In the Tree Tops
To state the obvious, Africa is a BIG continent. There are 54 countries, and the ecosystems range from desert, mountains, rainforests, woodlands, islands, volcanoes and just about everything in between.
'In the Tree Tops: West and Central Africa' covers sub-Saharan Africa, from the Guinea forests to the Angolan border, and almost all of the ecosystems. The range of wildlife is also immense. In terms of biodiversity, the South American countries have the number, but in terms of the the spectacular then the award must go to Africa.
Read about tackling the illegal bushmeat trade, working with incredibly poor people whose countries have been decimated by civil war, corruption and colonialism. And the wonderful people who somehow take all the injustices and cling on to survival. Only just, in some cases.
It is a book full of stories that will make you laugh and cry, as you read about the daily lives of people that wake up each day not knowing if they will see the end. And of the animals that live alongside the people, in their rapidly shrinking wilderness worlds.
It is a book that will make you want to reach for your jungle gear, mosquito repellent and walking boots. But first, read it on the sofa with a strong cup of tea and a handkerchief. Life at its very fullest.
Extract from In the Tree Tops.
The high-profile orphans at Yaoundé’s Mvog-Betsi Zoo that we were looking to relocate to Mefou Primate Sanctuary were chimpanzees and gorillas that had probably been kept alive by hunters in the hope that they could be sold as pets. If there was a report of a young ape in a village, then MINEF (later renamed ‘MINFOF’, the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife) would send a guard to confiscate the animal. If they had a vehicle, of course. Realistically, CWAF would provide the vehicle, the fuel and the per diem payments for the game guards.
The slaughtered adult apes got sold for meat straightaway, destined for a bushmeat market in the city, where such meat commanded a premium price. I wanted to try and understand how this ‘illegal commercial bushmeat trade’ really operated. That meant travelling to the hotspots and hopefully meeting the people involved. I knew it could be dangerous – it was an illegal trade, after all – but any solution had to be based on facts, and I needed as many facts as possible, not rumours or hearsay.
The chance of my seeing gorillas in the wild was going to be slim, but I hoped to find signs of them at least. Getting a feel for the landscape would help me enormously in my understanding of the challenges involved in conserving them. With this in mind, early in 2000 I hired a vehicle to take Chris and me to the Dja Faunal Reserve (DFR). This 500,000-hectare forest block straddled parts of Cameroon’s Central and South regions but was mainly in the East Region. We were headed for the area around the town of Lomié, on the eastern boundary of the DFR, at the very end of the road, eight hours’ drive from Yaoundé on a good day. It was the rainy season, so we needed to hire a 4x4 and driver to get us through the inevitable mud and craters. Car hire was expensive – even the most advanced 4x4 would only last a few years on the clay roads and boulder-strewn tracks, so it was a big investment – but it would be worth it, I reasoned, if I could see what we were up against.
We set off early, before the build-up of traffic that gridlocked the city from about 6 a.m. It felt good to escape. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Yaoundé was home to around one million people (in the twenty-five years since, it has quadrupled), and the frantic madness of the buzzing yellow taxis, the diesel fumes billowing out of every frayed gasket, the rattling, in-name-only exhaust pipes, and the ever-present crowds made just getting from one area of the city to another an exhausting experience.
Most of the trees close to the city had been chopped down for logs and fuelwood, but as we travelled away from Yaoundé we saw some spectacular giant specimens, including towering moabi and sapele, the flagship species of the rainforest. It took a while to appreciate the size of them. A moabi will take around a hundred years to reach its full potential, growing up to fifty metres high and weighing several tonnes. Unfortunately, they are worth up to half a million dollars at market, so they are a massive target for exploitation.
By now we were driving on dirt roads, and these were a quagmire of thick clay that clung to the tyres of our 4x4 and seemingly made the tread useless. Now and again, we’d come across a stranded logging truck, or ‘grumier’ as they are referred to (the French name), that had been abandoned by its driver, the heavy tonne logs having either tipped off the sides or still bound to the truck, waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive, which could take days.
You saw such trucks wherever there were timber concessions at work. They were massive – as long as the logs they were carrying, which could be twenty metres or more – and incredibly powerful. They comprised two parts: the huge diesel engine, cab and four-wheeled front section; and the rear wheels, which were strapped beneath the logs at the back. With no driveshaft to the back wheels, the logs acted as a fixed axle and all the grunt was at the front, which made them incredibly dangerous. The drivers were on a fixed rate to get the logs to port, or one of the sawmills, and seemed to have the attitude that they’d just keep on driving until they were physically unable to stay awake any longer.
Where a stranded grumier had lurched to the side of the road, we were free to get past, but on a few occasions we had to fight our way off-track to avoid the blockage, hoping that our wheels would retain some sort of grip in the cloying mud as we slid by. Even when there were no obvious obstructions, our pace slowed to a crawl at times, which was unnerving, but at least we had a good vehicle. We’d hired a Toyota Hilux, the preferred choice of most road travellers in the Congo Basin. They were expensive, at the time about £30,000, which was a small fortune in that part of the world, but they could generally be relied on to get you where you wanted to go, regardless of the inevitable potholes, mud-sinks and fallen trees.
The high price of these 4x4s, and their ability to cope with most types of terrain, had led to another problem – carjacking. The wars in neighbouring Chad and Central African Republic (CAR) had encouraged bands of rebels to pop over the border into Cameroon and steal new 4x4s for sale back home, to buy arms. The NGO community of aid agencies and wildlife conservation organisations were most at risk. They needed good, reliable vehicles to work in the field, and that meant new 4x4s would turn up regularly at their offices, courtesy of some grant aid. Parked in a compound in Yaoundé, the cars were reasonably well guarded, but the big risk was travelling through the city. It was rare that car-jackers would wait on the roads outside of the major towns, as there was no guarantee that a suitable vehicle would pass, but keeping an eye on the city traffic meant there was a good chance of spotting one idling in the stationary jams, easy prey for an armed force of thieves.
Being relatively poor NGOs, we didn’t have the money to buy a new 4x4, but several of the wealthier agencies took a beating. In one instance, a wildlife-conservation organisation not only had a brand-new Hilux pinched at gunpoint, but they then had their 4x4 hire vehicle nabbed as they drove back from the police station. Unlucky perhaps, but I also wondered how the gangs knew so quickly where the vehicles were. The sums involved were vast for the normal Cameroonian, so the incentives were significant. In a country where the average wage was £40 per month, the opportunity to earn thousands of pounds in one hit must have been tempting, to say the least.
‘Are we going to make it to Lomié tonight?’ I asked Chris, as the afternoon crept by and our progress was thwarted yet again by a queue of bush vehicles trying to get past yet another stranded truck.
‘Perhaps not. I’d like to make it as far as Abong Mbang at least. It has a hotel, although I’ve never stayed there, so I’ve no idea what it’s like.’
It was at the hamlet of Atok that our nemesis struck. The road forked there, one branch heading south to a timber concession, the other straight ahead to the east, towards Bertoua, which was our route. We were still a good hour from Abong Mbang, and at least another three from Lomié. The fork in the road must have been the reason for the gendarme post. We were pulled over for inspection as a matter of course, plus the fact that there were two white guys in the car, which was always a good reason to stop and check. This time, the luck of the policeman was well and truly in.