Saturday: the day of our arrival in Bayanga. We arrived in time for lunch and a party that evening for a couple of gorilla researchers that are on a one week break in Bayanga. They spend 2 to 3 months at a time in the middle of the jungle tracking female gorillas, writing down all their observations. Not something I would be particularly interested in, but hey.
Sunday: We went to the local EBB church and were warmly greeted by the pastor's wife. The pastor in Bayanga moved here a year ago after having spent 6 years at our church in Gamboula so he was eager to have us over and to hear the latest news from Gamboula. The rest of Sunday we relaxed, being especially tired after our long trip.
Monday: The plan was to head south to visit two villages but the road was rained out. This seems to be a chronic problem in the rainforest in the rainy season. Go figure. Instead we worked in the rain around the centre here, dividing and planting trees in the nursery and doing a bit of laundry in the river. You have to enjoy camping to really get a kick out of life out here. If you don't enjoy camping this life can seem awfully onerous and full of inconveniences.
Tuesday: The road is a bit drier today so we ventured off with Constant, the EBB pastor and a local Aka guy who is interested in learning all about fruit trees and giving advice on planting etc. I was quite excited to have JP with us as he is showing a lot of initiative when it comes to trees. He has asked us to come to his garden to give him advice on planting trees and such. He is the kind of guy you want to really give a lot of attention too in the hopes that he will help other Aka in the future with tree planting and gardening. We stopped first in a village called Lijonbo, a village with a mix of Aka and villagers. They have two churches, one for the Aka and one for the villagers and many people had nice big jackfruits in their yards from a previous visit Constant made their a year ago. A big part of our job is to reinforce the work of guys like Constant who are fully capable of doing the agroforestry work but need access to the resources to do it. We continued on and landed in the last village there is in this part of CAR. We were on the only road south out of Bayanga and it ends at the Sangha river. The other side of the river is Cameroon. Here the Aka and the villagers live pretty well harmoniously, having the same church and the same school. We were pleasantly surprised to find a group of Aka houses with trees doing really well. Of 15 trees Constant planted last year all of them have survived and flourished, and these are people who wouldn't dream of watering their trees at all in the dry season. God truly blessed these trees and some are even starting to flower already. We planted another 10 trees here and we plan on returning to help them get their own nursery going so they can have trees to plant around their gardens in the future. In another 2 or 3 years these will be very productive places food wise and will help change the course of the health of these people. What a privilege to be involved in such work.
Wednesday: After having our vehicle briefly inspected by the local mechanic we set off north to visit 3 villages that had seminars in them last year. After a brief stop in KP to say hi and look at the trees we headed for Wango, the site of an orchard and fish basins that a Swedish guy helped with this past year. You can't fault people for wanting to help even though they have gaps in their own knowledge, so we took a look and made some suggestions for improvement. We then did some 'door to door treevangelism' as we are now calling it. We go from hut to hut asking the owners if they would like a tree planted at their house. If they agree then we help them pick out a suitable planting place, give them instructions on how to take care of it and how to eat it and then we are off to the next hut. When you return for another visit you can see who the people are that are serious about taking care of trees and then offer them further help the next time. Those that didn't take of the trees get no further help. From there we drove another further 50 km towards the direction of the Congo to a town called Liboko. Here we were greeted by the local pastor of a well integrated Aka/villager church. They even had a Swedish built guest house that we were able to stay in. We had a great meal of gozo, beef (that we bought and brought with us) and coco, my favourite green that is abundant in the forest here. Coco is a smallish leaf that grows on vines in the forest. They collect the leaves, make a little packet of them and then cut them up really fine so that it looks like shredded grass. Cooked with palm oil and peanut butter it makes a delicious and nutritious addition to gozo. That night the Aka started up drumming and singing and dancing beside the church and our guest house and so we joined in the merriment for a while before retiring for the night. It was one of those moments where there is no mistaking that you are truly living in the heart of Africa and that you know few people will ever experience what you just did.
Thursday: After bread and coffee we rounded up the few Aka who didn't go hunting for the day, including the head guy most interested in fruit trees and oil palm. We went to their group nursery and helped them transplant about 30 oil palm seedlings. Afterwards, we did a mornings worth of treevangelism and planted some 40 fruit trees. I have high hopes for this village and especially for one Aka guy who is quite interested in fruit trees. He has planted several seeds on his own initiative and has started planting trees in his own garden. After a lunch of gozo and coco we were off for Nola, the large town half-way between Gamboula and Bayanga. We arrived in the afternoon and took the opportunity to wander the market and get a few groceries (it is much less expensive there than in Bayanga). I also bought a pair of orange knock-off Nike shorts for $4.00 so I could swim in the river here. Darren and Constant took a look at the truck since we were having some trouble with it on the drive to Nola. To our surprise we found that we were completely without rear brakes because of a major rear differential oil leak on both sides.The whole brake assembly was totally gummed up with oil. We managed to buy some oil to top up the differential and then put it all back together in time for dinner. Yup, you guessed it, we had gozo and coco, cooked with fish. Their was also a bowl of some meat from some forest animal that Darren and Constant enjoyed. I stuck with the coco and fish sauce.
Friday: After a good nights sleep at the pastor's house we found our only passenger (the pygmy evangelist from Bayanga) and Constant and headed for Lopo, just south of Nola, in order to find diesel and gasoline to bring back to Bayanga. We also dropped Constant off so he could traffique his way back to Gamboula. The whole country seems to be out of gasoline (for the motor bike) but we were able to find diesel for the truck. We made our way back to Bayanga, about 4 hours driving time, with no hassles or mishaps, just stops to say hi to Aka on the way, and stops to buy plantains and forest fruits. We arrived in good time to enjoy lunch with the Raul and Diana. We had a beautiful nights sleep and spent 3 hours Saturday doing our washing in the river. I wish I could adequately describe what we saw and did during this week but it is better left for when we can talk in person. Suffice it to say that we were filled with hope for these displaced people and were encouraged by their gentle and humble spirits.
