Word: fay
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...long after my talk with Fay, I encountered Japanese primatologist Masazumi Mitani, who along with Suehisa Kuroda established the first research camps at the edge of the Ndoki region in 1987. Since then, the Japanese researchers, in cooperation with Congolese scientist Antoine Ruffin Oko, have conducted a groundbreaking survey of animal populations in the Ndoki and have closely studied the primates, including gorillas and chimps. Mitani told me the animals were indeed unafraid of humans, but warned that conditions in the region were "very, very difficult." Knowing the extreme privation Japanese primatologists regularly endure, I took these cautionary words very...
Later conversations with Fay and others disabused me of the notion that the Ndoki would be safe if simply left alone. Only lack of funds has stymied government plans to build a road through northern Congo that would open the region to development. And in 1990 only the arguments of Fay and Japanese researchers, backed by the U.S. government and the World Bank, persuaded Congolese authorities that there were alternatives to giving a logging concession for the Ndoki region to an Algerian-Congolese consortium...
...pick our way through the quicksand-like muck by feeling with our toes and walking sticks for a series of thin logs Japanese researchers have previously laid down. I slip once and fall up to my chest in mud before grabbing a root. Sobered by the slip, I ask Fay how deep the mud is. "Who knows?" he says, shrugging...
...foot and is impassable much of the year. We use a pirogue that Kuroda's team has built to resupply his tiny station. Parched by the precarious walk to this point, we cool ourselves with the absolutely pure waters of the Ndoki as we pole through the river grass. Fay thinks he knows why the Pygmies have historically kept to the west side of the river. With ample game in the more accessible forests, they have had no need to risk a crossing. At this point, though, I am not thinking of hardship but rather of the beauty...
...areas are open and cool, even though the equatorial sun beats down on the upper stories of the canopy. At one point we discover leopard droppings containing black hair and some bone bits. The Pygmies claim it is gorilla hair, though only dna analysis could tell for sure. Fay thinks it's possible, since he has documented leopard attacks on gorillas. Samory, one of the trackers, claims leopards kill the immensely strong apes with surprise attacks in which the cat quickly snaps its jaws around the gorilla's throat. The Ndoki may be innocent of humans...