Word: ndoki
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...desire to visit this extraordinary place was tempered not so much by the prospect of hardship as by the feeling that perhaps the Ndoki should be left alone. It has been protected for millenniums by its inaccessibility. Should there not be somewhere on earth where nature can be safe from the heavy hand of humanity? Journalists, explorers and scientists can inadvertently set in motion the destruction of the places they are trying to protect...
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...
...next day we hit the swamps that have long deterred those curious about the Ndoki. We 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...
...Ndoki River is the real barrier. Unnavigable and meandering, it is 3 m (10 ft.) deep in places and spreads out into swamps several kilometers wide. Even at its shallowest points, it can take eight hours to cross on 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...
...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, but it is not a peaceable kingdom...