We set off into the deep rainforest with 16 men carrying our supplies and equipment. They are eager to work for 5000 CFA/day, which is about $8. I am with my group of young Cameroonian scientists, 5 of them who by now are experts at this type of work. We had arrived after a long drive from Yaoundé to a remote village called Zoebefame. We had communicated with the chief of the village, and he let us sleep in his house; I in the chief’s bed. I was here once before, exactly 20 years ago, in the summer of 2005. This retrospective project is to sample blood from birds at the same sites 20 years later, to understand how habitat and climate change are affecting the diversity and prevalence of bird diseases; namely avian malaria.
The hike is supposed to be 10 kilometers, but that is in a straight line, as a crow flies. It is more like double, and we start to realize how far the site is. One Baka pygmy, whose father was with us 20 years ago remembers exactly where to go. But it is a long hike, and I am not as fast as I was in 2005. This is particularly incredible because I couldn’t walk a few months ago, I had a back surgery on April 1st for a herniated disk that caused tremendous sciatica pain. As we proceed, the guys take breaks. I am too tall and keep running into trees, and at one point a vine fastens around my leg and I trip and fall. That would be fine, but the first tree I grab onto has vicious spikes that lacerate my right hand. Everything in the forest seems prickly. I know it will get infected. On top of it, I have a debilitating sore throat and runny nose and cough. Is it Covid, or influenza? In any case, I feel miserable.
We get to the site 6 hours later, but the guys with the GPS are somewhere long behind us. And the site looks different, there is no stream as there was 20 years ago. We can’t possibly camp here, we need water if we will be here more than a week, and my iPhone GPS isn’t giving me the correct coordinates. We decide to go further, to a place “nearby” that has a stream. We head out, and the porters demand more money, an additional 2000 each. This is just too rough for them and I agree. The action packers with the equipment are bulky and about 20 kilos each.
Then the thunderstorm starts. Within seconds we are all drenched. We carry on, and reach the site with the stream in another hour or so, and immediately start setting up our tents and camp in the rain. This is true field work. All of us are exhausted. Two of my team are lost, one arrives after dark. They had gotten onto the wrong path, and had to bribe some hunters to take them back to the Baka village. The second teammate stayed there overnight, too sick and tired to carry on. It turns out that the original site where we had stopped was correct, but for some reason there was no water any longer. Things change in 20 years.
My tent is very comfortable, with my air mattress, and light sleeping bag. The Baka people accompanying us simply sleep under a tarp. For them, this $5/day is a good income. They live in poverty, and life is fleeting. Their father and brother who were with us 20 years ago had died. And along with them died a part of their culture: the new generation doesn’t know how to make the Ngombi, a musical forest harp, nor do they know the songs that I had recorded of their relatives 20 years ago. They are visibly moved when they hear their father singing from my iPhone.
It is hard work to get the birds. We put up 10 nets that same day after the rain stopped, so that we can begin sampling the next morning. This means getting the porters to cut the lines and poles with their big machetes, so we can erect the mist nets. Then the next morning, we open the nets at 6 am, and the work begins.
Food is simple. Sometimes rice and beans, other times spaghetti, and the third choice is gari (cassava powder) with peanut sauce. But the camp of 14 people is eating the food too fast, almost all the rice is gone the first night. I have a few packages of dehydrated vegan food with me from the USA, so I eat those some of the nights. When the food is almost gone, we send two guys back to the village (four hours each way for them) to replenish our supplies. The bees are out of control, and keep stinging me, until we lure them away with a bucket filled with tempting salt/sugar water. We bathe in the cool stream at the end of the day.
We catch birds. Some familiar friends, the Olive sunbird, the Fire-crested Alethe, Bleda notatus, and Yellow-whiskered greenbuls are common. We also by chance got an owl, and some beautiful kingfishers. This is the amazing part, working with these birds, and seeing the diversity. I sometimes can’t believe that I see these animals up close, and that over all of these years, I seem to know the Cameroonian birds better than the ones from California.
The last day of this leg, we catch birds in the morning while waiting for the porters to arrive. They began their hike in from Zoebefame village in the middle of the night. Then we quickly pack up, and hike out. This time it was slightly easier, no rain, although now it was clear that I had pneumonia. We were planning to get near to Akonolinga, our next site, but the road is blocked, so we end up driving back to Yaoundé, reaching after midnight.
I buy antibiotics in Yaoundé and I start to recover quickly, with the cough lingering just a couple more days. Our next site is Ndibi, and this place has changed substantially. Over the 20 years, the road has become overgrown, so we have to hire villagers to carry our stuff to the camp site, which they clear from growth in about an hour. The river is much farther away now, so we rent a water container for the week and a boy brings us water from a well in the village. In the evenings we hike to the Nyong river to bathe. This river somehow has black water, and the banks are covered with cow poop from the cattle grazing nearby, so we don’t feel exactly clean after swimming. There is no big hike here, but conditions are still somewhat rough. The first few days we catch hardly any birds, even though we erect 27 nets and keep moving them every day or two. The forest is simply different now. Finally, we decide to put up the nets in the marshy grassland, and that’s where we catch a lot of birds. Our last day, more than 100. In any case, the trip is successful. Again, the chief helped us establish the camp, and I showed the villagers photos from 20 years ago, and everyone laughed when they saw how different I look, now with my grey hair.
The team is a well-oiled machine. Three of us on birds, two on mosquitoes, super-efficient and effective. No complaining, just working. I am so impressed with their dedication and commitment; these people are the reason I am here. They should be at big universities in the USA or Europe. All PhD programs in Cameroon have been suspended at this point. The corruption is overwhelming, so if you don’t have the right connections, you don’t get a job. There is no research funding. The USA, despite the recent setbacks with the current administration, is still light years ahead in terms of infrastructure and opportunities. 20 years ago I was with a team of 7 white men, and one Cameroonian. Now I was the only foreigner, and they don’t need me any more, just the money.
This year, Cameroon was voted by Lonely Planet as their number one travel destination. I can’t imagine why, unless Paul Biya (president since 1982) is a shareholder. Nothing is simple here. It is hard to travel around, and yes there is tremendous diversity, but you won’t see gorillas or elephants. Even seeing the birds is a challenge. Yaoundé and Douala? Not exactly tourist friendly. Lithuania was number two: also a surprise. I guess they must have already chosen India, Brazil, Thailand and Botswana different years so now they are reaching down the barrel. I love both countries deeply, but I go to them not as a tourist. Now I am in Kribi on the coast sitting near the ocean listening to the waves. While I am waiting for all the paperwork to clear in Yaoundé, I decided to come here for a little break. I feel like my iPhone, which for this trip was always at low battery levels, about to run out. Here I am recharging myself. The bus ride was challenging from Yaoundé (nearly 7 hours instead of the 3.5 that I thought), and I arrived in the middle of a huge rainstorm. I met a lovely woman on the bus who helped me by calling a friend with a car to take me to the hotel. She embodied the spirit of Cameroon. Everything here is rough, but there are diamonds to be found everywhere.
