Drums Along the Congo Read online

  “It itches whenever a crocodile is around,” he says.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Crocodile. We thought it was dead, but it wasn’t. She was guarding her eggs.”

  Innocent stares at the missing digits and then at me with an accusatory glare. In a whisper, he reminds me that an hour ago we were sitting in the shade, eating chocolate. When Alain invited us to go fishing for “the big one,” I convinced the reluctant Innocent to jump aboard. Once under way, we noticed that there weren’t any poles or nets in the pirogue, just five spears. In Epena “the big one” means crocodile.

  As we leave the kapok tree astern, Caspar tells us to stow our paddles; he’ll pole from here on in. It’s not long before we hear a splash about twenty yards downstream, near the left bank. Caspar swings the boat around and Innocent hands out the spears. Alain smiles and starts pumping his arm, practicing his throw. We drift with the current, moving quietly toward the left bank.

  “Merde!” Alain curses as a clawless otter surfaces. It sees us and swims away, its chestnut fur blending into the murky water.

  Caspar points us upstream again, poling silently. Alain remains standing in the bow, holding his spear tip inches above the water. I find myself mesmerized by our reflection undulating in the ripples.

  Of the twenty-five known crocodile species, the two most dangerous are the saltwater crocodiles of New Guinea and the freshwater Niles, which inhabit this river. These reptiles are considered the only natural predators of man.

  “Which kind of crocodile are we hunting?” I ask.

  “The one we see!” Alain answers.

  “Big ones or little ones?” The Nile crocodile grows to sixteen feet, but the other five species common to the Likouala aux Herbes rarely exceed eight feet.

  “The bigger the better,” Alain chimes. “The bigger the skin, the more money. Our biggest was six meters.”

  “Seven! Not a centimeter shorter,” Caspar corrects.

  They use spears not because of tradition or any notion of sportsmanship—they’d use dynamite if they could—but because Caspar traded away their rifle for a new set of drums. They’ve speared the giant Nile crocodile before, and they try to assure me that there’s nothing to it, despite Alain’s missing toes.

  Caspar poles us into a narrow stretch of river walled in by tall mud banks and thorny bushes. The jungle noises sound abnormally loud and chaotic, with a lot of shouting and cackling. For a few anxious moments, I feel trapped in the canoe; I imagine a gallery of predators perched above us, gathering for the feeding hour. Luckily, the banks soon re cede as the river widens, but the forest keeps chattering. A troop of green monkeys looses harpy screams, agitating other animals to call louder than ever. Alain says he feels the itching again.

  “Hoy … up ahead. See the flat grass,” Caspar whispers, exchanging his push pole for a spear. Alain nods.

  A small oval of mud rises off the starboard bow. Caspar carefully pushes the boat forward with his spear, swinging wide and taking us beyond the mound; we’ll drift back down with the current. The jungle animals continue to hoot and holler.

  Innocent studies his spear, nervously changing his grip, unsure what to do. At either end of the pirogue, Alain and Caspar stand poised to strike, their feet spread apart, one arm extended for balance, the other holding the spear. Each is focused like an archer zeroing in on the target. I spot the profile of a crocodile several boat lengths away, its head pointed upstream.

  Swish! Swish! Two spears zing outboard, their trajectories flat and true.

  “Yah!” Caspar screams, yanking the spear from my hand. I rearm with a paddle.

  The beast snaps its head skyward, its powerful tail knocking chunks of the sandbar into the water. It swirls toward the boat, jaws agape. With a startling burst of speed, the crocodile, two spears in its side, lunges for us and flops into the water. Its tail lashes at the river, whipping up a white froth laced with red.

  “A gauche… A gauche!” Alain orders.

  Bad call. The crocodile turns with us. Caspar abandons the defensive maneuver and prepares to hurl another spear.

  Whoosh! The angle is wrong, and the spear skips across the crocodile’s back. Innocent tosses him the last spear. The crocodile is closing in fast. The boat is pitching and out of control; Caspar and Alain struggle to keep their balance. I thrust my paddle deep into the mud and push off with a strength that comes only when a wounded crocodile is pointed at your head. The pirogue shoots forward and stabilizes, but the crocodile’s snout keeps pointed at our starboard rail. Innocent joins in, and we push off again.

  Alain cocks his arm and fires. His throw is wide. Caspar wraps both hands around his spear and aims straight down as Innocent and I dig in one more time. “Thuck!” Caspar lances the beast. The crocodile thrashes by, missing us by inches. There are now two spears in its side and another deep in its neck.

  We chase after the misfired spears and keep the pirogue a safe distance from the turbulence. We watch transfixed as the animal repeatedly submerges and surfaces, rolls and hobbyhorses. Blood slicks the water as the crocodile goes limp, its snout under the surface and tail partially curled. Dead, it looks small; in fact, it’s only a Congo dwarf crocodile, Osteolaemus tetraspis, just six feet long, but we approach with care. Alain squats in the bow, ready with a rope. Caspar moves forward and cocks his spear, alert for any sign of life. Alain lassoes the jaws without further incident and we tow our catch to shore.

  Landing on a mud flat, we drag the carcass out of the water. Caspar takes out his knife and carefully makes gouges around each spear so Alain can work the barbed tips free. They flip the crocodile to skin it, slowly working their blades, knowing that every unnecessary cut in the hide costs them money. The stench of the guts sends me upwind, but I return to inspect a partially digested duck. Its dark chestnut feathers suggest a Hartlaub’s duck. Alain keeps scooping entrails out onto the ground, where clouds of bees and flies swarm them.

  “Enough,” Alain grunts, brushing the flies away. He turns the carcass over and we drag it into the water. He and Caspar will finish skinning it under mosquito netting back in Epena.

  We follow Alain to high ground, where he digs a hole with a stick, removes a few pawpaw seeds from his juju bag, and drops them into the hole. Caspar spatters some of the crocodile blood over the seeds before gently tamping the soil and saying a short prayer.

  “This will help the spirit find a new home,” Caspar says.

  A shoal of butterflies dances in the bilge after we load the crocodile into the pirogue. All but one take off when we climb aboard. It is a small blue from the Lycaenidae family, with black forewings. The butterfly remains perched above the crocodile’s left eye, and when it finally decides to fly, it appears to float away, rising straight up without flitting its wings. Alain notices this as well and thinks the crocodile’s spirit is being carried heavenward.

  “Tokay!” Caspar shouts, turning the pirogue for home. He starts singing, his baritone voice in tempo with our paddling. Every ninth stroke, Alain calls out, “Yes, yes, of course, yes.” Innocent translates the lyrics about a giant bird who delivers food to the sky gods. One day the bird landed without noticing a leopard above it in a tree. As the leopard pounced, a Bantu warrior threw his body over the bird. The leopard bit and clawed the warrior, but the gods wouldn’t let him die. Magically, his wounds healed and he broke the leopard’s neck.

  “Yes, yes, of course, yes,” Alain choruses.

  When we’re halfway to Epena, we hear the Djéké village drum relaying a message about a group of mundélés who have left Boha en route to Epena. It must be the dinosaur-hunting British team, which I first heard about in Brazzaville. The commandant also mentioned that they passed through here on their way to Lake Télé several weeks ago. He had nothing much to report other than, “They came and went… Polite men with proper visas.”

  “They were only here for a day or two and didn’t spend much money. They were smarter than you, my friend,” Alain recalls.
“They brought everything they needed from Impfondo … plenty of gas. There were three of them.”

  “Four,” Caspar interjects. “They kept to themselves. Are you worried that they found Mokele-Mbembe?” “No, not particularly.”

  I’ve been told that the British group has sophisticated equipment and is intent on conducting a scientific investigation of Lake Télé. Although I respect this approach for some things, it’s a type of exploration that holds little appeal for me. Being more interested in chasing a dream than in the precise diameter of a footprint, I’m here to substantiate the obscure.

  Thankfully, after we beach the boat, Alain and Caspar refuse further assistance. They’ll finish the skinning themselves. As a crowd gathers, Innocent and I leave the hunters basking in the limelight and walk back to our room. When we pass the village produce market, which is usually sold out by eight in the morning, we notice three vendors still standing in the broiling sun.

  “Mister! Food here, mister,” one dealer says, beckoning.

  Dressed only in a tattered jumper, she stands over several rows of rotten produce; the bananas, fermenting inside blackened skins, are bloated and threatening to burst. Her neighbor’s yams have shriveled like prunes, and the lemons are brown and mushy.

  Innocent takes me aside. Begging, he says, is unthinkable here or in any rural district in the Congo. Instead, the impoverished pretend to have something to sell, and people pretend to buy it from them. The family, not the tribe, village, or state, takes care of those unable to support themselves, and these women must have lost their families.

  We buy out the market for six dollars and turn to leave.

  “Mister. These belong to you now.”

  Innocent helps me heap the rotten produce on an old piece of plywood, and we carry it to a village goat pen. The owner of the livestock waves us off, flicking a switch in the air.

  “That will ruin tomorrow’s milk!” He points to the jungle wall. “Feed it to the ants.”

  CHAPTER 15

  INNOCENT FINDS ME near the edge of the jungle practicing my drumming on some aluminum cookware.

  “You’re improving,” he encourages, “but, my friend, you still have a long way to go.”

  He has come to escort me to Caspar’s house, where our host is waiting for us with piles of crocodile meat. We detour to pick up a bottle of scotch and then join about forty people milling about a cookfire at Caspar’s. Everyone but us, still in our hunting attire, wears clean clothing and perfume. People nod politely to me, but I feel as though I’m part of a community outreach program and sense that they would feel more comfortable if I weren’t around. At least no one talks about commitments or asks me how I earn my living.

  All of the other guests clutch plantain leaves, which, I discover, serve as plate, napkin, and cup. Whenever someone sees the scotch bottle in my hand, they twirl a leaf into a cone and I pour in some liquor. I learn to pinch the bottom of my own leaf cup and not release the pressure.

  Alain and Caspar insist on enhancing the role Innocent and I played in the hunt. It’s their party, so they can say what they want. No one seems impressed anyway. We’re all here for a free meal and a good time, and when Alain describes the crocodile as an eighteen-foot monster, everyone is polite enough to ignore the puny skin hanging in full view.

  The crocodile meat has been chopped into steaks, which some people spear on a stick to roast over the fire, while others flip the meat directly into the flames. A few drop their steaks into boiling water. Innocent and I opt for roasting. The crocodile tastes rather good, but it’s very greasy, not unlike tuna packed in heavy oil.

  Alain hands me a bowl containing an avocado-colored sauce. “Let the strength of the crocodile be yours. Sip from the brains.”

  I raise the bowl to my lips, snap my head back, and feel something slither down my throat. Before the taste kicks in, I gulp a mouthful of scotch. The crowd applauds, but it has nothing to do with me: the electricity has come on. There’s a burst of activity around the fire as people collect their food before rushing off for the wrestling matches.

  “Monsieur mundélé, les autres mundélés sont ici,” a young boy announces from under my plantain-leaf plate. The English team has arrived at the village hospitality house, the customary lodging for visitors not escorted by someone like the colonel. When I’ve finished eating, I head over to meet them.

  Since before the formation of the Kongo Kingdom, each village has maintained a public guesthouse to shelter travelers or local families in distress. Often these guesthouses also serve as jails. As the hub of the district, Epena usually has one or two prisoners in lockup, commonly petty crooks caught stealing chickens. Though rare, murder does occur in the district; the commandant told me that two weeks ago his men captured a spurned lover who killed his rival.

  The shelter-cum-hoosegow has cement walls and floors covered in a black fungus, and the air reeks of stale urine and bat shit. A rat the size of a pregnant cat crosses my path and squeezes into a hole under the house. Several steps later, I see four white men sprawled on the ground to one side of the building.

  “Howdy,” I say enthusiastically.

  “Hooo!” one of them hoots, shining a flashlight at me. Apparently no one has told them what the drums have been talking about much of the afternoon: the end of one Lake Télé expedition and the start of another.

  I try again, this time introducing myself. Three of the four Brits stand to shake hands, but the other remains flat on his back, out like a light.

  “He had a rough time of it… Bloody hard in spots. More friggin’ problems than you want to imagine,” says William “Call Me Billy” Gibbons.

  Billy and the others flop back to the ground. They’re too tired to care where they sleep.

  “What are you doing here?” asks Marc Rothermel, the group leader. He looks like someone out of a World War II movie about England’s leathernecks. Hearing that I’m about to follow in their footsteps to Lake Télé, Rothermel groans and says something privately to his colleagues. Billy clears his throat and spits.

  “Well, did you see it?” I ask, passing out some chocolate bars.

  “It?” Rothermel questions.

  “Mokele-Mbembe, of course.”

  “Piss off.”

  They spent years pulling their expedition together, and they’re not eager to share any hard-earned knowledge. Besides, Rothermel says, “We don’t trust Yanks.” He goes on to curse the leaders of previous American expeditions, accusing one man in particular of trying to scuttle their operation by smearing their name to Congolese officials.

  “One minute we had the friggin’ visa, and then we had nothing. The minister revoked it and showed us a letter he received from Chicago saying we were frauds, not qualified… It took forever to get that permit back.”

  “Frankly,” Billy says, “you Yanks have been out to get us every step of the way. So who the hell are you?”

  I assure them that I’m only a freelancer, with ties to a newspaper but in no way connected to the other American expeditions. They relax a bit after hearing this, yet it takes five minutes of general conversation before they’re convinced I won’t steal their discoveries to advance my own career as a cryptozoologist. Curiosity, I explain, not advancement in the scientific community has brought me to the Congo.

  “Tilting at windmills, eh?” Rothermel concludes. “Christ, mate, you make us look like a top-drawer expedition. I like that.”

  Rothermel ticks off other expeditions he has been on, in the Andes, Borneo, Madagascar, and South America. All of them were well-financed operations that included numerous field specialists and the most up-to-date equipment. This is the first time he has organized and led a group.

  “We’re okay. The lads know their plants and animals, but I wish we had better gear.”

  Surrounding them are watertight camera boxes, bags, and rucksacks containing items I never considered bringing. Influenced by Patrick and Nando, I packed only what I could carry on my back while running: fo
rty pounds. Most of that weight is cameras, film, field guides, rope, and solutions for preserving insects. The Brits, on the other hand, have lugged an inflatable boat and outboard motor; infrared spotting scopes and lenses; a portable darkroom, complete with chemicals and trays; several movie cameras; depth sounders; recording devices of various types; and pricey-looking gizmos packed in fancy cases with double O-ring seals.

  The most sophisticated piece of equipment in my kit is a ballpoint pen that writes underwater, prompting Rothermel to try to sell me their used gear. Money is tight, he says, every native has done his part to milk them dry.

  “Cheap, cheap, cheap!” he trills, holding up one item after another. I buy a few rolls of film and some water purification tablets.

  “Boha is a drag,” he cautions, giving me tips about what lies ahead. “But the path to Lake Télé is a cakewalk, less clutter than a Midlands forest.”

  “What about the swamp?”

  “That bit can be rough. Watch out for the mud holes… Never saw so many bugs in my life. Mosquito heaven. Ever have malaria? You’ll be fine then, the first time is always the worst. Why, I remember when…”

  Rothermel recounts a few of his many battles with tropical diseases; I’ve had only malaria, nine years ago. I had run the coastal blockade to deliver a boat to anti-Somoza forces in Nicaragua, but a screwup in communications forced me to hide for a week. Word finally reached Nando, my shore contact and friend, and he rushed to my side, taking charge and leading me over the border into Costa Rica. I felt fine up to the minute the plane lifted off from San Jose. That’s when the chills began sweeping through my perspiring body. Woozy and dripping in sweat, I deplaned in Miami, where customs officials mistook me for a nervous drug runner and strip-searched me. A friend picked me up at a New York airport and drove me directly to a hospital. Six days later I took a cab home.

  Rothermel’s backpack weighs fifty-five kilos, but he can’t answer a single question about the jungle flora and fauna. “That’s not my department, mate,” he says. “I shoot ’em and cook ’em. The hunting is good, damned good. Plenty of monkey, snake, lizard, fish…”