Katinka's Field Trip to DRC

On a cold November day, I approached Barbara Fruth after her talk at the cluster advent event and said “Well that would be cool to see in person.” Little did I know that sentence would lead me to a great adventure and a hot break from my beloved ( ;-) ) excel sheets in my very comfortable office.

I accompanied Barbara and Mattia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the start of their large cluster project “Ecological and social triggers of human (predator) and animal (prey) movement patterns in Central DRC”. After my first culture shock in Kinshasa (How many people and vehicles can possibly be out on the street at once?), I had my second culture shock arriving with the charter plane at the field site. Having little to no infrastructure, the arrival of the plane was the main event of the month for the six villages with which the project cooperates. Therefore, everyone was at the landing strip trying to haggle for some of the newcomer’s belongings – my water bottles were particularly popular that day.

However, being part of an amazing team, I acclimatised quickly and was ready to set out for the first order of business: Negotiating with the locals aka watching Barbara in action. Doing research in their villages (household questionnaires) and forests (tagging duikers) is not for free and there is a lot of jealousy between the villages. Thus, a lot of patience and experience is needed for the negotiations, which can be rather heated – not only talking about the temperature here. But once the first village agreed to our offer, the others followed suit and we were able to start setting up the project. This meant a lot of administrative work like getting teams ready for temporary camps (organizing equipment like tarps, GPSs, cookware, food, …), paying local workers (porters, cooks, logistical helpers, …), planning the traditional hunt to tag the duikers (mobilizing the hunters, preparing the hunting nets, offering a sacrifice to the ancestors – I spare you the details …). Usually being on the receiving end of fieldwork receipts, it was very enlightening to see and experience field-admin firsthand. It helped me to understand the requirements of field research in more depth and will hopefully help me help you better ;-)

After the household questionnaire team was all set and had started with their work, Barbara, Mattia and I, together with another great team, went off to an adventurous day of traditional duiker hunting. Traditional means it will start two hours later than planned. Just kidding, although that seems to be part of it. Traditional actually means stretching a 50m long net in the forest whilst the hunters wait out in the savannah. Once the net is stretched, the hunters receive a vocal signal after which they start to drive the duikers from the savannah into the nets in the forest. Despite three trials that day, we did not catch one single duiker; “la forêt est vide”, the forest is empty, was probably the most used sentence of the day. One goal of the project is to understand how different hunting practices affect wildlife populations and if the system, as it is, is sustainable. That day showed that the situation is worse than we thought and that any future effort to regulate hunting might be coming too late. We managed to tag two duikers on another hunting-day, but we did plan to tag twenty so the team that’s still in the forest now has some work to do.* [If you have questions regarding the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Mattia Bessone or Barbara Fruth.]

Communication during the hunt:

Of course I also got to see LuiKotale, Barbara’s research camp since 2002, and the habituated bonobos while I was there. LuiKotale means long life, hit me up if you want to know why ;-) Being in and running through the rain forest within a group of bonobos was exciting and impressive but boy you have to be very fit to be fit for the job!

Arriving back to (German) civilization after 6 weeks in the forest I was both, happy and sad. There are things I really don’t miss like having an army of hookworms in my feet or eating overcooked vegetables but there are definitely things I do miss like incredibly beautiful sunsets and night skies, the best pineapples and coconuts I’ve ever had and being outdoors and around likeminded people all day every day!
 
*Note from Barbara: Meanwhile they’ve tagged eight duikers.