Endangered (22 page)

Early one morning, I took Otto and my mother and Clément and retraced the path I'd taken after leaving. I didn't have much optimism that Anastasia and the rest were still alive, but I hoped to find a clue as to what might have happened to them.

Getting to the manioc fields was a lot easier this time, since it was safe to take the road. I was unfamiliar with this way, though, and overshot, realizing I'd gone too far only when we unexpectedly came across a peeling plywood sign that read
SIDA
.

I could sense the old house was empty long before it came into view. Heavily so; some stillnesses are full. Deep greenery had grown over the entrance and ant columns crisscrossed the walk. The front door groaned and tilted free in my hands. Inside, everything was gone. Not only the teacher and the boys; also missing were the furniture and fixtures, and there were long winding gashes puckering the walls where someone had ripped out the wiring. Upstairs was much the same. The room I'd stayed in was stripped clean. In the boys' room, all that remained were the bolts that had attached the bunk beds to the wall; I guess that wood had built someone a cooking fire.

I pondered what had happened. The possibilities were wonderful and terrible. Maybe the teacher had gotten the boys together and escaped. Maybe soldiers had come and recruited the whole bunch. Maybe tearful families had come with open arms to collect their children. Maybe the water had gotten contaminated and
cholera had done everyone in, wild animals dragging away the bodies. I would never find out.

It was with heavy footsteps that I continued on my way, my mother and Clément allowing me a respectful silence. The abandoned village wasn't too far off, and already showed signs of rebuilding. Two old women were at work on one of the burned-away roofs, beating thatch against the earth to clear it of bugs before twining it to the roof timbers. We greeted them as we passed, and they briefly acknowledged us before returning to their task. One of them gave Otto a long puzzled look that was hard for me to interpret. I asked her if she had seen any apes like Otto nearby, and she shook her head.

Once on the far side, we patrolled along the jungle line, peering into the vegetation. Excited by this new game, Otto took to the trees, following me from up above.

There was no sign of Mushie, Anastasia, Ikwa, or Songololo.

We continued our investigating, delving deeper into the growth. It was late afternoon, around the time the bonobos would have been eating their fruit lunch back in the sanctuary, when I first heard a high-pitched call. Otto cried back exuberantly, bounding down from a tree and climbing up me to straddle my head, a foot on each of my shoulders as he waved his arms in excitement, slapping a hand over my eyes whenever he lost balance.

Calls answered Otto's, followed by frantic shrieks and crashing sounds from deep in the trees. Clément fled, taking shelter behind the wall of a wrecked hut, but Otto and Mom and I stood ready.

First to bound out of the tree line was Mushie, menacingly brandishing a tiny branch. When he saw who it was, he dropped it and rushed me, in his excitement climbing a nearby sapling and falling off, then picking himself up and racing near, only to
skid in the dirt and present his back to me to groom. I did so happily.

Next out of the trees was Songololo, approaching more timidly. She was excited to see Otto, grinning broadly, but still she didn't approach near. I found out why when, a few seconds later, a tiny bonobo clumsily pushed through the leaves to join her. When she saw me and Otto, she froze, chirping, and threw her skinny arms around Songololo's leg.

Mushie threw up his arms, and the little baby toddled over, climbing up his belly so she rested up near his neck. The baby stared at Otto and me with wide eyes. She was frail and wrinkly, probably no more than a few weeks old.

A baby! I couldn't figure it out. Someone in the group had given birth. But Songololo was far too young to get pregnant. That left Anastasia, and maybe Mushie as the father.

She must have been pregnant when we fled the enclosure. They'd been surviving out here in the forest and fields around the abandoned village, and Anastasia had given birth in the wild.

But where was she? And where was old Ikwa?

While I stood there thinking, Songololo and Otto were already working on bringing their friendship back into full swing, shrieking and humping and wrestling.

With the loud calls that Mushie and Otto had made, with the clamor they were making now, Queen Anastasia should have come running from wherever she was to take charge of the situation. Especially with her infant right here. Mushie and Songololo were paying no attention to the jungle behind them, which made me think they weren't anticipating any more bonobos.

Which meant Anastasia and Ikwa were gone. Probably dead. And not too long ago, at least in Anastasia's case, if that infant was alive without a nursing mother around.

To make sure, I tromped through the jungle where Mushie and
Songololo had emerged, the others following curiously a few paces behind.

There was no sign of them.

Finally seeing my mother — whom he'd known since he was a baby, when she'd nursed him on formula in our backyard — Mushie rushed over. As my mom embraced him, the baby transitioned to her, gamely placing frail arms around my mom's neck. Her instant appeal for bonobos appeared not to have diminished one bit. She buried her face into the baby's hair, her expression indecipherable.

We led the ape parade back to the sanctuary, reversing the course I had taken weeks ago. We passed through the sanctuary gate shortly before dark. I was there to witness Mama Marie-France cry for joy for the first time.

 

Mushie and Songololo were installed back in their old home, only now with a new baby to take care of. My mom entered the enclosure multiple times a day to feed milk to the infant. We discussed names, but nothing stuck. Mom wanted Mbandaka, I guess in honor of what the city had gone through, but I refused; I couldn't think about that horrible place every time I saw this sweet little bonobo.

Otto and I took on the massive administrative tasks involved in reestablishing the sanctuary, maintaining constant phone contact with the new government's rapidly changing Ministry of Environment and keeping track of which officials to curry favor with and which to hold to the fire. Well, that was actually all me. As I made my calls, Otto would munch bananas and stare out the window, or go outside to teach the new arrivals jungle-gym techniques. He wasn't allowed near the youngest orphans, since his lingering cough had returned full force. All human drugs work on bonobos, so whenever his wheezing kept him awake at night I
gave him precious cough syrup I bought from the US embassy commissary.

One afternoon, as I sat at my mother's desk, filling out and stamping paperwork, my cell phone rang. Recognizing a government number, I picked up quickly. “Hello?”

“Yes, I'm calling for Florence Biyoya, please.”

“This is her daughter, Sophie. May I ask who is calling?”

“Yes,” said a female voice. “This is the assistant to Monsieur Ngambe, Social Minister.”

I sat up straight. “The social minister? Of all of Congo?”

“Yes. Mademoiselle Biyoya, how can I phrase this? First I could ask this: Do you have a truck to transport bonobos?”

“We have a small vehicle, yes. Do you have a confiscated orphan? Let us know where you are keeping it, and we can —”

“Mademoiselle Biyoya, that is not quite it.”

“Tell me what I can do to help you.”

“Ah. Well … we have eighteen.”

It took me a moment to find words. “You have eighteen orphans?”

“Not exactly. You see … the new president has finally gotten around to cleaning out the former president's winter palace. But when we went to recover and renovate it, we … were not able to enter. There are bonobos inside. And they do not want us to disturb them.”

I smiled so widely it hurt. “I see. Where is this palace located?” She told me. It was no more than ten miles along the road. “Is someone there now?” I asked.

“I'm actually outside the gate right now,” the assistant said. “We're at a loss here, and the minister is getting angry. Please come as soon as you can.”

Clément drove me and my mom there right away. Otto was particularly under the weather that day, so I left him in the care of
Mama Marie-France, knocked out by cough syrup, snoring under a tree.

We found the assistant midway down the drive, pacing next to her black SUV and wringing her hands. She led us to the palace gates.

What a sight. On the other side of the elegant wrought-iron entrance lay what looked like a bonobo theme park: bonobos draped over cupid planters; bonobos pooping in a birdbath; bonobos chasing one another up and down Grecian statues, leaping from the head of Aphrodite and swinging around Poseidon's tri-dent to land in the arms of Zeus. They'd stolen clothes and furniture from the palace and strewn it on the lawn. Most were ruined, but one of the bonobos ran past wearing a dripping-wet military beret over her face.

There had to be half the nursery here, and a handful of the adults. They'd escaped the soldiers.

And they were having the time of their lives.

I put my arms around my mother. “It seems a shame to make them leave.”

I still have it, all these years later, there on my bookshelf.

The sneaker.

The knot Otto made in the laces when I was trying to escape from Bouain was a convoluted mess, made worse by repeated bathings in river muck. In the end, I had to cut the shoe off to remove it. But that wonderful chaotic sphere of shoelace that Otto had created, and in so doing saved my life, still crowns it on top.

I didn't wind up going back to Miami after the war, instead staying with my mother and attending the American School of Kinshasa. After a month or two, my dad returned to the States, and my mom and I settled into life in Congo. I'd harbored a fleeting hope they'd get back together, but it never happened. I guess the divorce had been for more reasons than I'd been old enough to realize. Once high school was finished, my parents insisted that I go to the States for college — and given the state of the universities in Congo, I agreed. So I moved to Atlanta and went to Emory.

The only souvenir I've kept of that war year is the sneaker. Visitors who come over — friends, boyfriends — often ask me about it. At first I'd put on a pot of coffee and go into the whole story, not starting with the attack on the sanctuary but going way back, to the nineteenth century when the Belgians invaded Congo up through the wars in the nineties. But the memories were so raw and so painful that my friends' inability to find words to say after
I'd finished only pushed me deeper into the sadness of what had happened. They'd want to see photos of Otto, and I couldn't stand to bring them out, not now that he was gone. It's like I'm back to when I was eight starting school in Florida, and people would ask me what Congo was like; I'd say, “Poor,” and move on. Except now it's “That was the shoe I wore during the war,” and we move on. No mention of the bonobo no longer by my side.

But I didn't move on from Congo, not in the most important parts of me. I wound up concentrating my course work on international politics and development, and now I've graduated and am on an AirFrance plane beginning its descent into familiar old Kinshasa. The business plan for a community development nonprofit is nestled in my carry-on briefcase, alongside a photo of that sneaker and its jumble of shoelace.

They say Congo is improving, but you can't tell from the airport. It's still a mess of barely paid employees searching for any excuse to exact a bribe. A big goal I have for my new organization is to make Congo accessible to tourists; I'm trying to network with European and American travel sites to arrange group visits to my mom's sanctuary and to the gorilla hot spots in the east, and in so doing infuse money into the economy, not the bureaucrats' pockets where so much foreign aid ends up. First step is reining in the bribe-happy airport employees. It's going to take a long time, so today I've got a ten-dollar bill in each pocket of my pants, one for each person who extorts money from me just to get out of the terminal.

Mom's waiting outside, and gives me one of those long warm hugs that I crave so much. We get into the backseat of the sanctuary vehicle, and before we're halfway home she's going on and on about all the eligible Congolese boys she knows, friends of friends of her friends, every one of them extraordinarily handsome and well-educated. This has been a recent development, my mom getting
boy crazy on my behalf. It all triggered when I told her I'd gotten engaged to a Senegalese guy I met at Emory; I guess she was hoping that I'd settle down with someone from Congo.

My fiancé is thrilled that we're moving to Kinshasa, and once he's here I'm sure my mom will come around. He's a teacher, and wonderful with children, so my hope is maybe he'll lead up the education arm of the sanctuary, introducing Congolese schoolchildren to their national heritage, doing something to make animals in Lingala more than the plural of
meat
.

To stave off the impending marriage argument, I ask my mom about the sanctuary. It's got multiple enclosures now, and is bigger than it ever was before the war. And her release project, after a rough start, has turned out to be a great success. She has more bonobos living in the wilds of the release site than she has in captivity, an achievement she brings up often. The sanctuary is still the best-functioning part of the Kinshasa economy and an important model for how the country can lift its people out of poverty; her staff roster has reached one hundred, not including the many farmers who produce the tons of fruit the sanctuary goes through each month.

I don't mention Otto, and I'm relieved that she doesn't bring him up.

 

I've timed my arrival to coincide with the latest phase of her release project, partially because it means I'll get to go back to Mbandaka with her. Now that a few years have gone by, I want to see the city again for myself and come to terms with the site of my personal horror.

When we arrive, I see that the city is doing pretty well — it's even got an outdoor café with real espresso drinks! And a botanical garden! Many people say it's made more progress than Kinshasa,
and I can see why. The rotting post office is now a little movie theater, for example. After fifty years' absence, movie theaters are back in Congo.

The people of Ikwa are still scrawny and smiley, and they host a big feast of fish and groundnuts and safou fruit for our crew. In return, we present them with burlap bags of salt and a few kilos of precious soap. I also give them a stack of clothing from America, and they're most excited by the price tags and labels, which get posted as artwork throughout the village. We spend the night there on the way to the release site, leaving the bonobos tranquilized and snoozing in their transports. Despite our efforts to shoo them away, the local children spend hours staring at the bonobos and trying to get them to wake up. The next day we're into motorized pirogues and heading to the site.

There are four bonobos in this release group. When Mom told me who was included, I knew I had to be here. Mushie is among them, as is Songololo, now an adult. The pair has been pretty much inseparable since their return to the sanctuary. The smallest of the release bonobos is only seven years old. She's Anastasia's war orphan, whom I named Congo. I was still in my wound-up post-war state when I named her, and I think the name's a little silly now. Sometimes I call her Democratic Republic to tease myself, but I don't think little Congo likes that very much.

It's late afternoon by the time our pirogues reach the island. It takes four men to lift each crate, with its groggy bonobo contents, onto the beach. There's a lot of shouting, and the pirogues nearly capsize multiple times in the process. But the crates are eventually all onshore. To make the bonobos feel secure, we decide to keep them in the crates until morning, sleeping in tents alongside them while we wait for the tranquilizers to wear off. Tonight we'll position the crates on the other side of the electrified gateway, then tomorrow we'll release these bonobos to join the wild ones.

But that's all for later. Right now I have a different mission. I ask my mom if I can take a pirogue and do a circuit of the island. She nods, with a half smile that tells me she knows exactly what I have in mind.

One of the porters offers to take me, but I tell him I want to do this alone. And so, in the pink-blue light of the approaching sunset, I motor off to the far side of the island.

To Otto.

 

I kept him by my side all that first year, only gradually introducing him to the nursery. I weaned him off me by spending half an hour at a time out of his presence, then an afternoon, and finally days away once he was comfortable with his new friends. Whenever I returned, though, he would leap to me with his arms over his head, desperate for a hug, like he'd only been biding time until I came back. I'd cry, he'd giggle, and I would immediately start dreading the next moment we'd have to part.

By the time I left for college, Otto was a full-on adult bonobo, slender and elegant, with a part right along the center of his head, wiry hair flopping on either side. Dashing, I thought, in a scrawny poet kind of way. He had huge, expressive eyes like a manga character, and (I'm proud to say) was catnip to the ladies. And to the gentlemen, for that matter — such is the way of bonobos.

A couple of years ago, my mom called to tell me that Otto had a goiter, and even though it was the middle of exam week, I almost got on the next plane to come save him. But it turned out that goiters are fairly common in bonobos, and harmless. It went away on its own after a few months, but until then he never left my mind. He's always on my mind, to tell the truth. My thoughts don't wander anymore; he's where they go as soon as they're idle.

Except for the hum of the motor, being in this pirogue feels familiar from my time with Wello. The lapping sounds are both soothing and anxiety producing. As I circle the island, searching for signs of bonobos, my heart races with a sense of all that's past and all that's happening now.

As I near the top of the island, the trees give way to low marsh. Mom told me the bonobos don't spend much time here, preferring the coverage of trees during the rainy season. So I speed along, slowing only after I've gone around the tip and am on the island's other side and back to a forested zone. But I still can't find any bonobos.

Though I have only a half hour more of sunlight, I cut off the motor and idle; I fear that the noise is chasing the bonobos away. I hear occasional crashes from the tree line, but each time it's a lizard plopping into the water or a bird taking flight.

But then a black shape appears at a treetop. It disappears almost immediately, and I question what I saw: It was definitely a bonobo, but was it Otto?

The bonobo reappears on the shallow beach, and I know it's him. The part in his hair, the searching eyes, the delicate limbs. My Otto! I stand in the pirogue and wave. He sways uncertainly on his two legs and peers at me. I cry out his name.

Immediately he shrieks, grinning and jumping and slapping the ground. He runs back and forth, keeping his eyes on me. He lifts his arms:
Come give me a hug.

Teary, I lift my arms back. It's an essential principle of the project that humans not come in direct contact with the released bonobos. To keep them safe from people who might come to the island to do them harm, the bonobos mustn't stay too used to us.

He lifts his arms again, more energetically.
Come give me a hug! Come give me a hug!

Oh, Otto, I wish I could.

I stand in the pirogue, calling his name over and over, talking nonsense to keep him near. But I don't need to work to keep his attention; he seems like he would never leave. He paces back and forth on the shore, makes a couple of steps into the water as if to swim out. But bonobos can't swim, so he heads back to land, arms fussily over his head to keep them dry. He paces the bank and murps at me. Eventually he gives up and slumps on the beach, head in his hands, sun glinting gold in his eyes. He stares at me.

“Otto,” I say finally as the sun pulls back its last rays. “I love you so much.”

He stares back and lifts his arms one last time.
Come give me a hug.

But I can't.

Before it gets too dark, I motor up the pirogue and head back to camp.

My mom helps me off when I get there. She asks me if I saw Otto, and knows the answer when I'm unable to respond. She leads me to our tent, where I stare up at the fabric walls until sleep finally takes over.

 

The next morning, I wake up to the sound of my mom unzipping and then zipping up our tent. I roll over and try to go back to sleep, listening to the hissing gas as she cranks up the camping stove to make tea. Then the tent unzips again, and she's shaking me awake. “Sophie! Get out here!”

I slip my feet into my shoes, slapping at the mosquitoes that have already whizzed into the tent. “Mom,” I say, “you have to be careful about letting the —”

I stop midsentence.

There, not more than a few feet away on the other side of the enclosure fence, is Otto. He's curled up on his side, fast asleep, facing us, arms reaching out and hands curled in the soil.

And not just Otto. Next to him is a young female bonobo with an infant, also asleep. His little legs are flung over his mother, slowly rising and falling on her belly.

Bonobos aren't monogamous, so it's impossible to know who is whose father, but these feel like Otto's close companions. He followed my pirogue in the dark, found out where the camp was, went back into the forest, and brought these two out to meet me.

“Mom,” I whispered, “I know we aren't supposed to get close to them, but I … could I …?”

She looked around guiltily. “Only for a minute, before anyone else comes out of their tents. They can't know I'm soft on this rule.”

Mom flips a switch on the line from the solar panels to the enclosure, and the electricity flicks off. I creak open the door and step inside. Back into an enclosure: It's in such a different circumstance this time, but memories return of my flight from the UN peacekeepers so many years ago. Then I draw near Otto and his family and all of that history vanishes. This is now.

I kneel by sleeping Otto and watch him. Those are the same feet I blew raspberries into. This is the same wrist Patrice held tight to force in an IV. Those are the hips, now so sturdy and muscled, that once were covered in blisters. Those are the hands that had looped so easily around my neck.

Otto stirs from sleep and opens his eyes. When he sees me, they widen further and he sits up. He murps quietly and lifts his arms, lean muscles flexing. This time I can hug him, and the clasp he returns is powerful, many times stronger than any human embrace I will ever experience.

He sighs quietly into my ear, and in return I stroke the thick hair of his back. The activity has woken up the baby, and the little guy groggily lifts his head and stares at me, calm and curious. I try to extract myself from Otto's fierce grip, but he won't let go. So I talk to him. “He's very cute, your boy,” I say. “Looks a lot like you once did.”