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                                                                                COVER STORY, Page 62

THE LAST EDEN


A trip into a remote African rain forest is a journey back in
time to a world where the animals have never encountered humans.
Will this treasure be preserved?

By EUGENE LINDEN/THE NDOKI


    Ndokanda, a bangombe pygmy, hunkers down beside me.
Holding the bridge of his nose, he lets out a loud bray -- his
dead-on imitation of the cry of small rain-forest animals called
duikers. These deerlike creatures make the noise in the throes
of giving birth, and Pygmies imitate it because other duikers
come running when they hear the call. This time, however, the
braying attracts a large band of chimpanzees, drawn by the
prospect of dining on vulnerable duikers. For a moment I feel
the shiver of being hunted.

    But when the chimps spot the Pygmy and his three white
companions, the animals stop dead in their tracks. Their
bloodlust gives way to astonishment, as if they are seeing
something they have never seen before. They begin stamping their
feet, shaking their arms, calling to one another and throwing
branches at us. As many as 25 animals scream from all sides.
Each time we make a move, a new round of calls erupts among the
chimps, but they never show signs of fleeing.

    Instead, for more than two hours, the mesmerized chimps
hover around us, drawing to within a few arm lengths. I am
flabbergasted. Wild chimps do not react this way to humans in
any other part of the African rain forest. But this is no
ordinary meeting of fellow primates. For the chimps surrounding
us, seeing humans amounts to an ape version of Close Encounters
of the Third Kind.

    In this drama, we are the aliens. We have ventured into
the last vast unexplored rain forest on earth -- the unsullied
Ndoki region of northern Congo -- a place where the animals do
not know what to make of us because they have never seen humans
before.

    The word Ndoki (pronounced en-doe-key) means "sorcerer" in
Lingala, and this is indeed an enchanted, mysterious place.
Guarded by swamps to the south and east, hills to the north and
the forbidding Ndoki River to the west, the region is almost
inaccessible. Pygmies have crisscrossed central Africa for
thousands of years, but there is no evidence that they have
entered beyond the fringes of this 3 million-hectare (7.5
million-acre) expanse of virgin forest, which is about the size
of Belgium.

    Our 15-day expedition, led by botanist Michael Fay of
Wildlife Conservation International, has taken us to parts of
the forest we believe no human has ever seen. We are catching
a glimpse of the rarest treasure on this crowded planet: an
ecosystem as pristine today as it was 12,000 years ago, before
humans began to transform the earth. Our journey into unknown
territory is a grand adventure, one that is as exciting as it
is daunting. At one point, Fay must persuade apprehensive Pygmy
trackers to continue through the Ndoki, for legend holds that
the forest is home to Mokele Mbembe, a dinosaur-like creature
that can kill elephants.

    Mokele Mbembe could hardly create more of a stir than we
do in this previously undisturbed land. Gorillas stare and
scream at us, and sometimes charge, but almost never run away.
Colobus and cercopithecus monkeys crane their necks to eye us
from high tree branches. Gloriously fat wild pigs, elsewhere the
favorite game of hunters, look up from their rooting and peer
at us calmly through the low brush for several minutes before
moving off toward new forage.

    But most intriguing is the curiosity shown by the highly
intelligent chimps. "What do they think of us?" I wonder. They
must recognize our apelike features, but our clothes and
equipment are novelties in this world. While our size and lack
of fear make them cautious, they clearly have no awareness of
how deadly our species can be. Otherwise they would flee as wild
chimps do in other parts of Africa where apes are part of the
human diet.

    If the apes are bewildered, we are in awe of the wild
innocence of their world. Was this how the wandering Asians felt
more than 10,000 years ago when they crossed to Alaska and
marched southward through the Americas, going where no man had
ever gone? On today's fully occupied planet, there are few
places left where indigenous peoples do not hunt and trap or
where loggers and mining companies have not sent in teams of
surveyors. The great forests east of the Ndoki River may be the
earth's last Eden.

    I first heard about the Ndoki three years ago, when Fay
told me about this wondrous forest where gorillas, chimps and
other animals do not run away at the sight of humans. At the
time, I was researching an article on great apes, and I thought
Fay was exaggerating. I had spent fruitless days trying to get
glimpses of chimps and gorillas in forests just to the north of
the Ndoki, and it was hard for me to imagine that Africa might
still contain forests so remote that the animals had never
learned to fear mankind. Western lowland gorillas, hunted for
centuries, are among the shyest, least-known animals on earth,
and scientists in Gabon and the Central African Republic have
invested years trying to gain trust so they could study the
animals at close quarters.

    Not long after my talk with Fay, I encountered Japanese
primatologist Masazumi Mitani, who along with Suehisa Ku roda
established the first research camps at the edge of the Ndoki
region in 1987. Since then, the Japanese researchers, in
cooperation with Congolese scientist Antoine Ruffin Oko, have
conducted a groundbreaking survey of animal populations in the
Ndoki and have closely studied the primates, including gorillas
and chimps. Mitani told me the animals were indeed unafraid of
humans, but warned that conditions in the region were "very,
very difficult." Knowing the extreme privation Japanese
primatologists regularly endure, I took these cautionary words
very seriously.

    Yet my 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.

    Even now, the Ndoki is almost entirely surrounded by
logging concessions. Moreover, had an international convention
not banned the sale of ivory in 1989, poachers almost assuredly
would have braved the swamps and rivers and invaded the region,
which is among the last places in central Africa with
substantial numbers of elephants. Finally, a 30-year dry spell
and overgrazing to the north have pushed migrant human
populations southward through Central African Republic and into
northern Congo, ever closer to the edges of the Ndoki.

    In response to these pressures, Fay began working in 1989
with the World Bank, the U.S. government, the Japanese
scientists and conservation organizations to encourage the
Congolese government to establish an Ndoki park. The goal would
be to protect the core of the region while allowing some tourism
on the more accessible fringes. The involvement of the World
Bank, however, aroused the ire of groups such as the
Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace, which argued that the
project might bring on the human intrusions it was designed to
prevent.

    So I put aside my reservations and arranged to join Fay on
an expedition into the Ndoki in late May. He planned to renew
his search for two unnamed clearings in the interior of the
forest that showed up on aerial maps but that he had failed to
locate in a foray two years earlier. He also hoped to test a
battery-operated geographical positioning device that he would
need during a longer surveying expedition later this summer.

    Our trip begins in Ouesso, a frontier town of 13,000 on
the Sangha River in northern Congo. There three Americans --
Fay, Karen Lotz, a photographer, and I -- set off in a 14-m
(46-ft.) motorized dugout canoe for the nine-hour trip up the
Sangha River, past a logging camp to Bomassa, a Pygmy village
adjacent to the headquarters being set up for the proposed park.

    Outside interest in northern Congo forests dates to the
turn of the century; colonial records include an outraged
letter by an expatriate who demanded compensation from the
French government for the death of his son, who was eaten by
cannibals. But intensive logging began only in the mid-1980s.
"If the loggers weren't here, we could leave as well," says Fay.
He finds it frustrating that logging continues despite studies
commissioned by the World Bank and the Congolese showing that
almost all of these operations lose money and cheat the
government by welshing on debts to state-owned companies. As if
that were not enough, Libyan employees of Socalib, a
Libyan-Congolese logging company, were implicated in the 1989
bombing of a passenger jet over Niger. Scores of Congolese
people died. "Forestry's been great for this country," remarks
Fay sarcastically. "They cut the forests, stiff the Congolese
on taxes and debts, and then kill the citizens."

    Fay is a small but durable 35-year-old New Jersey native
nicknamed "Concrete" by the Pygmies for his willingness to
endure the hardships of the jungle. Accustomed to spending
unscheduled nights outdoors, Fay has become rather haphazard and
fatalistic about planning. As a result, when darkness falls we
are still several kilometers short of Bomassa. The boat runs
aground time after time as we try to pick our way with a
flashlight through constantly shifting sandbars. Fay is
unperturbed, which is more than I can say, and he will be
equally sanguine about many other mishaps in the coming days.

    When we finally get to Bomassa, Fay sends word to the
village that he wants to hire trackers and bearers. A ragged,
somewhat inebriated group shows up the next morning. Fay chooses
Ndokanda and Joachine, trackers he has worked with before, but
rejects one Pygmy whose feet are swollen with elephantiasis. He
fills out the team of bearers by lifting our packs and duffels
and estimating how many men it will take to carry the load:
"That's half a Pygmy, that's three-quarters and this one ((he
grunts as he hefts a 132-lb. pack)) a whole Pygmy." Standing
nearly 5 ft., the Ba Ngombe and BaNbengele peoples are taller
than most other Pygmies but still seem impossibly small to haul
the loads they agree to carry. Seraphin, an auspiciously named
employee of Fay's who has come downriver from his home in the
Central African Republic, offers to come along as cook.

    The 25-km (15-mile) hike from Bomassa to the crossing
point on the Ndoki River takes one or two days, depending on how
much the bearers have had to drink. We make the mistake of
traveling ahead of the Pygmies, and our hung-over crew drags its
feet, forcing us to camp just before the Djeke River, 16 km
outside Bomassa. Fay says he cannot push the porters too hard
or they will simply abandon us in the middle of the forest as
they did him on a prior trip into the Ndoki.

    After a meal of soup, salami and cookies, I settle in to
sleep, wondering whether the dire reports I had heard from the
Japanese researchers had overstated the dangers of the area. A
few minutes later, I awake feeling an insect on my finger.
Flicking it off, I feel another take its place, and then
suddenly thousands of bugs seem to bite me at once. Seconds
later, I hear a strangled cry from Karen as she is attacked as
well. Stumbling blindly over roots and a massive column of ants,
we tear down a path and dive into the river. Crushing the ants
seems to release some chemical distress signal: as we emerge
from the river, the aggressive creatures drop on us from
everywhere.

    Stamping, slapping and at a loss, I rouse Fay, whose tent
is out of the line of attack. Surveying the insects that still
cover my legs, he says drowsily, "Driver ants can really be a
problem; they can kill a tethered goat," and then goes back to
sleep. Moving my hammock away from the column of ants, I wince
with pain as I drive a spiky vine clear through my thumb and
watch blood spurt out. Then it starts to rain. By 2:30 a.m. the
ants have moved on, and I miserably return to my tent for what's
left of the night.

    The 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.

    The 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 to the west side of the river. With ample game in the more
accessible forests, they have had no need to risk a crossing.
At this point, though, I am not thinking of hardship but rather
of the beauty of the grassy river, the fragrant smells floating
through the clean air, and the world that lies beyond the east
bank of the Ndoki.

    After landing, we begin our journey back in time. The
forests in these wet areas are open and cool, even though the
equatorial sun beats down on the upper stories of the canopy.
At one point we discover leopard droppings containing black hair
and some bone bits. The Pygmies claim it is gorilla hair, though
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.

    There is, in fact, a civilization in these forests, even
if it is nonhuman. The area is latticed with trails, some as
wide as boulevards, that have been cut and maintained by
elephants. Says Ndokanda: "This is the elephant's city, and the
leopard's and other animals' too." The grid of paths leads to
the elephants' favorite spots: mineral licks and clearings,
where they socialize with relatives and friends; baths, where
they cover themselves with mud; knobby trees, where they rub the
mud off, stripping their skin of ticks in the process; and trees
such as the Balanites wilsoniana and Autranella congoensis,
beloved by the big animals for their fruits.

    We have left behind the overhunted west bank of the Ndoki,
where elephant trails are abandoned and overgrown. On the east
side we see fresh signs of elephants everywhere. We do not,
however, see the great beasts. Because of the vast territory
they roam, and perhaps because of their ability to communicate
with one another, they are the only creatures in this ecosystem
that know about humans. They stay away from us.

    The elephant paths and clearings open up the forest for
other big animals such as buffalo, and the trails certainly make
walking easy for us. As we head down one path, Joachine suddenly
pauses. The brush erupts as a male gorilla charges, then
abruptly stops and drops down in the vegetation to stare. Fay
observes that gorillas favor the herbaceous plants growing in
marshy lowlands and in places where elephants have created
clearings. Farther from the water, the canopied forest suits
chimpanzees. With both populations at very high levels, the
Ndoki is one of the few places on earth where chimps and
gorillas live close together. Fay and the Japanese researchers
have even seen gorillas and chimps feeding in the same fig tree.

    Now that we are far away from the nearest village and the
temptations of palm wine, the Pygmies begin to come into their
own. Even with 14 years' experience, Fay can still lose a trail,
but Ndokanda, a former elephant hunter, or any of the other
Pygmies can read the very faintest imprint with a glance. In the
forest they are utterly self-reliant, creating cord from vines,
cups from leaves and bed mats from bark. Still, they are
apprehensive about this forest, and when Fay tells them where
we are going, Samory says, "Mokele Mbembe lives there." Fay is
convinced that the Pygmies are describing a black rhinoceros,
an animal that does occasionally fight elephants.

    That night termites reduce Fay's one T shirt to tatters.
This gives him the excuse to try his "new system," which means
stripping down to a bathing suit and sandals. "Come back in two
years, and you will find me completely naked, living in the
middle of the Ndoki with six Pygmy wives," he jokes. He thinks
that the Pygmies have it right: the less you wear, the faster
your skin dries after rainfall and the less likely you are to
get parasitic fungi and footworms. Fay has already accumulated
four nasty footworms, which burrow under the skin until they
discover that you are not a pig or elephant -- their proper
hosts. The worms then die, but bacteria in the little corpses
infect your feet.

    The second day after crossing the Ndoki, Fay announces
that we are entering the "unknown," and we set off in search of
the two clearings, called bais by the Pygmies, that he failed
to find in 1990. Fay is certain that the bais are elephant
strongholds. According to maps drawn from aerial reconnaissance,
we have to cross at least 15 km of dry land before reaching the
next watershed. Unless we find a stream by dusk, we face a
waterless night after a full day's hike. Ndokanda sets an
uncharacteristically slow pace, so Fay decides to shame him by
taking the lead. As we set off ahead, he remarks, "The one thing
Pygmies can't stand is for a white guy to lead in the forest."

    Entering dryer land, we come across disturbing signs that
humans are affecting this forest from afar. Everywhere we see
fallen Gilbertiodendron dewevrei trees with no sign of regrowth.
Fay says this tree species dominates during wet periods and may
be dying out because of the long dry spell that has reduced
rainfall more than 10% over the past 30 years. Many scientists
believe the shortage of rainfall stems from the widespread
deforestation by humans in other parts of Africa, which may have
changed the continent's weather patterns. Already the Ndoki is
one of the dryest tropical rain forests on earth, and if
rainfall keeps decreasing, the woodland may be doomed no matter
what legal protection it receives.

    By afternoon I'm all sweated out and parched, but still we
see no sign of water -- or of the Pygmies straggling behind us.
At one point Fay sees a thick vine and says, "Aha!" He hacks off
a section at just the right spot, and pure water spurts into his
mouth. I grab his machete and hack away but manage to taste only
a few drops.

    As the sun sinks and it appears that we will spend a dry
and desperate night, we finally hit sandy soil -- a good sign.
Soon we find elephant footprints filled with water. It looks
pure, and I drink greedily. Fay's hand is so tired from hours
of hacking with the machete that he cannot open the water bottle
I have just filled.

    As soon as we settle down to wait for the rest of the
group, Ndokanda comes motoring by us. Not bothering to stop, he
yells at Fay in Sango, "You fool, I know this place. Right ahead
there is plenty of water." Ndokanda is right, of course, and we
are left openmouthed, wondering what enabled him to recall this
tiny part of a vast forest from a brief visit years earlier.

    That night, with Fay interpreting, I ask the Pygmies how
they would feel if a road were built through the Ndoki and led
to the destruction of the forest and animals. At first they
scoff, saying there is no way anyone can kill off the forest --
it is just too big. Then they get excited. "So that's what you
are doing here,'' says Samory, "building a road. Great! Pay us
well, and we'll build it for you." Joachine chimes in, "But
you've got to build it in a straight line, not that zigzag path
you took today." They then launch into a debate about how much
they should be paid and whether they should be allowed to bring
their women.

    Listening, Fay shakes his head sadly. The forests have
always yielded food and wood during the millenniums Pygmies have
hunted in central Africa. They cannot conceive of the
devastation that roads and logging have wrought upon tropical
woodlands beyond their charmed world.

    If we are dumbfounded by Ndokanda's photographic memory
for terrain, it is soon his turn to be impressed. Using a
compass and a battery-operated geopositioning system, we look
for the two clearings. The system works by using signals sent
from satellites and can pinpoint a position within 100 m. By
taking a reading in the middle of a swamp near the camp (trees
block the satellite signals), we are able to determine the way
to the clearings.

    It takes us two days to find and explore them. The
excitement of discovery, however, gives way to disappointment
that elephants no longer frequent these clearings. Ndokanda
seizes on that fact as a face-saving way of explaining why he
had not found the spots on the earlier expedition.

    While we are exploring, Seraphin goes off with two Pygmies
and discovers the remains of an elephant. Fay worries that this
may be the work of poachers, but Seraphin points out that the
elephant has its tusks. The Pygmies can find no sign that any
humans have been in the area. The elephant could have died of
natural causes, or it could have been wounded outside the Ndoki
and then run inside for refuge.

    Every foray into the forest brings us face-to-face with
wildlife, most notably gorillas. In one day we tally four
separate encounters, and by the end of the trip we have found
15 gorilla groups. A couple of silverbacks, or mature males, go
through the motions of halfhearted charges, but most do not come
forward even in response to distress calls and hand clapping by
apprehensive females when we get between them and the males. We
take to calling these circumspect males the "pacifist gorillas
of Ndoki." The gorillas also seemed blithely unaware that they
are supposed to be ungainly in trees. One giant silverback
jumped between several trees and ended up 50 m (160 ft.) from
the ground at the very top of the canopy.

    Exploring this rich, fecund world is the high point of the
expedition. In camp we eat pasta flavored with dried soups and
sausages, but Fay uncovers more exotic treats on the forest
floor. He likes to pick up half-eaten fruits left by the animals
and to sample the untouched parts. I try the juicy kernels of
a Myrianthus arboreus fruit and decide that gorillas know a good
taste when they find one.

    Fay's attitude toward the question of what foods people
might take from the Ndoki has changed over the years. During his
first ventures into the forest, he allowed the Pygmies to catch
a duiker every two days, arguing that such brief hunts would in
no way affect the forest. Since then, however, he has realized
that conservationists should not introduce hunting where
animals have never learned to fear humans. Moreover, only if
there is a total ban on hunting will the Pygmies resist the
temptation to exploit this immensely productive ecosystem.

    It is during our hike back toward the Ndoki River that we
come upon the band of chimps -- an encounter Fay calls "the
signal wildlife experience" of his 14 years in Africa. The
ruckus the apes raise begins with threats and distress calls,
but some of them seem to let out the hoots that chimps use to
greet one another. I would like to think these chimps have the
capacity to welcome the apelike aliens into their forest.

    We hike out of the Ndoki in two days, covering more than
30 km in the last 24 hours. It would be rough going for a
distance runner, but I am in no shape for the trip at all. An
insect has apparently injected me with one of the countless
toxins found in the jungle, and I come down with pleurisy-like
symptoms that make every breath painful. It is probably dengue
fever, also called breakbone fever. Whatever it is, the final
day's march is sheer hell. As at the beginning of the trip,
darkness falls when we are still several kilometers from
Bomassa, and we walk the last stretch by failing flashlights.
At 9 p.m. I stumble, exhausted, aching and 14 lbs. lighter, into
the base camp.

    The ardors of the trip remind me why this area has
remained unchanged since the last Ice Age. Amid our planet's
vain struggle to balance conservation with human aspirations,
the Ndoki has no villages whose needs must be met or colonists
determined to build a new outpost of civilization. Fortunately,
this last Eden has formidable barriers protecting its treasures.
In all the world, it is perhaps the perfect place to make a
stand for wild nature.