FWD: ... and the horror

[Guest guest]

***************************Advertisement***************************

TechCentral

http://star-techcentral.com

 

*****************************************************************

This message was forwarded to you by yitzeling.

 

Comment from sender:

more about apes

 

This article is from thestar.com.my

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2002/4/16/features/gorilla2 & sec=\

features

 

________________________

 

 

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

... and the horror

THE head is bubbling in its own ooze, over a smouldering fire, deep in the

African rainforest. A mouth-watering smell mingles with the eye-watering wood

smoke. It is lunchtime. But in the gloomy mud hut, the stewed chimpanzee looks

not so much like one of man’s closest relatives, as one of mine.

 

“He was very clever, almost like a man. He was difficult to kill,” says Pascal

Nkala, 35, who shot this animal a day ago. Beside him, his two nephews wait

impatiently, looking hungry.

 

 

 

In Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, European conservationists have talked of

“sensitising the population” against eating the world’s last great apes. But the

message has obviously not reached Bizan, a straggle of huts 400km to the south.

“So you like monkeys?” asks Pascal excitedly, running out to see what else is

cooking.

 

Chimpanzees share almost 99% of our DNA. They use tools, laugh when they are

tickled, and live for 60 years. But to Pascal they are monkeys. Dead, they are

“beef”.

 

From next door, Pascal’s brother Jean brings a huge, meaty hand, with black

nails and a leathery palm, half-smoked. “This is the most dangerous monkey of

all. Only a warrior as ferocious as me can kill him,” says Pascal, who has

returned, drunk. The hand is from a gorilla. Pascal says he dispatched the

gorilla with a machete after snaring it.

 

Cameroonians, like virtually all the people of the great Congo basin, consider

chimps and gorillas fair game. For thousands of years they have eaten them and

anything else in the forest, subsisting in a harsh but abundant environment.

 

Now that environment is changing, lightning-fast. Log-ging companies are opening

up the forest and hunters are following them in. Spears and liana nets have been

replaced by shotguns and steel snares. Forest dwellers who once hunted to eat

sell bushmeat by the tonne to traders from the cities of Yaounde and Douala.

Hunting has become an in-dustry, the rainforest a killing ground. And Pascal is

delighted to show how. The gorilla hunters in Bizan have never had it so good,

he says.

 

Until four months ago, Bizan was on the edge of virgin rainforest, at the end of

Cameroon’s south-easternmost logging road. Then came the bulldozers of Sami

Hazim, a Lebanese logger. A slippery ochre track now runs 80km into previously

impenetrable forest. Thousands of 1,000-year-old tropical trees will eventually

be carted down it, destroying about 20% of the cover. But for now the main

export is meat.

 

Pascal has built a hunting camp 16km down the road and 45m off it. On the way

there, he waves at the bright yellow logging trucks thundering past: the wheels

of the bushmeat conveyor belt. “It’s a fair deal,” Pascal explains. “They’ll

carry you and your meat if you leave some for them – meat is money here.”

 

A steady stream of men and boys, carrying locally made shotguns, spears and reed

panniers full of dead animals, passes the other way. Around 300 men work on the

logging concession. But at least as many again hunt on it, Pascal says. Laoue

Adyapit, 19, has two forest antelopes strapped to his back. One of the heads

bounces on his shoulder as he walks. He has bought the animals from a hunter for

US$2.80 (RM10.64) each and expects to sell them in Messok for US$8.50 (RM32.30)

each.

 

Hunting camps are dotted along the road every mile or so, either Bantu or Pygmy.

Each hunter might lay 200 wire snares, says Pascal: “I usually check mine twice

a week; but there’s often something the next day.” Pascal thinks he kills on

average three or four chimps and two gorillas a month. “But it depends,” he

says. “Some-times I get four in one day. I have killed too many!”

 

In Bapile, a celebrated hunting village 80km west, Louis Eno, 42, introduces

himself as the bete noire of gorillas. Unlike Pascal, he is familiar with

Western sensibilities.

 

“But gorilla meat is good; gorillas are animals – if not they’d be living in the

village,” he says. Eating gorilla is a cultural imperative, says Louis: “Gorilla

is prestige meat – if your father-in-law visits, you can’t give him chicken.” –

Guardian News Service

 

 

________________________

Your one-stop information portal:

The Star Online

http://thestar.com.my

http://biz.thestar.com.my

http://classifieds.thestar.com.my

http://cards.thestar.com.my

http://search.thestar.com.my

http://star-motoring.com

http://star-space.com

http://star-jobs.com

http://star-ecentral.com

http://star-techcentral.com

 

1995-2002 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written

permission of Star Publications is prohibited.