NDOKI (Congo)

 In a remote pocket of Central Africa runs a river called Ndoki (which means
“Sorcerer” in the Lingala language). Its waters flow from a tropical forest that
supports groups of Pygmies and a greater abundance of wildlife than exists
perhaps anywhere else on the continent
 Teeming with leopards and golden cats, gorillas and elephants, this jungle
also harbors chimpanzees that may never have encountered a human being.
Hiking through this claustrophobic hothouse, says the author: “It’s like being
passed through the guts of the forest and being slowly digested.”
 Deep shadows welled up from the swamps and root tangles, and evening
wove them together, until it was night. The air stayed hot. Thunderstorms
were beginning to sweep the region with torrents of rain. But they never
brought enough to really cool things down. They only added to the steam.
 The Ndoki watershed encompasses roughly 3 million acres.
 As we emerged from the forest butterflies sometimes filled the air until I
envisioned myself stepping into a pointillist painting, in which the world is
formed from countless separate dabs of pure colour. We picked out fresh
prints of bongo, buffalo and giant forest hogs in the sunlit mud.
 In this forest, animals not only reflect the richness of their environment but
also play an important role in creating it
 Fruit bats, for instance, deposit fog seeds in their droppings up near the tops
of trees, which turn out to be exactly where many types of figs are adapted to
begin growing. The jungle is a single, huge organism.
 The natures in the area, the Pygmies are the shortest people in the world.
Adults average about 4 feet 6 inches, because they are unable to process the
hormones needed for normal growth. They find much of what they need in the
jungle: for building huts, leaves and branches; for food, roots, small birds,
fruits, fish, catepillars and bush animals. To gather honey, villages fill a basket
of leaves with burning coals, then hoist it into a tree beside a beehive. When
smoke subdues the bees, the hunter grabs the honey.
 Along a path, the trees on either side shot up into the air draped with ferns
and lianas until their tops disappeared in a luminous green haze.
 In the jungle animal life will always have 6 legs – Ants and termites are the
most abundant together, their small bodies outweigh all the big mammals
combined. Few animals are able to digest cellulose, the tough structural
tissue of plants. Termites can. Aided by specialized microbes that live in their
guts, they turn it into carbohydrates. Upon reaching maturity, many species
grow wings and take to the air in a mating flight, a stage during which they are
known as alates.
 Ndoki is nature unto itself – real wilderness: ancient, potent and largely
unfathomed. At any moment some part of it might transform me from a normal
human thinking relatively normal thoughts, into a crazed bundle of mindless
reflexes and fear. I keep pressing ahead into the green embrace because,
because to be honest I am as afraid of being a quitter as I am of anything
 else. But most of all because of the possibility that, in a few more steps, I
would once be transformed by wonder itself.
 “I tend to romanticize nature, but once there you’re a big fleshy piece of
protein, and as soon as you sit down, something crawls or slithers across
your feet.” Hikes were grueling and pain was borne in silence.

MALAWI
A silent touch to the lips signals shyness and respect among Malawians. In the
capital city of Lilongwe, hotel doorman Marton and his family sleep on mats in a
one room concrete house that has neither electricity nor indoor cooking facilities.
Marton’s small salary barely covers the cost of rent, clothing, school fees, 4
buckets of water a day, and cornmeal for porridge. At age 41, he is only 6 years
shy of the average life expectancy in Malawi, among the worlds poorest nations.

President for life – Dr Banda – while pursuing university studies in the US in the
1930s, he pledged to return to Malawi, citing his ‘fanatical sense of duty to my
people.’ His hard work and close contact with Malawians has been an inspiration.
His political pragmatism and sound economic management had produced a
balanced budget. Malawians are essentially conservative and quiet-minded and
somewhat puritanical.

In 1964 Malawi was marked by Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) in southeastern
Africa. It had one paved road, a handful of doctors, no university and no industry.
It was a textbook example of an undeveloped country blighted by ‘poverty,
ignorance and disease’ – so said by Banda. It had only 33 university graduates
out of 4 million people. Only 5 Malawians were medical doctors, one of which
was Dr Banda.

With a climate that could produce floods, droughts and frost and people afflicted
with leprosy, hookworm, sleeping sickness and malaria. Yet the people were
among the happiest, friendliest, most patient and optimistic. Spurred by Banda’s
directives, today agriculture dominates the economy of this Pennsylvanian-size
nation.

Most live in mud-huts and shanties, with no running water, no electricity and
hardly a chair or table – their childhood homes in low, rounded hills and high
plateaus, its tick forests and tall elephant grass its roads of red mud – and the
way the dry-season grass burning gave Malawi its name – the ‘land of fire’.
October, so hot it was called by British settlers, the suicide month.

On my return in 1987, Malawians were better dressed but the woods were more
ragged – deforestation. More people in evidence: crowded the roads, jammed
the buses, plowed and planted most of the visible hillsides. Malawi was no longer
a country of cyclists; it was a wilderness of pedestrians. The population had
doubled. More people wore shoes.
Some aspects of Malawi seemed eternal. The market trades still sold love
potions and smoked fish and fried locusts, as well as elegant baskets and sturdy
sandals made from rubber tires.

Malawi’s cash crops – peanuts, tea, coffee, sugarcane and tobacco.

The aroma of woodsmoke still hung over the countryside and except for the
people in the few main towns, Malawians still lived in mud huts with grass roofs
and worked as subsistence farmers. The tractor was still not common in Malawi,
nor was the TV set. The telephone directory for the entire country was not much
thicker than a copy of National Geographic. Dr Banda speaks of the need for the
‘3 essentials: food, decent clothing, and a house with a roof that doesn’t leak.’
Great importance is given in Malawi to respectability – to looking decent and
behaving politely. Unity, loyalty, discipline, obedience. It is a churchgoing country.
Even with all of Malawi’s disadvantages of being landlocked, with little industry or
raw materials and an essentially agricultural economy, the country has remained
stable and orderly and good-tempered.

I first met them in the rainy season of 1964, when they were barefoot children in
their mid-teens. Boys and girls alike tended to share their heads, for the simplicity
of boldness and because of lice. 23 years later it was great to see that they were
still alive, still well and happy and that they had families and jobs.

Malawi remains a subsistence economy, its people living hand to mouth. It is

both a worry and a marvel to me that they are still there, still at it, existing very
lightly on the earth.