For most of my adult life, being a nomad brought me freedom and joy.  Now, with stops in rapid succession, it feels like a turbulent river on which I find myself. Earlier, this river of life allowed my boat to calmly lap through its meanders; now I set foot on land at every bend.

In recent years, Bayanga and Berlin alternately formed a home and in both places I gathered around me fine and special people. In my absence, many of my friends in Holland sealed their love with countless babies, houses were bought and multiple fishbone floors were laid.  That different life for that other person and mine further away changes the dynamics and needs of friendships.
In vibrant Berlin, I became friends with like-minded and inspiring young women with equally fascinating trodden life paths.
A challenging existence in the remote rainforest requires individuality from a person, something that immediately connects. It is there where days fill with adventure and friendships quickly deepen.

A plan was drawn up in which an entire year of doctoral research was allowed to be carried out in the distant greenery. My life's wish in optima figura. Things run differently that day in September and the naturalness of every morning together is no longer there. A diagnosis hits us as a family right in the heart, with a seriously ill body predicting an early departure. A departure from a full life filled with love, psychology, art, pioneering in (disability) care, inspiring meetings and an inexhaustible source of creative initiatives which has not yet come to an end. It should not have been this way.

In times of sorrow, the bags are still packed and left for adventure 3.0. This time with my most faithful partner of this lively life: the dog. To the land where in the meantime I had not only lost my heart to nature and its people, but also back to where love blooms. Where the previous mission I walked on feathers to the runway and my heart leapt every time at the sound of an approaching plane, now it remained with an unrequited longing for that other. As the rain clattered violently on our roof, (unfulfilling) desires in the evening filled my head and home.

Far away from the suffering at home, I once again run after goats, vaccinate the village dogs, sprint on the sandbank and the days fill smoothly. There I once again find happiness in being. Burdened happiness admittedly.Where before I sailed away from the Dutch shores, I return early to where I left long ago: the parental home. I temporarily leave Africa behind and move in with those who earlier let me go out into the wide world.

With weekends in the Dutch countryside, during the weekdays I now land in Greifswald.
A home, surely "home is where my heart and dog is".

I ask anyone who reads the story below to read what I describe with empathy for the people and their existence here. Evaluate the context in which they find themselves and the challenges that arise from it before you may judge. After all, they give me the chance to experience their life up close. And that is an enormous privilege. 

An expedition of the hunter and his porters, the carriers of the carcasses, begins in the village bordering the rainforest. Here you find a post of the ecoguards who check the hunters' papers on arrival.  In Dzanga Sangha, there is a special area where regulated, legal hunting is possible. A hunter pays for a licence each year to the local hunting organisation, hunts for a maximum of two weeks per month and a maximum of carcasses. Traditional hunting with nets, mainly practised by the BaAka people, is allowed here as well. Poachers and illegal hunters with metal wires, called snares, are a threat to both the legal hunting and wildlife.

The group of this expedition, which I will join, consists of the hunter (29, he inherited the hunting rifle from his father) and three young porters. It is the first expedition of the group in this composition, but nevertheless, the mood is good. I carry a backpack with enough provisions for my assistant Eugene and myself, a sleeping bag and a small tent tied to it. The others carry a homemade rattan backpack, the sac à dos, containing a cast iron pan and a large bag with manioc, the potatoes in this country.

The rifle and bullets appear to be well hidden behind lock and key. So well, in fact, that the hunter's mother had also locked up the house in which the gun cabinet is located that morning, and tracing her and the key in the village will take the entire morning and afternoon.  Finally, a few hours before sunset, we leave for the forest. A temporary camp is set up just before the sun goes down. The fire is lit quickly and the men eagerly fill their stomachs with a first portion of boiled manioc porridge.  The fire also keeps us warm during the cold nights and rains, smokes the carcasses, cooks the organs and its smoke keeps the elephants away.

That same evening, we go hunting for the first time. The shot that night hits a species of antelope common here, the blue duiker. While one of the porters carefully ties up the dead animal and puts it in the backpack, the hunter's light suddenly shines on a field full of white mushrooms. I feel the men's excitement about the nutritious meal they have just found. In no time at all, the mushrooms are picked and wrapped in huge leaves (feuilles).  With a smooth and perceptibly satisfied stride, we return to the camp where one of them has been keeping watch. We sleep for a few hours in a clearing in the rainforest on a tarpaulin that I took with me on the advice of others. Above us, the sky is clear and full of stars.

On the following day, after a journey of several hours through the dense rainforest, we walk to an old hunter's camp some 15 kilometres away. We hang up the tarpaulin this time, as it is the rainy season, and a natural mattress is made from large leaves. This offers no comfort whatsoever, other than that it protects against stinging creepers at night. 

A morning begins with the scraping off of bark from a certain tree in the camp.  After boiling for a few minutes, this brew provides a liquid source of energy for the men. I am often, and very thoughtfully, surprised with a cup of Nescafé instant coffee as an alternative, after the men have finished their natural Redbull. After all, there are only two enamel cups that rotate in the group.

On the fourth day, we run out of bullets and while two porters return to the village with the first carcasses and buy new bullets, there is time and energy for an educational walk. Our feet take us to a clearing where the big wild animals feed at other times of the day on the mud that lies under a huge, hollow tree. This mire contains the feces of the inhabitants of the tree in question, a large group of bats. The hunter and Eugène tell me a lot about the use of elephants as seed dispersers and the creation of a bai full of minerals in the middle of a full rainforest. Satisfied, I return to the camp where peace and quiet reign and the boys teach me to fish in a nearby stream.

The level of French I speak deserves attention, so at the end of the afternoon I flip through my pocket dictionary of French-Dutch. One of the young porters comes and sits next to me and says, somewhat embarrassed, "How are you baby? We chuckle and he then asks me if I can teach him English. We start with the pronunciation of the alphabet. I see that the hunter asks Eugène for a piece of paper from his notebook. Then he silently comes and sits behind us. He diligently copies the phonetic pronunciation of the English letters that we have just written.
Night falls in the camp around six o'clock. The forest turns black, a few fireflies and our torches occasionally light up the darkness. One, bé, cie sounds a little further on. There I see the hunter sitting against the tree with his headlamp aimed at the scrap of paper. This image moves me. I am aware of the privileges I have had in my life that have not been granted to him.

That same evening, we go further into the forest to hunt. The hunter misses a duiker who escapes his shot. I feel compassion for the fugitive as he runs into the pitch-dark night. However, every bullet counts for the hunter. His wife will have less meat on the market and less money to feed their five children. We return to camp with nothing to worry about. I join the porters on the ground. We lie side by side under the blue canvas next to the tent where Eugene is already resting for the journey home. The privilege of sleeping in the tent had, logically enough, been given to the eldest of the group, Eugène. Beyond the language barrier, music also connects the men and me.  A guilty pleasure from my teenage years now comes in handy: the lyrics of Akon, an American singer with Senegalese roots.  One of them hums softly "lonely, I am so lonely", one of his number one hits.  The hunter joins in and I finish the chorus. 

The road back to the village is long and takes us along and through various small rivers. The porters carry their rotan bags full of the hunted animals, but despite the enormous weight they keep walking. The others patiently wait for me regularly and give me directions while I balance my way through the high water with a full bag and tent on my back. While walking, we snack on various brightly coloured fruits that are part of a gorillas' diet too.

When I arrive in my room, I see my body full of scratches, wounds and bites, but the strong and content feeling prevails. In this group I felt safe and at home, even though during the nightly hunt I could have stepped on a poisonous snake, crossed paths with a forest elephant, looked into a poacher's rifle and become ill. Forming a temporary family, where everyone helps each other when needed, but also where there is laughter when one of us falls in the middle of a trail of biting ants after missing a stump on our path.

A week in the forest with these brave men constantly confronts me with their poverty. They lack  everything that you think one needs on an expedition like this.  A life that includes the risks of a snakebite, confrontation with elephants, poachers and diseases each single day out there.  Being a hunter does not feel like a choice here, more like a way out of poverty. 

 
Hunters and the hunted; an existence with no guarantee of a tomorrow.

My father calls the life I describe during my 14-day stay in one of the bush camps "the ultimate existence". This reaction follows a message I send him: "It is beautiful here and I enjoy it. However, life here is also primitive and limited. Limited in terms of the possibility of social interaction."
An existence where my whole being, both mentally and physically, is put to the test. A life in the middle of nature, but one that "has to be lived".  New (research) work, an unknown language, a forest full of sounds during the night, no shower and toilet and the lack of a daily smile. This gives rise to daily reflection. What factors determine happiness in my existence here and in that of before? A temporary life without any comfort with challenging research in the middle of nature requires focus, creativity, a lot of mindfulness and family support. That is the conclusion after two weeks.

A day in the Bai Hokou camp starts and ends with the pleasant sounds of a Dutch sports canteen during the third half. Loud laughter and loud discussions come from the communal hut of the fifteen Ba'aka men who work and live here. The Ba'aka the hunter-gatherers living in DSPA. Many of them are now employed as trackers by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who follow the three habituated gorilla groups that live in the reserve on a daily basis. Habitat indicates that all group members, after a process of years, are used to the proximity of humans in their environment. I wake up in my bed on the corner of the just completed research hut. A sober, but beautiful in its simplicity, wooden accommodation. The hut has four rooms, each with two beds and open windows on all sides with gauze to keep out all the unwanted, stinging visitors. Due to corona, I am currently the only scientist in the camp and the other rooms remain empty.

In the camp, I receive practical help from one of the trackers, Kotto. His age is unknown and he has never had a regular education. The Ba'akas do not learn from books; they learn from each other and from nature.  He has an unstoppable energy and a positive attitude. He also has a contagious smile and feet that everyone respects at first sight. After all, his ten toes are no longer complete; clear user marks from all those hard-worked kilometres in the forest. While collecting the samples, he patiently helps and despite the fact that we often cannot express ourselves properly because of the language, we form a team.
Without GPS or compass, we set off towards a hollow tree where a large group of bats is said to be staying. On my Crocs, I try to keep up silently with the agile little Kotto, who makes his way through the forest at a fast pace. After a few metres, I already feel bad that my mother has had me on her breast too long.  After all, a one-metre-and-seventy-six-centimeters body is unhandy and unwanted in the rainforest.
Kotto carries a small knife with which he quickly cuts all kinds of protruding and stinging branches to clear the way for my tall self. Perhaps this will enable others to follow our tracks should we not return to camp. Along the way, his slipper falls off and Kotto tries in vain to tie the straps provisionally, but continues at the same breakneck pace on his bare feet without complaint. And that, while here, among the many leaves and branches, a veritable circus of exotic pricks is galloping on the ground.  "Un petit courier" is suggested, when I see thick black stripes on the ground in front of me. We make a run for it and sprint over the crowds of these ant families, without getting bitten en masse. Every now and then, Kotto stops abruptly, looks left and right, at the treetops, and fixes his gaze on the ground for possible tracks. The appearance of an angry forest elephant makes us stop for a moment. Fortunately, it is a false alarm and we can continue on our way.

The following days form a repetitive series of research work in the camp and the route to la maison des chauves-souris, the hollow tree. Until the magical morning when I join two trackers for the first time to observe the gorillas. The Makumba group is named after its imposing leader.   One of the trackers spots the group's carefully woven sleeping nest. It's wonderful to see how beautifully and meticulously the leaves form an attractive shelter for the sleeping ape. Not much later, the first female gorilla of the group shows up and a little later we meet the whole family. The youngsters play their version of the seesaw and take turns launching each other on bending branches. On the ground, near his fellow group members, silverback Makumba sits quietly chewing on a twig and, it seems, contentedly sitting on the ground.

On one of the evenings in the camp, life feels a bit less bright than usual, and I write the following words on paper: "Difficult to call life difficult, while it is so incredibly beautiful here and few will ever see this." Fortunately, there is something called resilience and reflection. Both provide renewed energy for the day that follows. On that last Saturday, a Landcruiser drives onto the premises, disrupting a resting camp. Normally, only a car arrives here on Mondays and Thursdays to replenish supplies for the trackers. From the off-road vehicle steps out Frédéric, my veterinary colleague, with a broad smile. Immediately, I feel joy. It's a similar euphoric feeling to when, the evening before, freshly baked bread was made in an improvised oven, and a warm piece of bread was handed to me.
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An hour's walk from the camp, the rangers have found the carcass of an elephant. Together, we quickly gather everything needed for the autopsy and sampling of this elephant(!) and depart with two trackers toward the described location. Without GPS, they lead me flawlessly through the rainforest, through swamps and up and down hills, just as they did before. It becomes evident that it's a victim of poaching when we see the elephant. Its head is separated from the body, and its tusks are missing. A sad reality. I learn from the rangers that the number of poaching incidents involving elephants has drastically decreased in Dzanga-Sangha in the past few years. A positive trend in a tragic context.

To all those considering it, be your adventurous self and explore here in Dzanga-Sangha or at home. Go hiking in nature and experience it. If you are of the adventurous type and purchase a plane ticket to Bayanga: the beauty of nature here and its inhabitants will not disappoint. Unfortunately, Dzanga-Sangha is currently closed to tourists. As soon as COVID-19 chooses a different target, you are welcome.

The Central African Republic. A country in the middle of Africa with better known neighbours Cameroon and the Congo. A negative travel advice and the lack of attractive travel guides prevent many of us from ever being there. And that is a great shame.

Because it is beautiful here. The countless species of beautiful butterflies that love to land on the colourful panties hanging on the (hand) washing line. Those panties are in sharp contrast with what the rest of my body is wearing here every day. The clothes come only in sober, but useful, rank colours. Nature here is diverse and always present. I hear the birds sing from early on in the morning and the monkeys make the treetops sway when they make huge leaps at high altitude in the afternoon. Briefly, tails and heads flash between the towering greenery, but so far I have not been able to identify these animals.
And then a major heavyweight here; the forest elephant. These guys unexpectedly waltz their way through dense vegetation and give my movements here on the ground and in the rainforest just that little bit of extra excitement every day.

Before I reach my final destination, Bayanga, I will spend a few days in the capital Bangui. A lively, African city, where merchandise is advertised on every corner and fine rhythmic music sounds from loudspeakers all day long, just like I saw before in Kenya. However, the street scene is dominated by cars from the United Nations and NGOs. 

The flight from the capital to the beautiful Dzanga-Sangha nature reserve is a real experience. One that is difficult to capture in words now it seems, hence the picture at the bottom of this post. 
I board a small plane with old stickers that may refer to its history in the service of WFP and United Nations. Carefully, my 8 pieces of luggage of lab material and crocs are weighed and distributed over the somewhat romantic aeroplane. For the right balance during the flight, the passengers are also equally divided and I immediately consider myself lucky to have a window seat behind the pilot. The 50-minute flight over the wild, unspoilt nature of this rainforest leaves me silent. Shortly before landing, we fly over Dzanga bai, a unique place in the world where huge numbers of elephants quench their thirst together. I look, enjoy and feel myself and my thoughts rising within the plane. This immense piece of green is going to be my temporary home and I realise that it will be an unknown big adventure.  

Early sunsets give long, dark evenings and time for reflection and (self) study by candlelight. There is an endless amount to study and learn about this country, its animal species, my research and the French and Sango languages. In my temporary house, there is a rich biodiversity that I readily accept. From the army of ants that painfully expose my poor cleaning skills, a poisonous yellow exotic frog on the toilet seat, spiders in different sizes and shapes to all kinds of hoppers that often give you a heart attack at night with their dive into the deep or on my body.

My stay here is still short, and in the coming months the dynamics of research and the challenging life here will surely provide many more insights.
Nevertheless, it already feels like an enormous privilege to have a temporary home here.

One of the next blogs I will dedicate to my fellow veterinarian Frédéric, a tall young Centrafrician who deserves an international stage. Because of his ambitions and his courage to live in a country where opportunities are not as easy to grasp as they are for young people elsewhere in the world.  Like in this world of mine.

To move. 
A verb that has been central to the life I lead since I left home somewhat naively at the age of eighteen and headed for Tanzania. (Un)consciously, I have been looking for new adventures, people and places ever since. 

A new home. I found that in Berlin too. 
After a turbulent time in trendy and lively Friedrichshain, the dog and I found a quiet, green base in beautiful Reinickendorf. Within cycling distance of the Robert Koch Institute, where my PhD research is slowly taking shape.  I am learning new techniques in the lab where, among other things, I am breaking open cells from gorilla faeces in search of genetic material of possible pathogens. Twice a week I take French lessons with a Frenchwoman, with a contagious enthusiasm, who prepares me for République centrafricaine. 

During the past weeks, when Covid-19 continues to play an important role for each of us, a sudden departure to the African rainforest remained a possibility. I could leave for the Central African Republic(CAR) to help with the testing there, the airlines would start their commercial flights to CAR again and I would arrive in Bayanga from the capital Bangui.  Now there seems to be an opportunity to start my adventure and work in early September. In the time I have left here, I will learn as many laboratory techniques as possible and be trained in corona testing.  The focus will therefore be on testing humans and animals. When there is room and the urgency for Covid-19 decreases, I will start to investigate rodents and bats. Looking for possible links, so-called reservoir hosts, that play a role in disease transmission from man to ape and vice versa. 

Living like a nomad. For now, there is too little time and space in my head for an extensive analysis of my nomadic existence. But who knows, I might take the time to reflect on this one day. Or perhapy, as the case may be; I will probably conduct this dialogue with myself, swaying to a fine reggae tune. 

Possible topics I would like to write and speak about in the future:

• Ambitious single women with a beating heart for their passion in search of love
• The German craving for justice in the forest, shop and on any car park
• The Berlin green sceneries

Presumably, my focus will change, temporarily or otherwise, to life in the rainforest of Dzanga-Sangha, its biodiversity and my attempts at meditation during my quarantine time in the bush. Maybe I will come back to you before I leave, maybe not. 

Barala, or good day in the local Sango language, Google tells me.