Each bullet counts

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.