Emerald Labyrinth: A Scientist’s Adventures in the Jungles of the Congo

312 Pages·2017·27.73 MB·English

by  Eli Greenbaum

ForeEdge An imprint of University Press of New England www.upne.com
© 2018 Eli Greenbaum
All rights reserved
For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New
England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5126-
0097-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5126-0120-6
To Wendy for countless sacrifices in
support of my work, and my African and
American students—past, present, and
future
CONTENTS
Preface
List of Abbreviations
A Note Regarding Provinces
1 No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine
2 King Kong of Kahuzi Volcano
3 The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
4 The Rats of Miki
5 A Vampire in Virunga
6 Wandege’s Eye
7 The Murderer of Mugegema
8 Congolization
9 This Man Is Not Right in the Head
10 Frogs in Elephant Footprints
11 The Death of Asukulu
Acknowledgments
Congolese Swahili Glossary
How Can I Help?
Notes
References
Index
Color images
PREFACE
At least one author has remarked that those who drink from the Nile are destined
to return to Africa forever. In my case, the spell was cast in 2001 by the Niger—
Africa’s second-largest river—during my first jaunt into West Africa. The
circuitous and unexpected path that first muddied my boots with African soil
near that great river had a lasting effect on me, and time would prove that my
professional focus would be centered, literally, in Africa. As I have discovered
how much remains to be learned in my field, and how relatively few scientists
are working in Africa, my career focus has progressed into a dedicated passion
for scientific discovery in one of the most biologically diverse but unknown
places on Earth. The urgency of this work is crucial, because explosive human
population growth is driving deforestation, climate change, and other negative
impacts to hasten the disappearance of the very biodiversity I am trying to
discover and understand.
Many have mistaken this passion for a psychotic sense of adventure. “You’re
going to come back from Congo in a box,” or some variant of this comment, has
been suggested to me repeatedly by friends, family, and colleagues, especially
before my first jaunt into Central Africa. Who can blame these well-meaning
people?—the Democratic Republic of Congo remains a mysterious “heart of
darkness” to many outsiders, even 118 years after Joseph Conrad’s famous
novella was published. Perhaps they have a point. As I will explain in more
detail later, Africa’s World War (a conflict centered in Congo at the beginning of
the twenty-first century) left approximately 5 million Congolese dead, several
dangerous militias linger in eastern Congo’s jungles, and a sprinkling of
landmines and unexploded ordnance persist in some areas that saw heavy
fighting. Add to that a smorgasbord of crippling and deadly diseases,
dangerously poor infrastructure, and at least three dozen species of venomous
snakes, with of course no antivenom in the hospitals, and one begins to wonder
if an expedition to Congo is indeed a suicide mission. Thankfully, several people
and organizations either ignored the danger, were blissfully ignorant, or funded
me to see what would happen, and I am eternally grateful to all of them,
especially the ones who supported my first foray into Congo in 2007 (see the
acknowledgments).
The primary focus of this book is the popular science of biodiversity
exploration, and communicating this work to the general public. In 2012, I was
awarded a grant (DEB-1145459) from the US National Science Foundation (along
with colleague Kate Jackson) to continue my research on the amphibians and
reptiles of the Congo Basin, and some of the results I present in this book are a
result of that grant. As part of my responsibility for using American taxpayers’
money for this research, I am required to engage and educate the general public
about what I am doing with their funds, and in 2016, I started this process with a
YouTube video to explain my work in laypersons’ terms.1 As aptly explained by
the greatest scientific communicator of our time, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the
American Museum of Natural History, “If you get tax money to do your research
as we do in astrophysics . . . NASA and the National Science Foundation, then . . .
it is not only your duty, it’s an obligation to share the fruits of your research with
the public. If the public does not embrace science, then not only does science go
out of business—so does the public.”2 A corollary of this statement with relation
to my own work might state that if the public does not understand biodiversity
science, then continuing mass extinction, including the human species, is
inevitable. This book is one aspect of that goal, but aside from the obligation, I
truly enjoy sharing my passion with people. The personal narrative you are about
to read is true, but because I wish to continue working as a professor in Africa
for as long as my health and luck allow, some minor details (e.g., names of
people) of the story have been modified.