Okapis in danger of extinction

Okapis are strange mammals who inhabit eastern Congo.  The wars and the decrease of their natural environment has reduced their numbers to less than 10,000 with risk of extinction.

This forest-dwelling cousin of the giraffe is also unmistakable due to its very peculariar shape and colouration. It reaches a head-body length of 200-210 cm, a shoulder height of 150-170 cm, and a body-weight of 20-250 kg. The eyes are large and dark, the ears large and broad, the tongue very long. Males have one pair of short backward directed frontal horns that are covered with hair. The body is short and compact with a sloping back like the giraffe, but the neck is much shorter. The legs are rather long in proportion to the body. The tail is about 30-42 cm long and has a terminal tuft.

The fur is short and sleek. Its general colour is velvety dark chestnut. The sides of the head are light grey, The upper parts of the forelgs, lower rump, tighs and buttocks are marked with sharply contrasted conspicuous transverse white stripes. The lower parts of the limbs are white except for a longitudinal dark stripe in front of the forelegs and a horizontal black band above the hooves on each leg.

The okapi's preferred habitat is dense, damp forest. It is diurnal, and lives solitary, in pairs or in small family gropups, never in herds.

After a pregnancy of 425 to 491 day one single calf of a bout 16 kg is born during the rainy season from August to October. Females attain sexual maturity ar an age of about 20 months. Under zoo conditions okapis may reach an age of well over 30 years.

Okapis arebrowsers feeding on the leaves, fruit and seeds of many plants.

The classification of the okapi as a giraffe species has been challenged recently (Kurt Benirschke, 2006, in Zool. Garten NF  76, 197-198) and have been put forward suggesting that the okapi is a close relative of the nilghai antelope of India, which has the same number of chromosomes, the same chemical composition of the bile, and a similar placenta structure.

Did you know?
that the okapi was the last large African mammal species to become known to science? It has been described in 1901 by the then Secretary of the London Zoological Society, on the basis of some small skin pieces, as "Equus (?) johnstoni sp.nov., an apparently new species of zebra from the Semliki Forest". In 1904 the geologist Dr. J. J. David of Basel (Switzerland) was the first European whoever saw, and shot, an okapi. The skin and skeleton of this animal are still preserved at the Basel Natural History Museum. In 1919 the first live okapi arrived in Europe, where it lived, for only 51 days, at Antwerp Zoo. In 1954, Antwerp was also the first zoo where an Okapi was bred.

The Bomani, the navigating city of the Congo

A strange compact vessel, consisting of a main ship about a hundred meters long, and several terraced barges, awaits the arrival of passengers and cargo to begin the long journey from Kinshasa to Kisangani at a distance of almost 1,700 kilometers.

There are no land routes that cross the Congolese territory and, apart from the airway, of an unattainable cost for the immense majority of the population, the waterway is the only means of transport available for the impoverished inhabitants of the country.

The passengers who board the Bomani, which is the name of the ship, for the long voyage, are made up of a disorderly crowd of crew members, men and women with children, entire families and all kinds of loads and freights. Little by little they go up to the big boat until they fill it completely. Days and weeks pass before the strange "ship" fully loaded with passengers can sail.

After a month of waiting, passengers become impatient. The captain promises that the next day the floating complex will sail at last, which for the umpteenth time does not happen.

Fuel did not arrive, you have to adjust details, tomorrow without fail. Two months later the ship (or whatever it is called) receives the thousands of liters of fuel required in more than 50 barrels and it is time to start the engines that do not respond yet. Finally, after numerous attempts and some makeshift arrangements, the engines light up and the ship sets sail.

It is a true floating city, carrying up to 2,000 passengers, there is practically no room to move or sleep.

On the boat there are no toilets, no cabins, only the heterogeneous deck full of all kinds of people. There is also no drinking water (only the polluted river water). Logically after a few days many passengers get sick. A single nurse practically without drugs, has to attend intestinal diseases, fevers, wounds, births and many other health problems of passengers.

The food reaches the passengers from the banks, boats and canoes approach offering their goods, fish, cakes, fruits, allowing passengers with a resource to buy them.

The engine breaks, it has to be fixed, it can take several days, floating in the river.

To gain time the "floating city" sails at night. As you can not see anything, you finally run aground on a sandbar.

After a lot of work and efforts, the crew manages to disengage the boat and continue the march.

After two months the strange fluvial procession that advances slowly must interrupt the navigation due to strong combats in the zone. The Bomani was barely halfway there. .

The passengers get off and wait a few days or weeks until another boat passes and takes them to their destination, with their distant families, or even the city of Kisangani where they are waiting, possibly job opportunities that did not exist in Kinshasa.

Colonial history produced two very different countries

In the Congolese region, colonial history produced two very differente countries. On the one hand the Republique du Congo,, on the other hand the Republique Democratique du Congo, known for a short period as Republique Zaire.

While the much larger Republique Democratique du Congo was colonized by the Belges, and practically was treated as a personal property by King Leopold of Belgium, the smaller Republique du Congo was colonized by the French, and probably because of the important role of a explorer and first French commissioner, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, became a much more organized society, before and after independence. Precisely because of that, on the RDC side Leopoldville became Kinshasa and on the RC side, Brazzaville did not change its name.

In present time, after half a century of independence, “Brazzaville and Kinshasa, which stare each other down from opposite banks of the Congo River, are famed as the two national capitals closest to one another, but they are hardly sister cities.

The streets of Kinshasa are a disaster, and whatever colonial-era grid there ever was has been submerged beneath a layer of mud, grime and neglect. Packs of young men fight their way into crude minibuses with holes drilled in the sides for ventilation, while in Brazzaville shiny green taxis cruise clean streets, gliding to a stop for their fares.

On hot days, Kinshasa reeks of fermenting fruit and urine. In Brazzaville, the whiff of freshly baked croissants creeps from under the doors of the city’s patisseries, as people in smart suits and enviable shoes sip café au lait. Brazzaville’s relative prosperity is due to oil money and the country’s small population, estimated at three million, with about a third in the capital.

It is here that the statue of Mr. Brazza towers over town, the pose inspired by a famous photograph of the explorer wearing a Lawrence of Arabia outfit.

And this may be just the beginning. Mr. Kamba, the head of the Brazza Foundation, wants a Brazza library, a Brazza traveling exhibit, even a Brazza theme park.

He remembered with a smile the soiree in October, when the bones were returned from Algeria — where Mr. Brazza had retired — and top diplomats gathered to swig Champagne and eat crepes.

“It was huge,” he said. “And the party didn’t end until dawn.”

Partially reproduced from The New York Times.

The Congo under Belgian  control:
a colonial domain of extreme cruelty that is often forgotten

The Free State of the Congo was a former African colonial domain, accepted by the European powers as private property of King Leopold II of Belgium. 
It corresponds roughly to the territory of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was administered in private form by the king Leopoldo II between 1885 and 1908, year in which the territory passed to Belgian control.

During the "reign" of Leopoldo II, the populations of the Congo were systematically and indiscriminately exploited to obtain their natural resources (especially ivory and rubber). Labor was exclusively from native peoples in conditions of slavery. To maintain its control the colonial administration established a regime of terror, in which mass murders and mutilations were frequent. There were a very high number of fatalities, most of the authors mention figures of between five and ten million dead as a result of belgian domination of the Congo basin..

It is worth saying that the exploitation of resources and populations continues in a more disguised way. This story of looting and death explains the difficulty that Congolese have in realizing a viable state that will allow Congo's people to withdraw from their present levels of poverty.