LOMAKO: Into The African Rain Forest

Book excerpt: Lomako tells a story from the nineties in the Congo, then Zaire, as the Mobutu regime slipped into chaos. It starts with the looting of Kinshasa and Mike’s adventures helping official America, ie the CIA, get out of Dodge. Like Heart of Darkness the story then goes up stream and into the deepest forest. Mike had visited the Bonobo Chimpanzees and the American research site before. He finds the academics gone but the local community still there and carrying on as best they could. Through a good relationship with the community leader, Mike takes on a series of tasks which ultimately lead to finding a poacher incursion and live trade in Bonobo. At one point in the various forest tracks Mike is camping alone and gets a bought of malaria, delirium and all. Despite the danger and difficulties described there is no Conradian darkness. The forest and rivers are beautiful it’s the people that bring the problems.