GORILLAS, PYGMIES, AND THE FRENCH
Bangui, Central African Republic. Pygmies are the original Africans. Africa was populated almost exclusively by them for millennia. Then came larger folks like the Bantu who exterminated them, pushed them deep into the rain forests of Central Africa, and enslaved them. There are now only a few groups of Pygmies left, scattered in pockets of the densest jungles, still practicing the original human way of life, hunting and gathering.
There are three kinds of gorillas. The giant hairy kind you see in zoos, and the thuggish human kind who rule over other people as "Big Men." Africa has plenty of both. Then there's the French colonial gorilla, which still has control over Francophone Africa.
The poster child for the French gorilla is the CAR. Of all of Africa's capital cities, this one is at the bottom of the Dark Continent's barrel. Most of the city's streets are dirt with more potholes than road, what few streets are paved are more of an asphalt quilt riddled with bumpy pothole patches, most buildings are decrepit, there isn't one new modern building or establishment of any kind.
So why am I here? To arrange an astoundingly awesome expedition. There is a hidden pocket of the southwest CAR where it, Cameroon, and Congo-Brazzaville come together. This three-country region is the most uninhabited area in all Sub-Saharan Africa. Save for two small villages of a few hundred, no one lives there except for pygmies and gorillas - tens of thousands of gorillas, outnumbering humans at least 100-1.
This only hints at the extraordinary profusion of wildlife. No one knows about it. And now I know how to take you there.
