38 - Some Like It Hot

Part of Djibouti from the air

 Flying from Addis Ababa to Djibouti in a small Bombardier Dash 8 Q-400 turboprop brings two different visions of Africa. Sitting right at the front next to me is a French navy officer on his way to join the international flotilla patrolling the seas off Somalia against pirates - with mixed success. And just across the aisle a man returning from the World Cup in South Africa cradles on his lap a couple of vuvuzelas, which he now proceeds to try out to see if they're still working. They are indeed, to magnificent effect, giving a whole new dimension to taking off.

From the air Djibouti looks like a moonscape of stark crags and sand, but once on the ground there are green bushes and many more rather colourless thorn shrubs. The city itself is low and not unpleasant with  Moorish architecture and colonnades, trees, and parks here and there. The facade of the old synagogue - all that is left - is equally Moorish. There used to be a fair community of Yemeni Jews, but most left after the Six-Day War and none are now left.

City Hall

It's very hot, but not as bad as I anticipated. I was prepared to say that as the airplane door opened we were gob-smacked by the searing heat of a blast furnace, but that would just be journalistic hype. It's about 39 Celsius, 102 Fahrenheit. An early afternoon stroll is in order; the streets are virtually abandoned, except for a few soldiers drinking soda round the park leading to the presidential palace. Where is everybody? Getting zonked or already zonked out on qat, of course!


Djibouti, as opposed to the other capitals visited this time, is considered pretty safe to wander round. An afternoon stroll toward the port brings into view a large modern mosque with lofty minaret, a palm-strewn esplanade, and a statue in front of the white People's Palace, at present used for the legislature. A side lane leads up to the grand presidential palace, the former French governor's residence; not only can I not take a photo of it, I'm not even allowed to walk past, or even approach as soldiers gesture verboten in a variety of sign languages. Still, there's a good photo op way back near the port when nobody's looking.

Building in June 27 square

There's very little traffic, and no such thing as a traffic jam (Luanda and Kinshasa, take note), but plenty of pedestrians, beggars and cripples. Nearly all the women wear flowing brightly coloured head scarves with equally colourful flowing robes. A few are completely incognito in black burkas. Near the Djibouti Broadcasting (RTD) building two men loll on the pavement, preparing their qat. A few minutes later, they no longer have qat in hand but huge bulges pumping out from their left cheeks. One shouts 'Vive la France' but turns negative when I propose a photo op.

Crippled street kid

Across the road at one of two side-by-side scruffy pavement cafes, imaginatively named RTD 1 and RTD 2, a quick overall impression is in order: a look into passing faces suggests a little too much intermarriage among some - buck teeth, receding chins, asymmetry.


Djibouti By Night, La Nuit, Bei Nacht - At last a city to walk around at night; no fears of muggers, bandits, cut-throats and the other usual suspects in the centre. The place is fairly hopping, the streets well lit, coloured lights from Sunday's Independence Day celebrations still twinkling, people everywhere, pavement cafes doing a brisk trade, an air-conditioned Italian ice cream parlour offering excellent sorbets. Nightclubs, bars, casinos are here for the taking - L'Oasis, New Delhi, Hermes with reclining Greek statues and faux ionic columns, disco music, flashing disco lights, flashing disco floors, flashing 'disco' women too in short, short skirts. How many of them are incognito in burkas by day?

Kids play soccer near new mosque

Djibouti by day - The countless market lanes by Mahamoud Harbi Square are swarming, echoing with what at first seems like explosively guttural Arabic. But then both the Afar and Somali languages have their own fair share of detonations. A group of men squatting on a dusty little median in front of the collective mass of minivan buses is selling qat, their customers, mainly scarved women, handling, sniffing, palpating, assessing the produce like pros; likewise at stalls down a lane where the vendors are women.

The excellent photo ops, of course, elicit shouts of verboten from passing males; too late, already snapped. Qat plays only a small part, though, in the alleys lined with little shop fronts selling leather, electronics, dresses, everything. Barrows overflow with every kind of fruit, much more than seen in West Africa. And everywhere little beggar kids run up for alms. The anti-camera shouts aren’t restricted to qat only.

Presidential palace from waterfront

High Noon - OK, I seem to be making a habit of this, giving further corroboration to 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen...,' except this time there ain't even a mad dog around. The blindingly sunlit streets are deserted, not a canine in sight, only a couple of shrivelled old beggar women crouching in the shade of an arcade. It's over 100 Fahrenheit again, expected to drop to around 90 after dark. Yes, this is clearly not the tourist season. When muggins asked a tour guide here if there might be others to share the costs of a four-day trip into the boondocks (where the thermometre can top 50 Celsius, 122 Fahrenheit), he e-mailed back: 'You're the only one to venture here at this time; it's rare to see visitors between July and August; even locals leave the country in search of cooler climes. Those who remain in Djibouti during this period must have a good reason for doing so - work or no means of leaving.' Furthermore, dear old muggins is wearing a dark T-shirt, absorbing instead of repelling the sun's rays. Time to nip indoors out of the sun, as the locals, sane dogs and other nationalities have done.

Street scene

Late afternoon - Vuvuzela boy on the flight in is not alone. At the Paraguay-Japan match on TV at Djibouti's Planet Hollywood cafe a huge guy, whose girth would make him a clear shoo-in for Rio Carnival's King Momo, raises a lengthy red vuvuzela to his pursed lips whenever he approves, disapproves or none-of-the-above of the play, deafening us all. There are lots of shouts for Japan's fast, smart play, even though they loose on penalties. I think everybody in Djibouti just supports a good game, even if no African team is playing. The vuvuzela's still going strong in the evening when Spain (and doesn't their coach look just like the son Franco never had?) beats Portugal.

Woman buying qat

Street in main market

Buying qat under expatriate Israeli Nestle umbrella

Mian mosque in market

Saved

Synagogue facade

Kids 'arcade' in market alley

37 - Apocablips Now

Children coffins at roadside funeral directors

 Blip no:1 - I've just started a real riot photographing a pavement coffin shop in Matadi, with lots of little coffins covered in golden satin to keep up with the infant mortality rate. And Didier, damn him, has just lost his zip. A sad photo op, thinks I, but not so the group of husky men gathering fast. They start shouting and waving their fists menacingly. Now they're charging the car. They're grabbing at my arms and demanding money. I dash back into the car, but they keep on pulling the door open, arms flailing, screaming for moolah. I lock the door. And Didier, the great zip-meister? He's become catatonic. He just sits behind the wheel like a zombie. Get a freaking zip on, screams I. At last he engages the motor and we pull away, barely, unscathed.

We proceed to the Belvedere, the highest point in Matadi from where the surveyors took the lay of the land for the railway to bypass the rapids to Kinshasa – a magnificent panorama of the now
house-cluttered hills and the soaring rock mountain beyond.
 

More coffins - before the angry charge

Blip no:2 – I go to the office of Filair airline at noon, as told, for the bus to the airport for the 1330 flight to Kinshasa in a tiny Russian 19-seater turboprop. They now say the bus will leave at 1300. At 1230 when I ask what time the plane takes off, they say 'Oh, haven't you been told? It's broken down and won't leave till Monday.' It's Friday and my plane for Addis Ababa leaves Kinshasa tomorrow.

Blip no:3 – Gabriel, the very sweet little middle-aged receptionist at the Metropole rushes me across to the office of another air company, Kinavia. Oh yes, they have a plane leaving at 1330. Great, says I. Oh but it's full, says they. Perhaps it's just as well; Congo air companies have about as good a reputation as those in neighbouring Angola.

Blip no:4 - All buses for Kinshasa have already left for the day, so now we have to look for a taxi to Kinshasa.

A Matadi neighbourhood from the Belvedere

Un-blip: Gabriel, who really is an archangel, tells me not to bother with Didier, who wants $200 plus fuel (the plane cost $120, which they at least returned). He takes me by taxi to the departure point for the group taxis, negotiates with a driver called Victor and I pay $80 for the whole taxi plus another $20 for the drive from the outskirts of Kinshasa to my hotel.

Another Belvedere view

Apoc-eclipse Now! - Victor is a speed devil. But he doesn't take risks on blind curves. We pass lorries carrying huge logs (damn those Malaysian timber companies) round the Congo rapids for re-embarkation; we curse Mobutu (since the departure of the Belgians we Congolese have done nothing, built nothing, the balance sheet is zero, quoths Victor); we laud Mandela and lament that there are not more like him in Africa; we pass through Mbanza-Ngungu, called Thysville in Belgian times, a cool hill station that is now – you've guessed it – incredibly run down and rotting; in fact we're having a regular great time until we reach Kinshasa in the dark after a five-hour drive.

This is a whole new phantasmagorical experience. Vast areas are blacked out, others have a few scattered, exceedingly weak bulbs in an occasional building, or the odd flickering oil lamp. Virtually no street lamps, but there's no lack, of course, of the usual huge traffic jams due to a slow-moving lorry or huge heaps of sand left for road works. And overwhelming everything are vast armies of humans at every turn, selling food and other wares, walking in unending columns on the side of the rutted roads way out from the centre to where they can get transport; or worse, darting in and out of the traffic. Many come from a protest demonstration, marked by the huge presence of Darth Vader riot police, at the funeral of a recently assassinated human rights activist.

Road to Kinshasa

A huge column of a different sort rises in the heart of darkness, a square phallus erected by Mobutu in honour of the martyrs of independence. Away to the right, weak lights illuminate a statue of Patrice Lumumba, prime minister at the time of independence, erected by - who else? - Mobutu, the man who betrayed him in the struggle that led to his murder in 1961.

It takes nearly three hours to cover the last few kilometres to the hotel.

Apocaloops Now! - Oops! For lack of anything better to do, I've just looked at the guidebook again and it says: 'The DR Congo still requires anyone photographing anything to have a photo permit... Permits sold in Kinshasa that are valid for the whole country can be as much as $50.' So all those people asking where my authorisation was were right and I was wrong? Well, I got through the country very nicely without it, thank you very much. And have a nice day!

Apocollapse Now! - After all this month-long swanning around equatorial Africa muggins is somewhat bushed and in need of a true holiday. So I'm off tomorrow to the other side of the continent to Djibouti at its hottest, which everybody else tries to escape at this time, and Somalia - which everybody else tries to escape at any time.

Further along the road to Kinshasa

Apocahips Now! - OK, one last Conrad/Coppola pun. At Kinshasa's N'Djili airport, there's an enormous American couple with hips from sea to shining to sea. They've come here to adopt two children, which is all very nice, but what is of immediate significance is that they're planted right behind me in the queue, acting as a great wall of China in preventing anyone from pushing in front – and there are several over-enthusiastic passengers who are trying their best with elbows and knees and boompsie-daisy.

There are four separate baggage searches; you got something for us 'to drink', ask the officers at three of them. Let's just forget the long lines, the three different immigration officials checking the passports even before you get to the one who stamps them – and now the computer system's gone down. Let's just say that despite the apparent total anarchy everything does get done.

Past immigration control and through a door, and yet another search; an imposing man sitting on the metal detector conveyor belt says: 'Mr. Arkus, I'm the police commander. I see you're going to Djibouti.' Gawd,called by name! What's going on? 'My younger brother who lives in Djibouti is suffering from a very serious illness – sexual impotence – and he needs our traditional medicine,' quoths he. 'I have here a little bottle of the stuff and I wonder whether you could take it to him as a humanitarian gesture.' Sorry, old chappie, quoths I, as much as I am in favour of promoting humanitarian causes, I am not authorised to take photos - or anything to anybody. Was this some entrapment attempt, with some cohort down the line ready to pounce at yet one more check point, find the bottle (drugs?) and extort a huge bribe to let me proceed?

Mbanza-Ngungu

The departure lounge is in a pretty sorry state. Sticky brown binding tape holds a dirty toilet cistern together. The woman attendant asks for something 'to drink.' Madam, quoths I, I've just left a whole lot of something for you to drink.

 The Ethiopian Airlines flight is fine, but Addis Ababa airport seems determined to cede the crown to no one for worst arrival reception. We wait for well over an hour as a single immigration official slowly goes through the inexplicably long process of stamping you in. An officious official comes over to move some of us to the line for airplane crews, which moves even more slowly. Then a second official joins in the process for the original line, though you'd hardly notice, and some of us move back. Everybody is muttering complaints. Time for muggins to hold forth: Every country should hold up Ethiopian officials for three hours at their airports, though not the ordinary people of course, quoths I. Naturally, as I get more and more radical, the immigration booth becomes vacant, the immigration official is gesturing furiously and my audience is shouting at ME to get a move on.

36 - Apocazips Now!

View back over Matadi from road to Boma

 Didier, the young driver who's a friend of the hotel concierge, is zipping along at a startling rate on the way from Matadi to Boma, some 80 miles closer to the mouth of the great river. Matadi has one functioning traffic light, now verboten red; he ignores it. Potholes? Doesn't give them a second thought as I smack my head against the roof and duck to avoid further capital collisions. He's got only one hand on the steering wheel, and now – look, Mum, no hands at all! We're in a grand prix.

We stop on a cliff on the north bank of the Congo so that I can recover and take some photos back over Matadi. A group of young men approach: 'Good morning, Mr. white man; hey boss, chief, you got something to drink?' All mimed with gathered fingers touching the mouth in physical demonstration of the French word for tip – pourboire (to drink).

Road to Boma

The potholes become so frequent and ridged that even Didier has to slow down. Boma, incredibly run down, rises on steep hills, dominated by a tiny metal cathedral assembled in 1890, and a monstrous modern block brick one that was built later next door. On the opposite bank is Angola and down stream the Congo's vast mouth, the ports of Banana and Muanda, the Atlantic, and if you continue, Brazil. The site of a trading post for the Portuguese with the African kingdom of Congo centuries before King Leopold II's brutal folly turned it into the capital of his Belgian Free State, and later of the Belgian Congo, until Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) took over in the 1920s, it was here that Stanley ended up after completing the first known full trip of several thousand miles down the Congo from close to its source.

There's a massive 700-year-old baobab tree inside which he is said to have rested his imperial bones, a very impressive, huge multi-trunk affair that is hollow inside, providing quite a large room, with an opening cut for entry. There's a natural opening at the top where the branches start.

Roadside village

Meanwhile I've started a minor riot; I raise my camera to snap some vendors peddling car parts and tyres on the pavement. They do not take kindly to my interest; they start shouting, they shake their fists, and now they're taking off at us at a gallop. Thank goodness Didier does zip along at a startling rate.

Boma's old metal cathedral and modern monstrosity

Stanley's baobab

Apocaflips Now! OK, I shouldn't have let Didier have that beer at lunch. He's almost flipped over a man walking on the dusty broken street outside Boma’s Au Coin de Paris (Paris corner) Boutique. The right-side mirror winged the walker who jumped back just in time with a startled cry. Now he's almost flipped over another pedestrian outside Jesus-Victory Establishments. And now he's almost pranged a policeman by a bridge. At this startling rate...

Inside Stanley's baobab

Another cop stops us for a document-check-cum-bribe. Thank God he hasn't got a breathalyser. He checks the documents which are OK, but Didier has forgotten to put his seat belt on, a capital offence the way the cop describes it. I wave a 500 franc (50 cent) note in his face. 'You don't have to do that, Papa,' quoths he, quickly pocketing it with a broad smile. 'May the Good Lord protect you, Papa.' Whenever they call out to people here, they use Papa, Maman, Tonton, Tata, Frere or Soeur (Dad, Mummy, Uncle, Auntie, Bro or Sis). And 500 is the highest denomination - just imagine $100 worth of them!

We resume our three-hour grand prix back towards Matadi, past little towns, some of mud brick and straw, others of proper bricks and corrugated iron, past kids holding up dead rabbits and parts of larger

Map of Stanley's voyage down the Con

animals for sale, past a bearded village idiot dancing and conducting a make-believe orchestra, past towering trees and palms, past giant overhanging bamboos that turn the road into a long green tunnel.


The late African afternoon is lingering and golden, the sun blood red in the haze. By the time we reach the north bank, the bridge south is already lit, the hills are twinkling with Matadi's extensive spread, and we're home. But not before a smilingly friendly 'Good evening, Papa' from one of the soldiers guarding the bridge, 'you got some coffee for me to drink?' Shit, no, never touch the stuff! And once more Didier's zipping comes to the rescue.

Bustling Boma 

View over a Boma neighbourhood from the cathedral

Bulk carrier in Congo with Angola in background

Boma statue recalls slavery under Belgian rule

A Boma street

35 - The Holler! The Holler!

Downtown church with Congo River and mountains

Muggins is in not too good a mood this morning, getting up so early after watching the Germany-Ghana match last night (the Kraut coach looks like Hitler with a face-lift and a shave) and then channel surfing - full of screaming evangelical preachers in French and Lingala - The Great Miracle Crusade, Christonomy etc. On top of that the TV has informed us that today is National Fish Day, though what the significance of that is remains somewhat elusive.

It's barely daylight but the mud streets of La Cite, the African heart of Kinshasa, are already alive, more than can be said for one of its resident; a coffin lies on a platform under a canopy with rows of chairs already filling up with women. We pass a vast stadium and arrive at the bus 'station' – a dirt road with a dirty great black clapped out bus drawn up for the trip to Matadi, a perfect picture in decrepitude.

Interior courtyard of Metropole Hotel

St. Jacques offered to drive me down there for a couple of days. On the way he'd show me the diamond, gold, cobalt, manganese and Gawd-alone-knows-what-else estate of an Israeli who was born in the Congo. I call him Papa Georges, quoths he, he's an old Papa like you. Thank you very much, St. Jacques! It'll only cost $500. I declined - and not just because he called me old. I'm fine with paying him $50 for a day round Kinshasa, but $500? The $15 bus will do very nicely, thank you very much. Meanwhile, St. Jacques provides the usual entertainment. I hear that Michael Jackson is really alive, quoths he; can you confirm his death? Well, Your Sanctity...

 The Holler! The Holler! And a-hollering indeed they are aboard our bus; a-whooping, a-cheering and a-clapping too. An evangelical preacher has just beamed up onto our roadship, and is energetically helping us to travel with Yahweh – in French and Lingala. It's last night deja vu all over again. The passengers, mainly portly women, are amen-ing and halleluya-ing for all they're worth, whooping in praise of God as if at a sports match. The reverend gentleman is now praying against 'crashes, sorcery and satanic attacks' on our journey. Amen! Amen! Halleluyah! Halleluyah!

Matadi port

Now he leads in singing a rousing hymn in Lingala that sounds suspiciously like 'she'll be coming round the mountains when she comes,' with many Yahwehs thrown in. He's bouncing up and down, repeatedly raising his right hand in a Heil Hitler salute. All the hands are energetically clapping for the Lord, the whoops for Yahweh are travelling up bus and echoing on back down bus. His Holiness is thundering; the passengers repeat after him what sounds like the Lord's Prayer in Lingala. Now comes a prayer in silence, eyes closed. And now comes the piece de resistance; His Holiness declaims 'I bless you, I bless you, and thank you, thank you,' fleecing his ad hoc congregation of 50, 100, 500 franc notes (5, 10, or 50 cents) before alighting in a halo of sanctity to bring the Lord closer to some other poor travelling flock.

Church square at sunset

Apocalips Now! No helicopters, like huge insects, hovering overhead to Wagnerian music in a Coppola update to Conrad; but to a blaring African beat on the tape deck our driver is trying to overtake a massive double Maersk tractor-trailer on the major highway – called a narrow country lane anywhere else. As he draws parallel at about 60 mph with continual horn blasts, the tractor trailer speeds up; we speed up, the lane bends in a blind curve - and we're heading for an apocalyptic full frontal with whatever may be coming round the mountains when she comes.

It is at this moment that my seat mate, a portly, aristocratic looking lady with enormous pouting lips and huge false eye lashes, starts a mutiny. The huge lips form a determined, elongated O and she lets fly at our driver, telling him to stop playing chicken with our lives. She is clearly a leader of men - and women - because everybody else is now screaming blue murder. We have a riot on our hands. The driver is finally prevailed upon, we drop back, Maersk draws ahead, and in a flash another Maersk comes swinging along in the opposite half lane within half a hair's breadth of our flank.

But Hot Lips is not yet done. We're speeding along nicely across savanna, up-hill and down-hill, mountains rising on the horizon, when a truck draws across our path. Our Jehu promptly overtakes him, forces him to stop, jumps down, and we have a new Congo war on our hands. Curses start reverberating, fists start flying, arms start straining to restrain the incipient country lane-side reprise of the Rumble in the Jungle – the 1974 Mohammed Ali-George Foreman bout in Kinshasa – and Hot Lips decides it’s time to show some more leadership.

Night falls over Matadi port

She hauls up her impressive bulk, descends the bus steps with dignity and deliberation, her giant lips forming a remonstrative 'no.' The Ali-Foreman wannabes cringe back to their corners. Ah, the role of women! It is often said that if women were in charge of the continent there would be no wars in Africa. That's, of course, excluding Alice Auma who sowed the seeds of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, Winnie Mandela and H. Rider Haggard's sorceress.

We move on, the crew giving us free soda, rolls and tins of sardines as we pass rough and ready towns, an overturned van and sundry other wrecks. At every stop little children run up and down the road selling packets of small paper hankies to mop our sweat. The bus arrives after eight hours – hot, dusty, uncomfortable, but still progress on Conrad/Marlow's more than a month, even if without the evocative poetry of their slog through forests, over mountains and past indigenous villages.

View of Matadi from right bank

Apocatips Now! Everybody in Matadi is asking for a tip. A guy near the decrepit station, the terminal of the railway built to circumvent the rapids on the way to Kinshasa, tells me I can take photos, and asks for a tip. The policeman closer to the station tells me I can't take photos and asks for a tip. The security guard at the Metropole Hotel escorts me to the lift, and asks for a 500 franc (50 cent) tip to buy some aspirin – he's feeling poorly. At least the kids in a courtyard near the station are too busy playing some pretty good football to ask for a tip. Not so a policeman by a house, who has just shouted verboten at my camera. He calls me over; he wants to talk with me. Thanks, but no thanks, quoths I, I'm going back to the hotel.

Matadi neighbourhood as seen from right bank

Matadi, Capital of the Bas Congo region and founded by Stanley 130 years ago, is fairly large, clambering up and over a good deal more than seven hills at a splendid site where the Congo narrows as it thrusts its way through high cliffs and mountains. It was here that Conrad met the British consul, Roger Casement, famous for his denunciation of King Leopold II's brutal regime of atrocities, before going on to greater fame and the gallows as an alleged traitor for his 1916 Irish Rebellion role during World War I.

A bridge and the country itself move north to the right bank, the left one becoming Angola. Matadi must once have been very pretty town, with a Tyrolean type church near the water front in the lower town, and the massive Moorish style fort that is the Metropole Hotel, a venerable institution that is now more venereal, if a building can be so afflicted - cracked, peeling, chipped and much else; it has a/c and decrepit little balconies but no hot water, and no water at all in the evening, all for $60 a night. But with its grand staircase, lofty lobby, exceptionally high ceilings, Moorish arches, and more than a little imagination, it is still impressive. In fact both hotel and city have real character, even if deadly election riots in 2007, and the wreckage they left, haven't exactly helped.

View of part of Matadi from Metropole window

34 - Sodom and Gomorrah! Gomorrah!

Bonobo reserve

 At last the famous Bonobos who, when under stress and tension, make love with each other instead of war, regardless of sex or age, an animal kingdom version of the Bible's ancient twin doomed cities – or a rampant example of modern-day equal opportunity. Standing more upright than a chimpanzee but less so than a human, they're only found in the deep equatorial forests on the left bank of the Congo River and are now an endangered species thanks to poachers and deforestation. Smaller than a chimpanzee – the male reaches 1.2 metres and 50 kilos, the female about 1 metre and 35 kilos - they live to about 50 or 60 and are estimated to number only some 10,000 as opposed to 100,000 in 1980.

About two hours outside Kinshasa orphans rescued from poachers are rehabilitated and eventually released into their natural habitat 1,000 kilometres or more to the north. In a huge forest enclosure protected by an electric-topped fence, several dozen bonobos roam and play about in family groups, grooming each other, making faces, and otherwise having a great time.

On the other side of the fence

Of course each time one of them produces an extremely elongated grimace with lips protruding forward like a long tube when asked if he/she can talk, muggins is too slow in getting his camera ready. Nor is muggins apparently producing enough tension or pressure, because they're not doing any of 'that.' But what muggins does manage to do is electrocute himself. In my enthusiasm to snap every gesture, I advance hands and camera too far in, brush against – yes, you’ve guessed it - the electric wires and am propelled backwards with a very nasty jolt amid flashes and an electricity-charged camera (fortunately photos unharmed).

Order restored, one of the older bonobos decides to put on a spontaneous show for yours truly. He balances a long stick on his back and runs proudly on all fours without it ever coming close to falling off. Now he walks, carrying it wedged between his shoulder and the side of his jaw. A family of seven with a baby groom each other in different positions, presenting their backs once front and arms have been cleared of ticks. The males have huge balls but tiny dicks.

Family rest time

There are 58 bonobos in the reserve including babies in the nursery; another nine have already been released into the wild. To visit them in their natural habitat is difficult to say the least – a week or more travel up river, a long trek into the jungle, and even then there’s no assured sighting because the forest is so dense.

Bonobo infant

A film at the reserve's headquarters shows how they have been taught to recognise 1,000 words – both nouns like house or orange, and also adjectives – either presenting pictured cards or pressing the correct computer keys when asked. They break wood by holding it in both hands and using their foot, take a lighter out of someone's pocket, flicking to make a fire and throw a pail of water to put it out.

Time to clamber over foster mummy

Start of the balancing act 

Show underway

Wow this is easy

Next move

Show over

More time out