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Our boat sailed towards a sprawling harbor in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and we silently gazed at the coastal scenery.
Barefoot men were lifting giant logs onto a steep muddy riverbank. Nearby, crews on dozens of log rafts waited in tangled weeds to unload. On the shore, forklifts with logs curled up between tangled tree trunks that looked as if they had fallen from the sky.
We got off our boat to understand everything. But after all those days in the water, we felt like we were swaying, even standing on solid ground.
I’m a climate reporter for The New York Times, and the port in Kinshasa was the end of a seven-day, 500-mile voyage down the Congo River and its tributaries that we published this month. I was there with photographer Ashley Gilbertson to explore the logging industry and its human implications in one of the world’s most important old-growth rainforests spanning the Congo Basin. The massive forest and its carbon sequestration capabilities are becoming increasingly important to stopping our planet from warming as trees continue to be cut down in the Amazon, the largest ancient rainforest. Congolese authorities are trying to rein in dangerous and often illegal logging practices in the region.
Roads and airports are scarce in this part of the country. The river is the main transport route and acts as a conveyor belt for logs from the forest to the market. Companies sail in log barges below the ports of Kinshasa, but ordinary citizens working on their own also float by tying logs together on a raft, sometimes with nothing more than mosquito nets. They live and sleep on rafts during dangerous, weeks-long journeys down the river that can result in injury or even death.
To understand the life and haphazard trade of these loggers, we had to join them on the river. We chartered what is said to be the best powerboat in Mbandaka town and hired two captains who both know the boat’s mechanics and can relax each other after long shifts. With very few large towns along the river, refueling is complicated: We refueled the small area under the deck with plastic drums, stocked up on bread and nuts, and set sail.
When our boat docked on the rafts, its contents came to greet us. After introducing ourselves as journalists and asking for their permission to board the plane, Ashley jumped onto the rafts, the arches of her bare feet tumbling against the swirling logs that moved and turned in the stream. Notoriously uncoordinated, I often hang on the side of our boat chatting with notebook in hand. Many of the people we spoke to wanted the world to know their plight and told us that cutting trees is a matter of survival. A member of the crew angrily fired us for fear of backlash if they talked about their mission.
On the river, we saw the lumber industry’s toll: we passed ramshackle rafts that were barely tied together, and encountered people whose fingers were crushed or torn as they tried to wrap up broken logs.
The people we encountered were frightened by the violent storms that swept over the river, and all were frustrated by a particularly shallow area where rafts were often jammed. The sands also stopped our speedboat so much that we got used to the sound of the hull scraping the riverbed.
Getting stuck damaged our power steering so often that at one point the steering wheel exploded in the captain’s hand. A mid-drive switch to an outboard, which Ashley suggests has the horsepower of a leaf blower, helped us throw it together. One night, while we were still navigating a dizzying maze of beaches, our captains did what many other crews of lumberjacks should have done when stranded: They sought help toward what looked like an empty, forested shore.
A voice answered: He was a fisherman who knew the river well. He swam to our boat, got on, and guided us to the nearest town for hours in the pitch dark.
That town, Bolobo, had no electricity like all the other towns we anchored. In another community, Loaka, children are crammed into two classrooms on the riverbank in a schoolhouse built on stilts that drill holes in the ground.
Traveling on the river, meeting raft crews, and sleeping in their communities helped us understand that government neglect and lack of jobs are pushing ordinary people to take the huge risks that come with cutting down these trees. In the Congo River, this reality was right in front of us.
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