The Slate Foundation would like to thank our family, friends, and all the animal lovers who donated clothes, toys, gear, equipment, time, and money in support of our trip to the Tayna Gorilla Reserve, the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology (TCCB) and the Muyisa Orphanage and Primary School in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

You will most likely wonder why there are no pictures of wildlife from the Congo nor of our intended host, Pierre Kakule. Neither of them was there. While I cannot tell you why Pierre Kakule was not there, I can tell you why the animals were not.

From gorillas on down the food chain to birds, poaching is the number one threat to animals in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And the group of people doing the most poaching are (you might want to sit down for this one)... Mothers! Mothers who need to feed their children. While facts such as these are alarming, they are indeed facts. And the only way to stop poaching is to provide people with options!

Chicken farms and cassava fields can provide people with several options to poaching. The Slate Foundation is working with two young men, Justin Isengoma and Paluku Mosovoli, who have created an association (AJPROFM) for single mothers with a focus on teaching its members new skills such as managing chicken farms and planting and harvesting cassava fields. Learning new skills such as these not only provides these mothers and their children with meat, eggs and cassava flour, but it also provides them with work for which they can be proud. While sensitizing them to the importance of animal conservation, work such as this makes them part of the process of re-construction.

Change is a slow process. But any change in the right direction is another step towards a solution. And if they are part of the solution, then they are no longer part of the problem.


Another approach to deter poaching and habitat destruction is through art. Students at TCCB have formed an association called AJCN (Association des Jeunes pour la Conservation de la Nature). These young conservationists travel from village to village educating local people through songs, poetry, and plays. Art is their way of expressing the grief and frustration they feel about the large number of animals being lost to poaching. It is through their art that this new generation is breaking down barriers, communicating with their elders, and educating their communities about new concepts involving responsibility for the wildlife around them.

Our initial observations of the Congo during our journey to the Reserve were of a wild, wild, west untouched by modern conveniences. The roads were unpaved, rocky and full of potholes. Checkpoints were intimidating. Self-proclaimed, plain-clothed guards who carried machine guns offered friendly “Bonjour’s” while they rifled through the contents of our vehicles. A “bandit” attempted to swindle our transportation funds and a person drove over our Director of Photography and fled the scene of the accident.

On a more positive note, the markets were colorful with fabrics and vegetables, loud with vendors selling their goods offering everything the earth could grow and more! The surprise of the journey was hotels offering hot water in buckets and a couple hours of electricity.

For the most part, the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo are friendly, kind, and eager to bring animal conservation programs to their war torn country. Though we were disappointed that Pierre Kakule did not uphold his commitment to meet with us and have received no reply to our request for information, we were devastated to find no gorillas - no wildlife in general. The Slate Foundation started out with one purpose, to experience a day-in-the-life of one man who had a vision of protecting gorillas in the Congo, but like life, things don’t always go as planned.

John Steinbeck wrote, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”

The Slate Foundation started out with plans that also changed. We had disappointments, but what we didn’t go there looking for we found:

In the Congo, a community. People dedicated to planting seeds of conservation in surrounding villages, in their families, and in the young people at the Muyisa Primary School and Orphanage. In Uganda, wildlife. Rhinos chased us into thorn bushes at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, where Deren Coetzer is re-introducing white rhinos into the wild in Uganda for the first time in over 20 years! Kob, eland, topi, impala, gazelle, duiker and antelope ran from us into the thick bush, jackson’s hartebeest, waterbuck, and bushbuck pranced through grasslands, hundreds of bird species monitored us from above, warthogs and cape buffalo sneered boldly while eating, crocodiles and hippos guarded the banks of the Nile River, elephants, giraffe and zebra confidently roamed free, lions reminded us who was king, and gorillas nested in treetops without worry.

Conservation efforts in Uganda are light years beyond the Congo, where people are pioneers. Although The Slate Foundation is not in a position to make a formal commitment to TCCB, we do support the teachers, students, and community in their efforts to sow the seeds of animal conservation they have planted. We look forward to assisting in their long-term conservation education and to working with them well into the future so that one-day, we can all see gorillas in the Congo!