Cameroon Part 2

03.06.09 - Boston, Mass. - Finished Part 2 of the Cameroon Project. This video discusses the poaching problem in the Dja Reserve and what Living Earth and the local people are doing to try and stop it.

Comments appreciated,

Will

ECO guards

6.23.08 - Djoum - The eco guards work to stop the bushmeat traffic coming out of the Dja Reserve. They set up checkpoints along the roads and monitor the traffic. Unfortunately, they aren't compensated regularily and will sometimes go 10 months without pay because of bureaucratic corruption. As a result they can be susptible to bribes from commercial hunters a fact these eco guards acknowledged in our time with them. They showed us their office in Djoum and some confiscated rifles, furs and ivory. 

Living Earth was working with them to improve their communication with the local Baka communities which in turn would lead to more confiscations because the Baka know who to stop.

Serge is the head of the Eco guards in the South Dja. The Dja is broken up into four quadrants, East, South, West and North. Here is sitting with confiscated shotgun shells and ivory tusks. 
The barrels of some confiscated rifles. The guns were heavy as lead and have probably been around since WWI.
A monkey fur and some wire traps, which are illegal when set in the reserve.
A map of the Dja, left, sits on two elephant skulls the guards found in the forest several years back. 

Water Music

6.22.08 - Minko'o - This was cool. We went out in the middle of the day with a group of women so Victor could record them making traditional music on the water. They would stand in a circle in the water and hit it rhythmically at different speeds to produce music. Really wild stuff and specific to this group of Baka. 

I wish I could explain it better, but these photos will have to do until we can get the films up in September. 

They jumped right in...
And started hitting the water to a beat...
And laughing, a lot.

This was also right before I realized I was covered in fire ants, not recommended.

Baka Village

6.22.08 - Minko'o - We spent an afternoon in this Baka village outside Djoum. The Baka are the hunting tribe in the Dja Reserve and are the only people who know every step of the forest. Living Earth is working with them to stop the bushmeat trade. Commercial hunters have to hire Baka as guides when they go into the forest to kill gorillas, deer, crocodiles, etc. 

The biggest problem is that the Bakas are very easily bribed by commercial hunters to take them on guided trips into the reserve (sometimes for as little as a bottle of whiskey for a service that is worth millions). Living Earth and the government are struggling to provide them with alternatives to the bushmeat trade because the Bakas get what they need to subsist from the hunters or the NGO and don't seem to care, which one offers money first. 

Often while we were in the village, we'd be filming people working in a tradition house and talking about how the trade was harming the forest, and a man with a rifle would walk into the house next door, clearly returning from a hunt. 

Most of these shots are from the village's kitchen where the women were preparing manioc for dinner (a starch made from cassava root served with bushmeat). I think the women got a good laugh out of the non-french speaking white boy who was trying to take their pictures. 

Boy at the first house in the village.
Child from the kitchen
A woman pulling off leaves for the manioc.
Group shot.
This has nothing to do with anything, it was just a nice shot from an afternoon we ran around Djoum looking for some b-roll wide shots of the reserve/forest.