Of Bonobos and Men: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo

by Deni Ellis Bechard

Overview

Bonobos have captured the public imagination in recent years, due not least to their famously active sex lives. Less well known is the fact that these great apes don’t kill their own kind, and that they share nearly 99 percent of our DNA. Their approach to building peaceful coalitions and sharing resources has much to teach us, particularly at a time when our violent ways have pushed them to the brink of extinction.

Of Bonobos and Men is the account of acclaimed author Deni Ellis Béchard’s journey into the Congo to understand bonobos and to learn how to save them. Along the way, we see how partnerships between Congolese and Westerners, with few resources but a common purpose and respect for indigenous knowledge, have resulted in the protection of vast swaths of the rainforest. And we discover how small solutions—found through openness, humility, and the principle that “poverty does not equal ignorance”—are often most effective in tackling our biggest challenges.

Combining elements of travelogue, journalism, and natural history, this incomparably rich book takes the reader not only deep into the Congo, but also into our past and future, revealing new ways to save the environment and ourselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571313454
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	09/29/2015
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	620,375
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Deni Béchard's first novel, Vandal Love, won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He has also authored a memoir, Cures for Hunger, and written for a number of magazines and newspapers, among them the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Outside, the National Post, VQR, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, the Edward Albee Foundation, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, and Vermont Studio Center, among others. He has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and he has traveled in more than fifty countries.

Editorial Reviews

“Intelligent, engaged, astonishingly perceptive.”—Dinaw Mengestu

“A seed of hope in our time’s garden of despair.”—Dale Peterson

“This adventure reveals not a heart of darkness but a rich world of light, shade, and imperiled life, a connection between the human and the great circle of being.”—James Engell

From the Publisher

Through a series of interviews and travelogues, novelist and memoirist Béchard (Cures for Hunger) recounts his efforts, alongside Bonobo Conservation Initiative (BCI) president Sally Jewell Cox, to save the nearly extinct bonobo chimpanzee. Since the Congolese have a complicated relationship with both the bonobos and the rainforest, BCI takes a “grassroots” approach, working with existing institutions to effect change. Strategies include laying the groundwork for ecotourism, which could boost both the bonobo population and the Congolese economy. Despite the author’s good intentions, the narrative becomes diffuse as he tries to tackle the Congo’s history, and the complex political and economic factors involved in global warming and the destruction of the rainforest. Béchard is at his best when sharing his own insights; he makes his most salient points when describing his firsthand experience among the Congolese, narrating his travels through Djolu and Kokolopori by motorcycle and canoe. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Journalist Béchard (Cures for Hunger: A Memoir, 2012, etc.), a foreign correspondent familiar with war zones, probes beneath headlines describing the Congo as "a country of such inhumanity that we find it incomprehensible" and finds another, more hopeful reality. The author explains that he was drawn to the Congo because its tropical rain forests play a crucial role in preventing climate change. As the area has become more stable politically after years of civil war, the threat of deforestation is looming due to the renewed, large-scale corporate exploitation of its valuable mineral resources. This also endangers the small remaining population of bonobos, "humanity's closest living relative alongside the chimpanzee," whose only natural habitat is the Congolese rain forest. Establishment of more traditional national parks, which exclude local farming, is not a viable solution, since the forests have become a refuge for Congolese forced out of their homes by civil war. Béchard learned that a small NGO, Bonobo Conservation Initiative, founded by American conservationists, offers an alternative model: a partnership among the BCI villages to preserve the rain forest and protect the bonobos. Villagers agree to voluntarily restrict their farming to designated areas; in return, they are employed in various jobs--e.g., tracking the bonobos and guarding them from poachers. The BCI takes responsibility for providing medical care and primary schools, as well as access to higher education. Graduates trained in environmental science then become part of the management. While the immediate BCI focus is to preserve the bonobo population, its broader purpose is to develop ecotourism as a viable economic alternative to corporate exploitation. The author profiles Americans and Congolese who are involved in this visionary effort to meld traditional and modern values in service of a planetary imperative. Béchard's adventurous travels in the Congo offer spice to this rich, complex account.

Kirkus Reviews