• A STUDY IN RAIN FOREST MUSHROOMS •
Life, with the park
Location: Sapo, Sinoe County, Liberia • • • Visit: March 2016
In transit:
I was sitting in the plane, reading a book about the age after the big pandemic, the story of an orchestra and theater company traveling between the sparse settlements on the North American continent preforming Shakespeare after a flu killed almost every human on Earth. Title: “Station Eleven”, a gift from Natalia, my pop cultural soulmate.
I glanced out through the window and saw the sun casting long shadows behind the snow-covered mountains of southern Spain. The sky a blue-shifting haze, the airplane wing. Formerly, a sight that would instill a feeling of freedom and boundlessness in me. Now, it’s complicated. And with the book in my lap, the thought hit me: this might not be possible for much longer. The vantage point of Earth from above. The implications, an unsettling thought.
Later, waiting for my connection. In Casablanca, but still not quite. French and English in the too-loud loudspeakers. Originally, I was meant to fly through Brussels, yesterday. But, two days ago, the departure hall was blown up. The world already is an unsettling place.
My plane from Casablanca arrived in Monrovia at five in the morning, just before the sun. I was picked up at the airport by mom and an embassy driver, the dawn slowly creeping up on us while we drove into the city.
I barely had time to repack my bag. The original plan was that I would have one night in Monrovia before we went anywhere, to get the transit exhaustion out of my system – but then three young men rolled two home-made bombs on luggage carts into the arrival hall at Brussels airport. So, now, one hour after arriving at mom’s nice, clean and cool apartment, we left again, met up with some acquaintances of mom’s in a second jeep (traveling in Liberia should always be done in twos, for safety). We headed east on the still hot and dry, but bumpy dirt road toward Sapo National Park.
I drifted in and out of sleep, while mom drove and our guide Jimmy and mom’s friend Prince discussed politics.
The trees became higher and higher, forest patches denser and denser, and by five, dark, ominous clouds suddenly appeared out of nowhere and large, heavy raindrops started falling. We had arrived in the tropical rain forest zone, where the sheer density of transpiring organisms drives its own, local climate system. Short showers of rain arrive in the late afternoon, every day, like clockwork.
Later than expected (as always when dealing with Liberian roads) we arrived in the Sapo village, on the edge of the national park. We set up our tents by the cars in the dark, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, awaiting our first rain forest dawn.
Sapo is Liberia’s only National Park, established in 1983. The park is 1,804 km2 and situated in Sinoe County, in the central-eastern part of Liberia. It is the second largest area of tropical primary rain forest in West Africa, after Taï National Park, which is situated just across the border in Côte d’Ivoire. There are plans to connect these two national parks, to create a wildlife corridor for all the West African rain forest mammals and birds that unfortunately have been living a dwindling existence here up until now, due to civil wars, legal and illegal logging and poaching.
Sapo is part of the Upper Guinean forest ecosystem, which is a biodiversity hotspot. It has the highest mammal species diversity in the world – in Sapo alone there are 125, including several antelope species, monkeys, chimpanzees, leopards, as well as the endangered pygmy hippopotamus and the African forest elephant.
During the first and second civil war in Liberia (1989-1997 and 1999-2003, respectively), Sapo National Park had big problems with illegal logging, hunting and squatting of militia groups and refugees inside the park. Several park rangers were also killed when doing their job, trying to protect the integrity of the park.
Today the park is protected again, but underfunded. The squatters are gone and illegal logging has been stopped, but poaching is difficult to control, especially since the rangers are few, the area is remote and the infrastructure to and inside the park is very poor. But this also means that the park is wild, to a degree that few places on Earth are anymore, and if you can manage the cumbersome journey to get there, it is an incredible place to visit.
Our first day in Sapo started with us being invited to introduce ourselves to the village. First, the chief ranger welcomed us to the park and introduced us to the paramount chief and the men of the village. Meeting the paramount chief is a big deal in Liberia, he is the traditional leader and the most revered and respected individual in local communities. The paramount chiefs are even consulted when regional and national politicians need to make decisions, because it is essential to be on good terms with the paramount chief to get local support for any changes. The paramount chief of Sapo and surrounding villages blessed us while the leader of the women’s village council drew two lines of ash on our foreheads, to protect us from any dangers in the forest.
Then, mom held a speech, introducing us and saying how grateful we were for the important job that the village was doing, both for Liberia and the world, in protecting the rain forest, and how important it is to teach our children to respect and protect the nature. All villagers solemnly nodded in agreement. And to round off, she presented the village youth leader with a gift: a football for the children, and she challenged the village youth to a game of football when we came back from our hike.
The village lies a couple of kilometers from the park. To get to the actual boundary, we walked on a wide trail for about an hour to the Sapo River. The river is the western boundary of the park. To get into the park, there’s a canoe to paddle across the river.
As always when I hike in groups, I soon lagged behind the others due to my constant urge to take photos of trees and mushrooms. Mom, Prince, Jimmy and two rangers waited for me, which led to the other ones already having crossed the river when we arrived there, and we had to wait for the boys that had helped carry our tents and food to come back from base camp before we could cross ourselves and continue our hike inside the actual park. It was nice to put down my backpack and wander, taking turns to paddle the canoe on the river. I love canoeing.
Once across the river, though, the hiking directly turned trickier. Here, the path was barely visible. It was like entering an impenetrable wall of green, with splashes of brown on the ground. And the air, like breathing the breath of a tree, moist, warm and earthy. Which, strictly speaking, we probably were – the photosynthesis and transpiration in this place must be insane.
About an hour of hiking from the river lies the park basecamp. It consists of a small clearing with a fire place and a small basic cabin. This is where we cooked and dried our sweaty clothes and eventually slept. We put up our tents in the four rooms inside the cabin. It is remote – but I was surprised at the comfort we found there in the middle of the almost inaccessible jungle.
The diversity of mushrooms among the rain forest trees! The colors, the patterns, the shapes. I couldn’t stop photographing them. I became known among the rangers as the mushroom fanatic, and every time anyone saw a new species, they pointed it out to me. I was in amateur photographer’s heaven.
The rain forest is hot. And humid. After half an hour’s hike, everything you’re wearing is soaked through, from the inside and out.
You drink a lot. It is easy to run out of water. But hey, no worries. In Sapo, they have the water liana. Cut off a piece, and water starts flowing out of the porous wood.
The water is fresh and cool, with a slight taste of sap. Like being kissed by a tree.
The other day in Sapo National Park, we rose before the sun to see some chimpanzees. The canopy was dripping with dew and leftover rain, and when the sun started rising, it made the air glow.
We sat on logs, listening to the sounds of the forest, and Augustin, the chief ranger, told us about how the chimpanzees live in families, make new nests up in the canopy every night and roam the forest during the day, eating nuts and fruits and calling to each other from the tree tops. We left the barely visible path and followed behind Augustin, led by a GPS device and a machete. All of me was wet.
And suddenly we heard them. The sound like hammering, rock against rock. And then, the calls. Warnings of approaching humans. The rangers excitedly led us up hills, around enormous trees and through dense undergrowth, quietly, without a word. We didn’t want to disturb them. But, alas, the chimps were gone, screaming in the treetops, by the time we made it to their breakfast spot.
The hammering had been the chimpanzees cracking nuts with stones. A little further on, we saw a nest hanging from a tree, and we heard the chimps calling to each other from the trees. Close enough for us to even hear the rustle from their movements, but too far away for us to see them through the dense canopy. They must have been curious about us, because they stayed close for about an hour, teasing us with their calls. Eventually, they got bored of us, their sounds moved further and further away, until they were gone, and we were on our own in the middle of the rain forest, off trail and soaking wet.
So, no chimpanzees this time. But we did get an amazing full-on rain forest hiking experience.
When we returned to basecamp, we went for a dip in the little nearby stream. There are few places for a bath that I could imagine being as beautiful as this. And the water was fresh and icy cold! Amazing to wash away the tropical heat with.
At the edge of the Sapo basecamp clearing, there was a small mound with several small saplings growing out of it. Augustin pointed it out to me and said: “That is a pile of elephant dung. They wander through here on their way up to the mountains”. I was baffled, amazed at the thought of an elephant being able to force the dense undergrowth of the rain forest.
Later, he showed me the fruit that the elephants like to eat. The fruit holds seeds, that then grow out from the dung into the saplings in the clearing. The tree is called Pentadesma. It can become enormous, like most trees in the rain forest.
He also showed me another fruit that the elephant likes to eat. He said it’s called Koua, and it can also be made into soap by the villager women.
And so, the rain forest and its creatures give and take. In a true circle of ecosystem services.
There were barely any flowers at all in Sapo National Park, probably because it was in the end of the dry season – but the butterflies were everywhere! Huge, colorful, blue, orange, black, yellow. But so flighty. Not one allowed me to get close. I wish I’d had my tele lens. It’s great for photographing skittish butterflies with.
And I have these thoughts, always when I’m around many butterflies, about how I should have made that into a career instead. Studied biology and become a photographing entomologist traveling the world in search of the rare butterflies. They’re fascinating creatures, for many reasons.
These fleeting thoughts, the ones about entomology or geochemistry (yes, I’ve considered that too), of how life might have been easier if I’ve chosen a conventional science specialty instead of my current vague “sustainability science” generalist career. I appreciate order. I feel like order is something an entomologist, or chemist, must live by. Maybe I would have found it easier to stay on track in that kind of structure.
Or maybe it would have taken all the fun and wonder out of the flight of a butterfly. We’ll never know.
We didn’t see any monkeys in Sapo, even though we heard both chimpanzees and Diana monkeys. We barely even saw any birds, through all the leaves and moss. Plenty of insects, and some bats scared us half to death when they flew out of a tree by the river, but that’s it. The rain forest is simply too dense to see anyone who doesn’t want to be seen.
So maybe that’s why it excited us so much when we came upon a little, tiny frog in the middle of the trail, barely visible from above where it was sitting among the brown leaves. When I got close with my camera, I could see it was beautiful, with its clear eyes and green belly. Augustin said it was called a Togo Yensi frog. Our little piece of Sapo wildlife.
Reflections from a rain forest, on a trunk in the middle of Sapo:
It doesn’t get quiet. Birds, insects, monkeys. The gurgling from the stream, drops that are still falling from yesterday’s rain. A slow journey from the top canopy, leaf by leaf, down to the soft ground.
The inhalation stays on my tongue, a sweet whisper.
Rotting leaves. It is a soft scent, moist. The smell of my own sweat.
It gathers in pearls on my arms. Like a sitting, walking Cumulonimbus I am. The air is soft, gives no resistance.
Everything is green. Even the brown.
On our jungle hike in Sapo National Park, we had a group of rangers with us. Solemn men who had grown up in the Sapo village, equipped with machetes and the jungle in their blood.
The head ranger, Augustin, didn’t talk much. He was patient. His writing skills were quite rudimentary. But when asked, he could name almost any plant we pointed at, in both English and Latin. He had his machete, a GPS device, and a notebook in his pocket that he took out and made notes in whenever we had seen or heard traces of an animal.
When Augustin and the other rangers discovered my fascination with fungi, they started pointing them all out to me, and then patiently waiting while I was rolling around in the wet leaves on the ground trying to find the perfect angle. They also went out of their way to find other pretty or cool plants for mom and me to look at and photograph. I think I could sense a sort of pride in them every time we gasped in amazement at the wonders of their forest.
The first time one of them showed us an edible plant, the water liana, and I asked if I could try it, he seemed surprised, cut me a fresh piece and laughed while I tried to catch the sap flowing out of it. I think they found us amusing, in general, our fascination, our mountain of luggage, me constantly taking photographs, our excessive drinking of water.
Only two of the rangers were actually employed by the Liberian park service, the others were there on a voluntary basis, funding their efforts to protect the forest through the tips that they received from the rare visiting tourist. And the rangers that officially were employed didn’t actually get a salary, but were only allowed a percentage from the visitor fees that tourists had to pay at the park headquarters in the village. Augustin said that this might be changing, that he might soon be getting a small salary, but it would probably still take a while for the arms of the weak administration of the Liberian government to reach all the way into the deep, dark jungle.
I think it is admirable, the devotion that the rangers of Sapo National Park have for protecting their rain forest and the creatures living in it. They are the true silent heroes in our battle to protect the environment, against the currently ongoing mass extinction of species on Earth and the disappearance of the trees that are the photosynthesizing lungs of our planet. But I wish that they had more than their devotion to keep them going. How far can it reach, how wide can it spread, when there are families to feed and pressures attacking from all angles, logging companies and palm oil plantations and poachers. This is where the true environmentalist’s battle lies.
Oh, I don’t know what to do with this realization. I just wanted to tell you all about Augustin and his brothers-in-arms, and share my admiration and appreciation for them with the whole, wide world.
During my week in Liberia, I was reading a book about a world after the big disaster. “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel takes place in a world after the Georgian flu has wiped out the majority of the human race, and with that, civilization as we know it. In a fluid narrative meandering back and forth in time, we follow the lives of a couple of characters, the ex-wife of a famous actor, a psychologist turned curator, an aspiring paramedic, an actress in the Traveling Symphony. The flu and what it did to the world is ever-present, but what makes Mandel’s storytelling so affecting is that the disaster never gets to take center stage. Her characters tell their stories, heart-wrenching and banal and dirty and profound all at once, and the unravelling apocalypse is just a foundation that turns all the painfully human more desperate. She sees the small things in the world-altering, and I couldn’t put the book down because of it.
I started reading it on a plane. Eerie, as it turned out, since airplanes have a rather important role in the novel. Small capsules in the sky where time is separated from Earth during the hours of travel. And then I arrived in Liberia, a country that has just survived the worst outbreak of the Ebola virus in recorded history. Everywhere, signs had been put up informing about how to avoid getting infected. And also subtler things, the decades-old traces of a long, painful civil war mixing with the new layers of a country completely shut down for a year by a disease. Liberia had their own almost-apocalypse, and I arrived in the time just after, people picking up their lives again, and I don’t think there can be any setting that would have made the dystopian “Station Eleven” seem more real.
An amazing book. Really. Read it.
Katja Malmborg 