Bossou, Guinea

2019-03-28: Institut de Recherche Environnementale de Bossou. Playing with Jiré (7 years old chimpanzee)


We will take 4 days to reach Bossou from Kindia by the national road number 2 (RN2).
The first day from Kindia to Mamou on RN1 and the first part of the RN2 to the west is easy.
Video showing vendors of fruits and vegetables on the roadside:

The second day is less amusing.
The road is about right until Marella. But then it's just a succession of nasty holes, often filled with water from the night rain. The average speed drops dramatically.

The Route Nationale number 2 (RN2) in Guinea

Regarding the landscape and the vegetation the change is slow. We slide gently towards the rainforest.
After Faranah the road is very good and we can finally run the kilometers. Forty kilometers later, after the town of Tiro, the sky is covered with large clouds more and more black and threatening right in front of us to the south. No need to wait a long time and it is a deluge that falls on us.
The rainy season begins. These are our first rains since Morocco in October.

Beginn of the rainy season in Guinea

We spend the second night on a petrol station parking at the entrance to Kissoudougou.

Crossing Kissoudougou

After crossing Kissoudougou the road is excellent. It is a relatively new road whose construction was financed by the European Union. Once again, it is to be feared that the first potholes will soon be formed due to the unimaginable overload of the many trucks that circulate there. And as of course nobody will take care of the maintenance the state of the road will very quickly deteriorate and worsen. In other countries like Senegal or The Gambia, big efforts are made to limit and especially control the load of trucks.
We find some rice fields and, all new for us, the first small pineapple plantations.
Women take advantage of the tarmac and hot surfaces of the roadside to dry the rice. Be careful not to roll on it.

Rice drying along the road

 After one hour and twenty minutes and 70 kilometers of very good tar is the brutal passage to the original road. I still call it "road" because officially it is paved and we actually find some pieces of tar here and there. But in fact it is a horrible track with deadly holes every few meters.
After 9 km traveled in half an hour we arrive on Guedekou.
We continue on the still catastrophic RN2.
We drive at an average speed of 15 km / h.
After very demanding 55 km traveled in 4 hours we find again the tar.

RN2 around Guedekou in Guinea

The vegetation is now frankly tropical. Many banana trees and gigantic trees typical of the virgin forest.

The 4th day is rather easy to drive.
We are now entering the heart of Forest Guinea. A landscape in relief is offered to us. We no longer find the cliff-shaped rock formations of the Fouta Djalon but huge domes that spring from the virgin forest. Without all this vegetation I think it is a landscape littered with monoliths that we would discover.

Banana trees and palm trees dominate the forest. There must also be a lot of small coffee plantations because the sides of the road are covered with grains that dry. And in the villages people are busy roasting it in empty oil drums turned into a brazier.

Coffee drying in a village

Coffee roasting

We come across a particularly meticulous checkpoint: in addition to the Carnet, driver's license, registration card and insurance the officer wants to see the fire extinguisher, the first aid kit and the two triangles. I sweat a lot because I can not find the second triangle that had slipped into a corner of the car. Unfortunately, I am going to ruin the pleasure of the policeman who had to start rubbing his hands thinking of the little "gift" that I was going to have to give him because I finally found it.
The road is still good even if some isolated potholes force us to be very vigilant.
Until Lola the road is good where it turns into track for the last 20 km. We arrive safely at Bossou in the late afternoon.

Old US school bus serving as intercity coach in Guinea.

2019-03-27: arrival at the institute.

We arrive late afternoon at the institute. We settle on the large green land with a few huts and a building with a few rooms for tourists.

Gandalf on the campground at the institute

The caretaker welcomes us and explains the camp and the rates. He calls the scientific secretary by phone, it does not take him long to arrive. He is also responsible for the tourism activity of the site. I sign up. It is not given: 50,000 GNF (€ 4.97) per night and per person for very basic sanitary facilities: no running water, you have to go to the well, shower with a bucket and Turkish toilet, no electricity, no WiFi. Only a parking lot actually. But very pleasant in the greenery and freshness!
I also pay 1.000.000 GNF (99.47 €) for the hike to chimpanzees tomorrow morning, 500.000 per person. It's also quite expensive, but it's for a good cause to support this beautiful project. Departure scheduled at 7:30.

Thursday, March 28, 2019.

We are ready at 7:30 as planned but neither the guides nor the chef are there! A first guide arrives. The leader does not appear until around 8:00. He asks us to wait a bit, a second guide is on the way. It is still too dark in the forest because of the clouds. We must wait for a little sun.
We leave with three guides at around 8:30. Two other guides are already in the forest in tracking. We enter into the virgin forest by a narrow path that climbs up the flanks of Gban Hill. After ten minutes of climbs we pause at half-height while waiting for information from other guides to know what direction to take.

In the virgin forest to the chimpanzees

Waiting for a decision

We continue to climb on the right. The guides are irresolutes at a paths branch. It is there that one of them, Guanou, discovers a chimpanzee on our left to a good fifty meters below. Even with their indications, we need a little moment to distinguish it. In fact it is a female, an old lady of about fifty, Famwa, the mother of the leader. She is very calm, sitting on a branch.

Famwa, the old lady

Thierry and two of the guides

 In the surrounding peaks branches crack. A young chimpanzee approaches little by little to come and play with us. This is Jiré, a 7 year old who loves to come and play with tourists. But beware ! It is a dangerous game because its favorite joke is to throw branches on the visitors. Fortunately he aims very badly!

Jiré, the young chimpanzee is approaching.

We spend one hour here. It's quite fantastic to see these chimpanzees in freedom, we do not get tired but it's time to go back.
The guides are waiting for a small gift, that's obvious. I give them 40,000 GNF to share. They seem satisfied. We make some pictures of the group: Vincent, Gilles, Guanou, Boniface and Pascal. We see it, we are in a Christian region.

Thierry and the guides

The director comes to greet us. This is Dr. Suma who heads this environmental research institute of Bossou in collaboration with the Japanese.
He will give us interesting details about the project. Originally, in 2006, the community consisted of 12 individuals. They are only 7 today. Three have disappeared, certainly gone to another community. In general, females leave the group at maturity because the relationships between siblings are taboo in chimpanzees, as in humans.
There were also two deaths due to illness. This is one of the reasons why we had to wear masks just before, near the monkeys.
The problem of this group is that it is inevitably called to disappear because, as mentioned above, the population does not reproduce because of the taboo of incest and the fact that no female from neighboring communities comes to integrate this group too close to the village of Bossou, its animation and human beings. But there is a large population of chimpanzees in the vicinity, on the slopes of Mount Nimba. Several hundred chimpanzees, some advance the number of 800, are living there. But no exchange exists with those of Bossou.
The director explains to us that it had been envisaged to insert females from the reserve of High Niger Park in this group. But this idea would have been doomed to failure. The chimpanzees of Upper Niger are monkeys saved from the claws of poachers and raised by humans. They are so adapted to humans and dependent on them that it is certain that they would not stay in the forest but instead come to seek the human presence in the village.
So this is another idea that is being implemented, the creation of a corridor between Mount Nimba and this Gban community with the hope of creating a migratory flow between the two groups. This project is underway. They have to reforest an entire area between the local forest and Mount Nimba.