From Rings to Tents

Part of the excitement of the Congo trip recently has been the possibility of getting to share the experience with the world -- and no, not through this blog, but with the ENTIRE world of National Geographic!

A production company contacted me a couple of weeks ago to gauge my interest in participating in a show they are pitching to National Geographic about the Bili Ape. Would I mind contributing? Would I be alright being on camera?

HA! As though I’d have a problem ;)

But the practical side of it is that we’d be flying out from either Entebbe or Kinshasa to Aketi with a privately chartered missionary plane, and it tends to get expensive. But if the film crew was coming out too, we could fly on the same plane and save money.

Now, the film crew would be going directly to Liguga to film the chimpanzees in the forest. And trekking through the forest, following the chimpanzees, for about 2-3 weeks! What an incredible adventure!

I’ve gotten to trek through the bush for observational study when I lived in Kenya, but the Blue Monkey group I was following lived and ranged right near my tiny, forest periphery shack. So there was no real camping involved, sadly.

I do like camping! I spent a summer with Wilderness Ventures in high school hiking and camping throughout the Pacific Northwest.

But suddenly, the beginning of our trip has changed so much. It means that instead of bringing our bags and things directly to Aketi, we’d pack our hiking bags separately, and bring those along and give the rest of our luggage to a TWWF employee to hold onto for a couple weeks until we came back from the forest.

Adam doesn’t even have a hiking bag. And here I was, idling my time looking at other things online and suddenly, I’m looking at tents instead. (Thus far, I think I’ve settled on the Nemo Morpho AR).


But hurrah!! What an adventure! I can’t wait.