Welcome to our blog!

As you hopefully know by now, your friends, Tristan Jordan and Jenn Holland are working for the next year on a forest conservation and community livelihoods project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Jenn has already been her for almost a year and is the Operations Manager of the project and Tristan is the Field Coordinator for all the forestry and agroforestry aspects of the project. We have no idea what we are doing……..

Tristan, Kitoko, (our mild-mannered Congolese Mutt) and I thought you might be interested in our experiences in Africa. We plan on doing this in the most casual and interactive way(s) we possible can. For that reason we haven’t given ourselves rules, in fact the rule is ‘no rules’.  We will share our experiences through photo essays, scanned journals, archived journals and…..good olde fashioned online blogs.

This blog is intended to share the stories, experiences, and perspectives that we have from the depths of the Congo Basin.

If you don’t yet know, we are located in the province of Bandundu on the shores on Lac Mai Ndombe in the town of Inongo. We are easy to find on a map of central Africa. Our project is 300,000 hectares of land to the west of Inongo spanning 100km of shores along of our beautiful rootbeer coloured lake. 

Here are some photos to get us started: 

A shot taken in the streets of Inongo. Inongo is a city of 107,000 people but for the most part it is like a village. There are less than 10 cars, no running water and electricity and most families still rely on firewood collected from the forest to cook their meals. Sadly Inongo used to be a bustling resort town and hub for nearby timber extractions. However once the DRC gained its independence things slowly unraveled. The electricity went out in 1984 and hasn't come on since. 

 The gate to our office. I (Jenn) lived here for about 6 months, but now, thankfully, we live in a wonderful house that is about a 10 minute walk down the lake.

During the wet season the grounds of the office come right up to the water of Lac Mai Ndombe.

Along the road to our house

Tristan with a slightly alarmed Kitoko and a lot of children in the village of Ngando Manage (Crocodile Mango)