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The Place of Bones

DAWN CAME TO THE CONGO RAIN FOREST

The pale sun burned away the antic silent world Enormous trees with trunks forty feet in diameter rose two hundred feet overhead, where they spread their dense leafy canopy, blotting out the sky and perpetually dripping water to the ground below Curtains of gray le froround level, huge ferns, gleaher than aHere and there was a spot of color: the red acanthema blossoms, which were deadly poison, and the blue dicindra vine, which only opened in early ray-green world - an alien place, inhospitable to er put aside his rifle and stretched his stiff muscles Dawn cah the lanced at the expedition cae nylon tents, a blue mess tent, a supply tarp lashed over boxed equipuard, Misulu, sitting on a rock; Misulu waved sleepily Nearby was the trans equipment: a silver dish antenna, the black trans to the portable video camera mounted on the collapsible tripod The Americans used this equipment to transmit daily reports by satellite to their hoer was the bwana o He had led expeditions before: oil coical parties like this one Co teams into the field wanted soh to handle the porters and arrange the travel Kruger ell suited for this job; he spoke Kis?wahili as well as Bantu and a little Bagindi, and he had been to the Congo ine why Aion of Zaire, in the northeast corner of the Congo rain forest Zaire was the richest country in black Africa, in est producer of cobalt and industrial diaest producer of copper In addition there were sten and uranium But most of the er knew better than to ask why the Aa, and in any case he had his answer soon enough Once the expedition passed Lake Kivu and entered the rain forest, the geologists began scouring rivers and strea for gold, or diamonds It turned out to be diaists were after what they called Type IIb diamonds Each new sample was i conversations were beyond Kruger - talk of dielectric gaps, lattice ions, resistively But he gathered that it was the electrical properties of the diaeer had examined several, and they were all blue fro back placer deposits This was standard procedure: if you found gold or diamonds in streambeds, you moved upstream toward the presumed erosive source of thethe western slopes of the Vir?gunga volcanic chain It was all going routinely until one day around noon when the porters flatly refused to proceed further

This part of Virunga, they said, was called kanyaufa,

which meant "the place of bones" The porters insisted that any o further would have their bones broken, particularly their skulls They kept touching their cheekbones, and repeating that their skulls would be crushed

The porters were Bantu-speaking Arawanis fro natives, they had all sorts of superstitions about the Congo jungle Kruger called for the head to the jungle ahead

"No tribes," the headman said

"No tribes at all? Not even Bamies

"No ufa"

"Then what crushes the skulls?"

"Dawa," the headical forces "Strong dawa here Men stay away"

Kruger sighed Likeabout dawa Daas everywhere, in plants and rocks and storms and enehout er had been obliged to waste the rest of the day in tedious negotiation In the end, he doubled their wages and proani, and they agreed to continue on Kruger considered the incident an irritating native ploy Porters could generally be counted on to invoke soes, once an expedition was deep enough into the field to be dependent on thereed to their deht no more about it

Even when they caer was not concerned Upon examination, he found the bones were not human but rather the sy black-and-