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Patroling the flanks of the Nyiragongo Volcano - one of Africa’s most active - can be challenging and full of surprises. But the Rangers of Virunga - led by Emmanuel and Innocent - carry out regular patrols of the area to eliminate the threat of deforestation caused by those making illegal charcoal. Watch this video to learn more about the difficulties of protecting the flora and fauna of Virunga National Park… and see footage of one of Africa’s most active volcanoes that stands at 10,410 feet and has a 0.7 mile wide lava lake!

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At the end of last year we received a donation to buy a piece of land strategically located in Munigi, which is on the outskirts of Goma en route to Rumangabo and the Gorilla Sector, and a stone’s throw from the airport.

This month we started building a Briquette Warehouse on this land. The warehouse will be home to all of our marketing activities, in addition to facilitating the storage of sacks and the drying and quality control of fuel briquettes before they go out onto the open market.

In short, this is a massive step in our bid to eradicate charcoal.

The plot of land where our warehouse is being built.

It is located on one of the lava flows erupted from Nyragongo in 2002.

The wall construction started last week.

The wall enclosure yesterday, going up fast!

The efforts of our team – me, Balemba, Jean Bosco etc - are now focused on the sale of this biomass energy source, while improving the quality of materials being used for the briquettes mixture.  We are carrying out calorific and burning tests to find out which are the best materials to utilize. Remember, to make one kilo of charcoal, our biggest competitor, you need 6 kilos of wood. That is a lot of concentrated energy!

Balemba with the striped shirt and Patient from Mercy Corps carrying out tests with the fuel briquettes.

Different qualities of fuel briquettes drying in the greenhouse waiting to be tested.

Thank you for your continued support and donations… we are coming along in strides and it is exciting to be a part of this effort.

It is over 1 year since we launched the briquette program, and I would like to share some of our achievements:

600 briquette pressing machines on the ground
3,500 jobs created in rural areas
4,000 sacks of fuel briquettes produced each month
A carpentry workshop producing 20 briquette pressing machines per day

A group of press machine beneficiaries in Rumangabo

Our objective was to install 1,000 pressing machines by the end of 2009. Even though the machines have already been built and are waiting to be set up in the villages around the park, the sales of fuel briquettes in Goma could not keep up with the production. So we decided to slow down a bit, and reinforce marketing and sales.

Pressing machines ready to go on the ground

Huge efforts are being made to convince local people of the drastic consequences of charcoal consumption. Changing people’s habits is a difficult task that needs persistent effort in the long term.  And to keep those briquette producers motivated, we need to make sure that all their production is bought by our project, no matter what.

Our on the ground experience tells us that the financial return from making briquettes is one of the main reasons 3,500 people continue to make briquettes. But importantly, briquettes are clean, easy to use, and do not require women to spend days on end in the forest, making them extremely vulnerable to attack.

Marketing fuso selling in Goma

Justine is a good example. Her husband was killed 10 years ago by the FDLR rebel group. In February 2009, she received the briquette-making kit and training, and since then, she has been selling her fuel briquette production every week in Rubare (close to Rumangabo). Thanks to the money earned she is now building a home for her eldest son, now 18 years old, and pays school fees for the rest of her 3 children.

Justine and her son

Justine with her pressing machine

Stories like this are a good example of how this project can have a positive impact both on the forests of Virunga National park and on the plight of the local population.

In 2010 we are more determined than ever to fight charcoal consumption, because our experience so far has shown that it is possible to make a change.

Thank you to all of you who donated to the briquette program in 2009. I should also like to thank the Dutch government (SenterNovem), the Belgian government, the British Embassy (in DRC) and the US Fish & Wildlife Service for their support.

Makala Ya Sasa! (The New Charcoal!)

Back in July 2007 I was working in Mutsora, the northern station of Virunga National Park. I remember hearing about the massacre of the Rugendo family of gorillas from Emmanuel. But it wasn’t until I opened an e-mail from an American lady, who broke my heart with her message, that I realized the horror of the what had just happened. She was pregnant just like Mburanumwe, one of the murdered gorillas.

Mburanumwe is buried behind Senkwekwe at Rumangabo - how pertinent that the Senkwekwe Center will be a stone’s throw from the graves.

I wish I had kept that message, because I would like to tell her today that there is still hope. Ndeze and Ndakasi are two strong babies, and the Senkwekwe Center is half way through to being finished.

The fuel briquette program’s main objective is to stop deforestation, and therefore save the habitat of the Mountain Gorillas and other wildlife in Virunga. Today we are working side by side, and by that I mean just a couple of meters away from each other. While we are building wooden pressing machines in our carpentry workshop at Rumangabo, just 20 meters away from us the brick machine is constantly producing bricks to build the future home of the baby gorilla orphans.

Here you can see the presses ready to be distributed throughout the park, and behind is the little building where we make the bricks (that building is made from the bricks too!)

Please help us by donating towards this campaign, so the wall can be finished and Ndeze and Ndakasi can have a wonderful new place to live. Thank you!

First of all a big hello to all readers. I am back in Goma from maternity leave, with more energy than ever to make sure that fuel briquettes are sold like hot cakes …. a difficult (but not impossible) task to achieve!

Previously we told you about the moving truck going around the streets of Goma with 6 guys dressed with gorilla suits, selling sacks of fuel briquettes, and playing a song Katya specially wrote about the “new charcoal”. It was a complete success, and we will continue doing it every day now.

But of course that is not enough. So we have opened 12 shops in the busiest areas of town, where makala (charcoal) is being sold (and of course where our target market is!)

Balemba and the saleswomen at the shop in the “Deux Lampes” neighborhood in Goma

So yesterday I went with Balemba to visit one of the shops, where fuel briquettes are sold side by side with makala. It is the same charcoal saleswomen who are now offering the briquettes. It is a great result.

A signpost was put up advertising fuel briquettes. It reads, in Swahili, Makala Ya Sasa “The New Charcoal” is sold here.

A saleslady grins as she sells the briquettes!

So now it is crunch time. We will be opening 6 more shops by the end of November. And we are adopting an aggressive marketing strategy. At the same time we also have plans to build a warehouse on the edge of Goma so that we can perfect the quality control and distribution of the briquettes.

Thank you for your continued donations. All kind of support is much appreciated as we continue on this journey to halt the deforestation of Virunga’s forests.

You absolutely must watch this video. If it makes you chuckle half as much as I did, it will brighten up your day.

Now that briquette production is well underway with 490 presses distributed around the periphery of Virunga, and over 3,000 local people employed in making briquettes – we now need to boost our marketing effort in Goma.

That is what this video is all about.

So if you want to see a bunch of gorillas, atop a moving truck, with music blaring and driving the local people nuts – click on the video below.

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Yannick, one of the young guys on the truck, was telling me this morning as they were getting dressed in our parking lot that some people think they are actually real gorillas. He said the other day someone offered him a banana. So what did he do? He grabbed it and ran!

As a footnote the song in the background is called Makala Ya Sasa – which in Swahili means “The New Charcoal” – which of course is what our briquettes are.

Katya wrote the song especially – good job Katya.

And we now have 11 warehouses (that can each store up to 400 sacks of briquettes) at various points throughout Goma. These are effectively purchase points. So we are putting a lot of time and energy into the promotion of this new form of energy. Asking people to change their cooking habits will not happen overnight, but we are giving it our best shot to make it happen as quickly as possible and diminish the threat to the forests of Virunga.

Thanks also for all your continued donations to the briquette program. They are going to very good use.

We’ve reached a cross roads with the briquette programme.  As you remember, we had pledged to set up 1,000 briquette businesses this year.  1000 village briquette businesses translates into the creation of 6000 employments and the substition of about 15% of charcoal consumption with a clean, sustainable and cheap source of domestic energy for poor households in Goma.  We currently have over 3000 people making briquettes and the idea is to have 34,000 by the end of 2011.

That could make the briquette business the biggest employer in the province after agriculture.  Hmmm…

It meant setting up a workshop in Rumangabo to build presses, creating a team of trainers and business advisors, a very effective logistics, finance and administrative support system, a transport business, and the rest.  But now we have over 500 presses in production, and amazingly, we are on track to reaching our target, and more.

About 85% of briquette producers are women, most of whom were forced from their homes by the fighting last year

But there remains one BIG question mark.  Will the briquettes sell on the open market?

So far  we have been distributing briquettes in the Internally displaced camps around Goma.  They have now largely returned home as peace starts to come back to the region.  We are now producing over 4000 sacks of briquettes a month, and we have to convince people to buy them.  Cultural barriers run high, and people just don’t like to change the way they cook.  Briquettes do produce more smoke, which people hate, but they are also much cheaper.  Old habits die hard and it’s not an easy sell.

So what are we doing about it?

Katya and Balemba have been spearheading a marketing campaign.  We have the billboards, youth groups running around with leaflets, pamphlets, and… a gorilla reggae band that goes around Goma on the back of truck singing about the briquettes, the forest, the gorillas (the World Premiere of their video will appear on this blog later this week, so don’t miss it).

We have to sell those briquettes to save the forest and the Mountain Gorillas’ home.  So far, we’re selling about 10 sacks a day, which is not enough.  We really need some clever ideas.  If you have any thoughts or ideas on what we could do to promote the briquettes, we’d love you have your comments.  There’s a very good chance we’ll try to put your ideas into practice.

This is a copy of the comic strip produced by Katya that we have started distributing around Goma.  It’s all in Swahili, but you can hopefully get the message from the pictures.

Yes, there is another newborn in the Kabirizi family. We never tire of hearing this wonderful news, especially when we think of the war that was enraging Virunga, the Rangers and the gorillas only a year ago.

Karibu gave birth late last month – this is baby number 3 for her. The newborn will join his or her siblings, Kitagenda and Serundori. She has only been an adult since 2002 – so we hope she has more babies in her yet!

Rangers have spent all day destroying illegal charcoal kilns in the southern sector of Virunga, the area the worst hit by the illegal charcoal industry as you know.

Innocent and his men swept a large area in the park

We need to maintain the momentum of this very important operation and do all that we can to prevent the destruction of the forest.

Thank you for all your donations – please keep Protecting the Park !

In the early hours of the morning we launched Makala II, the second phase of operations to break the charcoal trafficking.   On Friday, 150 rangers arrived discretely in Rumangabo to prepare for a second offensive around the Nyiragongo volcano.  They received some training and an extensive brief before launching the operation.

The first charcoal kilns were found and destroyed before dawn

At 2 o’clock this morning, we deployed the rangers in 5 platoons of 30 men each in a sweep across the southerns slopes of the volcano. The number of charcoal kilns was staggering.  Far more than in the previous operation six weeks ago.  It seems they never thought we’d come back, and were clearing the forests as quickly as they could.  In the end, we destroyed a record 177 kilns today, and made 6 arrests.  That’s almost half of all the kilns destroyed in the last operation, which lasted 8 days.  It’s good to have damaged the charcoal trafficking system in the park, but the scale of the destruction is extremely worrying.

It was a tough day, over 18 hours.  In the late morning a section of rangers had a violent contact with an armed group.  Less than an hour later, a second platoon came under heavy fire.  Fortunately no one was hurt, but one of our rangers was seperated from the rest and then lost, so we had a very worrying few hours searching for him.  He turned at camp in the evening exhausted but unhurt.

One of the 177 kilns destroyed today

Tomorrow is another day, but morale remains high.  It makes all the difference to be able to provide proper support for the rangers in terms of rations and equipment.  This is largely thanks to your support over the last few months.  We’ll keep you updated on the operation as it unfolds over the next few days.