How A Poacher Became A Born-Again Conservationist:
Told By A Passionate Elephant Rustler
In 1976, Dontego fired his first gunshot and killed two Hornbills at once. Dontego was 12. The double-barrelled rifle recoiled into his shoulder and threw him flat on his back. Dontego remembers how his brother laughed at him, with tears flowing down his cheeks. Earlier in 1974, Dontego had set a fence trap around the groundnut garden behind their house to keep rat moles out. The trap caught a Cutting Grass, and when he happily bent to remove the animal, it spoke to him in the voice of an old woman: “My son, please, don’t kill me.” Shaken to his core, Dontego set the animal free. Another time when he shot a bush pig in Yabassi, part of it turned into human skin. Further discoveries about the power of the gun barrel in the hands of young Dontego led to incalculable harm on the wildlife of Yabassi forest and Libongo in the southeast of the then East Province. One thing Dontego learnt about killing wildlife? Killing wildlife to sell is not as great as you might expect.
By Azore Opio
Dontego’s larger-than-life story is dominated throughout by the influence of his many-faced deity. Of enormous emotional strength and with something of a mastermind in his nature, Dontego is, by turns, scholar, polyglot, wanderer, truck driver, interpreter, poacher and conservationist. He is also capable of great delicacy of feeling. He is, without doubt, probably one of the most extraordinary and intriguing characters to be found in the poaching-conservation literature of modern-day Cameroon.
Desire Dontego was born on June 23, 1965 in Bangou, Mifi Division, now Haut Plateau or Upper Plateau. In 1980-1981, Dontego attended Lycée de Yabassi. After that, he went to secondary school at the Kamerun Technical College (KTC Nkwen) at Mile 4, Bambui in Bamenda, where he made many Nkwen friends.
His father, an ex-service man, possessed two rifles; small and big. During holidays, the soldier would take his young son along to hunt. His father’s father had been a griot and a very famous hunter.
“I learnt a lot about handling guns,” says Dontego. “Between 1978 and 1979, I killed four Drills and a monkey.”
Dontego plucked and developed a passion for hunting when he was a kid. Tough times conditioned him to graduate from hunting small game to killing elephants for money to pay his school fees and also care for his siblings.
“My mother was a midwife with very little means and my father, retired and farming cocoa and cocoyams, hadn’t enough money. Once in a while he would go hunting to supplement the subsistence of our family.”
Dontego grew to become a master marksman. He was thus nicknamed “Mark Bolan”, a sharpshooting character from a novel who shot without missing.
“I never missed my shots,” Dontego says with a smile twitching on the corners of his mouth, “and I sold all the flesh and tusks of the elephants that I killed.”
One day, Dontego decided to follow a group of hunters out of curiosity and discovered an area along the Makombe River towards Badem forest teaming with a huge population of elephants and other wildlife. Dontego spent three months in the forest killing elephants, butchering, smoking and selling their meat. The next six years saw Dontego hunting elephants every third term holiday.
“I made enough money to pay for my fees and support my family,” he recalls.
“After butchering an elephant, I left no signs behind except bones and dung. I had porters under me. We could stay two weeks to a month in the forest, smoking and selling elephant meat and tusks. We had a hunters’ camp where we stayed.
“I started hunting elephants in Nkonjock, Yingue and Yabassi forests. Men and women came all the way from Douala to buy elephant meat from.”
Hunter Becomes Hunted
With enough elephant money in his pockets, Dontego travelled to Nigeria where he enrolled at the Polytechnic of Kaduna to pursue a course in civil engineering. In 1992, “Mark Bolan” would be back in his native Cameroon, jobless and penniless.
“My siblings were stuck at home so I fell back to elephant hunting. Soon afterwards in 1994, I ran into trouble with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife in Yabassi. News broke out that a man was dealing with wildlife, especially elephants. I became the hunted and fled to Douala where I met Dieudonne, a friend to my father, who taught me to drive heavy trucks. I drove trucks to Djamena in Chad and to Congo Brazzaville through the East Province.
“What I saw in the East I had not seen before. It simply amazed me; the area was filled with wildlife – monkeys, gorillas, duikers, antelopes (Bongos). You could see them crossing the road or playing along it. I was overwhelmed and my appetite for bush meat surfaced again.”
After two trips, Dontego let go the steering wheel and went back to Douala, then to his village. Once again, he picked the gun, this time with its legal certificate, sought out Dieudonne and met him going to Libongo.
“I stopped midway and joined a group of hunters at a place called Cinquante, a meeting point for hunters and buyers of wildlife meat from Douala and Yokadouma. Cinquante is 50 km from Libongo and 50 km from Kaumela village. It was a great catch. At that time I had no choice.”
Dontego’s hunting skills resurfaced and he taught the other hunters how to carve all the flesh from dead game and leave behind bones only. His dexterity with languages – English, French, Pidgin, Fufulde, Douala, Bassa, Ewondo, Baka Pygmy – added to his experience as a poacher, combined to tip the balance of fate favourably for Dontego. But this expedition was short-lived as Dontego’s life and attitude were about to change forever.
“In late 1995, Brian, an American with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) picked me out during a sensitization meeting on the wellbeing of communities in conservation. He talked me out of poaching. However, I hunted for six more months although not intensely and stopped.”
People who knew me decades ago cannot believe that I changed. I am completely born-again. A storm landed on my head and I suddenly questioned myself…
Two days after Brian spoke with Dontego, Brian’s English colleague was coordinating field activities. Dr. Fimbert and Sheril – both biologists – had difficulties communicating in French and the local languages. Naturally, Dontego started interpreting for Brian, Fimbert and Sheril.
“Brian understood that I needed to do something to earn a living but I did not have the means, so I was made camp manager and field interpreter,” Dontego recalls.
“Apart from interpreting, I started collecting data, feeding and deploying field workers. And my pay package was raised from 4,000 to 7,000 francs CFA a day,” Dontego says, beaming with smile.
Sooner than he had expected, the former poacher picked interest in conservation and worked so rapidly and so much that one day he broke into tears.
“I had come upon this group of chimps playing. I watched as they harvested honey from a natural hive while the adults sat waiting. What fascinated me hugely was when the young ones harvested the honey, picked fresh leaves, placed the honey on them and presented them to the adults. I just broke down and started crying. After this, I experienced a complete change of mind and I said to Fimbert, ‘Can I get close to chimps and learn habituation skills?’”
From 1995 to 1997, Dontego worked with another researcher, Dr. Atanga Ekobo, on connectivity of elephant trails and remembers the days, “He mentored me on elephant data collection. During this time, my perception of forest changed completely.”
Dontego’s complete about-turn from poacher to conservationist could have been turned on its head but for two breakdowns.
“At the time my mind changed completely about poaching, WCS was passing over work to WWF. That transition period provided a gap in my career. I still had my rifle but no more hunting. I went back to the logging company and worked for seven months driving trucks.
“On one of my trips, I had breakdown at Garigombo between Yokadouma and Bertoua. And here comes Cameroon IUCN Coordinator, Dr. Osongo Leonard, whose vehicle gets stuck in the mud. I pleaded with a fellow driver to tow him out of the mud, and then he recognizes me, and says; ‘Desire, what are you doing here?’ I say to him, ‘as you can see, I am a truck driver.’”
A week later, Dr. Osongo on his way back finds Dontego still grounded at the same spot and he says, “Come back to WWF.” After this invitation, Dontego drove his truck to Bouam and parked it at Three Corners, Nangai-Eboko, forsook his salary and headed to Yokadouma, back to the forest to start bio-monitoring.
Jumbo Induction
Dontego first made contact with WWF in 2000. He was given the responsibility of monitoring elephants, his former
victims. His experiences as a hunter gave him the insider know-how and propelled him to do the feasibility field study to start collaring elephants; and between 1998 and 2013, the former poacher had collared 43 elephants; some humans.
Conservation happens when people with Dontego’s passion get involved, never, however, is it a picnic when tracking elephants to collar.
“Collaring brings with it challenges and often perilous expeditions. Every expedition has its unique reality – long treks, many days in tough conditions, crossing fast-flowing rivers and charging elephants.
A Storm Landing
March 6, 2008. The ground shook under Dontego. For a moment, he thought, “why does this elephant want to kill me?”
Dontego could not have imagined he was going to come face to face with his assailant. It turned out to be a very lopsided duel. With so much little in common, the difference between the elephant and Dontego was just unimaginable
Before he knew it, he had become a rag doll in the trunk and tusk of the animal.
“You are killing me, I am protecting you,” pleaded Dontego to the elephant.
Dontego recalls, “The elephant used its tusk to puncture my side, stomped a thick foot on my shoulder, hip and ankle then used its trunk to fling me into the bush. I was dazed.”
“I remember vaguely the elephant turning me over, smelling me from head to toe, picking some blood and snuffed it out. It made a call to tell the others, ‘I have finished with the danger we can go,’” Dontego recalls with a distant look in his eyes, the worst moment when an elephant charged at him in the wild.
The one-sided man-elephant encounter had happened in a flash. He had unintentionally walked into an excited herd of elephants fleeing from poachers.
“The elephant left me with five broken ribs, a bloody gash in my side, bruised ankle, dislocated shoulder and a disjointed hip,” is Dontego’s memory of that jumbo encounter.
“We were following elephants, and I crept through the jungle and came face to face with the elephant,” says Dontego. He remembered then how he had once escaped under the stomach of an elephant in Boubandgida National Park in the North. Not this time.
All counted, Dontego faced fourteen elephant charges including the one that left him bruised and at the point of death. It took 72 agonizing hours to get a bleeding Dontego from Lele to a hospital in Yaounde. He was barely conscious but he remembers that at Mintom, the doctor who could have helped him was in a bar drinking.
Dontego spent a year recovering in hospital.
In the days that followed, the charging elephant had become a nightmare for Dontego.
“Images of elephants on TV conjured up the grim visage of a killer after revenge,” Dontego says, “the fear of elephants was so overwhelming until a psychologist advised me touch an elephant. So when I started collaring elephants, I got the urine and dung of an elephant and rubbed myself. The fear vanished.”
Broken ribs or not, Desire Dontego has never had trouble tracking and collaring elephants.
Says the born-again elephant poacher, “In 2009, I collared an elephant on Mt. Cameroon. Two elephants we collared there were humans. One person came to us and said, “that musanga (collar) you put on my neck is disturbing me. I told him you are well protected and you are safe from poachers.”
Of all his conservation endeavours, Dontego takes the greatest pride in his success of changing people’s attitudes from being vicious to nature to protecting the wellbeing of nature for the next generation.
“I make sure to transform one person; a poacher to a driver; a poacher to a conservationist. I try to make others understand that there are many indirect benefits from the forest – non-timber products; that when you destroy a njangsang tree, tomorrow you won’t have njangsang for your soup. I try to make people understand that all wildlife regenerate forests; elephants, apes, primates, all distribute seeds and so we must all protect and conserve the forest and the larger environment.”
