I’m in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the next two months, working on a conservation theater project in and around a new national park in the east of the country. It’s going to be an interesting effort, writing and directing some short skits about conservation with Congolese researchers and fieldworkers that we’ll take out to small, remote villages in the upper reaches of the Lomami river. Our goal is somewhat complicated- to promote the idea of community forests, of community stewardship of forests and their fauna and flora, in the hopes of helping to defend those forests against commercial exploitation by criminal networks and well-funded poaching enterprises. This is an experimental effort- at least half the time we spend out in the field will be put to the use of determining if what we’re doing gets the point across in any useful way at all. You can follow regular updates from the project here on its tumblr. If you’re curious about what exactly is going on in that photograph, click here to read the most recent update from Kinshasa, Congo’s vibrant and sprawling capital. If you feel like you want to support the project (which is running on the tiniest of budgets), you could consider buying a download of some amazing music I recorded in the region when I was last there.