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Mokèlé-mbèmbé is the name given to a large creature reported to live in the lakes and swamps of the Congo River basin. The term "Mokèlé-mbèmbé" comes from the Lingala language, and can be roughly translated as "one who stops the flow of rivers." On the basis of two investigatory expeditions, made in 1980 and 1981, Dr. Roy P. Mackal, a research biologist at the University of Chicago, is convinced of the existence of the legendary monster in the swampy Ubangi-Congo basin of central Africa, described by the Congo pygmies as half-elephant, half-dragon, and much more fearsome than a crocodile, the creature has been dodging hunter-explorers since the start of the 20th century- although reports of something weird in central African rivers and swamps go back to the 1800s.
In 1980 Roy Mackal and James H. Powell, Jr., a crocodile specialist, went deep into the heart of the wild Likouala region to track the tales to their source and try to identify the beast. They arrived at the remote outpost of Impfondo early in February, and although they were appalled by the trackless swamps and jungles that lay ahead, they were heartened to hear locally that the mokele-mbembe was often spoken of as a well-known phenomenon if unfamiliar beast.
One of the older eyewitness reports was given by one Firman Mosomele, who said that about 45 years earlier, when he was a 14-year-old, he had seen the creature while paddling his canoe around a bend on the Likouala aux Herbes River near the town of Epena. He waited only long enough to see a reddish-brown snakelike head and neck about six to eight feet long before he paddled briskly away, but the image was burned on his brain. When shown a book of animal pictures, Mosomele picked a sauropod (or dinosaur) as the creature he had seen.
The next report, by a woman from Epena, confirmed that such a creature was indeed a habitue of that area. Two of the beasts, she said, had recently entered Lake Tele from the Bai River. One had been killed by lakesiders, then cut up and eaten in spite of a local belief that people eating its flesh would soon die.
The explorers and their porters spent most of the rest of the month "slogging" through mokele-mbembe territory, hunting the creature and collecting many more eyewitness accounts. One of the most circumstantial was given by Nicolas Mondongo, a Congolese from the village of Bandeko. During a journey on the Likouala aux Herbes between Mokengui and Bandeko he saw a mokele-mbembe "making the water run backwards as it rose out of the river."
The water at that point was only three to six feet deep, and virtually the whole animal was visible. Mondongo said he saw its back, neck, head, part of a long tail, and short legs. The head was topped with something like a cockscomb. As nearly as he could judge, the length of the creature was 32 feet, about 6 to 10 feet of which were head and neck.
Convinced by such reports that "although rare, rhe mokele mbembes do exist and that they correspond to no other living forms known to science," Dr. Mackal returned to Africa in 1981 on a six-week expedition with a group of French, American, and Congolese scientists. Their foray was highlighted by the discovery of "huge footprints and a wide swath of bent and flattened vegetation. The track led into a river." In size the footprints compared with those of an elephant, according to Dr. Mackal, but the flattened vegetation suggested that the trail had been made by a reptilian creature "taller and larger than any known crocodile."
Dr. Mackal, who is "more convinced now than ever' of the creature's existence, thinks that it inhabits swamps but uses the rivers to facilitate moving about. Further ventures in search of the beast are expected. (Animal Kingdom, 83:4-10, December 1980; The New York Times, October 18 and December 10, 1981)
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