DRC, KINSHASA

"When I decided to start off my second volume of women’s portraits with one of a female bonobo, in the way that I’d prefaced the first volume with a portrait of Lucy, I kept hearing: 'A monkey! Keep away from anthropomorphism. How ridiculous!' But if there’s one thing that I’m wary about, it’s anthrocentrism. (…) I owe it to Claudine for selecting Semendua as a representative, in this work, of the community of our distant river cousins, the bonobos.

Semendua’s story echoes that of almost all of the bonobos gathered here. They are all orphans of bush-meat trafficking and victims of military clashes. Semendua was one of the most approachable ones in the group even if she had lived in semi-liberty with her own kind for several years in the forty hectares of the protected forest of Lola ya Bonobo (“Paradise of the Bonobos” in Lingala), near Kinshasa."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard