The Kahuzi-Biega National Park is one of the pioneer NPs in Africa that has confirmed the need to provide psychological support to park rangers. The NGO Coopera Congo started the project in 2018 with a study on the mental health of 60 rangers.
The study revealed that nearly 80% of park rangers suffered from a mental disorder. If we go to the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we find a region rich in natural resources, especially minerals. The world is a silent witness to the massacres committed in this area by hundreds of militias seeking control of these resources.
We rarely realize that the "congo war" has a close relationship with the protection of biodiversity. The National Parks are niches of exotic forestry and animal species that are still traded today. Its soils become artisanal mines controlled by armed men, and increasingly better armed. Park rangers have to equate their knowledge of fauna and flora with paramilitary training to be able to carry out their work, the protection of natural space.
The men who apply for these jobs are looking for a livelihood, they do not have a military vocation. Their lives become dangerous, but they also do not have a salary that compensates for the risk they take every day. They have no pension, no social security, and no life insurance. But if they have a family with an average of 6 children of their own and others in foster care.
The stress they suffer daily is not recognized by their community or their country, and less by the rest of the world.
The psychological care they are receiving restores their self-confidence, helps them to find solutions to their problems, to recover the meaning of their lives, and, above all, to heal the wounds of the past that hinder their lives even more.
This project should continue over time and be extended to other national parks.
If you resonate with the rangers, do not hesitate to donate to MUTIMA AFRICA, so that we can continue to pay the salaries of professional psychologists, and doctors trained in psychiatric treatment and acquire medication to stabilize their psyche and their lives, but Above all, to encourage them to continue working to protect the biodiversity of one of the lungs of the planet.