“The forest will never end,” says Papa Mbembe as he treks through the swampy peatland of the rainforest behind his village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), nearly 400 miles from the capital, Kinshasa.
Walking barefoot, and dressed in a T-shirt and rolled-up jeans, he points to the ferns, lianas and hardwood trees rising high into the canopy. He hunts small woodland antelope, collects timber for his house and is an expert in traditional medicine.
