Muhamad Yehia .. Cairo
n the Kinshasa Botanical Garden, a troupe of cardboard animals – monkeys, a gorilla, leopards, a giraffe – stand to attention in a clearing. Their handlers, puppeteers dressed in black, begin to move slowly through the woods, eventually picking up speed and breaking out into a run.
These were the first steps of “The Herds”, a moving theatre performance made up of cardboard puppet animals that flee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Arctic Circle in a bid to bring attention to the climate crisis. The story goes that the animals will be forced out of their natural habitats due to global warming and displaced north, stopping in cities along the way and being joined by more animals. Just meters away, part of the botanical garden lies under floodwaters. Leftover from massive flooding earlier this week that left half of the city inaccessible and killed dozens, the sight brought The Herds’ story to life in a bleak way.
Tshoper Kabambi, a Congolese filmmaker and producer, is working for The Herds as their DRC producer. He said The Herds’ main goal is to raise awareness. “Nature is very important to us. But humans have a tendency to neglect nature,” he said. “We want to raise awareness among people about everything that is happening. You have seen the floods all over the world, global warming, deforestation.” The Herds’ organizers say the significance of starting in the Congo lies in the fact that the country is home to the second biggest rainforest in the world. The Congo Basin serves as one of the planet’s “lungs”, the other being the Amazon Rainforest. They say much less attention has been focused on Congo’s rainforest, but it is still in dire need of protection.
The Herds comes from the team that was behind The Walk in 2021, where a 12-foot tall puppet of a refugee girl called Little Amal drew attention to the refugee crisis by traveling to 15 countries – from Turkey to the U.K., Ukraine, Mexico and the U.S. Amir Nizar Zuabi was on that team and is now the artistic director of The Herds. He was also a part of The Walk. “I think one of the big impacts of this project is the fact that this project is happening in 20 different cities. It will travel through different cultures, different places, and it accumulates. And it will tell the story of the Congo also in Norway, because we have partners everywhere.
So whatever happens in the Congo is also seen by a lot of other people all around the world,” he said. Congolese artists were an integral part of The Herds’ opening act, just as artists from other countries will be as the project moves north.