Okapi Skin

One time, some sellers at the animal market downtown in Kinshasa brought me something unusual. Wrapped in a dirty burlap sack, this stiff hide came from the rare okapi, a giraffe relative that only occurs in the Democratic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). The stripes wrap around the animal's buttocks and the base color is a dark chocolate brown. It was odd to touch the velvet plush of the same animal that I had once touched, alive, at a zoo.

The Congolese knew that the okapi was rare and special, and illegal to kill, so the men were being secretive about the contents of the sack, and said that it was worth a king's ransom. They insisted that we take it around back for photographs, after which I sent them on their way. The skin was of poor quality, like all of the hides I saw, because it had been salted and dried in the sun.

I had seen the okapis at the "Capture Station" of Epulu, between Kisangani and Bukavu, but this was the only time that I saw the evidence of a hunted one. I was probable that the animal had been poached for its meat and skin from the the forests surrounding Epulu. I never knew what happened to the hide.