I am called Bagambe Walter Safari. I am a Park Ranger at the Rumangabo station, and I hold the rank of sergeant. I was born in Mushari in North Kivu. I am married to Sikujuwa Melanie with whom I have five children.

I became a Ranger simply because I wanted to earn my living.In fact when I started in 1972 I wasn’t very ambitious. As time went by, and I learned my trade, I found my work more interesting. Today I work in one of the best kept sectors of the park. One day, when I was assigned to Kingi in the Nyamulagira sector, I was on patrol with three other Rangers and we were on the trail of poachers. Before we left camp we had been informed by our sources that a group of poachers was operating in this are. We needed to stop them carrying out their plan to massacre elephants. We were following their footprints when, with great good fortune, we came across a poacher with his AK47 trained on a male elephant that the poachers had moved away from the herd. We told him to drop his weapon: he didn’t. Suddenly he turned it on asked us and told us to give him our weapons.

I realized we had walked into a trap. We needed to react quickly before we were killed (in fact not far from there some of their accomplices had killed two elephants). I felt we were losing the initiative and failing in our mission. Without waiting I gave the order for the Rangers to rout these criminals. There was an exchange of fire and after about thirty minutes the poacher escaped, leaving two AK47 and a shotgun. We captured two of them and took them back to the station.