And then it was over. Or that's what I thought.

We returned to Malabo by boat, then drove across the island to spend the night at a research station. On the return, my driver and I were stopped at a military checkpoint, one of three along our one-and-a-half-hour route. This checkpoint, the most remote, was known for being the most dangerous. True to form, the lead soldier was drunk and got belligerent when I told him I had no alcohol to give away. Becoming more and more enraged, he wouldn't let us pass. He began to alternately yell at and interrogate the driver. The other soldiers circled our small car, griping AK-47s. They were boys, really, with zero expression on their faces. One was wearing an iPod. The boss eventually woke up in his chair in the background, shouted to them to let us through, and fell back asleep. The soldiers looked disappointed.

As you approach civilization, the first thing you notice is that the forest starts to thin. There's a burning smell, then you see the wounds. Bulldozers and chain saws have been here, leaving enormous scars, stripping away the foliage. Soon there's no green at all, just dirt and shacks. Garbage is strewn about, most of it plastic, but also hulks of old cars and the occasional dead dog. Nobody is smiling as you drive past. I wouldn't either.

Malabo is a city adrift, mostly without power or sewers or clean water. Grocery shopping at night means you intermittently stand still among strangers, unable to see the chocolate cereal on the shelf in front of you as you wait for the lights to come back on. Credit cards are useless. Sporadic stoplights and untrained drivers constantly yield wrecks.

My last day in Malabo
This morning I went to the bush-meat market. I’m from Nebraska, and I’ve seen butchering. This was different. Here were baskets of hornbills, tables covered with pangolins, pythons, brush-tailed porcupines, and rats. I’d seen snares set everywhere in the forest; this was their harvest. A small blue duiker lay bound and alive. The woman selling it yelled when I brought the camera up to my face, so I took three shots from the hip using a trigger on the bottom of the camera, coughing each time to hide the sound of the shutter. Slaughtered animals would eventually be carried over to metal tables where men would torch the hide or feathers. The whole place smelled of burning hair. I bribed the torch men to let me shoot; a four-dollar phone card bought me half an hour.