Creature record / 1971
Probably November 1971. The rainy season on the Motaba River, in the Likouala region of the Republic of the Congo. Pastor Joseph Ellis is steering a dugout upstream, loudly singing a hymn to keep himself company. Then the African companion in the boat yells "yama, yama". Animal. Something is crossing the river ahead. A long, low back, as long as the 10 metre dugout, ridged like a saw. No head. No tail. Just a steady ripple across the water until it slides into the tall grass of the far bank and is gone. Twelve years later, Roy P. Mackal, who had searched the region for Mokele-mbembe, sat down with Ellis and wrote the encounter into the record of the Nguma-monene.
Pastor Joseph Ellis spent ten years in the Congo Republic, from 1963 to 1973, as a missionary with the United World Mission. Ellis worked at Impfondo and lived at Dongou, where the black waters of the Motaba River meet the white water of the Ubangi, in the Likouala Department. This is the land of Mokele-mbembe and Emela-ntouka. It is also home to a reported animal called the Nguma-monene, a name translated as "large python".