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Alex Brecker is an international communication expert, writer and documentary filmmaker. After graduating in communications and film studies in France, Alex embraced a career in international development, working with various international organizations in Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific. He lived for three years in Cameroon, during which he shot two feature length documentaries, Message in a Bottle and
the aforementioned The Explorer Quest for Africa's Living Dinosaur. Alex Brecker, Welcome to Coast to Coast AM. How are you very.
Good Richard, Good morning or good evening for you.
It's also morning here now very early three, just after three o'clock in the morning Eastern time. So first of all, congratulations, it's a beautiful, beautifully shot film. The scenery is absolutely stunning. Just describe where when we talk about the Congo Basin, I mean that's a vast area. Just kind of give us a sense of what the terrain is like and what part of Africa you were in.
Absolutely so, well, we're talking about the Congo Basin, which is a forest, the tropical rainforest that's about the size of Europe. It stretches from the from the Athletic coast in Gabon to the mountains of the Moon in Tanzania, so all across Africa, and it's one of the last wildernesses unknown and Charlotte areas in the world. Well, if you compare it to the Amazon, for example, the Amazon has been widely explored that the Congo Basine remained extremely mysterious.
So the area in this very vast forest where we are looking for mochal Embembe is at at the border between Cameroon and the Congo on the Cameroon side along the river called the Jar River.
So mochllyan Bembay will probably be familiar to many coasts the coast m listeners. We've I mean, I've talked to doctor William Gibbons who's been to the Cameroon and Congo on several expeditions looking for the elusive creature. And now it has its own movie, Mokelly and Bembay. What do the locals say it looks like? How do they describe this creature?
Basically, they describe it as a like a sauropod dinosaur. So the first testimonies of Mokembeme. Go back three or four hundred years ago, there was a French bishop called Abby Projard who was a missionary in that part of Africa, and he started collecting testimonies from the locals who describe that giant cloth footed animal. That's yeah, I really look like like a sauropod dinosaur. So people have it looks like an apatosaurus if you look at the different if
you collect different testimonies. But while there's no clear description of the animal, just the global shape. Maybe it has a horn, maybe not that every local tribes person would agree to say that it's huge, and that's why they have called it mokelem Bembe, which means one who can stop the flow of rivers. So it does a lot about the size of that animal.
And you mentioned a part a pot of saurus. I think that's what we used to call a brontosaurus, which yeah, I mean absolutely immense. And the film is titled The Explorer. So while it is about the search from a Kelly and Bembay, it's really focused on Michelle Below, this former lawyer from France who left everything behind to go to Africa to find this creature. Tell us some more about Michelle belot.
So.
Michelle was a lawyer in the south of France and about fifteen to twenty years ago he started writing letters to Bernard Shuttlements. So, for dose who know about cryptozoology, Bernard Huddlements is a Belgian scientist and he is considered the father of cryptozoology. So his very well known for his investigations on locktest, monster and Yetti and Bigfoot. Obviously he was also involved he examinated the body of the Minnesota Heisman, which was very famous, a very famous case
in the US. So Michelle started exchange letters with Bernard Shuttlements and he asked him, like bluntly, where in the world am I would I be likely to find a cryptid? And Hubanman said, well, you should look at the Congo bassin because there you have an animal called mochealem bembe. And while we have lots of testimonies, there's some evidence and it's likely that there's something out there. So Michelle went on a first journey to Cameroon and the Congo.
He spoke to the locals, the locals confirmed that there was something big living in that forest, and then he went a second time found new evidence than three times, four times he dropped his job and now he is a full time explorer. So he dedicates his life to the search for local and Bembe. He has been in about more than twenty twenty five expeditions. He was writing me recently that he's standing for another expedition that will
take placets in A in October. So he goes there two three times a year, and well, he finds new evidence each time he goes there, and well, I'm quite sure that he will find something one day. I mean, there's too many proofs that the beast exists. And Michelle is certainly most advanced researcher specialist of mocl M Membe.
So you were living in the Cameroon for about three years. Were you doing sort of NGO type development work there at that time?
Yes, I was working. So I started. I was working with WWF, the conservation organization, and then I worked with the UM, the Organized Nations.
Okay, so during that time you met Michelle Belot. What were the circumstances under which you met Michelle below? And then maybe you can describe what that first meeting with this explorer was like.
Absolutely, So basically Michele got a bit of a reputation in friends. We got well known in friends because he wrote a book called Searching for mochllem Bembey. And I read that book and it was absolutely amazing. So at the time, I was working with the World Wildlife WWF
in Cameroon and I wrote that book. And while I found the research absolutely amazing and fascinating, and he was describing areas which I used to know when we're for example, tracking elephants for gorillas, so he was looking for Kembby in the same area. And the funny thing is that I met some Pigmy tribes people when I was working there, and they would talk about mokellem Bembey at night, you know,
at the fire camp. So when I read that book, it really resonated and I was like, okay, I need to meet that person because I certainly we have lots in common. So I sent him an email. I told him like, well, I'd love to join one of your expeditions one day if you would invite me, and he told me I'm going in three weeks, come along. And then I went with him on the first expedition.
And were you filming at that point or was it simply a kind of an introduction to the to the terrain and so forth, or did you start filming right away.
No, no, no, The first expedition was really to go there to discover, I mean, to learn more about this quest from Mocal and Bemby, to meet Michelle, to look at the terrain, and and to be really honest, I didn't believe much in mokel em Bemba at the time. If you know that part of Africa, well, people would describe lots of myths or monsters. They talk about, for example, mermaids, the mami watas in the in the in the large rivers of Africa, and we know this is certainly not correct.
I mean, they're not great creatures of flesh and blood. So for me, Makembmi was maybe more of a myth. Now we went from that expedition. We so when you go on an expedition from even from Yon day the capital of Cameroon is not statinity journey. So you have to to drive basically for for three days on dirt roads. It's it's very long. Then you take a dugout and you and you and you go on the on the on the river, on the jar River, you go upstream
for for another three days. You have mosquitos, you have flies, you have lots of insects, so it's it's quite an adventure. And then you reach these absolutely wonderful anky waterfalls which is the which are basically the doors to the area where Marcleemba Bay is supposed to live. So I went to that expedition just to see the nature, to discover
a new place of the Congo Basine. That the thing is, we found something, We found some new evidence during that first expedition, and yeah, then I started believing that maybe something exists out there.
We obviously we want people to watch the movie and we don't want to give everything away, but can you give us a hint as to what that first little bit of evidence was that you discovered that led you perhaps to believe in the reality of Mokelly and.
Bembe Yes absolutely well. And it's very funny because you mentioned doctor William Gibbons Bill Gibbons earlier in the show, and going back to twenty twelve, Bill Gibbons was with Michelle in that part of the Jar River and they were set in camp and they heard a big roar that really crossed the forest and well, the local people said, well, this is certainly mokeem Bembe, but it was very far and then stopped. But they came back, you know, no recording,
nothing happened. And when I went back there on this So in my first expedition, which was in the winter of twenty fifteen, one night we were also set around the fire camp and we were starting to eat and we heard a huge roar and then a big splash something that really crossed the forest, I mean really something loud, and the splash was even louder, and we integrated local people and they said, well, maybe these are elephant, maybe gorillas that we're not really sure, or maybe to put
it simply, it's mokelm Bembe. That place is known for mokelm Bembe. And you know, you know, it was the middle of the night. We're in the middle of nothing, in the middle of the forest, so you tend to
believe in what local people say. So the day after, we took the dugout and we went upstream to try to find the area from where the roar was coming from, and we saw some large footprints that were a bit hard to read, but it was something very large like eighty centimeters and fifty five so something quite big and that was it, and the locals confirmed like yeah, I mean that's smokel m bembe. So this is what happened during the first expedition. And the sunny thing is that
we recorded a bit of the sounds. I sent it to Bill Gibbons and he told me it's exactly the same kind of sound that we heard back in twenty twelve during our expedition. So this is what happened. And when I came back from that expedition. While I had more questions, obviously, by the way people talk about mochalm membe, what you can find in terms of evidence, well, I tend to believe that it's absolutely real.
So that first expedition that you accompanied, Michelle Bellow, was twenty fifteen. When did you actually start filming for the documentary The explore So that was.
A couple of years after that, so in twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen. So what we talk about the winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the twy season in Cameroons. So basically, if you want to go on an expedition there, you can go from there. The window from October November to March. Then is the rainy season and it's you really can't go. I mean the river, the flow of the river is
too strong. So in September twenty twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen, so in Michelle reaches out and it tells me, well, one of my trackers has sound a cave that is said to be the den of mochal m Benbe. So
it's very far. Not only we have to drive for these three days and then take the dougout for three days and then climb the key waterfalls and walk, but we have to work for but ten days in the forest to reach an absolutely remote area that's in totally pristine forests, so no human civilization, nothing, it's complete wilderness out there. Very dangerous as well that we might possibly find the den of the animal and obviously some hard evidence you know that that market exists. So do you
want to come? They told him, yes, of course, but I would like to do a movie, to film a documentary on the research. I mean to share that with the world. That it's too amazing, you know. So it told me, okay, no problem. I told him, I will bring camera. I will certainly hire a Pigmy a tracker to help me with the sound. You know, we we wanted to be as slight as possible that we wanted to shoot a professional movie as well. But we're just the two people strong team and we try to be
absolutely invisible so people wouldn't see us. We just follow the expedition and follow Michelle and so that you know, we wouldn't be intrusive with the cameras and and it worked pretty well.
And the the the locals, the pygmies, when they talk about Mokelly and Bembey, they've seen it, they've encountered it. Are they frightened by it? Do they hunt it?
So they are frightened by Mochal and Bende. If you look at the area when you so there's there's there's a village called en do'ng go and and Dongo is about one five hours a boat right from the port where you drop the car basically, and so you take the boat, you go upstream for five hours to reach that village of Anongo. And this is the last village. Then if you go upstream so two three days towards the end key waterfalls, you won't find a local and
the reliever you won't find a village. And even fishermen stay in the in the area of the Dongo and they don't go further upstream because they're afraid of mochaalem Bembe. And it's absolutely amazing. I mean, they are fishermen. It's plenty of fish out there, but they don't go there because they're afraid of the beast. And if you don't have back at the.
Yeah, sorry, no, no, go ahead, go ahead.
Yeah. And if you look back at the history of mokealem Bembe, so in another place area of the Congo basin called Lake Telle, and that was certainly seventies or eighties. So Lake La is another high well hotspot for local embmbased sightings. It's a lake, it's a crater lake that was certainly created by amatter ride that fell down on that forest. And it's another very remote area and lots of there has been lots of sightings happening over there.
And back in the seventies or eighties, there's apparently some a couple of local em Bembe were terrorizing local fishermen so they couldn't put the boats on the lake to go fishing. So the villagers. Local villagers decided to kill the local em bembase. So there were some canals leading to the to the to the lake, and they started breaking traps to try to trap the animal, to attract the animal in these narrow water streams and then to
kill them. So they manage apparently to kill one with spears and arrows, and then they ate the meats, and the most of the villa died because the meat we was certainly poisons.
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