Gorillas in the Mist…(and the rain…!)

Emmanuel collected me promptly at 4.00am as promised, driving a Land Cruiser, which was a huge step up from the little sedan he had been driving me around in the day before… It had rained heavily for most of the night, and I was praying that today would be dry…

My prayers had not been answered, and it was still raining when we left Kigali… For the first two hours, we rode in mist and light rain, climbing higher and higher from Kigali’s 1200 m.a.s.l. to well over 2500 m.a.s.l. It was pitch dark, and we had to ride slowly through the mist, not talking too much, as I did not want Emmanuel distracted… As dawn came on slowly, I was able to make out steep drop-offs next to the road, and the crests of mountains all around us…

It's 6.00am, and after two hours drive, we are nearly there...

Kinigi Park Headquarters...

We arrived at the town of Ruhengeri at a little after 6.00am, having taken 2 hours to travel the 95 kms to get there… From there we went on to the small village of Kinigi, where the Volcanoes National Park’s headquarters are located. We were the first to arrive, and I was lucky to meet the Director of Rwanda’s National Parks who was there to make arrangements for the “Kwita Izina” or naming ceremony, which is held every year on the 1st of June… This ceremony is attended by many dignitaries, including President Paul Kigame himself, which shows just how much importance Rwanda places on its Gorillas…

This year, 12 baby Gorillas will be given their respective names. We chatted for a while and after asking me where I’d come from, and receiving my “short version” of my plans for the next few years, he rushed off to the curio shop and returned with a cap which commemorates the “Kwita Izina” and presented me with it, saying:

“You are an inspiration, and I hope you will wear this cap to further promote awareness about our Gorillas here in Rwanda…!”

I was taken aback by his gesture, and for a second wanted to reply:

“Thank you Sir, but I would prefer a $200.00 discount off the trekking price, if you don’t mind…”, but thought better of it, when I saw the sincerity in his eyes… He called a few of the rangers who were milling about and introduced me to them, telling them what a “determined man can achieve if he believes in what he was doing”… I think he might have been referring to himself rather than me, but I took it as a compliment anyway…

He then looked down at my feet and asked if I had brought any boots with me… At my reply to the negative, he sent one of the rangers off and told me to wait at the front office… A few minutes later, I was handed a pair of gumboots and a pair of socks… The ranger who had arranged them for me then apologetically said,

“These socks are not new sir, but they have been washed….!”

I slipped him a few thousand Rwandan Francs, and he scurried off, beaming from ear to ear…

Up above the clouds, at 2700 m.a.s.l. A magical morning...

By then many more vehicles had arrived, depositing Germans, American and French tourists. There are only 56 permits issued per day, and we were split up into seven groups of eight, assigned a guide and six porters to carry camera bags and water for those who wanted to lug them up into the mountains… We were then given a half hour introductory session on the Gorillas of the Volcanoes National Park…

This park spans three countries: Rwanda, the Congo and Uganda. Conservation agencies form the three countries work together to protect the 280 Gorillas in the 18 “family groups” that are established in these mountains… Ten of the family groups are monitored for research purposes only, and no contact is allowed with them. Most of them occur in the part of the Park that is in the Congo… The other 8 families are scattered throughout the forests and have been habituated to receiving visitors on a daily basis.

Each family is assigned a name, and a pair of armed trackers spends every single day with “their” family, and gets to know them intimately… They are in constant radio contact with Park HQ, and radio in every hour on the hour, 24 hours a day, to advise on the movements of “their” families… Apparently, when the Gorillas find an area where they are happy with the feeding conditions, they will stay within a few hundred metres of the spot for days on end, otherwise, they can cover up to a few kilometres in a single day…

The Silverback will also sometimes go off on his own to “look for more wives”, and cross national borders to do so…

Francois shows us how the Gorillas might behave... Or is that a Gorilla showing us how Francois sometimes behaves...!!

I was put with a group of four Americans from Los Angeles, an old couple from New Zealand, and a Kenyan Safari Guide who was leading the Americans on a tour through East Africa…

We would be visiting “Family 13”, the only Gorilla family not given a name, but rather the auspicious number “13”… They were discovered on the 13th day of the month, they were the 13thgroup to be recognized, and there were 13 members in the family at the time they were discovered…

The family had now grown to 22 strong, with only one Silverback, 9 females and 12 sub-adults and babies… The Silverback was named “Agashwa”, which means “Special One”…

He is currently 35 years old, and was given this name when he arrived on the scene from the Congo, and took over a family group whose leader had died from natural causes…

It is apparently rare for all the females in an existing group to “fall in love” with a new leader, as Francois, our guide for the day put it… Not only did they all accept Agashwa, but he also made no attempt to kill any of the babies that many of them were carrying at the time… Another rare occurrence among Silverbacks, who like Lions, kill all the young that they have not fathered, in order to bring the females into season… The “Special One” was therefore aptly named…

Agashwa currently weighs in at 220 kgs, and is one of the biggest Gorillas in the Park. He has an eye for the ladies, and has wandered into both Uganda and back into the Congo, to add to his harem… This is not uncommon amongst Gorillas, and it is a natural way of ensuring that the gene pool remains strong…

Gorillas also have a natural “family planning regime” that ensures that each female has only between six and eight offspring in her lifetime… Their gestation period is exactly that of a human’s, 9 months, and the baby drinks from its mother for about three years before being weaned off onto solid foods… Females become sexually active at the age of 12, and if conditions are right, will give birth every four years…

Gorillas have a lifespan of between 40 and 45 years… Agashwa will therefore be making merry for many years to come… Many of the groups have more than one Silverback, one of them being the dominant one, who tolerates the others, as long as they keep their hands off his wives… Agashwa does not tolerate any other Silverbacks near his group, and has successfully fought off a number who have threatened his dominance…

Young males are known as “Blackbacks”, and only start showing the “Silver” on their backs at the age of 12 years. Agashwa recently laid a fatherly hand on the shoulder of one of his “Blackbacks”, pointed in the general direction of Uganda and politely suggested that he head in that direction, and keep going… According to the trackers, there was no arguments from the Blackback… One day he was there, and the next he was gone…

We hack and trudge our way up into the mountains in the pouring rain...

After radioing the trackers to find out where Group 13 was, we set off for a village about 10 kms away, parked the vehicles on its northern edge and then set off to walk up a steep hill, through an area planted with potatoes and beans, until we reached the edge of the forest…

There we came to a rock wall, about six foot high and three foot thick, which we were told was built not to keep the Gorillas in, but to stop Elephant and Buffalo from ravaging the villager’s crops…

The Gorillas only come over the wall to feed on the Eucalyptus trees that the villagers have planted as a source of income, for building material and charcoal… When Gorillas do this, it is usually a sign that one of them is ill, and they use the Eucalyptus leaves as “medicine”… Clever beasts, huh!!

Before we reached the wall, it had been drizzling lightly, but as we squeezed through the narrow slot built into the wall, and stepped into the forest, the rain came down in earnest…

We were all soaked through in minutes, despite the raincoats we were wearing… We then climbed steadily upwards for the better part of an hour and a half, sloshing through thick mud, the porters hacking a path through the bamboo and shoulder high bush… We came across fresh Elephant and Buffalo dung that had us looking over our shoulders and peering into the thick bush around us… We climbed up a very steep section of forest, up to the rim of a crater, where the trackers had radioed to tell Francois, that the Gorillas were feeding…

My first view of a wild Mountain Gorilla... Mother and child...

The porters stopped and sat down to wait with the bags that they had carried up… No water or food would be allowed within a few hundred metres of the Gorillas…

It was bucketing down as we scrambled up a steep slope in the middle of a large bamboo thicket… I was just behind Francois when he put a hand on my arm to stop me, and pointed up ahead…

My heart leapt into my throat as I saw my first wild Gorilla…!!

It was a female, with a baby slung over her shoulder… She was perched halfway up a tree with her back to me… Her coat glistened grey with the raindrops adhering to the long hair on her back and shoulders… She ignored us as we gathered within a few metres of her, all struggling to find a foothold on the steep overgrown slope we had stopped to see her on…

"Oh no...!! It's those pesky humans again..."

We watched her for a while, and were shaken out of our reverie when from the bamboo thicket to the left of us, Agashwa beat a strident tattoo on his chest, to let us know that he was aware that we were ogling one of his wives… Francois immediately began “talking” to Agashwa, advising him all was well and he had brought some visitors with him…

Keeping a beady eye on proceedings, Agashwa watches us creep closer...

The female climbed down from the tree and in seconds had vanished into the undergrowth… For the next hour, I was continually amazed at how quietly they could move when they wanted to, and how quickly they could “disappear” from sight…

Granted, the forest was particularly thick where the Gorillas were feeding, and with the rain and the mist, it was difficult to see them clearly, or take decent photos of them… The camera lenses were constantly being wiped, but this hardly made a difference, so persistent was the rain…

Francois had worked out the best route through the forest to get us close to the Silverback, and with machete in hand, began hacking a path towards him… Agashwa sat there like a huge Buddha, watching us intently through those little eyes of his, occasionally letting a hand fall over them, and then peeping at us from between his fingers…

He was slightly above us, and we crouched down almost at his feet, awed by the sight of this animal…  He then began making himself a “salad”, taking the leaves from two or three different plants, rolling them into a ball and popping them into his mouth… He chewed thoughtfully on this for a while, and then got onto all fours and moved away…

Suddenly, from all around us, the family group appeared, and we were literally surrounded by Gorillas… Perhaps Agashwa had somehow signaled them that all was well, and those that had been so very close to us, but out of sight, came into view, scaring the living daylights out of some of us, and even making the two trackers that were with us, nervous…

Agashwa prepares a salad...

Just after I took the photo, this female charged...!

Francois indicated that we should crouch down and huddle together… I was on the outside of our little group of puny humans, and had reached into my pocket to get to one of the three cameras I was carrying, when a female with a young baby, made a rush at me, her mouth wide open, yellow teeth bared…

Francois shouted for me to crouch down and avert my eyes… To say that I nearly “soiled my britches” is an understatement…!! I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, and waited for the blow that I thought would surely come… The Kenyan guide later said that he had seen here come up to a very short distance away from me, beat her chest a few times, all the while her mouth agape…, and then turn away to feed nonchalantly on a stalk of bamboo behind me… She had made her point…

A female and her baby huddle together to keep warm...

He had earlier told us about the previous trip he had made to this very group, where he had witnessed an average size female Gorilla, pick up the guide by an arm and a leg, and bash him into the ground a few times…no doubt leaving the guide “shaken and stirred”, not to mention “bruised and battered”… I realized then that these were not just large and cuddly looking animals, but they were dangerous and powerful too…

We spent a total of 90 minutes with the Gorillas, following them about in the mist and the rain… All of my cameras began playing up, and despite having them in my pocket under my raincoat, they still got wet… We were all covered in mud, and I was thankful that I was wearing gumboots, even though my feet were sloshing around in the water that had gotten into them… Other members of the group would be throwing their shoes away when we got back down…

Agashwa and two of his wives settle down to feed...

Agashwa seemed to know that we were leaving, and as a grand finale, he climbed up into a huge thicket and turned around to face us, chewing on a bunch of leaves… Two of his wives clambered up and sat close to him, and I tried to take as many photos as I could, with the rain pouring down, clouding the lenses of my cameras…

The video worked a little better, although I could see that water had got into the corner of the screen… But it was all good… Even though I doubted whether I had captured any usable photos or footage, the sight of these magnificent animals will live on in my mind forever… None of us wanted to leave… We were wet and cold, but had we been allowed to, we would have gladly spent the rest of the day here…

I was the last to leave… With Francois in the lead, the group began inching away through the bamboo… I had put my cameras away and had crouched down, on eye level with Agashwa… It was a very emotional moment for me…and for many reasons… I was thankful that I had been given the opportunity to see Gorillas in the wild; sad that it was over, and I would probably never get the chance to do this again; and even sadder that I was not able to share this once in a lifetime experience with my family and friends…

I thought about my daughters and wondered what they were doing while I was sitting on the edge of this volcano rim, watching an animal that had been brought back from the brink of extinction… I felt very small and alone at that moment… My emotions got the better of me, an unseen hand had my heart in a vice-like grip, and I felt tears that I could not properly explain run down my cheeks, mingling with the rain on my face…

It was a moment that ranks right up there with the birth of my children… The joy, the awe…

The "Special One"...

I looked around me and realized that I was alone… A shiver of fear went through me when I heard a rustling in the thicket behind me… I turned to see one of the trackers beckoning me towards him…

“Come quick, we must go… Francois is far ahead of us…!”

I followed closely behind him, as we walked right through the middle of the Gorillas…they seemed to be everywhere I looked, and we had to backtrack on a few occasions to get out of their way… Francois shook an admonishing finger at me when we eventually caught up with him a few minutes later…

“We nearly left you behind… Agashwa would have beaten you because he would think you were after his wives…!!” he said, laughing out loud… And a “proper beating” THAT would have been…!!!

Gypsy Biker poses for a photo with Agashwa, or is it the other way around...?

The hike back to the vehicles took only half as much time as it had to walk up into the mountains… Where little rivulets had been running on our way up, there were now swiftly rushing steams… In some places we were almost knee deep in water…  But none of us cared… We had been to a little piece of heaven, and no amount of discomfort would get in the way of our memories… The group stopped to rest after we crossed the rock wall, and I asked permission to walk on to the village on my own…

Francois and the tracker who stays with the Gorillas 24 hours a day...

“You like to be alone…?” Franscois asked, giving me a long look and a little smile… “OK, then, but take one porter with you, in case you get lost…!”

We walked down into the valley below in silence… I began to shiver in the cold and the wet, and wished that I had packed some dry clothes into my backpack which was down in the vehicle…

Emmanuel was waiting for me at the car, eager to hear about our experiences… He took his shirt off to cover my seat with, so that mud on my jeans and boots would not rub off onto it… We rode down the hill and back to the village of Kinigi, where we stopped to have some coffee… Emmanuel had been up to see the Gorillas in 2001, and related his experience to me… He had been just as overwhelmed as I had been…

It continued to rain, and I began to shiver uncontrollably… With heater in the car on full blast, we wound our way back along the 120 km route to Kigali… The road came down out of the mountains about 20 km short of our destination, and the rain mercifully stopped… The sun came out and welcomed us back to town…

Back at the hotel, I walked past the Big Fella, noticing again how dirty and mud-bedecked he looked… I had a cold shower (no hot water at the Dream Inn…!) and then went downstairs to wash the bike…. I asked for a bucket and a cloth, which the receptionist arranged for me, and as I crouched down to rub the mud off the Big Fella’s engine, I said,

“Guess what I saw today…”…

And then I told him…, reliving it all again…

©GBWT 2011