Guest gorilla posting

This beautiful closeup was taken by Joanne Kiley, one of the women I was lucky enough to travel with in Rwanda.

I am very grateful to all of them -- Joanne, Maureen, Kim, Lisa and Dianne -- for their kindness and patience with me during those memorable few days. They got me soup, tucked me into bed with hot water bottles, and let me ride shotgun in the jeep, and I would never have made it to see the gorillas without them, or our wonderful guide Timothy.

Thank you.

Now I lay me down to sleep

The guides had warned us that we needed to get to the gorillas while it was still morning, because they'd be sleeping in the afternoon. And several of them did go to sleep while we were watching them, apparently not caring that they were being observed.

I like the thoughtful finger-chewing while waiting for that sleepy feeling.

The last gorillas

Here's the last of Rwanda, except for perhaps a bird or two: the wonderfully expressive face of a gorilla.

Karisoke Research Center

The original center in the mountains was destroyed during the genocide, so it's now located in the town of Musanze.  There's a museum open to the public, with exhibits on everything you could possibly want to know about the mountain gorillas and the ecosystems of the Virungas.

This is Dian Fossey's desk, with reproductions of her field notes.

In which I emulate Dian Fossey

I was ordered to change clothes, then “allez!” out the door to a waiting teepoy -- an elongated basket affair with stout rims and handles manned by six Africans. I was trussed up into the basket along with piles of blankets, and before I could say kwa heri, the men began carting me off in such a silent and gentle way that I really had no sensation of movement beyond the passage of tree boughs over my head. It was a rather strange experience. I didn't really possess all of my faculties, and yet I was so aware of the silence of the porters and the sparkling, crisp beauty of the morning....

I was taken to the nearest hospital and checked in as a rabies patient by all the French-speaking doctors and nurses in Ruhengeri. No one spoke English and I guess I learned more French during the next three days than I'd learned during the past three years.

That's Dian Fossey, writing about the aftermath of being nipped by a wild dog -- and refusing to leave Karisoke until she started to show symptoms of rabies and had to be carried down the mountain for treatment. I don't think anyone ever described her as easy-going; on the contrary, like so many people who actually get things done in this world she was often a colossal pain in the ass.

I on the other hand have yet to bring a single species back from the brink of extinction, and I try hard -- maybe sometimes too hard -- not to be a pain in the ass. I knew I was going to have a hard time with the gorilla trek; I wasn't able to eat much and my legs felt as though I'd borrowed them from a different body and hadn't bothered to read the instruction manual. Everyone hires a porter to carry their gear; I figured if I hired two one could carry my backpack and one could assist me. But it quickly became obvious that I was struggling, and the tour leader suggested that I use a teepoy. I knew I was slowing the group down and we hadn't even started the serious climbing yet so I agreed.

Was it embarrassing? Oh my God -- totally. I'm still embarrassed.

But the embarrassment was mitigated by the knowledge that I could never have seen the gorillas otherwise, so I told myself that if Dian Fossey needed a teepoy when she was sick, who was I to turn it down?

(The picture is from the cultural village near the park. That's a teepoy on the ground to the right.)

More Charlie

Two more pictures: Charlie staring thoughtfully into the distance, wondering what he should eat next, and one including part of our group so you can see how close he came to us. We kept trying to back off and allow more distance, and he kept coming closer. The other side of that low underbrush between us is where he stretched out and went to sleep.

Charlie in all his magnificence

Unfortunately, all of my pictures of Charlie are a little blurry, but this one is my favorite.

I was already unsettled, and the setting was completely alien -- thick underbrush, roots and wet leaves underfoot, quiet except for whispers and camera clicks, and the rustles and grunts and croons and crashes that are apparently the soundtrack to the daily life of the mountain gorilla -- but the gorillas themselves were somehow strangely familiar.

They are so much like us (we share 97% of our DNA). Looking into those beautiful, deep-set eyes and having them gaze calmly back was a profound experience.

I see you.

I see you too.

It made me feel rooted again. I was far from home, sick in a strange country, but among friends.

And yes, I realize that this is all the most extravagant projection. Charlie was probably not aware of our presence except as something he had to evaluate as a possible threat to finishing his snack and taking a nap, but he did allow us to get close to him and his family. That acknowledgement and acceptance was the most thrilling part of the experience.

Here he comes, walkin' down the street

Charlie, the silverback of the Umubano group, pauses in his stroll through the jungle to check out the wacky humans with their clickety cameras.

After deciding that we posed no threat, he came closer, ate some delicious wild celery, and went to sleep.

Oh baby baby

Here's a cropped image so you can see a little more of that sweet face.

Oh baby

Yes, that's a baby gorilla, only a couple of weeks old, with mom.

They were back in the trees and so not easily photographed, but it was astonishing to me that we were able to get as close as we were. The trust that the gorillas showed us was humbling. It made me want to be worthy of it, to do everything I can to see that they are protected.

Gorillas in the trees

And there they are

We heard the gorillas before we saw them. There were rustlings in the underbrush ahead of us, and then suddenly a huge crash to our left.

Then one of the guides told us to look up, and there they were, three or four young gorillas up in the trees, climbing, scampering, feeding.

I cried.

The rain forest

After the farmland, it's steep paths slick with wet leaves and a man with a machete leads the way, cutting tunnels for the group to get through. Trackers have gone ahead very early in the morning to locate the assigned family and monitor their location, and they're in constant contact with the guides.

After an hour or so, we were told, We're here. We had to leave our bags, and any food or water, and walk the rest of the way with just our cameras.

How gorilla trekking works

When Dian Fossey established Karisoke Research Center in 1967, there were approximately 240 mountain gorillas left and it was assumed they'd be extinct by the end of the century. Today there are just over 1000, 600 in the Virungas and the rest in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda. Although they're still critically endangered, it's a rare conservation success story, and one in which tourism has played a positive role.

Visiting the gorillas is tightly regulated. There are 10 families in the Virungas that are habituated to humans, but there are usually 56 permits issued each day, 8 per group, so not every family is visited every day. The visits last one hour.

We had two prep sessions before we went, one the night before with the head of Rwanda tourism, and one with our guide Augustin before the trek. We learned to make the vocalizations that mean we're not a threat and how to show submission if a silverback took offense at our presence. I got better at the vocalizations -- my first attempt received the gentle rebuke, “It's not a cough,” but by the next morning I got a “Very good“ -- but it's a rumble so deep in the throat that it's hard to do for more than a minute or so, and for me at least usually ends in coughing even if it sounds all right before that.

Rwanda raised the price of permits last year, from $750 to $1500. A certain percentage of the money goes to local communities, but it's given in the form of improvements like schools, roads, and electricity instead of cash payments. Some of it benefits the entire country; Rwanda now has universal health care and free public education. And some of it is earmarked for expanding Volcanoes National Park, and creating more of a buffer zone between humans and the gorillas. There are farmers inside the current park; the first part of the trek is through their fields.

I really did see the gorillas, part 2

The experience alternated between hazy, almost dreamlike, and all too real.

I clearly remember posing for this picture because the guide told me to squat down to get in the frame. My knees were too shaky to make anything resembling a squat possible, so I just leaned forward until my head was roughly level with the gorilla behind me.

I really did see the gorillas

I am going through photos, but as usual I have a ridiculous number -- especially since I was in Rwanda for less than a week.

Most of my gorilla pictures are not high-quality. The foliage was thick and there wasn't much light. Also, I had brought the 400 mm lens so I could get detailed shots from a distance -- as usual with wildlife, we'd been cautioned to keep at least 6 meters/20 feet away -- and then I couldn't use it because the gorillas got so close to us. So most of my pictures were taken with the point and shoot, and they're just okay.

And I don't really care. I was light-headed and shaky-kneed from lack of food, trying to keep my balance on the steep, slippery trail, and I was maybe five feet away from a silverback gorilla who stared at us thoughtfully while munching on leaves, and whether I could get good pictures was the last thing I cared about.

This gorilla was out in the open, far enough away to let me use the Canon.