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| Our first view of him was just his hands from behind, reaching up to pull down leaves. |
We enter into the jungle clearing and our guide urgently
whispers, “come come, they are here!” Our hearts leap into staccato and we exchange
looks of wide-eyed delight. We are about to see gorillas! We step through knee
deep plants on the forest floor and quickly our attention is drawn up towards
the sound of something falling through the forest canopy; a baby gorilla has
lost his grip and is plummeting towards the ground, he’s about the size of a one
year old child, and I gasp just as he reaches out to catch his fall on a
looping vine. As we watch him repeat
the falling and grabbing over and over we realize this is a game for his own delight. At this point we become aware that a
large family of gorillas surrounds us. We scramble through the groundcover,
propelled along by our excited guide. Babies are latched on to their Mama’s
thick black hair as they stroll in front of us, while adolescents chasing each
other, dart back and forth behind us. “Take pictures” insists our guide,
Lambert. “Come here, move forward”, he instructs in the next breath, his
excitement apparent. “Look, there he is.” Lambert points at a hillock of vines
and leaves and we see nothing but a buzz of flies. And then a massive, wrinkled
hand, exactly like a humans but five times larger, reaches up and deftly plucks
a series of leaves from a vine. It disappears again behind the mound of vines.
I gasp and my heart beats with delight. The silverback!
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| Tea Plantation Below the National Park |
Tristan and are in
Kahuzi-Biega National Park, South Kivu,
Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s right, the scary part. Except for its not
scary, it’s beautiful, and welcoming and incredible. After living in DRC for
over two years we decided that there was no way we could say we had lived in
Congo without seeing some of its most incredible residents. Kahuzi-Biega became
a park in 1970 and spans an area of 6000km
2. It is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site, and listed on the Parks in Danger list. Hundreds of rangers, my
heroes, protect its resident forest elephants, chimpanzees, and endangered
Eastern lowland gorilla from encroaching agriculturalists, poachers, and war
lords.
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| Me and some of the forest rangers, these guys truely are heros, risking their lives to protect incredible animals |
This is the only place in the
world where this species of gorilla, the world’s largest, live. There are an
estimated 180 individuals remaining. The population size is slowly climbing
since it was decimated during the wars of the 90s (the gorilla population was around
600 before this). Our guide has worked in Kahuzi Biega for the last 30 years.
He has seen it all.
When we left the rolling tea plantations below and moved
into the protected mountainous regions of the eastern park we met another
guide. Miniature in stance, with a big filed-to-triangular toothed grin and a
presence that makes you realize this is his forest. Our new guide was introduced
as “Chocozy”. Lambert explained to us, “Chocozy is a pygmy and his family has
always lived in this forest, we employ as many of his tribe as possible to
provide them with an alternative to hunting. Plus, they know the forest and its
animal inhabitants the best.”
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| Chocozy, our pygmy guide, has been working in the park for decades |
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| Our guides, Tito, Chocozy, Jamarie, and Lambert |
It was at this point that Lambert gave us our
little talking to: 1) you will have to
wear a mask – we don’t want the gorillas to get a cold; 2) take lots of
pictures – its very important that your pictures reach the expats in Kinshasa
and the western world so people will come to visit; so they know what is here
that needs to be protected; 3) look the silverback in they eye – these gorillas
were habituated by a man so they will think you are weak if you don’t (opposed
to the Eastern mountain gorillas to the north that were habituated by a woman -
you can’t look them in they eye). His last piece of guidance was both
stereotypical and nerve racking: If an adolescent pounds his chest at you, go
ahead and pound back as an exchange….but don’t do that with the silverback, he
will take it as a challenge to his authority. Um ok, check.
Back to the silverback. We ogled at his amazing hands for a
moment or two, and then Lambert encouraged us to come around to face him. And there he is. All 359 pounds of him. Munching on leaves and scowling in our general direction. He is about four meters away from us, so close we can hear
his breath between the sounds of his molars grinding leaves. His massive body sits
in a great mound of course black hair, his chest the blackest leather. He’s
exactly like a gorilla costume you found at value village might look, only this
is the real deal. Flies buzz around him incessantly and he swats at them distractedly.
He sits quite quietly; reaching up for a vine of leaves, tearing in down,
deftly eating the leaves off it, repeat. A few times he looks straight into my
eyes, as if to say, you may think I’m just zoning out, but I know you’re there.
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| Tristan and I with Mr. Silverback right behind |
True to his look, one minute he was grazing leaves, the next he was on the
move, and I was in his path! Lambert grabbed my backpack and yanked me
backwards out of the silverback’s way as he brushed past me. Just in time. He
lumbered past us and for the first time we could really see his incredible
silverback. No it’s not just a formidable name.
An adult male gorilla weights about 170kg and is considered
mature at 12 years. Silverbacks generally leave their original family with one
or two other young males and remain together until they are able to attract
their own group of females. This particular family is about 30
gorillas, the
silverback, his ladies, and a number of babies and young males. Lambert himself
has been working with this particular family for 30 years and it is for this
reason that we can stand here right now. These gorillas have been habituated
with humans, they know that we mean them no harm and while they don’t know us,
they know and trust Lambert. He can identify and tell the story of each
individual.
The silverback was still walking away from us when he
stopped and started to urinate. A great golden stream of steaming liquid,
shortly we smelled its deep rank odor too. “He’s pissing,” Lambert helpfully
informed us in a loud whisper.
The sliverback lumbered further away and up a hill. Lambert
asked us if we wanted to follow. Um..YES! So we scrambled up through the vines
following him. He stopped about 25 meters from where we first spotted him and plunked
down in the same position, delicately munching leaves and occasionally swatting
flies. We stood about 3 meters away and he looked me straight in the eye, and
then lunged straight at me, stopping about 1 meter from my face and returning
to his original position. My heart jumped behind Tristan, and Lambert had to
stop me from falling down the hill. Holy Shit! “Don’t worry, he’s just bluffing,”
advised Lambert under his breath, as if to prevent the silverback from hearing
his counsel. After a few more minutes of staring at each other from behind our
masks and wondering if we were going to be charged again Lambert gently
suggested that it was time to give him a break and visit some of the others. We
agreed, taking one last, one more last, and one very last look, knowing this
may be our only chance to see this magnificent creature and his family in the
wild.
***The End***
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| The silverback and his silverback |
