Rwandese Mountain Gorillas

We saw them.

On Saturday, August 21, after getting security clearance from the UN offices in New York and Kigali the previous day, we rose at 5AM - a feat made difficult the previous night not so much by the late meeting we had with the mission chief, in which we assured him that for a day off we would complete a specific volume of work by the end of the weekend, as by the rhythmic drum celebration that took place by the swimming pool at our hotel, vibrating the panes of our glass balcony doors until after midnight. In town we met our military escort of four armed soldiers who would ride with us as far as Ruhengeri, the town closest to the volcano on whose slopes the gorillas live. We loaded into two four-wheel drive RVs for the ninety minute drive, during which we followed our soldiers, who sat on benches facing sideways on the back of a Toyota pickup truck, which, perhaps for security reasons or perhaps to recognize the importance of the IMF mission and the government authorities who accompanied us, led us at speeds of up to a hundred miles an hour, as we passed through beautiful steep terrain whose cultivated plots made quilt patterns on the sides of the green hills. We passed thousands of people of all ages on their way to regional markets, carrying huge baskets, bags, and wooden objects on their heads. About a third of the people carried tomatoes, while others carried bananas, sugarcane, yams, manioc root, firewood, and wood tables. We passed by 20-foot-high, smoky pyramids of mud bricks with fires built underneath to cook them in the middle of the marshy fields that they had been carved out of.

There are three main species of gorillas in the world: two lowland species and one mountain species. Tens of thousands of the two lowland varieties live throughout central Africa, including in Congo, Gabon, and Central African Republic, as well as in zoos throughout the world. But, because of destruction of their habitat and poaching, fewer than 700 of the mountain species of gorilla remain alive today. They live in two separate colonies of roughly equal size; one in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, and the other in the volcanic Virunga Mountain Range, straddling Uganda, Congo, and Rwanda, that we were headed to.

At about 9:00 - after stopping at the prefecture in Ruhengeri to get our final papers and because we had to wait for the return of our guides, who had gone out ahead of us to scout out where the gorillas were that morning - we drove up a hill to a one-room outpost where the full military escort that would accompany us on the final leg of the journey up the side of the volcano to the gorillas' habitat had assembled. It included 20 soldiers carrying machetes, automatic rifles with multiple clips and tripods, and rocket launchers. Most looked like teenagers, including the boy who carried the rockets, who looked like he was sixteen. When I asked him if I could take his picture he walked away without saying anything. We noticed that it was much cooler there than in Kigali. We were told that we might want to put on shirts with long sleeves both for warmth and to protect us from the vegetation along the paths.

(Click on the small pictures to see larger versions.)

The high level of security was provided both for show and as a precaution. In March, 31 tourists visiting the gorillas in Uganda were taken hostage by rebels who were armed with submachine guns and who may have been from the militia which led the 1994 massacre against Tutsis in Rwanda. Some of the hostages escaped, but 14 of them were marched into the jungle, where eight of them were killed with machetes and clubs, including two women who were killed because they fell behind during the march. The other hostages - who included a Swissair flight attendant who was on holiday to help recover from the trauma of losing her friends on the Swissair flight that went down over Nova Scotia, a flight she would have been on as well except that she happened to be off duty that day - were released with a warning to western nations not to do business with the Rwandan government. Some of the rebels were tracked down and killed, but President Museveni of Uganda later made an announcement admitting that the Ugandan authorities had not provided adequate security in view of this known threat.

The Rwandans were not planning on making any similar announcement. Although the security situation in the area had greatly improved as a result of the recent treaty signed by most of the warring parties in Congo, hostilities had not completely ceased, and there would always be a danger of meeting poachers. The government was well aware what the already limited prospects for tourism would be like in Rwanda during the next decade if any incident were to occur.

We continued up a rough, rocky path to the foot of the volcano, from which we had views of the surrounding mountains and other volcanoes. All were completely covered by forest, even though the highest peak reached 4,507 meters. Around us we saw good land that was not being cultivated, including some that we knew had been abandoned because we could see traces of plowed rows. Below us, towards the town, we could see new, solidly-built, mud-brick houses with tin roofs that had been provided to people displaced in 1994, as well as some previously-existing, mud-and-stick shelters that had been fortified with trademark blue, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, plastic sheets.

After we had gotten out of the cars and formed a group, a park guide made a presentation. We were allowed one hour with the gorillas. While in their presence we were not to talk, and we were to put away or leave behind all food and water. If we had to cough, we were to turn away to protect them from our germs, which are dangerous to them. We were to remain at a distance of at least seven meters. If they acted threatening in any way we were to obey the orders of the guide, and in no case were we to start running. We could take pictures, but not use a flash. He assured us that the guides knew all of the paths, so we would not get lost, and that they could find the gorillas because they knew where they moved about, and could smell them when they were near. A handful of the soldiers remained with us during this talk; the rest marched ahead to secure a safe perimeter around the gorillas' area.

At 9:30 we started hiking into the forest, which varied from thick bushes and ferns, to dark bamboo forest without undergrowth, to open field, to heavy forest with undergrowth so dense that in places we had to crawl on our hands and knees to pass under creeping vines and tangled branches. Many of the ferns had stinging needles that would leave an uncomfortable, tingling itch for up to 30 minutes. I had the misfortune at one point to firmly grab the stem of one when I lost my balance. The needles were fine and would easily slip through cloth, so our pants and long shirts gave only minimal protection. There were vines along the ground that would catch your feet and you would trip and fall if you were not careful, as happened to the boy carrying the rockets while he was walking directly in front of me.

At 10:30, as we came into an area with scattered trees and thick bushes, the lead guide motioned to us to stop and be quiet. He and the other guides began making low, purring grunts while standing on their toes and peering into the bushes. Our group pressed together as we all wanted to be close enough to him see the gorillas, but far enough behind him to be safe. Twenty feet in front of us we saw the bushes shake violently. We were told to crouch down and be silent and we waited in this position for several minutes. An aggressive grunt came from the bushes a few feet away and, startled, we recoiled and got set to retreat, but the guides indicated that we should stay down. After another minute, during which the guides continued to call to the gorillas, the lead guide motioned to us to move forward a few feet. Pushing down the bushes in front of us, he revealed a baby gorilla hanging from a branch, about seven meters away, staring at us like a human toddler seeing TV for the first time. Although he was only six months old, he was strong enough to do flips while holding onto branches with both hands. As we quietly shifted about to take pictures and give everyone a look, the mother raised her head into sight; it was tipped back and her expression was relaxed, as though she were reclining on her favorite sofa.

Suddenly a loud grunt came from the bushes on the other side of us. We were surrounded. A guide moved towards the noise to investigate, and then motioned to us to carefully and quietly join him. Forty feet away, across some low bushes, we saw the head and enormous shoulders of the chief gorilla. He looked like a surly bouncer at an unsavory bar. He stared at us for a few moments and then sunk into the bushes; it was the last we saw of him.

At this point we could tell from their receding noises and from the movements of the bushes farther down the path that the gorillas were moving away from us, so we followed them. We were no longer walking on ground, but on a mat of leaves and vines several feet thick. If you stepped carelessly onto a soft spot you would fall through up to your hip. In some places you could hold onto a vine or branch for support, but in many places these were too low to be of use or were covered with needles. We moved slowly for a couple of hundred yards, as the guides grunted and sniffed the air, and came to a narrow path that ended in front of a cluster of tall bushes. A long vine that one of us was holding onto began moving, rapidly disappearing into these bushes. Inside them, we saw an adult gorilla; staring at us, eating the vine, shifting about, and periodically beating his chest at us.

As we squeezed together and milled about in the confined area to see, the guide at the rear of our group suddenly called out to us all to step aside. Following urgent signs from our guides, we spread out into a single line, economists, officials, guides, and soldiers, and leaned back against the bushes along the left side of the path. As we stood like this at attention, perhaps twenty of us, with our backs straight and our stomachs sucked in, like infantry being inspected by a general on horseback, the mother gorilla came up the path behind us with her baby on her back. Giving no indication that she noticed a difference between the ferns to her right and the human legs to her left, she passed alongside us, joining her companion that we had been watching in the bushes in front of us.

Hey! We've been waiting for over an hour in this line. How come they get to just walk right in?

At this point we had only fifteen minutes remaining of our hour with the gorillas. We circled around to their rear in an attempt to see or to coax out the chief gorilla for another view, but without success, although we had more views of the young gorillas. At 11:30 we started back along the path to the cars, where we signed guestbooks, thanked the guides, and made some donations to the conservation of the park. We returned along the bumpy volcano road and then took the southwest road to Gisenyi, a town on the border with Congo, to have lunch in a restaurant on the beach by lake Kivu. The scenery along this route was even more beautiful than on the route to Ruhengeri because the hills were more jagged and dramatic and there were more high points along the road where we had good views. We saw many tea plantations and refugee settlements. At the restaurant we could see the point along the northern side of the lake which was by Goma, the site of the Hutu refugee camp in Congo, and across the lake we could make out the silhouettes of mountains in Congo. Although the food in the restaurant was not bad, the service was slow, and at 4:30 we had to hurriedly pay the check and get on the road so we could return to Kigali by dark. UN security guidelines recommend not leaving the region later than 3:30 in the afternoon, but it would have been inconvenient for us to remain there for the night and it was not clear that this would be safer than returning to Kigali shortly past dark. We quickly retraced the same route, which was hazier in the humid afternoon air, and was less crowded with foot traffic along the road. There was a slow flow of people returning from market with half-full baskets of unsold tomatoes. We made it to Kigali just by nightfall.

Here are some mud bricks being cooked in pyramids.

Here is a New York Times article about the conservation of the gorillas' habitat.

Here are a couple of pictures of the genocide memorial outside Kigali.

Here is the elegant Central Bank.

And finally, here is where we play a game of tennis once in a while.
<> Joe Crowley, Washington DC