MOUNTAIN GORILLAS

[Martin Hash]

Mountain Gorillas.JPG

Half of the world’s Mountain Gorillas are in Uganda, approximately 350. They are protected by the communities that surround them and by many uniformed men with machine guns.

After driving at night on rutted, winding dirt roads through terraced mountainsides for over four hours, we ended up at Bwindi Campground, site of one of the worst tourist massacre in Africa, around 9 pm. Dinner, mushy rice and soggy vegetables, was five dollars. Similarly-priced, breakfast was an egg and passion-fruit, and lunch was a banana, hardboiled egg, and buttered bread. Our room (approximately forty-five dollars) was bare and dirty but the mattress was firm, the linen clean, and given enough time, the shower hot. However, there was no sink and a full-length mirror leaned unnaturally against the wall.

In the morning, the view from our room was magnificent – something right out of the movie, “Gorillas In The Mist.” There was heavy dew on the ground and everything was bright, bright green. After a one hour lecture describing the gorilla troop we were going to: their names, ages, and personalities, and social structure: we spent another hour driving even further into the mountains before arriving at our starting point. One thing that struck me as incongruent was the size and sophistication of the surrounding human population – the gorillas literally lived in a jungle, heavily interspersed with roads, farms, and mud-brick dwellings.

The gorillas are tracked daily by the people who live around their habitat. These people wear the militaristic uniforms of the Uganda Wildlife Association (UWA) with matching caps. We hired a local porter, Moses, primarily as a means of supporting the community, considering that he carried our pack perhaps only a hundred yards. The remaining dozen or so potential porters seemed disappointed that only one of their number was needed. We were also accompanied by an AK-47 toting security soldier, our guide, Sunday, and two trackers.

We walked for perhaps ten minutes through dense jungle. Sunday was quick to sickle away branches and vines – it definitely felt like a gorilla safari. Abruptly, we stopped… The guides pointed high into the forest canopy where we could just make something black out through the binoculars. It seemed anticlimactic – all this way for far off sighting. Then, a female gorilla with a baby on the ground moved just ahead of us, barely visible through the foliage. My hair stood on end.

After another ten minutes, the large silverback came down from his feeding high in the trees, followed by his troop of seventeen, with four or five very young ones among them. Once on the jungle floor they ceased any productive activity, instead lounged about for our entertainment while the young ones amused themselves grappling with one another. The gorillas were habituated to human watchers but kept at least ten feet away.

The air was moist but not humid, the temperature perfect. No insects bothered us. The constant background chorus of birds and other wildlife calls kept us company, plus the gorillas were prodigious farters – their low calorie, high fiber diet being the most obvious culprit. I wrote this essay crouched on the jungle floor, observing intently. Our time was limited to one hour, counted down at ten minutes and three minutes, ostensively to let the gorillas return to their food gathering.

I left Tarzan #1 among the fecund undergrowth, not a dozen feet from the silverback in the background. iPhone service was sporadic but I got a good GPS lock on our location and lots of pictures.