Gorilla gorilla gorilla

I wanted to back date some posts, but internet and time wont permit this, so I've only got the chance to add one more, so I thought I'd give you another blast of gorilla habituation. This contact was only made a few weeks ago, but far surpassed any of my expectations, and since then they've only been getting better. Photos are mixed, taken during the past month from different contacts, but show just how rewarding all the hours of swamp walking and crossing can actually be.

19/07/2012
Just had to give Jorice his monthly pay. Feels really weird, because we’re work colleges, but its like I’m his boss now. And hes far older than me. Doesn’t seem right somehow. Going to feel a hell of a lot weirder with or Loic, because hes effectively my boss, and yet I’m going to be paying him. So yeah, I’m now in charge of all project finances whilst Chris has gone off for his month and a bit holiday. This means I have all the project money, have to do all the accounts, keeping note of everything spent on the economat, pay all the eco-guides, and pay the trackers when they leave, and then do all the finances for the trip to Waka when we go to pick up 4 more trackers. That’s a lot of responsibility when pretty much everyone I’m paying is earning more than me. But, at the same time I’m really happy that I’m having to do all this, its really, really good experience to have, puts me in a much better stead for when I finish.

And I have another 5 months to go. That’s a weird thought too. Like everything got reset, back to year 0. Still not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I think its definitely worth it considering the extra experience I’m gaining of being in charge of the project finances. Especially considering I am still only 22. Definitely need to keep reminding myself of that.

Yesterday the trackers returned from the forest saying that they’d finally found the Atananga group. I think its been at least about 2 weeks since we’d seen them, so we were all really happy. This meant that today we went out to where they’d left them, and pretty soon found their tracks, which lead to a set of fresh nests. We found the direction of their travel, across the arm of a swamp, and smelt the unmistakable smell of gorilla, meaning that they must surely be close. We crossed, and found where they’d just been feeding in a vitex tree. Smelling them again, we carried on following the trail, which then went abruptly cold as they’d presumably entered the dry forest. Whilst we were all turning in the small area to try and find some sign, any sign of the gorilla, we hear a chest beat reverberate across the swamp, and then the barking of gorilla. We deduced that it must have come from the other side of the swamp, in Mamma Helen, but despite searching the boarder, we could find no evidence that the gorilla had traversed, and then finally we found a fresh set of tracks in the opposite direction to where we’d heard the vocalizations. The chest beating and barking must have come from a second group of gorilla who were over the other side of the swamp, and was presumably a warning to the Atananga group not to come over. What I think happened was that the Atananga group were feeding on our side of the boarder, whilst there was another group feeding on the opposite side, and eventually the Atananga group moved off in the opposite direction to the other group. But when we followed the tracks, and as I said we must have been close as we could smell the gorilla, the other group heard us on the boarder and thought that the Atananga group was still there feeding, and so chest beat and barked a warning. Pretty cool.

So we followed the tracks away from the boarder of the swamp, and up a baffon, finding really fresh signs showing just how close they must have been, until eventually the gorilla had entered the dry forest at the end of the baffon. Here we tried to followed, but found it difficult as usual, until Kamaya made if easy for us by soft barking. Success! Finally! My first gorilla in 14 days! Genuinely excellent. And it gets far better than this.

Chillaxing with the gorilla. Evidently its a hard life watching the Atananga group.

Moutchie wanders out of the forest, and sits around 20 meters away, with his mother sat in the background. He comes forward, approaching us, and I try to take some photos. The clicking of the camera prompts him to stand up, and make a tiny chest beat, then pull some of the vegetation in a display. This in turn causes his mother to floor slap, and eventually moutchi makes a little charge, and then patters off into the forest, disappearing amongst the vegetation. We sit for a long time, with Kamaya sleeping in front of us, whilst every now and again he sits up to pull a few leaves off a bush and eat them, then lies down again. Hes gets up and moves off, and immediately we follow, finding him sat around 10 meters away. Over and over this happens, every time him greeting us with a ‘woo-woo-woo’, and over and over we see the little juvenile. The group stops to rest again, and we sit with Kamaya at about 15 meters from us. Almost immediately Moutchie comes out of the bushes again, this time not 8 meters directly in front of me, out in the open. His mother follows at a distance of about 10 meters, at first unawares of our presence, but she quickly realizes, stops, and then lies down whilst watching us. It is incredible. To my right I have a silver back gorilla at 15 meters, directly in front of me a juvenile at 8, and behind and a little to the left of him, an adult female at 10. It is one of the best experiences of gorilla I’ve had since being out here. Moutchie does his usual tricks, pulling the lianes, chest beating, and just sitting watching us as curiously as we’re watching him. After 10 minutes he moves off again, following his mother, and we sit watching as we see the shadowy movement of at least 3 adult females moving off. We followed, and managed to catch a glimpse of the adult female with her infant riding on her back crossing the path in front of us, and then two more females, a juvenile and finally the male.

Kamaya sitting not 10 meters from me, taken a week or so after this post, but still wicked.

Again they move off, with us following quickly behind. We were too quick, and Kamaya barked a warning, whilst a female screamed, but unperturbed, after they’d finished we pushed on. We had Kamaya directly in front of us in the bushes, and we walked in his direction. Then I see movement out of the corner of my eye and turn to see Kamaya walking through the forest not 10 meters behind and to the left of me. So I call to Loic and tell him that the male is right there. Loic turns, looks, and replies simply with “Je connais, on suivre les females”, and we continued after the rest of the group, with Kamaya right behind us. We’d effectively just side stepped a silver back and he didn’t make a noise. I felt kind of sorry for him, wondering if he felt slightly inadequate. After about 50 meters though, we weren’t sure which direction the gorilla had taken, and at this point Kamaya passed parallel to us making a little display by pulling some saplings as he went off after his ladies, giving us the bearings we needed. We caught up with the male again, as watched as he dragged a huge branch of baphia up the side of a baffon then sat to eat it, before upping and moving again. Again we find them, but the females scream and the male barks, and they moved on. Eventually Kamaya decides the time is right, or I don’t know, this patch of forest is especially good, or he just got frustrated with trying, and failing, to shake us off, but either way the gorilla finally stop moving and they all sit down to rest some more.

The adult female, called quite simply, 'Le female avec le rouge tete'. At least its descriptive. Shes a bit of a character, often floor slapping and chest beating at us.

We sit for about half an hour with Kamaya resting at 10 meters, and once again Mouchie comes out to satisfy his curiosity, this time to less than 5 meters from me, his mother watching from 8. I see another adult female watching from a gap in the bushes at about 15 meters, so I pick up my camera to take a photo, and at this instance she starts hooting. This prompts the male to get up, and charge to 5 meters all mouth and teeth and barks. He stands, looking over us as we all sit avoiding eye contact. I glance up to see if hes still there, and catch the adult female who originally hooted still sat watching the proceedings, joined by another female. It reminded me of two old ladies sat watching their favorite soap opera, which they themselves have just created. After the spectacle is over, the ladies move off, and we move forward.

Suddenly the adult female Essombay rushes through the foliage screaming at us as she charges to within 5 meters then running off. The male barks and rushes forwards, and at first we think its to charge us too, but instead he chases after the female, and on reaching her smacks her back using both his fists with full force. He sits there, at around 10 meters holding Essombay down on her front, directly in front of us. They stay like this for about a minute, until Kamaya relents and Essombay slowly walks off to join the rest of the group, followed by the silver back. We all look around at each other in amazement after having just witnessed this show of brutal enforcement.

The gorilla stopped next at the base of a big old saccoglottis tree, where the group spread out and started to forage for the fallen fruit. At different points we could watch the male putting each fruit into his mouth then delicately maneuvering it with his lips and tongue to scrape the flesh from the seed, a female picking through the leaf litter, and finally Moutchie carefully picking up each fruit and holding it to his mouth as he tenderly ate the flesh, allowing me to take some stunning photos.

One of the juveniles of the Atananga group, 'Moutchie'

The last we saw of the gorilla, Kamaya was stood to attention just at one of the crossings they use through the mangroves, normally over to Cola (I say normally, because after they’d ‘crossed’ we went over to pick things up on the other side, where we found zilch. They hadn’t crossed, the gorilla were just playing games with us…).

It was an utterly fantastic day, and as I’ve said before, quite possibly one of the best I’ve had with the gorilla, which can often be so damn illusive when they want to be. But this time, we managed to see every member of the group, from the tiny infant to the massive silver back. Its days like these that easily justify the hours and hours of swamp walking, crossing and relentless boarders of the dry season.

Birthday Beast

So I signed off claiming I’d be back to update as much as possible, but unfortunately that fell by the way side. Seems like all I do on here is apologize… But this is life. You set out to achieve certain goals, and for some reason or another, you get distracted, have too much of a good time (or bad), or simply forget about them, and they never get completed. This blog turned into a victim of many of the above when I was in Malawi and the months after. But by some miracle, there is actually wi-fi at the lodge, and more amazingly at the brigade (eco-guard HQ), and on my rare few trips out, I’ll see what I can do while checking e-mails. I mean, last time I could even surf the web on my kindle…a-maz-ing.

I thought I’d just post a few of the entries I’ve been keeping on my hard drive as a diary come blog posts, and as it was just my birthday (thanks for all the messages everyone, much appreciated), I thought I’d start by letting you lot know what I got up and how I spent the day, which far exceeded my expectations…

03/07/2012
Its been a very good few days. Was evidently my birthday, which everyone found out to their great amazement that I was only turning 22 (“You’re so young!”). Started off with that god awful start of 0550, which despite my alarm failing to go off, I still woke up on time in order to get up, heat water for coffee, and then cook pasta and sauce for everyone while the sun rose and the mosquitoes fed.

After this we were off to the forest, taking the daily boat commute over to Cola to try and pick up where the others left off the day before, which we quite rapidly did. We managed to follow the tracks from yesterday, through the forest and along the boarders of the swamps, finding a mixture of feeding signs, such as where they’d been feeding in a myrianthus tree or little piles of Cola flavoulatina leaves they’d been snacking on, and tracks in the mud. After around two hours of walking, and one swamp crossing later, we managed to follow the trail until their nests from the previous night, and so the race began. Quite simply (and obviously), we now have to walk faster than the gorillas. But whilst they just wander through the forest stopping and feeding at their will, we have to search for their tracks, determine their direction, and often make predictions based on our knowledge of them, their habits and the geography of the forest.

The almost daily morning boat trip out to search for the gorilla

We followed the tracks north, the gorillas making it easy for us by following the boarder of the Bonne Terre swamp, meaning they we’re leaving behind lots of helpful tracks and feeding signs, until finally they cross another arm of the swamp and Loic stops and gets out his mask, simply pointing at a wet patch on the dry leaves. Fresh gorilla urine, they’re close. We all take our masks out in preparation and continue, splitting into two teams, one to walk the boarder, whilst my team walked in the forest. Not an hour from when we found their nests, and minutes from finding their urine, when we start in the forest we hear the gorilla barking, and turn to see the male, Kamaya, watching us. We had found them. I take my camera out, and try to take a few photos, forced to use the manual focus as its too difficult to use auto when there’s lots of leaves and branches in between the camera and the subject, and the fact that the gorilla hate the noise it makes. I wouldn’t know until I return to camp whether they came out or not. And so we all settled down to watch as the Kamaya sat about 20 meters away watching us, and then an adult female came into view about 30 meters away to observe, and then sleep in front of us. It has to be said, I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day simply due to the fact that we’d actually managed to find them on my birthday, I was so happy. After about half an hour of relaxing with the gorilla, the female decided to strut her stuff, and did a little display of floor slapping as they often do, and eventually Kamaya joined in as we heard the ‘pok-pok-pok’ of a chest beat echoing though the foliage.

The beautiful silver back of the Atananga group, 'Kamaya'

Eventually the gorilla decided to move on, and we saw another adult female and a juvenile passing off, and we followed them, being greeting with the males little reassuring soft barks, until we followed a bit too close and heard the screams of an adult female as she obviously felt threatened by us. This in turn caused Kamaya to bark as they continued to wander off. As we were following, every so often we’d come across Kamaya just sat there, not 10 meters away, eating leaves or bark and keeping an eye on us as he let the females move off in front, doing his protective male thing, until eventually they decided to stop and rest and feed again. It’s clearly a hard life for the gorilla.

After maybe 20 minutes, and we’d taken lunch, we went after the gorilla again, who’d already moved off. We were following them, as usual, in dense forest, and pretty much managed to stumble upon the poor things as they were sleeping. I judged us to have been at about 15 meters and the females screamed and ran back by about another 10 before they settled, with Kamaya barking and coming towards us to about 10 meters. Now when I say the females were screaming, its hard to describe exactly how horrible a sound this actually is, and how distressing it can make you feel knowing that you caused it. Almost sounds like a woman being beaten. We’re evidently trying to win the gorillas trust (and especially the females), and so when they scream you often can’t help but think what you’re doing is wrong, even if it necessarily isn’t. Its now got to the point where its important we’re pushing them, trying to get as close as possible, and show them that we’re no harm. It’s the getting as close as possible that’s the problem, and whilst this is fairly easy with Kamaya, its proving fairly difficult with the females, who often scream and back off.

Mid birthday contact with two of the four trackers Alphonse and Ekoba

So after this, we evidently stopped where we were and sat down, waiting for the gorilla to calm down, whilst listening to Kamaya about 10 meters in the bushes feeding, as he formed a physical barrier between us and his group. Finally the little juvenile Moutchie managed to pluck up the courage and came out to see what all the fuss was about, before he moved off, with Kamaya following suit. And so we moved on to follow again thinking they’d all upped and left, but apparently not. The forest peace again was shattered as the females screamed again and again, and the male started his aggressive barking. After a few seconds, all settled down again, and Kamaya took to resting 10 meters away in full sight. We could watch him as he lay on his stomach with his head on his hands, then as he rolled over onto on side, with his arms bent and head resting on them whilst he dozed. I love watching Kamaya sleep, mainly because his postures are so human like, some of which I’ve found myself doing in the past. My absolute favorite is when he lies on his back with on leg propped up against a tree, and the other crossed over it. So chilled.

Eventually the gorillas upped and left, and I said this to the trackers, who appeared to be imitating the gorilla with their heads propped up by their bags, who told me that no, the gorilla were still there. As they’re often far batter at seeing and knowing where the gorilla are, I took their word for it and sat down, until 20 minutes later when Loic came over and asked where the gorilla where, and the trackers told him that they’d left. Typical. Anyway, after this, it took an age to find which direction the gorilla had left in, as they’d done a loop in the forest crossing over where we’d already followed them, meaning we had tracks going in all directions. After maybe an hour we finally managed to find the correct set of prints and followed them, but unfortunately they’d had too much of a head start, and we didn’t managed to find them again.

But we did at least manage to play a round of the game: elephant or gorilla? As weird as it sounds, the two animals appear pretty much identical when encountered in dense forest, when all you can hear and see is the rustling and pulling of vegetation. So when Loic stopped and pointed to a clump of bushes, and said that the gorilla where there, I took up my binoculars and pointed them to a patch of vibrating branches, just waiting to see if the trace of a gorilla could be seen. Instead, the whole view was obscured as a huge male elephant with big tusks sauntered out. He was so close that I couldn’t even see him all in the binoculars, just his back and ears. So I lowered the binoculars, and sure enough, he was stood not 15 meters away apparently unawares of our presence as he then started to wander over in our direction. We backed off about another 5 meters (or in the trackers case, another 20), and eventually he smelt us, stopped, then decided to walk in another direction and avoid the stinking people.

I was genuinely so made up with the fact that I was able to see the gorilla on my birthday (and even more so, take some photos), and to top it all off we even found an elephant. So when I got back to camp, my spirits were well and truly high as I was greeted by the Ozouga lot as they’d all come over for the night so we could have a party. The perfect end to a perfect day in the forest.

We had a lot of pastis, scotch, rum, wine and beer, so we definitely weren’t going to run dry. We ate and then drank and danced all night, knowing in safety that we weren’t going to be going into the forest the next day. The chief for the lagoon even came over to join in and say happy birthday, which was wicked and really nice. We stayed up late drinking and dancing, pumping music and laughter out into the thick warm rainforest night (for once it wasn’t cold at night, or was that just all the alcohol and dancing?) and out over the still lagoon whose dark waters were a perfect mirror reflecting the shimmering stars and bright moon. For once we were drowning out the continual chirp and croak of the forest, but the forest eventually won as the noise was swallowed up by the black night, the glittering stars and the impenetrable vegetation surrounding camp. After more than enough to drink, too much dancing, and far too many incriminating photos, the party broke up and we all drifted off to various parts of the camp in twos and threes, till sleep came heavy and thick and it was called a night. The next morning I awoke again to the clicking and calling of the forest, as if she was reasserting her territory, and reminding us that whilst we were only temporary, she was here to stay.

Dancing the night away. Photo wonky due to too much alcohol, or uneven surface? You decide.

The next day was spent with everyone lazing about camp, whilst the trackers who’d taken all the left over alcohol (including my unopened bottle of wine and half a bottle of rum, I mean seriously, you cant leave anything out around here) carried on drinking. I was so damn tired I pretty much slept through most of the day, waking up periodically only to eat or play cards (check, uno, finish), and then everyone was in bed by about 2000 in order to get up the next morning and go out looking for the gorilla.

So all in all, I had a really fantastic birthday, and its not going to be one I forget in a hurry.