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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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