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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment