The achievement of a resolution

Damn, you have to be REALLY motivated to post anything from here - this is taking me FOREVER!! The trials and tribulations of blogging from the middle of Africa, I suppose. I'll add the photos tomorrow, when I'm back in Kinshasa with a better connection. If you're reading this, I'm doing a little jubilatory dance in the hotel cybercafe!

While I was busy making unreasonable New Year’s resolutions about buying property, taking time off work to go travelling the world (who said resolutions had to be compatible?), unearthing the Fun in Kinshasa, and buying myself a digital SLR (who said resolutions had to involve some measure of self-sacrifice?), F.’s resolution was of far more practical nature: to go see the mountain gorillas in the east.

Well, the Forces that Be were clearly on his side: eight days into the new year, a mere 24 hours after returning to Kinshasa, our friends call us to ask if we want to join them on a six-day expedition to the Kivus, to climb the volcano near Goma, and to go see the eastern lowland gorillas near Bukavu. Having only just come back from a wonderful safari in Malawi, we didn’t feel we could justify yet another indulgence – goody goody two shoes that we are – and we declined the invitation, preferring instead to work throughout the three-day bank holiday (to commemorate, respectively, the deaths of Cardinal Etsou, Kabila Father and Patrice Lumumba – January is a bad month for Congolese ‘heroes’). Thankfully, the Forces that Be decided to give us a second chance: just a few days later I came home from work with my monitoring plan for the next few weeks, Goma and Bukavu top of the list, and F. countered with the news that he had to go register some equipment in…Goma and Bukavu. Too good to be true.

So we hopped on a plane, and we hopped on a boat, and after setting up our meetings for the next few days, we made our way to the entrance of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, some 50kms west of Bukavu, near the border with Rwanda and Burundi. By mid-morning on Sunday we were trekking single-file through the bush under curtains of rain, following an elderly tracker as he hacked a passage through the undergrowth with his machete, only turning from time to time to show off his single tooth in a broad grin aimed at no one in particular, and accompanied by a handful of armed park guards. We walked like this for about an hour, with the guards pointing out the different places where the gorillas can usually be found: “This is where your friends saw them last week, and this is where the visitors saw them yesterday, and look here is some gorilla dung that shows they were here this morning.” Still we trekked on, seeking the gorillas as they sheltered from the rain. And suddenly there they were. Meet Chimanuka and his family.

The 250 kilo silverback was sitting under a tree some two meters away (yes, that’s right, TWO meters away), and after a half-hearted attempt at intimidating us with a bit of chest-pounding and a pretend charge, he went back to munching greedily on his lunch. I was a bit worried when the elderly tracker insisted on hacking away the tall grasses around him so we would have a better angle for our cameras, but Papa Gorilla didn’t seem to mind in the least. Meanwhile, a couple of child gorillas stared at us intently from the safety of a nearby tree. But where was Mama Gorilla? One of the guards pointed nonchalantly behind us, and sure enough one of the females was sitting just there on the path we had made, cuddling a small baby close to her and looking at us suspiciously. We must have passed right next to her without even noticing.

When the female realised that we weren’t moving out of her way, she came towards us, then leapt effortlessly into the tall grasses beside us and promptly disappeared. The silverback followed, and so did we. We found him sitting regally a few metres away, like one of those fat Buddha sculptures with the big belly and hanging tits, and two of his kids (twins, we were told subsequently) playing together just behind him. One of them promptly skipped over to examine us more closely, while his papa warned him with a few grunts to keep a safe distance. The kid then skipped back to his brother and did a little performance: a cartwheel, a wave of the arms, beating of the chest, and then he energetically jumped on top of his brother who promptly toppled him into the tall grasses. Okay, I’ve kept it in long enough: SOOOOOOO CUUUTE!!! F. took a short video.

We stayed maybe half an hour altogether, and the experience was unforgettable. Gorillas are such stately, majestic animals. I never thought we would get that close, that they would be so unperturbed by our presence, while still making clear their imposing superiority. Right at the end, as we were turning to leave, we spotted Mama Gorilla and her baby hidden in the tall grasses just to our right, within touching distance. Such a big animal, and we had failed to notice her altogether. I still wonder how humans ever made it to the top of the food chain.