A Forest in the Clouds

by John Fowler

  It was getting dark as we trudged back into camp at curfew. I knew Dian would be pacing the floor of her cabin not only waiting for news of Nunkie, but any sign of the three of us. Behind us, the sky glowed red as if the sun was setting in the south. The jagged monolith of Mount Mikeno formed a dramatic silhouette against the backdrop of fire from its active erupting sister, Mount Nyamuragira, which kept the sunset alive with a fire of her own.

  Back in camp, her French visitors having departed, Dian was alone again. Inside her cabin, Stuart and I sat on the step that separated Dian’s raised dining area from the split-level sunken living room. Dian was disappointed that we had not found Nunkie’s Group, but instead of launching into an emotional tirade, she thanked Stuart and me for making such a long trek.

  “Reeeally and truuuly, I know you guys must be tired,” Dian said, coming out of the kitchen and surprising us with bottles of cold Primus from her kerosene refrigerator—we had done good, and Dian was rewarding us. Next, Dian handed Stuart and me some tiny soup bouillon cubes wrapped in gold foil.

  “Here, you can eat these cheeses,” she said, “If you have the patience to unwrap them. I know I don’t.” In Dian’s refrigerator, I had seen a small cardboard tray of foil-wrapped cheese cubes with a little laughing cow head on each. These were not those. Hungry as I was, instead of pointing out her mistake, I quietly ate one of the bouillon cubes she had just given us, grimacing and rinsing away the strong salty flavor with several swigs of beer.

  By the light of the pressure lantern, Rwelekana unwrapped each lobe of gorilla dung and sorted them by size on the floor. Dian put her reading glasses on and examined each piece, poking and prodding with a pencil. After studying our sketches of the nest layout, she told us that she thought we had found the trail of Group 13, a fringe group that usually stayed out of Karisoke’s research range. Dian informed us that Amy Vedder was now contacting this group regularly from the base of the mountain, to habituate it for tourist visits.

  “Eht mwaaah . . . Group 13 is on the other side of Visoke trying to get away from that cunt!” Dian muttered. As if to get the bad taste from her mouth at mere mention of her archnemesis, Mademoiselli leaned sideways and spit on the floor with contempt.

  Stuart and I had been back at our cabin for less than an hour before Dian knocked on Stuart’s door. From my unlit room, I peeked through the open door into his side of our cabin.

  “You guuuuys,” Dian said, drawing out her words in the childlike whine she often used. “Come onnn . . . You’ve GOT to see this.”

  “See what?” Stuart asked.

  “The sky is red! A volcano is erupting!”

  “Oh yeah . . . it’s Mount Nyamuragira,” Stuart said. “We got a really good look at it today from the other side of Visoke.”

  I dropped back into the shadow of my room, surprised that she didn’t know about the eruption.

  “Ehht mwaaah . . . hmmm whaaah . . .” Dian grumbled, deflated and scowling. “You knew about this?”

  “They told us in Kigali,” Stuart said.

  “Eht mwaaaah! How come everybody knew about this except me?”

  “It’s been erupting about a month now. I thought you knew!”

  “Well this is too special to miss.” Dian exclaimed, shaking off her disappointment. “You’ve got to come see it with me.”

  Thinking, hoping really, that she didn’t mean me too, I tried to skulk back into the shadows of my room.

  “John . . . you need to come too.”

  Oh crap! I’m not getting outta this. Stuart and I put our jackets on and followed Dian into the night, trailing her and her bobbling flashlight up the path. Peter’s light was on as we passed his cabin, but Dian didn’t bother to rouse him. Lucky bastard, I thought. Still, it was an obvious slight to Peter from Dian, for her not to include him. Past her cabin, we followed Dian to the edge of the meadow and stared southwestward. Mount Nyamuragira’s false sunset flared crimson from behind Mikeno’s towering silhouette, as it had when Stuart and I returned with Rwelekana at dusk. Dian’s cheerful mood was almost giddy while the three of us stood admiring the lighted sky. It was truly a beautiful scene, and I was buoyed by it, but by now well aware that Dian’s moods were as changeable as Nyamuragira, and the climate we were in.

  “Okay, I know you guys are tired from your hike today,” Dian said after a few minutes. “I’ll let you get back to your cabins. I just didn’t want you to miss this.”

  The next night, still in manic celebration of Mount Nyamuragira’s eruption, Dian invited us to dinner at her cabin, insisting that we bring our cameras. We were to make an evening of photographing the red night sky. This time, she even included Peter in our mix. Basili had come up to camp to begin his twenty-one day shift, replacing Kanyaragana as “house boy” while Kanyaragana returned to his twenty-one days at home with his family off the mountain. As Dian poured Primus into our glasses, Basili served us hot plates of spaghetti and sauce.

  That morning, Dian had sent Rwelekana and Baraqueza out to look for Nunkie on the far side of Mount Visoke. By five-thirty, curfew time, they had not returned. Usually, Dian became very upset by this, ranting about every worst-case scenario when trackers or students failed to return on time, but this night Dian remained in a rare elevated mood, with nothing daunting her. While we dined, she occasionally looked over her shoulder at the window and commented about her trackers whereabouts, but she remained calm.

  “They did have a long way to go,” Dian said. “I gave them each a torch with fresh batteries.”

  Dian’s rationale made Stuart and Peter comfortable and talkative. I was also more at ease than ever before, but in the shell that I had grown in Dian’s presence, I remained a quiet observer enjoying the conversation around me.

  Stuart talked excitedly about our trip over the top of Mount Visoke, and Peter reminisced about how beautiful the lake is at the volcano’s summit

  “Oh, it really is beautiful, isn’t it? . . . ,” Dian said, catching herself mid-sentence. “I mean, at least they tell me it is. I know I’ve never been up there.”

  “Huh?” I blurted. Dian had been in the Virungas thirteen years and she hadn’t been to the top of the volcano in her backyard. Now I had to catch my-self. I shoved another forkful of spaghetti into my gaping mouth.

  “I’ve tried, but . . .” Dian demurred, shaking her head, “but . . . oya . . . oya . . . I just can’t do it.” With some reluctance, Dian admitted that she had a keen fear of heights that prevented her from climbing above the tree line that blocked the view of the land far beneath her. Instead of the rare case of following gorillas beyond that point, she would have to leave them and clamber back down.

  “I’ve seen it from an airplane,” Dian said, before changing the subject to that of the erupting Mount Nyamuragira. She talked excitedly about past volcanic eruptions and mentioned the book that she was writing about her thirteen years in Africa.

  “This is the reason I came to Africa,” Dian said, “. . . the excitement and the beauty. You guuuys, I’m going to put this in my book!” At Dian’s order, Basili brought us another round of Primus.

  “I’ve heard some white women come to Africa to experience the black male,” Stuart said with a laugh. Peter chuckled too, but I just about choked on a swig of my beer. Where did that come from? Boy, is he pushing it! I braced for an angry rebuttal, and an end to our happy evening.

  “Not this white woman!” Dian said, with haughty defensiveness, but completely unperturbed.

  Dian’s spirits remained elevated throughout our meal, and she was even able to talk about the dilemma of what to do with the baby gorilla without falling apart. The idea of the infant being the missing baby from Nunkie’s group made her think more about releasing the orphan back into the wild.

  “Better for her to die a wild gorilla than end up in a zoo.” Dian surmised. “If she goes to a zoo, and they can’t get another mountain gorilla, and the motherfuckers will try, they’ll just breed her with a lowland gorilla and make a bastard
baby.”

  On this night, Dian seemed ambivalent about whether or not we helped with kitchen duties, but having been trained under fire by her in the past, Stuart, Peter, and I automatically began helping Basili clear the table. Before we could finish, Dian was beckoning us outside.

  “C’mon you guuuys! Basili will get that. We’ve got to get some photos of this.” The dark sky was starless and the clouds obscured all signs of the volcanic eruption we had witnessed the night before. “Shit merde!” Dian said, beginning to look dour before shaking off her disappointment. “Maybe it will clear up later.”

  Our party broke up at nine o’clock when weary Rwelekana and Baraqueza trudged back into camp with a backpack full of dung from Nunkie’s Group, which they had found in a heavy poacher area far into Zaire. I watched as the expert trackers carefully unwrapped the thick lobelia leaf from each sticky lobe of gorilla dung, handing them to Dian as they did. She, in turn, examined them, matching each to the age and size of the members of Nunkie’s Group. After examining Rwelekana’s rough sketch of the nest site, showing in which nest each lobe of dung was retrieved, Dian was satisfied that Nunkie’s Group had been found, though she was disturbed about the location, low and deep into Zaire. But knowing that Nunkie’s Group was still intact, had obviously offset her worries.

  Dian’s mania over Mount Nyamuragira’s eruption continued into the next night when Stuart and I were asleep in our beds. At half past midnight, Baraqueza knocked on the door to Stuart’s side of the cabin. I listened to the murmuring through the wall, half-asleep and confused, before Stuart next opened my door and poked his head into my room.

  “Baraqueza said Dian wants us to come up to her cabin,” he said, with a weary chuckle, “and we’re supposed to bring our cameras.” I rolled over and groaned in disbelief before rousing myself from my warm bed. Having slept in my sweats, I grabbed some dry socks and pulled on my clammy sneakers.

  “You guuuys . . .” Dian fawned, as she handed us each a cold Primus upon arrival at her cabin. Peter was already there sipping from a bottle, a little disheveled and bleary. Despite the odd hour, or because of it, the three of us students soon became giddy drinking beer. Dian was so upbeat, it seemed nothing could bring her down.

  “The sky is perfect tonight,” Dian said, lifting a tripod from her dining room table. Her Nikon camera was slung haphazardly by a strap around her neck. “It was cloudy earlier, but I had Baraqueza and Mulikasi sleep in the living room to watch for the sky to turn red.”

  These two men sat wearily together on a sleeping bag stretched out on Dian’s couch. A second sleeping bag was laid out on the floor. Both men looked bedraggled and dumbfounded in the shadow of the unlit side of the living area. Caught like us in the wake of Dian’s mania, these poor guys too weren’t getting a restful night’s sleep.

  Balancing beers and camera equipment, Dian, Stuart, Peter, and I left the cabin and walked toward the open meadow. Hearing the snort and heavy hooves of a forest buffalo, Syncerus caffer, Dian shined her flashlight into the darkness.

  “Napati,” she called, in a soft voice as if the bovines were her pet poodles. “Napati . . .”

  Stuart, Peter, and I chuckled nervously at Dian’s odd pet name she used when greeting these nocturnal behemoths, and we dropped behind her as she approached each one. We could barely make out any image of the herd against the blackness of night, unless a flashlight caught their reflective eyes. Stuart chimed in with his own rhyming version of Dian’s sing-song, “Napatiii . . . get away from meee.” Peter and I laughed, amid the irritated snorts of perturbed buffaloes.

  As we continued through the herd, another sound arose from the forest. A low, guttural hee-whahhh, hee-WHAH, HEE-WAAAAH . . . rising in an eerie crescendo before ending in a descending series of whistles, TSHIRRR, tshirrr, tshirr . . . As soon as we heard the first one, we heard a dozen, then dozens! It sounded like hundreds of demented wails and whistles rising and blaring from all directions of the forest around us, HEE-WAAAH, HEE-WAAAH . . . TSHIRRR, tshirrr . . .

  “What the hell is THAT?” I asked, stunned. The deafening croaks and screeches rattled from trees near and far, high and low, each vocalization joining in mad chorus rose to a reverberating crescendo before ending in the same raspy whistle.

  “Tree hyraxes,” Dian and Peter shouted in unison above the din.

  I knew tree hyraxes were in this forest but had not yet seen these elusive nocturnal creatures. Now we seemed to be surrounded by them. A furry brown rabbit-sized mammal, the species Dendrohyrax arboreus, is surprisingly a relative of the elephant, as evidenced by obscure shared structural and physiological characteristics including bones and teeth. I had seen its similar-looking, diurnal lowland cousin, the rock hyrax, in Kenya.

  “One girl left camp because she couldn’t stand the noise they make,” Dian said, with a laugh. “She was in your cabin, John. She left after two weeks.” This, combined with Dian, I surmised.

  The sound, almost deafening, was eerie but added even more surreal magic as we left camp’s understory and stepped into the meadow against the backdrop of the glowing red midnight sky. It was as if the hyraxes had planned the moment at which they all, by the hundreds, climbed from their respective tree cavities and began calling like noisy katydids or frogs in a pond, enraptured in asynchronous cacophony. It was as if every tree hyrax in the entire Virunga mountain chain had joined in the moment, our moment. It was enchanting.

  As the hyraxes exhausted themselves, with shrill voices waning to their last shrieks and whistles, the four of us stepped out onto the edge of the meadow, gazing southward at Mount Mikeno, outlined against the fire of Nyamuragira, the hyraxes silencing themselves as suddenly as they had begun. Stuart and Peter joked with Dian about getting us up in the middle of the night. The three of them laughed while I quietly observed the stunning view as silence reclaimed the surrounding forest.

  “You guuuys,” Dian whined, “this is what I came to Africa for . . . I’m going to put this in my book.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Peter said, adding his characteristic one-note guffaw. “Ha!”

  “John, you’re sure being quiet over there,” Dian said, adding, “John’s not happy.” I should have been encouraged by Dian’s concern, but even having her seemingly positive attention directed my way made me uncomfortable. I fumbled with my camera in the darkness, screwing the tripod’s bolt into the base.

  “John’s not happy, and that’s not fair,” Dian added.

  Poignantly aware of how cruel she could be, I couldn’t utter a single response, but wanted her capricious attention directed away from me as I attended to my camera setup.

  Dian placed her tripod on the ground and Stuart held the flashlight while she pulled at each metal leg.

  “Shit merde, I always have trouble getting these fucking things to work,” Dian grumbled, tugging at the bolts that held the telescopic legs nested inside each other. Stuart gave the flashlight to Dian and joined Peter, jumping in to release and extend the legs of Dian’s tripod.

  Next, Peter and I set up our own camera equipment while Stuart mounted Dian’s camera onto her tripod before setting up his own. Dian seemed completely clueless as to what to do with her expensive camera equipment, while we guessed and debated how many seconds or minutes each timed exposure should be to capture the image of the night’s red sky on film. If there were going to be any pictures of this event for Dian’s book, or otherwise, they wouldn’t be coming from her camera. She was hopeless with any type of equipment, from camp lanterns to her own camera. Perhaps her photos of this night would be coming from ours. I was reminded of Peter’s story of stolen film. While we waited for our camera shutters to click off from their extended exposures, we finished our beers. Cold damp air crept across the meadow making us shiver and shift on our feet.

  “Stuart, you’re sleeping with me tonight,” Dian said, giggling. That did make me laugh.

  “Uh, no Dian . . . no I’m not!” Stuart said, laughing nervously.

  “Yes you are.
” Dian persisted, as Stuart directed his attention to his camera.

  “C’mon Dian, let’s get some pictures here,” Stuart said, in an effort to redirect her attention.

  After taking several pictures, which seemed hopeless under the circumstances of dim light, we gathered our equipment and empty bottles and headed back into camp. Full of beer, we laughed and stumbled off the trail and through the mud. I was almost enjoying myself, despite Dian.

  “What’s that smell?” Stuart asked.

  “Ha, Fossey laid one down!” Peter said.

  “The term is ‘put one out,’ and I didn’t do it.” We were all laughing as we realized we had strode back into the herd of grazing buffaloes. Their indignant snorts surrounded us before they scattered, hooves thudding off and away from our sloppy, noisy entourage.

  “Mbogo-poo, where are you?” Dian called out giddily into the darkness, using the Swahili word for buffalo, converting it to her own baby talk with “poo.” As she wandered farther off trail toward one of the shadowy figures, Stuart tugged on her sleeve, drawing her back to the trail.

  “Uh . . . c’mon Dian,” he said, “I don’t think you need to be petting an mbogo-poo right now . . . you’ll get us all killed.”

  “Stuaaart . . . you guuuys,” Dian said, “this has been really great. I’m going to write about this in my book . . . really and truly . . . all of you.”

  The prospect of appearing as a character in the published version of Dian’s life story was exciting. I mulled this over as we walked toward the light of Dian’s cabin, but couldn’t help but surmise that with Dian’s repeating this theme, that this had all been staged as a means of creating at least one positive Fossey-student interaction in her storytelling. After all, it hadn’t been a week since Carolyn had made her escape from camp. And that same day, the visit from one of her bosses of sorts, Bob McIlvaine, who was checking up on things. Dian had much damage control to do. Plus, Stuart, Peter, and I would be going back into Kigali in only ten days to renew our visas and surely the American Embassy staffers would be curious about our impressions of Karisoke Research Center and Dian Fossey, especially with Carolyn, abused and spurned, having just blown back through. Better to send us off on a high note, I surmised.