by John Fowler
“Did you notice the flowers?” Dian asked the befuddled pair who glanced around the room and nodded emphatically.
“Yes, very nice. Very nice!” Taka responded.
“I once took a course on Japanese flower arranging, back in the States.” Dian said with a proud smile.
More polite smiles and nods.
“I’ve always been interested in Japan and would love to visit your country.”
While Kanyaragana served us cheese sandwiches in the living area, Dian cut a deal.
“I’ve decided that I’m going to release the baby into a wild group of gorillas.”
The two listened and nodded, wide-eyed and attentive, as if straining to understand across the language barrier.
“And I’d like you both to film this.”
At this, Taka’s mouth dropped open, and he turned to repeat the news in Japanese to Kaji. Soon, both were nodding with wide-eyed excitement at this prospect. It became apparent that Taka spoke more English than Kaji.
“And I’d like you to relocate your camp up here,” Dian stated, pointing to the floor. “Up here to Karisoke. You. Come. Bring your camp.”
Taka again turned to chatter to his sidekick, the word “Karisoke” blending in perfectly with their Japanese. More excited nodding. Then Dian came to the terms.
“You know, I have many expenses to run this camp.”
“Yes . . . I see.” Taka said.
“For this, I will need ten thousand dollars.”
Both continued nodding, but their smiles were gone. Taka, the film director, more fully understanding what was just said, reiterated what he understood the deal to be.
“Our company pay you . . . ten sousand dollar? Yes?”
“Yes. And you will get your film.”
“Okay. I see . . . I contact my company, Nippon AV Productions,” he said slowly, finding his words, “and see . . . if they will agree.”
“Let them know I have a lot of expenses, to run this camp.”
“Yes . . . yes, okay . . . we will see.”
“Okay . . . and there is one more thing.”
“Ohhh . . .” Taka spoke, like air leaking from a tire. Next to him, Kaji remained deadpan, only his eyes moved, blinking and darting from his partner’s face to Dian’s.
“I’ve always wanted to visit your country. Perhaps your company would send me there.”
“Ohhh . . . yes, okay!” Taka maintained his composure, while Kaji furtively studied his partner’s demeanor and emulated it. “I will have to see . . . yes . . . you know, talk to my company . . . but yes, okay.”
This settled, Dian leaned back in her chair and summoned Kanyaragana for more beer. Belly full, and enjoying the effects of a midday beer buzz, I was sublimely content, even seated next to Dian, excited even, about the prospects ahead.
“But I’ve got to warn you . . .” Dian said, followed by a foreboding pause, “I can be difficult to work with sometimes.”
“Ohhh . . . ?” Taka said softly, with a confused tilt of his head. “Yes . . . okay . . . no problem.”
“No, I mean really . . . sometimes I can be a real bitch.” Dian looked at me. “Right?”
“Oh, YEAHHH!” I said, with perhaps a little too much conviction, instantly regretting my cheekiness.
“Ehht mwaah,” Dian growled, scolding me back into silence, staring at me to remind me I was just a prop.
Against the exotic backdrop of the Virunga Volcanoes, my life had become routine. Each day, at 8:00 A.M. I trudged up the trail to Dian’s cabin at the opposite end of camp and waited to pick up the baby gorilla. Never knowing what time Dian would actually arise, I waited by the gorilla graveyard for fifteen to thirty minutes before our mercurial headmistress would finally emerge. Often the first sign of life I heard coming from inside was the shaking of a giant bottle of Darvon she kept in her bedside table. Having stayed up until the wee hours drinking and typing her book manuscript, Mademoiselli was usually hung over, hair lopsided from bed, and undressed but for dingy long johns bagging at the knees. She was extra gruff and short-tempered at this hour of the day, and I would beat a hasty retreat as soon as I had the baby, carrying my little charge off into the forest edge to forage and feed on her natural fare.
The Japanese film crew duo of Taka, the director and sound man, and Kaji, the cameraman, wasted no time packing up their dapper tented camp from the base of the mountain and moving up to Karisoke. Dian must’ve taken more than a little satisfaction knowing they had dropped their filming with Bill and Amy for the one and only Gorilla Lady and the dramatic footage she promised. In camp, Dian moved them into the Tent Cabin at Karisoke’s eastern side—a large military-style tent with a proper metal roof mounted above it. But after that, Dian was hardly the hostess. Like us, they were left to fend for themselves.
Her already poor health then took a turn for the worse, deteriorating more each day. In addition to her deep chronic cough, sciatica sent sharp pains from her sore hip down her leg with every heave from her lungs. She also complained of a festering spider bite on her arm, and lamented constantly of mysterious brown spiders in her cabin that no one else saw. I began to wonder if she was imagining them.
One morning, Dian asked me to accompany her to select a site where I would camp outdoors with the baby in an effort to re-acclimate it to life in the wild. As I picked up little Nani, Dian leaned on a walking stick, pale and sickly. Dressed in jeans and a thin turtleneck shirt, she slowly tied the arms of an old green rain jacket around her gaunt waist. We slowly moved from the cabin down the trail out of camp, Dian wobbling precariously with each step, frequently stopping to wince from pain.
“I just can’t make these hikes anymore, goddammit,” Dian gasped, stopping to lean on her walking stick. A light drizzle began and, even with the cold, Dian left her raincoat off. The baby clung under my arm to support herself, looking baffled by our slow progress, as the Rwandan teen Toni trotted up to join us, likewise decked in rain gear.
We were still within view of Dian’s cabin, when she just gave out, saying, “Maybe this will do. Let’s sit down.” I lowered Nani to the ground and Dian dropped onto one thigh, holding her torso up with one hand on the ground beside her. Her legs, like a newborn foal’s, were crumpled and frail in contrast to the heavy Vasque hiking boots weighing her feet down. Dian was dressed for a real hike, but we weren’t even beyond the bounds of camp. This could hardly be what Dian had in mind for a bivouac camp, I thought—not yet away from the smell of humans, of smoke, nor the din of camp activities.
When we rose to our feet again Dian coughed uncontrollably. “I’ll send the men out to look for a suitable bivouac,” she said, coughing again and doubling over unabashedly. She grabbed her stomach until her coughing subsided. Toni and I stood by awkwardly, uncertain what to do. “I know I can’t do it,” she muttered, before resuming an upright stance.
At that, we turned around and headed back into camp. Before reaching her cabin, Dian doubled over again with a deep heaving sound. I thought she was trying to make herself vomit, and Toni and I stood by with the baby, both disturbed and a little embarrassed for Dian. Finally, she stood upright, and slinging little Nani onto my shoulders, I followed her and Toni back to her cabin, where our boss shut herself in for the rest of the day.
While Dian’s health waxed and waned, she communicated with Stuart daily, running ideas by him, sharing her plans. Peter and I knew only the bits and pieces we could glean from Stuart. This served Dian as an effective means of keeping Stuart in her pocket, while also preparing him for her departure by elevating his rank within the camp hierarchy. For my own part, I was happier to continue having Stuart as a buffer between Dian and me.
Under Dian’s edict, we still had to abide by her rule of “No Communal Dinners!” Clearly, any gathering beyond her watchful eye continued to strike at some acute, deep-set paranoia, which triggered compulsive rage. I felt self-conscious if she even saw the three of us standing together chatting. But Taka and Kaji were exceedingly friendl
y and congenial in camp, bowing, nodding, and inviting us to dinner each time one of us ran into them.
“We really want make special dinner for you,” Taka would remind us when any of us would run into them. “Kaji very good cook!”
Under the mounting pressure and awkwardness of evading our exceedingly friendly would-be hosts, Stuart asked Dian if we might accept their offer just once. In no uncertain terms, Dian forbade it, saying that we were not to bother them. But they were just biding their time, waiting for Dian to be ready for filming, and wanting to interact with us in the meantime. Under Dian’s strict rule, their repeated offers became increasingly awkward for us to dodge.
“When can join us?” They asked at each opportunity. With blank stares, they were visibly disappointed and perplexed by our steadfast refusals. None of us were successful at explaining why.
In their blissful ignorance, Taka temped us further, reminding us of Kaji’s camp culinary skills and that they had a delicious menu planned, with food a young production assistant had just brought in from Japan just for this occasion, a temporary third man to their party. From the perspective of our own meager and monotonous rations, the offer was, of course, extremely appealing.
In temptation and exasperation, Stuart eventually announced to Peter and me that, despite Dian’s warnings, he accepted an invitation for the three of us.
“What’s she gonna do,” he said, “Embarrass herself in front of them?”
I was scared to death, but the next evening I relented and joined in the wonderful spread, which included teriyaki beef, Japanese-style egg foo yong, and dried squid with mayonnaise dip—a fascinating and wonderful repast. This we washed down with all the Primus beer we wanted, numbing my fears of Mademoiselli emerging from the darkness fit to kill. Communicating across the English-Japanese language gap just added to the drunken fun around a blazing fire. Drinking, swapping stories, and laughing into the night in a cloud of Impala cigarette smoke under the stars gave us a well-needed respite from the camp’s oppressive atmosphere. And we were quite noisy.
Despite the distance from her cabin, or because of her unrelenting paranoia, Dian was entirely aware of our merriment. Stuart avoided her the next day, but that night, drunken and enraged, she staggered down to our cabin and confronted him.
“Stuart, you reeeally fucked up!” she yelled, leaning in Stuart’s doorway, absolutely livid. ”We don’t need all this me-itis around here, with everyone worrying about themselves and feeding their goddamn bellies all the time!”
Uncharacteristically, Stuart stood his ground.
“C’mon Dian, what was I supposed to do?” he protested. “They kept asking us.” Dian cursed and berated him unrelentingly before staggering back into the darkness up the trail toward her cabin.
After she was gone, Stuart cut the tension, declaring with a laugh as he slammed the door, “I still LOVE the bitch!”
SIXTEEN
THE BIVOUAC
You reeeally fucked up, Stuart,” Peter and I would chide our fellow sufferer at every opportunity, out of earshot of Dian. “Reeeally and truuully . . .” Stuart would accept our ribbing with a cathartic laugh, before heading back up to Dian’s cabin to assist with whatever task was at hand in her preparations for departure.
Dian had coined the term “me-itis” in reference to one thinking only of themself, but I was beginning to realize it meant, not directing our efforts at her needs. Our dinners without her sorely represented a lack of devotion to her, triggering a blind rage. She would also remind us “We’re here for the gorillas,” which really meant we were there for her.
Under the crunch of ever-shrinking time before Dian would have to leave Rwanda, she scheduled Nani and me to start our bivouac camp on February 26. Filming of the baby gorilla’s release process began that afternoon. With Taka holding a long foam-covered microphone and directing in Japanese, Kaji deftly aimed his camera at Nani and me as we walked from my cabin down the camp trail toward our new temporary home in Zaire. I felt awkward and a little embarrassed in front of the camera. My spare clothes were jammed into my small, bulging backpack and I had strapped a flashlight and boots onto the outside of it. As I walked, these boots, hanging from their laces, began flailing wildly back and forth, pulling at my pack and gear, to and fro, until the rhythmic sway almost made me lose my footing. Feeling self-conscious, all I could think about was how dumb the scene must have looked as Kaji filmed me from behind.
I would come to understand that Dian had become a brand of sorts, an admirable one—the woman who gave up everything to live with gorillas in the forest to protect and save them. It had brought meaning and importance to her life since photographer Bob Campbell had first rocketed Dian to fame with his photos for National Geographic magazine. Cameramen and film crews were how she established and cultivated the brand, conveying it to the world. This phenomenon, I would realize, afforded her the ability to both remain withdrawn from society, and yet connected to the world, detached and yet fulfilled in the knowledge that she was admired by so many. She may have struggled with friendships and intimate relationships, ending them with irrevocable finality, but she had found a way to be adored by the masses. She guarded her brand jealously, as if her life depended on it.
Dian came alive in the presence of the film crew and stepped ahead of me on the trail. Moments earlier, she had been her dour self, irritably barking orders to all of us. In front of the camera, she became the doe-eyed gorilla martyr she wanted the world to see. When Kaji aimed his lens at her, Dian widened her eyes in a dramatic expression of compassionate concern. She did this frequently as we walked down the trail past her cabin, letting her gaze linger with emotion for the baby, knitting her brow, well aware of the camera trained on her.
Dian had told the Japanese crew that she wanted Nani to begin her readjustment to the wild the moment I carried the baby out of camp. The smiles had dropped from Taka’s and Kaji’s faces as Dian had explained that they could not follow me and Nani to the bivouac camp. By design, there would be no cameras rolling without Dian in the scene. This was not going to be a film about her students. Obediently, the film duo halted and stood with Dian as Nani and I walked on into the meadow. Oblivious to the load I already had on my back, Nani grabbed at my legs. I hoisted her into my arms and kept walking. Under the weight of gorilla plus backpack, my boots sank deep into the soggy meadow and I struggled to balance my load.
Where the tussocks grew thick at the western side of the marshy plain we crossed a cool clear bog and trespassed into Zaire. At that spot, I recalled Peter having told me that Jacques Cousteau had traveled there to identify the headwaters of the Nile. Cousteau believed that the mighty river may, in fact, start at that very spot where the Virunga Volcanoes, like the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda to the north, divided West Africa from East. The idea captivated me as I trudged across the wetland leaving one country for another in one step. Nani stared blankly from my arms when I paused in this wide-open space to muse over the idea that the water in front of me trickled down westward into the Congo River basin, while the water behind me flowed northward to the Nile. Despite the load of baby and backpack, I took it all in. At that place, I felt like I was at the top of the world and pondered the irony of having one foot in one of the smallest, most densely-populated countries in the world, and the other foot in one of Africa’s largest and least-populated provinces.
As Nani and I reached the southwestern edge of the meadow, and the open forest of airy hypericum trees and mighty hagenias converged around us, I set Nani down and encouraged her to walk on her own. Wide-eyed and pensive, she stared in all directions, scrambling after me. With a whimper, she grasped my leg, insisting I carry her again into this new region unknown to her. I stayed on the narrow trail kept worn by forest buffaloes, and forays by us few humans out of Karisoke. The trees grew thicker as I hauled my gear and baby gorilla farther along the trail, another ten minutes, until the level ground began to slope gently downward. Here Stuart’s bivouac had been set up by
camp staff under a spreading hagenia, beside an opening in the forest. The site was well equipped with a tent, a sleeping bag, a stove, and cooking utensils. Stuart was out with Rwelekana keeping tabs on the location of Group 4. Dian had dubbed this site the “Midway Camp,” because it was between my bivouac and Karisoke. The game plan was for me to eat meals here. Toni would be spending each night with Nani and me, and I would come here to eat while he looked after the baby.
To keep Nani out of the campsite gear, I carried her farther along the trail and set her down to forage in a thick stand of vegetation. She stayed close to me, and fed contentedly, purring over mouthfuls of her familiar foods, hmwaaah . . . The land dropped gently from that point on in terrace-like gradations, downward and westward into Zaire. Here, I felt aware of Africa falling away from the upland Virungas, down into warm lush forests and into the deepest darkest basins of the Congo River, which snaked like a fat python to the Atlantic Ocean far beyond the horizon.
Without a visa for Zaire I speculated as to what the consequences would be if Zairean park officials or soldiers were to find me, camped out in their country as an illegal alien. Dian hadn’t talked about this, and I shrugged off the notion that anyone would encounter us during our three-day campout. But I knew Dian had been abruptly extricated from her Zairean camp, a three-hour walk from here; after which, she was held hostage until she pulled off an escape in Uganda.
When Nani had fed for a while and began crawling back to me, I kept a few steps ahead of her, allowing her to travel on her own. This gave me a lesser burden on the rest of my trek, and conditioned her to some independent walking that I knew she would need back in the wild. My little gorilla scampered along on all fours, but whimpered loudly about every fifty feet. I relented intermittently, and carried my furry bundle another fifty feet before setting her down again. We continued with this alternating travel plan for nearly an hour, before we reached our own camp, a large gray canvas military tent under a spreading hagenia. From Karisoke, we had walked about four kilometers, nearly a quarter of the distance around Mount Visoke to the base of its western slope. From here, we stared directly into Mount Mikeno’s eastern face and its rocky tower, jutting starkly into the clouds to an altitude of 14,460 feet.
