by John Fowler
Peter and I developed a good rapport, the kind that single young men in their twenties develop—plenty of mutual respect and camaraderie, with insults and ribbing.
“Shit goddammit motherfuckit!” we’d shout at each other just for fun, quoting our fearless leader in remembrance of volatile and oppressive times with her among us. The other might answer with, “Shit merde salber and sheisamakopft!” as an appropriate response, or simply, “You reeeally fucked up. Reeeally and truuuly. You are NOT to be believed!”
In conversation and reminiscence of home, we talked a lot about food, family, and our different upbringings on opposite coasts. I swapped my Van Morrison and Jesse Colin Young cassettes for Peter’s Blondie and Patti Smith, left with him by an ABC film crew member.
On rare occasions, we combined resources of simple fare and ate dinner at one another’s cabin. On one of these nights, I noticed a clump of dried herbs in a cup on Peter’s desk.
“That’s pot,” Peter said. “You want some?”
Hearing that the ABC film crew liked to smoke it, Dian had made her head porter, Gwehandegoza, buy the “hashish” at the market, despite his protests, and threatening to fire him as an ultimatum. If he could put a contract on a poacher for her, after all, he certainly could score a little dope. When the film crew arrived for a dinner at her cabin, Dian had the dried bundle of weed in a vase as a table centerpiece. The film crew loved the gesture and gave the remnants to Peter when they left.
Not a big fan of pot, but in the absence of beer or other libations, I gave it a try anyway, listening to Debbie Harry and Patti Smith belt it out on my dragging cassette player, its precious batteries dying an ever-slowing death. What the hell else did I have to do on Saturday night in Karisoke, anyway, fergawdsakes? Camp was not a good place to get the munchies. I ended the evening nibbling on unrefined sugar, savoring the crunch of each large brown crystal between my teeth, and keying in on nuances in the music. Eat to the Beat!
My Swahili fluency grew as I studied past and future tenses, later trying them out on the men at the campfire near my cabin, discussing with them everything from their own family lives to the possibility of life on other planets. I showed them pictures and articles in magazines cast off by visitors from Kigali. They were smitten with Linda Ronstadt’s face on the cover of Time—iko mzuri sana!—and bowled over by Ola Ray’s centerfold in Playboy, although baffled that she had pubic hair—so bad for lice! Some of the men, I learned, had relatives who fled into Uganda after Rwanda’s civil war of the fifties, but the men grew quiet on this topic.
With Dian gone, I began to feel I needed to get serious about some sort of research direction of my own. Dian had never returned to me the research proposals Terry Maple had written, and by then, it felt too late to get started. Still, I tried. The longhand notes Dian wanted seemed superfluous to me and cumbersome to write. Peter be damned, with his detailed narratives Dian favored! I thought scientific check sheets would be more efficient to both produce and analyze, versus weeding through long narratives for data. I ran ideas by Peter, who simply warned me I could unleash the wrath of Fossey if I didn’t give her what she wanted. How well I knew. And how well I knew she could come blowing back in at moment’s notice, as she’d done already, with a vengeance. And so I continued the longhand notes, recording everything and anything in a shorthand of abbreviations, Fossey-style, in hopes that I could still extract something useful in the end.
At the end of the long dry season, Juichi Yamagiwa, a student from Kyoto University, was granted permission by Dian to visit Karisoke for a couple weeks, and Peter and I hosted him on visits to the research groups. Studious and quiet, he didn’t speak much English but was appreciative of our welcome, and uncomplaining about accommodations. He had already been to see the eastern lowland gorillas, Gorilla beringei graueri, at Kahuizi-Biéga National Park in Zaire and showed particular interest in the differences between those eastern lowland gorillas versus the mountain gorillas. I was baffled when he told us that gorillas in Kahuizi Biéga didn’t eat wild celery, although it grew there. It was a daily staple for gorillas in the Virungas.
The announcement of Juichi’s arrival had come from Kigali, and the letter included Dian’s commendation. Her words described Juichi as “tractable” among his qualifications for Karisoke. Neither Peter nor I were familiar with this word, and I looked it up in a dictionary in Dian’s cabin. I had to laugh when I read the definition to Peter: “capable of being easily led, taught, or controlled.” I could only surmise our headmistress was scouting new recruits to be her next “students” at Karisoke. I would gladly pass the torch to Juichi, who unbeknownst to us at the time, would one day lead the International Primatological Society and become the 26th president of Japan’s prestigious Kyoto University.
My hair and beard grew long, and I spent most of my time inside my head, either reading or thinking about what I’d read. Whatever old magazines had been brought in by the rare visitor, or left over from the US Embassy staffers, I read cover to cover. I finally read J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, and imagined the Virungas as Middle Earth, seeing Frodo’s trek to Mount Doom as like my own hikes through the volcanoes.
Judy Chidester commented, “You seem even more quiet than usual,” on my last trip to Kigali to renew my work visa. Then again, knowing little of current world news events or politics, and nothing of the latest movies or music, I had little to contribute to the conversations of her worldly set. I was a nearly wild and isolated creature out from the forest. The true tales of Dian I kept to myself; everyone wanted to admire her so.
Karisoke felt mostly safe, high above the world, but one night, I had a disturbing dream in which my body was an abstract Makonde carving, stuck in the chimney of my childhood home. I had seen these bizarre tribal carvings in a market on the border of Kenya and Tanzania the previous summer and their bizarre forms had left an impact. The Makonde people who create them from their native ebony seem to have no rules about where disproportionate heads, hands, feet, or teeth belong on the body. Their work is reputed to have inspired Picasso’s cubism. In my dream, I was trapped in this grotesque form with my distorted body rising from the hearth up through the flue. My malformed mouth gaped in the wind above the chimney like a frozen scream.
I woke with a feeling of paranoia. How safe was Karisoke? What if bandits were to come in from Zaire to raid our camp, to take what little we had . . . the money, guns? Or try to take what they thought we might have? Or kidnap us in hopes of ransom? Were bandits in camp now? Is this a premonition? With my mind racing, it took a long while for me to drift back to sleep. By dawn these feelings were gone with the morning light and the familiar comforting sounds of the men readying camp for another day.
On another night, I awoke to a clamor of strange yips, chortles, and cackles amid the sounds of swift feet dashing through the grass and undergrowth of camp in all directions. Startled, I lay in bed, wide-eyed and wary as I recognized the calls as those of spotted hyenas, Crocuta crocuta, similar to what I’d heard and seen in Kenya the year before. Their voices rang from all directions, as if communicating among group members on reconnaissance as they moved. A few dashed close by both sides of my cabin, making hurried calls before their sounds faded away toward the west end of camp and the large meadow beyond. I could only imagine that the forest buffaloes had already retreated from the clearings back into thicker forest, to avoid harassment and predation in the open spaces, but who knew what would take place beyond my earshot?
Otherwise, Karisoke was mostly a quiet place at night, but for the infrequent chorus of the tree hyraxes, who nearly drowned out one’s own thoughts before fading to silence as unexpectedly as they had begun. They served as a nocturnal version of the occasional hailstorm in sound, and rivaled its rancor. Forest buffaloes were so regular that I expected their occasional hoof-thud or snort while tossing my tooth-brushing water outside the door into the darkness, or during that final pee of the night before bedtime. Their dark hides kept them
invisible in the darkness, like benign phantoms. Knowingly, we always kept our respectful distance from them, and they left us alone in exchange for camp’s rich grassy patches.
Throughout the remaining dry weather of August, our paths out with gorillas would cross those of these forest buffaloes who often rested during the day after a nighttime of traveling and foraging. While most of the group moved away, the silverbacks might put on a little display of hoots and chest beats, just to run them off and keep them at bay. To this the bovines snorted their indignation and crashed away. Often Beethoven would let his younger silverback Icarus carry out this task, and the young blackback Ziz watched as a gorilla-in-training. It wouldn’t be long before this esquire of Group 5 would be a silverback too.
Perhaps my closest brush with danger was with a buffalo. I had already heard the story of Sandy Harcourt’s goring by an angry female. Regardless of how much time one of us students might have in the field, our skills never achieved the level of Karisoke’s longtime trackers, who could discern the slightest spoor when finding gorillas each day. The dryness of dung, or the color of sap on broken plant stalks determined the ages of overlapping paths, while a partial hoofprint, versus a partial handprint, needed to be observed and discerned. The direction in which twigs and stalks were broken, and snagged hairs on tree bark provided clues to who, what, when, and where. I sometimes ventured out alone to find gorillas, on days when trackers were spread thin to keep up with other groups.
One frustrating day of having searched on my own for Group 5 amid a tangle of buffalo trails, I began my return up the Porter Trail toward camp. By then, I was conditioned enough to do this hike at a fast pace, and was ready to get this last uphill portion of my day done with. At one spot, a thick hagenia’s trunk had grown into the trail, creating a curve in the path around it. Rounding this tree, I nearly ran smack into a foraging female buffalo. Instantly, we were together, and in the moment, she lowered her horns with a snort. All I could do was bring in my arms and brace for impact. I even closed my eyes in preparation. Then, to my own disbelief, I opened my eyes to see this cow just staring at me, as stunned as I was. I could’ve reached out to pet her on the forehead. For a moment, it was if she was in disbelief of a human appearing before her so suddenly. I remained frozen, and within seconds she shook her head and horns, as if to shake us both out of a nightmare, then turned and crashed away through the underbrush.
Her departure gave me short-lived relief, as others of the large heard caught wind of me, and began a stampede, galloping across the Porter Trail before and behind me. I could neither progress toward camp, nor flee downhill, as more buffaloes closed directly in on me. The big hagenia leaned enough that I could crawl up its thick, gnarled trunk. As I did, I reached for a lower branch and hoisted myself onto it. From that vantage point I became clearly visible to others of the herd, who stopped in their tracks from a distance and stared up at me.
Great! I thought, now how long will this day last? With a man in a tree above them, the herd of cows and their young seemed paralyzed to move on, wanting instead to keep their suspicious eyes trained on me. There I clung, tired and hungry, in the late afternoon. The minutes passed, five, ten, fifteen . . . We were at a stalemate, and I wanted to speed things up. The long, late shadow of Mount Visoke was upon us.
“Hey!” I shouted.
This only made them huff and stare all the more.
“Get out of here!” I shouted. They looked dumbfounded, and I felt stupid talking to them. What else could I do? A song came to mind.
“Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight . . .” My shouted song sounded so pathetic to my own ears, but it must’ve been even more horrid to these buffalo gals. At last, one by one, each shook her head and trundled off, as if disgusted and tired enough of the sight and sound of me.
When I was sure the herd had moved on, I clambered down the tree and resumed my ascent to camp, “Buffalo Gals” still stuck in my head. I belted out a few lines along the way home, to clear a path and keep the herd at bay.
“And we’ll dance by the light of the moon . . . !”
At least I hadn’t stumbled into a herd of elephants. I wouldn’t have known what song to sing.
On August 30, Peter and I found Group 5 low on Mount Visoke, not far from where the Camp Stream neared the shambas. The group was dispersed widely among the vernonia trees, as young Poppy lingered in the rear long enough to break a fresh sprig with the favored flowers and bulbs and scamper off behind Pablo to join the group somewhere ahead. Here, the vernonias, the tree-form cousin of sunflowers and asters, had become full of mature fruits, crisp white bulbs that the gorillas coveted. Gorillas made their crunching sound so good that Peter and I decided to sample them ourselves. We were impressed with their water-chestnut like texture, and nutty flavor, similar to the pith of the giant senecio at higher altitudes. Hungry as usual, we sampled several before I took the time to really scrutinize what I was eating. Looking closer, I saw the extra protein hidden within. Each nutty fruit was studded with tiny insect larvae, white worms with dark heads wriggling in the path of our teeth. Ugh! The gorillas could have them!
Elephants obviously liked them too, as their trails were marked by many of them, felled and stripped of bulbs, flowers, and leaves. We began seeing elephant footprints combined with felled vernonia trees well into August on our treks to Group 5. We had to watch our step as we traveled to avoid these unintended booby traps, and a broken leg. Over the next few days, it became apparent that forest elephants and Group 5 were sharing the same feeding spaces, yet the great pachyderms remained unseen by us as if invisible, vanishing to parts unknown by the time we would arrive at their feeding grounds.
As Peter and I followed Group 5’s path, I suddenly felt a strange sensation run through me. It made me pause, unsure if I was imagining a deep vibration move through my torso.
“What is that?” I asked Peter, stopping in my tracks.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, sensing it too.
“Is it a sound?” I found myself asking, one hand on my chest and surprised by my own question. The sensation then morphed into a reverberating noise, finally audible as a low rumble as if from all directions.
“Is that a helicopter?” I asked, as we both glanced skyward. When we heard the loud crack of a vernonia tree, and a rumbling roar, we knew the gorillas were between us and forest elephants beyond. With our senses piqued, Peter and I moved swiftly and quietly toward Group 5, which had suddenly vanished. This brought us closer to the elephants. Seeing a cluster of three large steep volcanic rocks, we climbed atop the nearest one for safety, about twenty feet high. By the time we reached the top of the knoll, the elephants, just on the other side, were somehow alerted to our presence. Obviously confused about our location, they let their alarm be known, choosing their flight path in a stampede directly toward us, trumpeting, rumbling, and roaring. Only the steep face of our rocky knoll diverted their course off to the left below us. More dazzled than terrified, I counted eighteen before averting my eyes from them to set my camera. As at least as many more stampeded in and around, following the others in a bouncing canter, I realized it was a herd of fifty or more, careering before us, back into the forest in a crashing column.
As the swerving rank and file disappeared over a rise to our left, remaining stragglers moved in slower, too late to feel the security of the herd. They approached Peter and me, then stalled twenty meters before us, trunks raised, sniffing the air cautiously for the clues to our whereabouts. Their ears were folded back, pressed against the sides of their necks making them look attentive and guarded. Our vantage point and close proximity to this pair really gave us a good opportunity to better observe their unique adaptations, than for previous encounters. Each of these two was about the same size, six to seven feet at the shoulder, small, relative to their savannah cousins, but huge relative to us. Oddly, the slightly larger one lacked visible tusks. The smaller one had tusks about one meter long, tuc
ked in and pointing downward. This characteristic, along with the smaller, rounded ears, was their adaptation for a life in the forest, where greater protuberances, like the large splayed tusks of savannah elephants, would only snag in the undergrowth and slow their movement. I could see another difference which I hadn’t noticed during previous sightings: these forest-dwellers were covered in an even distribution of short dark hairs over back and sides, lending a dark hazy shadow on their wrinkled gray hides, a sort-of sparse, wiry fur. Peter and I kept silent, well aware that they were searching for us, side by side, trunks raised like olfactory telescopes taking in the surrounding smells. So conditioned were we by then at taking notes, we scribbled away on our paper pads as we observed.
Soon, another large one with tusks moved in from beyond. Directly behind her was an infant, only four feet tall. The little one stayed in close to its mother as one more adult brought up the rear close behind. Peter and I watched in awe as these five elephants lingered silently, senses alerted to the sounds and smells of the forest, wary of any possible danger, keeping their baby in close. With their size, forest elephants are no match for the other forest animals. Only man is their real natural enemy, sadly in pursuit of their ivory, if only for adornment. They have good reason to fear us.
Within twenty minutes, the two with the baby moved on down the slope in the direction of the group that had circled back around, but had since moved on. At this, the two sentries dropped their tusks and brought up the rear, disappearing with the rest of their group.
By then, it had been nearly an hour since Peter and I’d lost contact with Group 5. We followed the curve that the stampede had taken, moving up the same gentle ridge. The elephants hadn’t gone far, and we encountered some again just downhill on the other side, relaxed and feeding quietly on the abundant undergrowth. Without the rocky outcrop to protect us, Peter and I froze as one approached idly, ripping up trunkfuls of stalks and leaves to place in its mouth, oblivious to our presence. Then on the ground at their level, with an even playing field, we didn’t want to make even the sound of a footstep to reveal our presence. But this oblivious elephant moved in closer . . . twenty feet . . . fifteen feet . . . At that proximity, the big gray pachyderm raised it trunk and clearly took in a big whiff of Peter and me. At that, it lurched and turned, barreling noisily through the herd ahead. This triggered another stampede of these nervous denizens, causing them to disperse widely, rushing east and west in chaotic rampage.
