98% Human
Text and photos: Sarah Duff. Article from the April 2013 issue of Getaway Magazine.
You come close to confronting what it means to be human in the Central African jungle. Forget the Big Five – tracking mountain gorillas, our ape relatives, in Rwanda is Africa’s most rewarding wildlife experience.
It was a moment I’d been dreaming of for years. The 200-kilogram silverback and I locked eyes. It was a powerful, intense connection, something I’d never felt before with an animal. His dark, mahogany eyes bore into mine and I was transfixed, unable to move from my awkward crouch in a patch of stinging nettles. He dropped the piece of bark he was gnawing on and turned to face me. Right then, I felt the gulf between human and animal move from a chasm to a tiny sliver. As Urugamba took a step towards me, I felt my heart beating faster than the drums of the traditional dancers we’d seen that morning. I was spellbound. The mountain gorilla observed me, searching for something in my gaze. Then he picked his nose, examined his stubby finger with all the intensity he’d just blazed on me, and put it in his mouth.
Having spent lots of time in Southern African parks, spotting the Big Five on foot and camping breaths away from predators, hadn’t prepared me for gorilla tracking. Looking a leopard in the eye from a game vehicle is miles away from sharing an interaction with an animal that shares 98 per cent of your genes and, apart from a few grunts and a bit of fur, could almost be human (especially the nose-picking part).
This exhilarating wildlife encounter in the Rwandan jungle doesn’t involve the inaccessible trip to ‘darkest Africa’ that you might imagine. A four-hour flight to Kigali from Johannesburg and a three-hour scenic drive through tea and coffee plantations and hills wreathed in smoke and sprinkled with villages is all it takes to get to Volcanoes National Park in the northwest of the country.
The reserve incorporates part of the Virunga Mountains, a chain of volcanoes spanning Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Together with Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, roughly 40 kilometres away, it’s the only habitat on Earth where mountain gorillas live.
Just across the border in the DRC’s Virunga National Park, violent insurrection has compelled tourists to opt for gorilla tracking in Rwanda and Uganda. I chose Rwanda, having been enthralled by the movie Gorillas in the Mist, based on primatologist Dian Fossey’s groundbreaking conservation work.
I travelled with a group of nine from Joburg and our anticipation, which had been palpable from the moment our flight took off, peaked when we arrived at the Volcanoes headquarters in Kinigi on the misty early morning of our planned adventure. Rwanda’s 10 habituated gorilla groups are monitored daily, so trackers and guides know where they are pretty much all the time and how long it will take to hike to them. Before leaving the offices, guide (ryamukuru Jean Bosco gave us the lowdown on gorilla etiquette and told us about our target, the Urugamba group, named after the dominant silverback. Then we hit the bumpy road towards the slopes of the imposing Visoke Volcano in a Land Cruiser, getting a free ‘African massage’ along the way.
There’s no official entrance to Volcanoes National Park and permits are checked at the headquarters before you set off with the guide to the boundary closest to where your assigned gorilla group is located. We parked in a village, hired porters and headed through fields of Irish potatoes, daisy-like pyrethrum and Africa’s most beautiful cows (herders in the 15th century had 19 words to describe colourful Ankole hides).
We stepped over the stone-wall park boundary, entering the magical Central African rainforest. Painted in a million shades of green, it’s a place of moss-bedecked hagenia trees, prehistoric-looking ferns, bamboo thickets, twisted vines like thick dreadlocks and muddy paths peppered with giant earthworms … and the occasional human-like gorilla poo (the most exciting excrement I’ve ever seen). After an hour of hiking, we reached a clearing where the trackers waited and hacked our way off the path through thickets of nettles.
Painted in a million shades of green, it’s a place of moss-bedecked trees, bamboo thickets, twisted vines … and the occasional gorilla poo
Suddenly, they were there. A few metres in front of us, on a nest of grass, a mother, baby and juvenile gorilla were quietly playing together, rolling around in a ball of dark fur. Iryamukuru had taught us to make the deep guttural noises that signify a peaceful ‘howzit’ in gorilla language (á la Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist), and we grunted away nervously, hoping we weren’t s saying ‘attack me’ by mistake.
A few steps away, a protective new mom cradled her three-month-old tot, the size of a teddy bear, who looked at us inquisitively. I felt a rush of emotion laced with adrenalin and an overwhelming sense of the surreal. The sharp sting of nettles through my trousers was the pinch that brought me back to reality.
Then the shutters opened as our group turned into a flash of gorilla paparazzi. Over the clicking, we heard frighteningly loud chewing noises that sounded like cracking bones. Following our guide and his machete, we gingerly made our way under vines and around trees to the source of the mastication. There, in a clearing, was Urugamba, nonchalantly munching on a piece of bark as thick as my leg. To say that the 200-kilogram silverback mountain gorilla was large is an understatement and images of the savage skyscraper-scaling beast from King Kong flashed through my mind.
But there was no menace emanating from the silverback. He grunted back at us and acknowledged our presence without batting an eyelid. I realised how popular culture has wrongly demonised these creatures. Gorillas are peaceful herbivores whose only killing (other than self-defence) involves the occasional ant snack. British natural history programme presenter Sir David Attenborough had it right when he said, ‘It seems really unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolise everything that is aggressive and violent when that is the one thing that the gorilla is not, and that we are.’
There’s no better illustration of the violent divide between human and ape than the poaching which almost decimated the gorilla population. For years, they were snatched for zoos and killed for bush meat and ghastly souvenirs.
This unnecessary killing is the two per cent genetic dichotomy that separates gorilla and human: while Urugamba’s species would kill only to protect babies, my species would kill for an ashtray (gorilla-hand ashtrays were popular ornaments in the 1970s).
Although they’re no longer poached in Rwanda and Uganda, gorillas still fall prey to rope-and-branch snares set by bush meat hunters and they face an uncertain future in the unstable DRC. Despite this, the numbers are increasing each year and there are about 880 individuals in the three countries.
However, they may have faced extinction if it wasn’t for the introduction of gorilla tourism (in the early 1970s it was estimated that there were only 250 left in the world). Money from gorilla-tracking permits goes towards poaching prevention, scientific research, park rangers’ salaries and community upliftment projects.
‘It seems unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolise everything that is violent when that is the one thing the gorilla is not’
Many of the porters who help you up steep, slippery paths are ex-poachers who now have another viable source of income and an incentive to help conservation efforts. Paying $750 (about R6 700) to spend an hour with gorillas may seem a lot of money if you’re used to paying less than R50 to see the wildlife of Kruger National Park, but you’re ensuring the survival of an entire species. Feel-good factor aside, not much can top the magic of being metres away from an animal that understands and reciprocates your grunt.
Repairing the Dark Heart
You can’t go to Rwanda to see gorillas without engaging in the country’s dark past. In 1994, 800000 people were massacred in a 100-day long tribal genocide. Kigali’s Genocide Memorial provides a harrowing account of the atrocities through photos, videos, a site of mass graves where people can mourn loved ones whose bodies were never found, and a message to the world: Rwanda will never forget what happened.
I found the experience overwhelmingly chilling and was most affected by videos of attackers testifying to their murders in front of village tribunals and relatives of the victims after the genocide. But it was through this, and other community efforts (such as umuganda – a nationwide, monthly community service day) that Rwanda managed to reconcile.
Almost 20 years on, it’s a peaceful, stable, economically thriving country and one of Africa’s greatest success stories. For the most, people now ignore tribal differences and Rwandans are among the warmest, friendliest people I’ve met on my travels around the world.
Paying $750 to spend an hour with gorillas may seem a lot of money if you’re used to paying less than R50 to see the wildlife of Kruger, but you’re ensuring the survival of an entire species
Travel Planner
Getting there
You could organise an independent trip to Rwanda (RwandAir has daily flights from Johannesburg from R4400 return, tel 011-390-2456, email info@rwandair.com, www.rwandair.com), but it’s much easier to go on a package trip, where everything is organised for you.
Getaway Adventures offers a five-day, four-night gorilla-tracking package for groups of up to 12 people. Departures in 2013 are in June, July, August and September. The package costs from R24052 a person sharing (R26606 single) and includes return economy flights on RwandAir from Joburg to Kigali, meals, transport with an English-speaking driver, a city tour of Kigali, a gorilla permit, national park entrance fees and a gorilla tracker. The package also includes accommodation in the five-star Serena hotels in Kigali and Lake Kivu. Tel 021-530-3380, email claudia.hodkinson@ramsaymedia. co.za, adventures.getaway, co.za.
When to go
While you can go gorilla tracking year-round, the best time to do it is in the dry season from June to September, when the ground is drier and dirt roads are more accessible.
Need to know
South African passport holders don’t need a visa for Rwanda. You need to get a yellow-fever inoculation and present the card when you return to South Africa. Rwanda is a malaria-risk area, so consult your GP or travel clinic about prophylactics and any other necessary vaccinations such as Hepatitis A and B.
The currency is Rwandan francs (R1 is about Rf70), but US dollars are widely used and accepted. When changing money before your trip, try to get dollars in small denominations for tips.
Plastic bags are banned in Rwanda, a great idea as you’ll see from the spotless Kigali streets. Any bags you carry into the country will be cut up upon arrival.
Rwanda has 10 gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) groups open to tourists, ranging in size from fewer than 10 individuals to more than 40; the remaining seven bands are observed by researchers only. To ensure that gorillas don’t get stressed from too much human contact, each gorilla group is exposed to a single group of up to eight tourists for one hour a day. You can choose what length of hike you’re able to do: there are short (which can take about 30 minutes), medium (anything from an hour to three hours) and long (can be nine hours) options. Kids younger than 15 aren’t allowed on expeditions.
If your package doesn’t include it, you’ll need to buy a permit for a specific day at least six months in advance of your visit. Permits cost from $750 (R6733) a person from the Rwanda Tourism Board.
What to pack for gorilla tracking The rainforest is full of nasty stinging nettles. Protect yourself with thick gardening gloves, knee-high hiking gaiters, a long-sleeved lightweight shirt and fairly thick trousers. You can hike in running shoes, but a comfortable pair of hiking boots (preferably with a high ankle to protect from nettles) would be perfect. It rains often (it is a rainforest, after all), so carry a light raincoat with a hood. Only take essentials in a small backpack – water, camera, hat and sunscreen – and a walking or hiking stick will help to prevent falls on muddy, slippery paths. You can use your own or get one included in the fee when you hire a porter for $10 (R90) at the start of the hike.
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