The Impenetrable Forest

by Thor Hanson

  “Twareeba enjojo,” whispered one wide-eyed youth: “We have seen the elephants.”

  I wanted the community to learn more about gorillas, but worried that curious apes could expose themselves to unnecessary harassment and disease risks. Properly done, the habituation process shouldn’t simply eliminate fear, but replace it with respect. We aimed for peaceful coexistence, with both humans and gorillas learning to maintain a safe distance. But like Makale in Katendegyere group, the Mubare gorillas, particularly the juveniles, always found new ways to challenge our teaching.

  I crouched next to Tibamanya, the lead tracker, and scanned the group with binoculars. Mamakawere reclined near Ruhondeza with her baby cradled against her chest. At five months of age, the infant’s skin had darkened completely, transforming the fragile newborn into a tiny, rounded replica of its massive parents. Motherhood seemed to give Mamakawere increased status in the group, and we rarely found her far from Ruhondeza’s side.

  Farther afield, three young apes played king of the mountain on a low stump, grappling, biting, and shoving one another roughly to the ground. Bits of mud and dry leaves hung from their long black hair, and their soft play hoots sounded like cartoon monkeys as they struggled to climb higher. The largest finally prevailed, pushing away its siblings with a heave and pirouetting awkwardly on top of the mossy stump. It sat down, licked rainwater from its forearm, and peered around with youthful distraction. When that brown-eyed gaze fell on us, the ape sat up with sudden interest, then dropped to the ground, staggering in our direction on two legs like an awkward toddler.

  For the young gorillas in Mubare group, trackers and tourists blended into their daily landscape like the trees and shady clearings of the rain forest. They accepted human visitors easily, a predictable occurrence of quiet, camera-toting observers they’d seen nearly every day of their lives. As the apes matured, their natural curiosity made people an irresistible subject for investigation, sometimes at close range.

  As the youngster came toward us, we gathered the tourists together, preparing to retreat and maintain our five-meter distance. This tactic failed, however, when a gorilla was persistent or drove us into thick vegetation. Instead, we’d begun shaking leaves and twigs at the juveniles whenever they crossed the five-meter line. This motion and noise irritated them and usually drove them back, but we had to be careful. If annoyance turned into fear, they might cry out and bring down the wrath of the rest of the group.

  I plucked a handful of ferns and stood firm with Tibamanya. The young ape advanced on all fours now, pausing after every few steps to peek cautiously through the undergrowth. From its size and independence, I judged its age at nearly three years. Within twelve months it would separate completely from its mother and begin building its own night nest, marking the definitive end point of its gorilla childhood. The female would come into estrus again soon after, continuing the gorillas’ constant reproductive cycle: breeding, an eight-and-a-half-month pregnancy, and three to four years of intensive child rearing. While infant mortality ranged as high as 40 percent, a healthy female might still raise four to six children in her forty-year lifetime.

  Young gorillas receive more parental care than almost any other primate. Born light-skinned and highly dependent, infants rarely leave their mother’s side during the first six months. They ride ventrally, clinging to her chest and nursing at regular intervals while they gain in size and dexterity. Gradually, they learn to perch on her back for long journeys, but don’t start traveling on their own or interacting with other juveniles until well into their second year. Silverbacks often take an active role in child rearing, and have been known to “adopt” juveniles whose mothers have died. In most primate species, mating with multiple males makes parentage unclear, and child rearing is left entirely up to the females. But as the sole breeder in his group, a lead silverback like Ruhondeza can treat all the offspring as his own and take a greater interest in their care. We often saw him playing and wrestling gently with his younger children, and once, when a two-year-old fell from a high branch, Ruhondeza was there, stretching his arm up casually to make an easy, one-handed catch.

  Tibamanya and I began rattling ferns and leaves at the approaching juvenile, and it stopped suddenly, blinking and wrinkling its nose, as if the noisy vegetation were something painfully bright or foul-smelling. We paused, and it twitched its head from side to side, peering up at us with a suspicious, narrow-eyed look before taking another step closer. I shook the ferns again and it spun away, then came at us from a different angle. We continued this game for several minutes until the ape grew bored and turned back to rejoin the group. As it walked slowly away, I pulled out my notebook and tried to sketch a nose print. With so many look-alike females and youngsters in the group, we’d named only a few of the Mubare gorillas, but today’s visitor seemed distinctive. It stood noticeably larger than the other juveniles, with a heavily lined face and a precocious capacity for mischief.

  “Does this one have a name?” I asked Tibamanya quietly.

  He held a whispered conference with the other trackers and turned back to me, nodding. “Bob,” he whispered.

  “Bob?” I was taken aback. Ruhondeza, Kashundwe, Muchuchu…and Bob? Where did they get this name, I asked. From a tourist? No. Did it mean something in Rukiga? No. Then how did they choose it?

  Tibamanya shrugged, blinking his perpetually sleepy eyes. “He is just Bob.”

  Strangely enough, the name seemed to fit. I watched the young ape pick up speed and launch himself onto his father’s stomach, eliciting a low growl from the resting silverback. Ten minutes later, the whole group moved off, with Bob bringing up the rear. He glanced back over his shoulder with a puzzled expression, as if wondering why we all didn’t hurry to catch them up.

  Over the past two years, Mubare and Katendegyere groups had received more than five thousand visitors, from local people to foreign tourists and visiting dignitaries. As Bwindi’s reputation grew, it attracted attention from far beyond the community of adventure travelers. The World Bank identified Bwindi and nearby Mgahinga Park as beneficiaries of a perpetual trust fund to support protection, research, and sustainable development. Sheraton Hotels donated construction funds and sponsored a design contest for a new Bwindi visitor center. CARE International hired a park adviser and stepped up its sustainable development projects in the area, while Liz was hard at work on a major grant proposal that would extend IGCP’s support for three years, bringing new vehicles, equipment, and additional staff for the park.

  In many ways, the Impenetrable Forest had become a test case for modern theories of conservation. With gorillas as the focal point, Bwindi offered the opportunity to expand beyond protectionism, to see what ecotourism, revenue sharing, multiple use, and sustainable development could contribute to preserving biodiversity. Environmental groups and scientists around the world would watch Bwindi’s successes and failures, taking the lessons home to their own conservation efforts.

  All of this took place against the backdrop of Uganda’s continued political stability and newfound position as a power broker in the region. While people criticized Musevini for his resistance to multiparty politics, all agreed that his government had brought about a dramatic social and economic recovery in Uganda. Aid poured in from developed countries, rebuilding infrastructure and attracting foreign investment. When Musevini visited Europe and the United States, he gained the reputation as an eloquent statesman among the new generation of African leaders. Unrest still marred the northern part of the country, and rebel groups staged occasional raids from neighboring Zaire, but the path ahead looked hopeful. And ultimately, a secure, stable nation was the best hope for the forest and the gorillas as well.

  In Buhoma, I watched these developments with great encouragement, but also with a certain nostalgia for the days when hearing a vehicle in the village was unusual, and when you didn’t have to wait for a table at Hope and Phenny’s canteen. Gorilla tourism had brought jobs and relative prosperity to the commun
ity but not without certain costs: inflation at local markets, children begging from foreigners, insensitive visitors offending local customs, and even the arrival of prostitutes to serve the tour company drivers and camp workers. Still, it was an exciting time, with a new focus on the future.

  “I am investing in wood,” one of the guides told me. “If I buy timbers now they are cheap, but I’ll sell them later for profit when everyone is building new houses!”

  On a rare day without tourists near the end of my tenure, the trackers and I spent a quiet hour with Katendegyere group, sitting near them in the rain while they slept and fed. Only Kasigazi had shown any sign of activity, climbing a low tree to swing and dangle lazily from the branches. As the group’s lone juvenile, he’d learned to play by himself, wrestling with saplings or making daredevil leaps from high trees. Before settling on the name Kasigazi, the trackers called him Makyita, a word meaning “courage” and “mischief.” Today he’d hung one-armed from a stout limb, staring down at us with languid curiosity while he deftly picked his nose and ate it. Now, this is science, I thought – another observation that would never make it onto a television special.

  Toward the end of the hour, Prunari touched my arm and pointed up. Twenty feet above us, a fine-banded woodpecker focused his percussive attention on a rotten limb, then a liana, hopping nimbly from one to the next with no regard to gravity, as if he’d lost all sense of earth and sky in the serpentine weave of branches. His olive plumage blended perfectly with the leaves, a pattern of green broken only by the tiny crimson feathers streaking his crown. Through binoculars I watched him leap and flutter through the foliage, pausing to listen for the telltale gnaw of insects. He would cock his head and wait, silent as a still life, then rear back to hammer the bark away in sharp staccato bursts.

  I thought back to my first months in Bwindi, when visiting Katendegyere group wasn’t exactly peaceful enough for bird-watching.

  Hiking home, the trackers skipped nimbly over root wads and patches of rain-slick mud, half-running. It was market day, and they could sense the tonto flowing in downtown Buhoma. Overhead, sunlight crept through pillared gaps in the clouds and fell across our backs, searing hot after the rain. From Rukubira’s hilltop clearing, the forest stretched away to the edge of vision in waves of textured verdure, heavy with steam and silence.

  Unlike the teeming jungles of a Hollywood movie set, the heart of a true rain forest often seems deserted. As we descended from Rukubira, Bwindi closed around us like the dim hall of a medieval throne room, its wildlife hidden behind a living stillness that hung down from the canopy in veils of dripping green. The layers of foliage held back wind hum and sun-bright air until any noise at all sounded thin and contrived: the monotone coos of a tambourine dove, the biplane drone of Goliath beetles, or the subtle patter of fruit pith dropped by a troop of monkeys.

  I stopped Prunari, and we advanced quietly to the base of two huge fig trees, their wide trunks buttressed by smooth gray roots, like hip bones sculpted from sand. High in the canopy, faint shadows coalesced into monkey shapes, red-tails and blues, foraging together on the ripe green fruit. They fed voraciously, ignoring their neighbors and the black-billed turacos that hopped and flapped through the branches around them. Figs and other fruiting trees are the market day tonto bars of the rain forest, attracting a huge variety of birds, primates, and other species. By plotting the location of specific trees and recording the months in which they bear fruit, researchers can predict the best places to find wildlife at any time of year. We kept track of the trees near our forest walk trails, and this pair of figs had been producing steadily for more than two weeks.

  When the monkeys finally noticed us, the whole troop erupted into action, their sudden movements accompanied by panicky high-pitched chirps. We mimicked their calls, cupping our palms against wet lips and making sharp kissing noises. Several males paused to look down, bobbing their heads as a gesture of threat. Then the turacos took flight—a flurry of crimson wing splashes that sent the nervous monkeys leaping away across an aerial highway of branches and vines. Two redtails hurled themselves haphazardly into dense thickets, a noisy display intended to distract us, and alert any lagging group members to the threat of people below. Historically, the Bakiga rarely hunted primates, but local Batwa pygmies and many Zairian tribes relish the meat, and Bwindi’s monkeys have learned to be wary.

  We walked on and saw the troop again, passing over a narrow clearing in the forest. Each individual used the same route through the trees, hurtling across a forty-foot gap in the canopy like circus acrobats in freefall. They jumped without pausing, arms stretched forward and tails out for balance, their short-fringed coats glowing in the patch of sunlight. The flashy russet fur of the redtails contrasted sharply with the blues, who gleamed in shades of dull silver, like woodland spirits woven from mist. I watched them disappear into the greenery, sorry for disturbing their meal. But both species belonged to the genus Cercopithecus, forest guenons equipped with large cheek pouches for storing food. At the first hint of danger, the monkeys had surely stuffed their mouths with fruit, a portable luncheon to enjoy in peace whenever the troop stopped running.

  I let the trackers go on ahead and turned my walk home into a long, slow detour through familiar forest. A blue mother-of-pearl butterfly drifted above the path before me, furling and unfurling its iridescent wings like the folds of a magician’s cloak. I recognized every bend in the trail as I moved toward Buhoma: a familiar tunnel through drooping Brilliantasia shrubs, the nesting tree for bar-tailed trogons, a day-roost snag for eagle owls. I passed the waterfall trail, where Phenny, John, and I had hiked to the bridge on my birthday and dangled our legs over the stream in the black hush of midnight. Every branch in the path led to hills or tiny clearings where I’d camped, watched gorillas, or shared lunch with the trackers—obscure but beautiful places with names like woodwind music: Hachogo, Kanyampundu, Rutojo, Mukeshwiga, Hakigugu, Musharara, Nyakagera, Hakatare.

  The Peace Corps talks of community as the village world where volunteers interact with local people, form ties, and make a home for themselves. I realized now that my own community extended beyond the human element of life in Uganda. It included gorillas, clear streams, trees, birds, and all the myriad aspects of the forest itself, a dynamic, living landscape that I would miss as much as I missed my friends in Buhoma. I watched a rufous warbler flutter through the trailside bracken and felt a sudden wave of emotion, as if I were already surrounded by memory.

  22

  Bye, Phenny, Bye

  My age-mates have donned

  White ostrich feathers,

  They are singing a war song,

  I want to join them

  In the wilderness

  And chase Death away

  From our village,

  Drive him a thousand miles

  Beyond the mountains

  In the west,

  Let him sink down

  With the setting sun

  And never rise again.

  —Okot p’Bitek, Ugandan poet

  from Song of Prisoner, 1970

  “You have lost your friend,” the man from Buhoma told me, and the chaos of the taxi park faded into a blur around us. “Hope is dead.”

  I nodded numbly and heard myself ask about the burial.

  “It should be tomorrow,” he said. “They are still bringing the body from Kampala. You know she went for treatment to Mulago Hospital?”

  I didn’t know but thanked him for telling me. He said he was sorry and then disappeared back into the swirling crowd.

  I felt disoriented as my surroundings came back into focus. A tiny boy next to me raised his eyebrows as I glanced around, holding out a box filled with gum and packets of sweet crackers. “Biscuits?” he asked, but I waved him away. Nearby, the driver of a bright green matatu honked his horn repeatedly, smiling and shouting like a drunkard. “Muzungu! Where are you going?”

  Home, I thought with double meaning, and wearily began looking for
transport. Ishaka’s taxi park lay at a busy crossroads, but matatus rarely strayed from the main routes, and I knew I’d be lucky to reach Buhoma in time for the funeral. I’d been away for more than a week, working in Kampala and then stopping up-country to say good-bye to several Peace Corps friends. Our “close-of-service” date was at hand, and we all had plane tickets back to the States. I’d planned a vacation in Zanzibar along the way, and for a shameful moment, I wished I was already there.

  “I guess Uganda couldn’t let me go without another round of tragedy,” I later wrote in a letter home. Hope had battled poor health for more than a year, but somehow, her death still came as a shock. I think we’d all grown accustomed to the routine: small improvements and setbacks, new medicines, and trips to the herbalist.

  “How are you, Hope?”

  “Improving, Tour. I should be back to work any time.”

  Even sick, she kept herself heavily involved in community affairs, organizing meetings and managing accounts, while at the same time running her and Phenny’s canteen, the most successful local business in town. She treated her illness as a matter of course, and everyone took it for granted, until its implications almost ceased to seem threatening.

  The struggle to reach Buhoma had never been so frustrating, and I didn’t arrive until late the following evening, after a night in Kabale and a long series of buses, trucks, and minivans. I missed the funeral service completely, but found the Gongos’ farm still crowded with mourners as I made my way up the path.

  “Tourrr!” Phenny called out when he saw me, drawing out my name like a wail. He ran down through the banana trees and shook my hand, his face unreadable.

  “I got the news at Ishaka,” I told him. “Someone found me there.”

  He didn’t meet my gaze, and we stood together for an awkward moment, but this time something greater than cultural boundaries kept us silent. In a span of months, Phenny had lost his only child and now his wife. Even in America, I wouldn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry, my friend,” I finally managed, still gripping his hand.