A Forest in the Clouds

by John Fowler

  Heading into the center of camp, the trail formed a narrow ribbon of wet black soil, worn down in the undergrowth, compressed by boot prints intermingling with the cloven hoofprints of forest buffaloes, Syncerus caffer, who kept the path’s edges mowed by their nocturnal grazing. Here and there, the moist air hinted of manure.

  Not far up the trail, a sharp, raspy whistle shrieked from a stand of tall thistles on my right, and a small reddish-brown antelope sprang out and away from me, leaping and diving into a thicket toward the forest edge; this was the black-fronted duiker, Cephalophus nigrifrons, I’d read about. I only caught fleeting glimpses of the delicate creature’s dark-tufted forehead and tiny black horns before it vanished. This disturbance, in turn, triggered another sound from farther beyond, the repeated single bark of dog, which struck me as so out of place here. From the direction of the noise, in a streak of golden brown, a bushbuck, Tragelaphus scriptus, bounded in repeated leaps and thuds over the undergrowth to just inside the forest tree line. As he fled, the large antelope raised its tail like a flag, flashing its snow-white rump just like the white-tailed deer I was so familiar with from home. Feeling safe among the trees, the bushbuck stared back at me, twitching his tail with agitation, and giving me a good look at his elegant horns, spiraling upward from his crown. His sides were patterned with an odd arrangement of white stripes and dots among the golden brown, as if designed with whimsy by a postmodernist painter. Witnessing these forest denizens firsthand only added to the enchantment of this equatorial montane habitat.

  A hundred yards farther up the trail another metal cabin flanked the path. Situated on a slight rise, stone steps lead to its front door, giving it a quaint cottage appearance; its occupancy revealed by a waft of smoke from its stovepipe chimney.

  I continued on through an open understory another hundred yards, where the last cabin stood. The largest of all, at thirty by fifty feet long, and made of the same green-painted corrugated metal, this one was a house compared to the others. Five times the size of the rest, it had been the last in the series of Dian’s constructions, and was her current home.

  Approaching it, I noticed the stony path split. A narrower path led up to what looked like a back door, while the other continued around the cabin to the left. Here a large bird flapped heavily upward into a small tree. It was a small red rooster, joining a couple of smaller red hens already perched there. The trio teetered a moment, balancing themselves to settle in for the night on a high branch. I followed the wider path around to a grassy clearing on the other side. There, I was greeted by Judy Chidester, the American Embassy’s communications officer who had lent us her home back in Kigali. In a dark red jacket hanging open, cheerful Judy was obviously enjoying the brisk mountain air as she introduced me to her friend Liza, from the Swiss Embassy’s Kigali office. Liza, petite, thin and waifish under a pageboy crop of strawberry blond, donned a thick, white wool cardigan against the chill. Her pallor contrasted sharply with Judy’s florid cheeks, but she was equally jovial, and I noted her pleasant French-Swiss accent.

  “And this is Cindy.” Liza said, as a large golden-brown dog with a smooth coat approached us wagging her stumpy cropped tail. I reached to pet this friendly pooch while she sniffed my boot and legs.

  “She’s just the sweetest dog,” Judy added. “And to think Dian confiscated her from poachers.”

  A bushel-sized black ball of fur sat a few feet away on the ground in the middle of a pile of greens that looked like they were plucked from the forest. The fur ball lifted its head, and the plaintive face of a baby gorilla stared into my eyes. Overwhelmed by its childlike expression, I moved closer, and hovered above the small round simian, staring back into her jewel-like dark brown eyes—my first mountain gorilla, Gorilla berengei berengei, in the flesh. Her bare face shone like polished leather, convoluted with folds and wrinkles radiating from the space between her eyes, along her broad flat nose, and beyond her flared nostrils. She turned away, and with her leathery fingers, picked up a handful of greens and brought it to her mouth. Then, as if in a greeting of her own, she ambled to my feet. Hmm, hmmm . . . a soft low purring voice rumbled from her.

  “Can I pick her up?” I heard myself ask.

  “Yeah, sure, she’d love it,” Judy said, chuckling.

  I leaned over, intuitively grabbing the baby by its underarms and lifting her like a child. She immediately wrapped her warm furry arms around my shoulders; her legs grasped around my waist. I could feel the solidness of her body in the heft of her weight, and as I put my arms around her for support, I was struck by the hard, broad bones of her hairy back; by contrast her belly was soft and pudgy. Again emitting the low purring rumble, she burped and her herbal breath filled my nostrils.

  “We’ve been calling her Charlie,” Judy said with a laugh. “Dian originally thought she was a boy.”

  As little Charlie resumed nibbling on her fistful of green leaves, completely at home in my arms, I noticed I was standing near the edge of a plot filled with little placards on wood posts. There were names printed on them: Uncle Bert, Lee, Flossie, Kweli, Digit . . . It was a gorilla graveyard outside the high narrow windows on this western side of Dian’s cabin.

  When little Charlie finished her handful of browse, she climbed from my arms to the ground to return to her mound of leafy gorilla foods. Loud coughing and shouting from Dian over the din of porter’s chatter from the opposite side of the house sounded Dian’s arrival up the mountain, and my gut tightened. With the sound of Dian’s voice, a high tree branch shook from above and beyond the cabin, and a monkey appeared suddenly from the other side of the cabin’s roof peak. It bounded noisily over the corrugated metal roof, chattering and muttering with abrupt clicks and chirps, its slender tail floating above and behind. It was a blue monkey, Cercopithecus mitis, named for its blue-gray coat. The quick-moving simian glared warily at each of us with glowing amber eyes as she scampered down onto the cabin’s front door overhang.

  “And that is Kima,” Judy said, chuckling again. “She’s Dian’s pet.” While Kima’s gaze darted furtively from me to the cabin’s entryway, Dian drew the door open from inside. As if this was their cue, Judy and Liza moved toward Dian’s doorway too. From there, they coaxed the baby to enter the cabin. Dian crouched just inside, still coughing, and beckoned to the baby gorilla with a slice of fresh pineapple she had bought at the Ruhengeri market. Little Charlie followed her caregivers and snatched the fruit greedily from her surrogate mother’s hand, before scrambling farther inside to more treats laid out on the grass mat floor. Dian pulled the door closed behind her, leaving me and Kima outside. The monkey leaned over the eave chirping frantically, glaring toward the door then at me as if in supreme indignation.

  “Hey Kima . . . !” I called, approaching the expressive little being with my hand outstretched. At this, the monkey turned away, chirping sharply, long tail arched tersely above, before bounding back over the rooftop and leaping into a tree on the cabin’s other side. Karisoke, at its high altitude, was not the normal habitat for a blue monkey; I would learn that Dian had brought this pet to camp.

  Behind the gorilla graveyard, from where I stood facing northwest, the forested slope of Mount Visoke rose steeply upward from the level plain of the meadow area where I stood to its pinnacle at over twelve thousand feet. In the fading light, the volcano disappeared in the cloud cover that was again wafting in from the far side in Zaire. Massive and spreading hagenias dotted the level landscape of thick undergrowth and open grassy places in the flat saddle area between Visoke and Karisimbi. It looked like everything that grew on the ground also grew up the leaning trunks and heavy branches of these great trees. Thick cushions of green mosses and long dripping hanks of wispy gray usnea lichens hung from the limbs, making the trees resemble the live oaks of my American southland, draped in Spanish moss and ferns.

  The sun had disappeared behind Mount Visoke, and cold drifts of mist began moving through this open forest like ghosts of giant gorillas, past the massive gnarled
tree trunks and through the markers of the gorilla graveyard—cold billows of fog to those of us at Karisoke, but clouds to the people in the farmlands below looking up at these enigmatic sleeping volcanoes. Scarcely varying its schedule near the equator, the sun rises around six in the morning and sets around six each night. After twelve hours of day, twelve hours of equatorial night was settling in. My happiness about being in the forests of the mountain gorillas was tainted by the incomprehensible and irascible behavior of Dian that I had witnessed until this moment. I could not even imagine what was in store.

  No one invited me inside from where the laughter and excited voices then drifted, but I shook off thoughts of the last few days and returned to the far side of Dian’s cabin pondering what I should do next. Soon, two Rwandan teens appeared up the trail carrying heavy buckets of water. As they approached the back entrance I stepped in front of them to pull open the door. With heads down, the two young men lugged their burdens inside as a man’s voice called out to me.

  “Hey! C’mon in!”

  I followed the young workers into a dark kitchen where a kerosene lantern’s weak pulsing flare provided the only light. The smells of cooking permeated the small dark room. In the dimness, a young man my age extended a hand from the shadows, introducing himself as Peter Veit.

  “Welcome to Deepest Darkest,” he said, with a friendly handshake. “Great place, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

  Peter, twenty-three, was the student from California I’d heard about, who had been at camp for a year already. He had written a letter to Ray Rhine to be copied to us newcomers about what to bring: waterproof paper, warm clothes, boots, etc. . . . I had followed his advice. With close-cropped dark blond hair, he wore a khaki work shirt and a pair of grass-stained blue jeans, with sturdy Vasque hiking boots. A third Rwandan man in a blue plaid flannel shirt, older than the boys, moved from the kitchen sink, smiling from under a blue-and-white New York Yankees hat, the teens joined him at the counter.

  “This is Kanyaragana,” Peter said, turning back around to introduce us.

  “Jambo,” Kanyaragana said, his smile drawing into a wide grin beneath his cap.

  “Jambo sana,” I replied. Kanyaragana perked up at my Swahili response.

  “Unajua Kiswahili?”

  “Oh . . . uh . . .” I stammered in response.

  “He wants to know if you speak Swahili.” Peter said, in helpful intervention.

  “Oh . . . no, but I picked up a few phrases on a study-abroad program in Kenya last year.”

  Peter translated for me as Kanyaragana nodded and sat at a small table against the wall in the dim light. There, he pumped an old lantern that failed to ignite. Peter spoke to him again in Swahili.

  “Iko kufa,” Kanyaragana replied.

  I laughed, recognizing the word kufa for dead.

  “Ist kaput,” said Peter with a one syllable laugh, “Hah!” Peter told me his parents were German immigrants and he and his younger sister grew up with some German spoken in the household. As a kid, he even went to a German school in California. He came to Karisoke as a graduate from the University of California in Santa Cruz.

  “Is that a refrigerator?” I asked, noticing a small rectangular appliance in the corner. “I didn’t think there was electricity . . .”

  “Yeah, it runs on kerosene.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, it even has a little freezer box. I keep gorilla urine in there.”

  “Really? What for?”

  “I’m doing a study on female cyclicity. I hope to get the hormone levels analyzed eventually. If they last that long. The thing shuts down sometimes, but it stays cold here at least.”

  “How do you get gorilla urine?”

  “It’s from the females. Sometimes I just hold a vial right up under one. If not, I’ll catch it dripping off the leaves when they move on.”

  My curiosity led me beyond the kitchen, and Peter soon guided me out of the dark work space into the brightly lit dining area. A doorway in the wall on the right led to a dormitory of four twin beds for Dian’s overnight guests. To the left, the dining area stepped down into a large communal living space. All the walls and floors were covered in the same woven grass matting as mine and Stuart’s duplex. The working pressure lanterns glowed brightly, hissing from nail hangers and side tables, illuminating the space. Judy and Liza waved at me from the couch against the far wall, beneath a long window, where they chatted amiably, sipping wine they had brought from Kigali.

  A fire smoldered in a stone fireplace flanked by goatskin chairs, and faded African print curtains hung beside large windows over a desk and chair against one wall. Where Peter and I stood there was a long dining table with chairs, and a sideboard against the far wall. Dozens of black-and-white close-up pictures of gorilla faces stared from the walls in this area, pinned and taped here and there like a collage of makeshift wallpaper. I had read about these in one of Dian’s National Geographic articles and knew she used them to identify individual gorillas she had documented in Karisoke’s study range.

  Dian emerged from her bedroom doorway by the fireplace and crossed the living area. We all watched as she reached up to a wood-and-wire conduit that ran the length of the room. Above the door to the outside, she pulled at a wooden panel, sliding it open. Kima the monkey bounded into the suspended caging from the chilly night air, chirping and whistling as Liza and Judy chuckled at the sight. Dian then slammed the exterior door shut, preventing Kima from retreating again to the outside. Above the middle of the room, Kima stopped to glare at what was surely an unusual number of visitors in the room for her nightly routine. It was clear she didn’t like strangers, and only Dian could approach her.

  “Poor Kima, come inside . . .” Dian beckoned. Kima’s eyes darted nervously from Dian to each of us from her suspended caging. “I know, Napati . . . too many people.” Our gathering watched in beguiled anticipation, but instead of scampering farther along, the nervous monkey froze, glaring at each of us, before releasing the contents of her bladder in a stream of golden urine. Down through the wire it trickled, splattering into a puddle on the grass matting, before soaking in. A wave of groans wafted from everyone in the room, followed by laughter—except from Dian.

  “Uh, that’s really good.” Dian grumbled facetiously. “Ehhht mwaaah . . . c’mon Kima!” Dian tried to coax her frisky monkey farther along the conduit that led through the wall into her bedroom. At Dian’s ire, everyone stifled themselves. “Stop being a little . . . bitch. . . . Get in the bedroom! You know the goddamn routine.” As Kima scampered a few steps closer to a chute leading into Dian’s bedroom, Liza followed Judy toward the outside door.

  “We’re going out to get the weather data.” Liza said, raising her quiet voice above the din, waving a small notebook as she slipped out the door behind Judy.

  The Rwandan boy named Toni peeked his head out of the kitchen to get a look at the commotion and the beguiling monkey at the center of it all. The young man was mesmerized by the furry creature suspended above the room, and stared, mouth open in a bemused half-smile. Upon seeing young Toni idle, Dian snapped.

  “Get back in that goddamn kitchen!” she shouted, lunging toward him. “Shit, goddammit, motherFUCKIT!” The young man couldn’t understand his boss’s English words, but he got the universal message of her hostile glare and loud voice, and retreated. “Bloody wogs!” Dian grumbled, stomping back into her bedroom. Only then did Kima decide to follow her mistress from above and out of sight. With that, Dian slammed another sliding panel near the ceiling, successfully confining Kima to the caging within the bedroom.

  “Dian’s got a cage in there for the baby gorilla, too,” Peter said. “You should see it . . . up on stilts.” To my amazement at his seeming obliviousness to her volatility, he guided me over toward Dian’s door. Unlike Kima, Peter was obviously energized by all the company of we new arrivals in camp. I was struck by his calm demeanor around what I found to be a very disturbing unpred
ictable environment. His jovial, relaxed banter made me uneasy in such close proximity to Dian’s hair-triggered emotions. I thought he should tone it down, but still I craned my neck to peer through the half-open door into the room, and saw the foot of a king-sized bed mounted on a low platform. A half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch stood next to a gray Olivetti field typewriter on a small desk against one wall. I could see one of the spindly tree trunks that supported the wood and wire cage suspended six feet off the floor near the ceiling. The baby gorilla, tucked in for the night, was obscured in her mound of leafy fronds of nest material cut from the surrounding forest. Suddenly Dian appeared from her room and stepped up into the raised dining area where Peter and I stood.

  “Shit merde . . . get in there and help with dinner, goddammit!” she snapped at the sight of us.

  “What do you want us to do?” Peter asked, with arms spread in bafflement.

  “Do something useful, instead of acting like you know every fucking thing!”

  I followed Peter as he skulked back into the dark kitchen.

  “Everybody needs to pitch in around here!” Dian shouted after us, as she retreated to her bedroom, where the baby gorilla and her monkey were settling in.

  “What does wog mean?” I asked Peter, the strange new word still resonating in my ears.

  “It’s a derogatory word for the Africans.” Peter informed me. “More like something you’d hear from English colonials. Dian probably picked it up when she was in the UK. That’s where she got her PhD, at Cambridge.”

  Stuart soon entered from outside, carrying the parts for the pressure lanterns he had purchased for Dian in Kigali. Hearing his voice, Dian called for him to join her as Judy and Liza returned with the weather data notebook. He quickly set his cargo on the kitchen table with Kanyaragana’s dead lantern, and joined Dian and her guests in the living area. Peter, Kanyaragana, the two Rwandan teens, and I made a total of six men tripping and stumbling into each other in the dark little kitchen. In the Africans’ banter I made out the recurring word, “Mademoiselli,” their Africanized French title for Dian.