by John Fowler
“She refers to Amy as ‘The Cunt.’” Peter laughed a little at the absurdity. I was stunned that even Dian would use that word.
“Really? Why, what happened?”
“Dian thinks people need to keep away from the gorillas. She doesn’t like the tourism thing, and she had problems with Bill and Amy in camp.”
I wanted to learn more, but with the uphill climb, I was soon getting too winded to talk. Peter climbed effortlessly, and I tried not to show my fatigue while trailing behind him.
Eventually, Peter and I arrived at the meadow, which marked the halfway point to camp. Peter again showed me the trail leading up Mount Visoke to Group 5, but seeing my condition of near exhaustion, suggested we rest briefly.
“Okay, you ready to climb?” Peter asked.
“Yep.” My heart was still pounding, but my breathing was less obvious. We gathered our backpacks and clipboards and left the level ground of the meadow to climb the Tourist Trail up Mount Visoke. It started gradually, like the Porter Trail, but soon took on a 45° upward angle. Peter barely seemed to break a sweat, but I could feel myself dripping inside my heavy shirt and plastic rain pants. We traveled again without talking. I willed each step on the viscous volcanic mud, dropping back twenty feet behind Peter, who looked back periodically to make sure I was still following.
My head swam as I thought back to the previous summer with Terry Maple’s group of students. One of our day trips was to Mount Longonot, an extinct volcano in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Our group made the hot dusty climb up its arid slope. I secretly wanted to be the first to the top, to see the views in solitude, and surreptitiously passed everyone as we trod and panted our way up. I arrived at the rim of Mount Longonot a few minutes before the next person and privately admired the magnificent view alone in those moments. Before me was a steep wall that dropped hundreds of feet to a perfectly circular crater valley. Beyond the crater was the Rift Valley and shimmering Lake Naivasha. About fifty feet above where I stood a black-chested harrier eagle hovered stationary in midair, riding the hot dry wind blowing up from inside the crater.
As I struggled to keep up with Peter, I wondered why being the first one up Mount Longonot had been important to me. I’m sure no one else cared. It was just some personal little victory that meant nothing as I hiked the steep trail up Visoke.
Slowly I caught up with Peter standing slightly off the trail on the right.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I said, between gasps. “Whew, this is some climb.” I dropped to the ground and sat, too winded to say much else.
“We’re gonna cut across slope now,” Peter said. He showed me where he had used his panga to slice through the trunk of a lobelia the day before to mark the spot where he had returned to the main trail. The lobelia, Lobelia gibberoa, is a soft-trunked plant with long blade-like leaves at the top, giving it the appearance of a miniature palm tree. I stared at the plant’s stump, sliced cleanly by the panga the day before. Thick milky sap had oozed from the hollow trunk and turned brown overnight.
“Do the gorillas eat that plant?” I asked.
“No, that’s low-altitude lobelia. They don’t eat it, but they pull it over to make nests. They eat the high-altitude lobelia. You’ll see that higher up, it looks different, with narrower leaves.” The higher-altitudinal species Peter referred to was Lobelia wollastonii.
Peter asked if Dian had given me a panga yet and told me I needed to get one as well as an altimeter. There were extras in camp. We would need to note the altitude once we found the gorillas and their nests from the night before. Upon leaving the group, we would need to mark our trail with panga cuts as a reference to help locate them again. The pangas were also useful in getting through the dense vegetation of the forest.
I told Peter about asking Dian for pots and pans to cook with, and he said he would ask for those when he asked about a panga and altimeter for me. This simple task seemed like a brave effort, and I wondered about his complacency in light of his rough treatment from Dian at dinner the night before.
I stood up and Peter led our way off the trail across slope. Our footing went from mud to a substrate of thick weeds, and I noticed in most places we balanced on a matting of vegetation that kept us raised inches above the soil. As I balanced and stumbled to keep up with Peter I noticed the mountain slopes were covered in basic mountain gorilla foods: wild celery (Peucedanum kerstenii), thistle (Carduus nyassanus) and a tender creeping ground cover called gallium (Galium spurium) that has tiny Velcro-like leaves for gripping and climbing.
“Ouch, shit!” I exclaimed as I stumbled and swung my hand through a tall fuzzy plant.
“Those are the nettles,” Peter informed me. “The gorillas eat that too.”
I rubbed my hand and could see the redness forming on my skin from Laportea alatipes.
“What do you do for the sting?” I asked.
“I don’t do anything. You just get used to it.”
“That hurts! How do the gorillas eat that?”
“It doesn’t seem to bother them, just like the thistle. They don’t eat elephant nettle though. Watch out for those.” Peter was referring to the much larger Urtica massaica, which I would encounter soon enough.
“Where is it?” I asked, looking around with my senses more acute.
A little farther on, Peter pointed to a stand of elephant nettle, a tall plant with large, heart-shaped leaves. On closer examination, I noticed the leaves and stems were covered in translucent spines. Some of these spines were larger, almost the gauge of a small hypodermic needle. I could see the clear fluid toxin through the rigid membrane that comprised the needles. This plant’s evolution had put a lot of energy into a structure and function that would prevent it from being eaten by anything, including elephants.
As we traveled across the slope of Visoke, I swung one hand and then the other through stinging nettles as I tried to balance and watch out for the more distinctive and foreboding elephant nettle. My hands became tingly and numb as if they had just been electrocuted.
Despite an ambient temperature of about 65°F, my clothes were soaked with sweat and my heart pounded as I followed Peter in and out of one small ravine after another. I realized these formed the ruts and ridges typical of the sides of a volcano.
Eventually Peter stopped at a level area and looked at the ground around his feet. I dropped to my knees and sat panting.
“This is where I left the group yesterday,” Peter said. I could see the weeds were trampled, as if they had been walked all over. He looked at me, and then his watch. It was getting late.
“I don’t know why Dian wanted us to find Group 5 after taking the luggage down to the parking lot,” he said. His calm demeanor was replaced with a look of frustration as he studied his altimeter and shook his head silently. We were near eleven thousand feet, a thousand feet higher than camp, and three thousand feet higher than the parking lot from where we had come.
“You can wait there while I look for the night nests,” he said. I nodded as he walked upslope and down in big concentric circles until he was out of sight.
After about thirty minutes Peter returned and announced that it was too late in the afternoon to try and find Group 5 and be able to spend any time observing them. Peter usually spent four hours with the gorillas once he located them, and even if we found them and spent a short amount of time with them, it was a long way back to camp. It would be dark at six and Dian had established that time as camp curfew. She did not like having to worry about students who were not back in camp after dark. I was too tired to be disappointed at not seeing the gorillas and too tired to look forward to the hike back to camp, but we headed back across the deep vegetation to Mount Visoke’s trail.
I remained exhausted cutting across the mountain’s slope at a 45° angle. I was a little relieved to come out onto the open main trail downward, but when we reached the small meadow again, I wanted to drop and stay there. Peter waited politely, until I decided to g
et up and move on up the trail to camp. This time he followed me. As the trail resumed its incline, my ribs ached with each breath and I began to feel nauseated. I kept moving, and Peter stayed at my heels until we came to a small stream that crossed the path. I suddenly became aware of an overwhelming thirst and dropped to my knees by the edge of the water. As tempted as I was, I knew not to drink directly from this stream for fear of what tropical microbes might live in that water. I knew the men in camp boiled our drinking water from Camp Stream for good reason.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine,” I said, picking my head up. “I just . . . wanna rest . . . a little longer.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah . . . you go on.” I preferred that he continue on rather than watch me gasping. Reluctantly, Peter headed up the trail and I sprawled on my back on a patch of cool grass by the stream, staring up at the clear blue sky. I remained there for a long time, with my ribs aching, before regaining the energy and composure to continue up the trail to camp.
SIX
UN-SETTLING IN
The next morning, I walked up the path through thick cold mist, arriving at Dian’s cabin promptly at eight o’clock, as my boss had mandated via Stuart. I was not going to be late, and quite frankly, thankful not to be doing another climb like the day before. Stuart and Peter had already headed in opposite directions in pursuit of gorillas, Peter went east to find Group 5, and Stuart headed west into Zaire, where Peanuts’s Group ranged.
Upon my arrival, Dian’s door was closed and the cabin was dark and quiet. I waited by a hagenia that dripped the mist it had captured in the moss and lichens draping its spreading limbs. I thought about Carolyn inside and wondered if she felt as uptight as I would, living under the same roof with Dian. For me, the simplest actions required the greatest of precaution to avoid triggering sudden anger from Dian. Could Carolyn go in the kitchen and fix a cup of tea? Could she eat a piece of bread or sit in a chair? Did she keep the door to her room closed at all times? I would.
At 8:20 I heard Dian coughing and the rattling of a lock from inside. Wearing Levi’s that drooped from her hipless waistline and a long john top, Dian opened the door and invited me in with a tired monotone. She was puffy and pale and her disheveled hair covered her sunken cheeks. I knew Dian had moved Carolyn up to her cabin, and saw her seated at the couch with a steaming coffee cup in her hand.
“Good morning,” Carolyn said. I was surprised to see that she looked relaxed, and I got the impression that she and Dian had been chatting idly. The little gorilla was on the floor and came to me immediately. I picked her up.
“She hasn’t eaten yet,” Dian said curtly, which I took as a hint to take the baby outside to forage. “She needs to be active so she won’t retain gas.”
Josephine clung very tightly to me as I walked outside with her. A thick mat of crisp stringy gallium covered the ground at one edge of the gorilla graveyard. Squatting down, I picked a strand of the trailing plant and placed it near Josephine’s mouth. She looked disinterested, but slowly began to nibble on it, taking it between her own pudgy black thumb and forefinger. The hairless skin on her hands, feet and face was like supple polished black leather. I put her down in the thick growth of gallium and she quickly climbed back into my arms. I moved into the sunlight and sat with her on my lap. The warm sun felt good as it burned away the morning dampness. I noticed that Josephine was lethargic and didn’t vocalize with her characteristic deep purrs that Dian called “belch vocalizations.”
The baby wouldn’t crawl off me and eat something, so I picked some gallium within arm’s reach and dropped it on her distended belly. She ate a few bites when I placed it at her mouth, but then picked the rest off her stomach and dropped it on the ground. Knowing Dian wanted us to get the baby moving, I made Josephine get on the ground and tried to walk away from her. She clung tightly, desperately, I thought. Funny to think that just weeks earlier she had seen her first humans and was rightly scared to death of them.
After an hour, clouds wafted in from around Mount Visoke and obscured the sun. The air became chilly. Carolyn emerged from Dian’s cabin and took Josephine in her arms. I noticed bruises on Carolyn’s forearms and upper arms as she held the big black ball of fur at her chest.
“She seems lethargic,” I said.
“Dian keeps telling me to make sure she stays active,” Carolyn said, handing her back to me. “She thinks her stomach feels too tight, like she has gas. She was talking about Coco and Pucker again, saying that they had the same problem.”
I felt Josephine’s stomach. It was round and taut like a basketball, but I didn’t know what a gorilla belly was supposed to feel like. I put the baby back on the ground and walked away so she would have to follow. She found a thistle and nibbled half-heartedly on a few leaves. I climbed the trunk of a fallen tree so Josephine could not cling to me and would have to move around on her own, but she pursued and tried to sit in my lap. As I jumped to the ground, she clung tightly, and giving in, I held her in my arms.
I thought about her insecurity and the conditions under which she must have been captured. You can’t just walk up to a mother gorilla and take a baby from her arms. It must have been a traumatic scene with Josephine’s mother being slaughtered. Others were surely killed as they tried to defend their group from a band of poachers. Josephine had been terrified of humans upon entering camp. Now, after three weeks of living in terror, she not only trusted them, but needed them to feel secure. Right then, she needed me, a human and recent alien to her world.
Dian came out of her cabin and offered a banana to Josephine, who tried to bite me before I loosened my grip and let her jump from my lap. At that, she grabbed the fruit and stuffed it into her mouth, peel and all. She emitted a soft, rumbling purr as she chewed, hmm waaahhh. Dian slyly stuck a second banana in my shirt pocket, which the baby didn’t see.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Eht mwah . . .” Dian growled. “That’s not for you!” Carolyn politely moved toward the cabin and out of earshot as Dian continued. “You know, you really do remind me a lot of Peter when he first got here . . . selfish, young and stupid. Remember, we’re here for the gorillas, not to feed our goddamn belly.”
Ouch! As at the dinner with Judy and Liza, I was speechless. I stared at the ground. Okay . . . what did she want from me? I wanted to say something, but had really never been in a situation like that in my young life, and it left me utterly dumbstruck. I had come there planning to do as I was told, and I could do that, but I did not know how to respond to unprovoked and unexpected hostility and condemnation at a moment’s notice. The best I could surmise is that she resented my naïve enthusiasm about being there. Peter must’ve been the same. He still had enthusiasm, when Dian wasn’t looking, and he retained a respect for her, however tenuous it had become, which I hadn’t even yet had the chance to develop. I was too new to realize that for Dian, Karisoke had become a maelstrom of turmoil and regret. Enjoyment and levity would neither be tolerated nor rewarded by her.
I had come there with enthusiasm and confidence, but soon felt that Dian despised confidence. It seemed to me she only liked the vulnerable, like children and animals, especially those disabled and endangered. Her first career had been working with disabled kids at a children’s hospital in Kentucky; now she was saving the endangered mountain gorilla. She would have to break me in some way to find me tolerable, or punish me for being happy and pull me into her misery. Whatever her agenda was, she was good at humiliation and demoralization, and got satisfaction from it.
Carolyn had gone back inside, and Dian also headed toward the cabin. Josephine followed, but the door closed before she caught up to her mistress. Halfway down the forty feet between Dian’s cabin and me, Josephine stopped and looked back. Those deep brown eyes stared widely at me from her solemn black face. Within a minute, she realized I was not going to follow her and she returned and clung to me.
I shook off the feelings from
my interaction with Dian and focused my thoughts on the baby. I’ve got to get her to eat her normal gorilla food, I thought, and took her from thistle to gallium plant. Certainly, it didn’t help that Dian plied her with sliced fruits, and even candy at bedtime. The baby would not eat on her own, and only nibbled reluctantly if I pushed a leaf or sprig to her mouth.
In an effort to initiate play, I took her by her arms and swung her outward. She turned upside down and hung with her feet upward. A playful sign, I thought, but in human terms her face was stoic and humorless. I placed her back on the ground.
Carolyn emerged from Dian’s cabin.
“I don’t know what Dian wants from me,” I muttered. “It’s like she just wants to break my spirit.”
“I’ll take her while you go in and have some breakfast,” she said, reaching down to pick up the baby. I didn’t expect this and speculated whether it was Carolyn’s idea and if it was okay with Dian.
“Breakfast? Are you sure?” I asked, in a low voice. “How’s it going in there?”
“It’s okay, we’re just talking. Dian’s been telling me about what it was like for her when she first came here. She’s had some tough times.”
“I think she’s just a miserable wretch,” I said, passing the banana from my pocket to Josephine before nervously heading inside. A fire smoldered in the stone fireplace. I couldn’t see Dian but heard the voices of several Africans on the other side of the house and moved toward the kitchen.
“Jambo,” Kanyaragana said, slicing bread by the sink.
“Jambo,” I replied. Kanyaragana uttered more Swahili that I did not understand. He was asking a question, but befuddled, I laughed and shrugged with my palms out to show confusion. Chuckling, he placed a plate with toasted bread and cheese on the dining table next to a jar of amber-colored jam, sliced pineapple, and a bunch of bananas.
“Asante sana,” I said.
“Ndio.”