Living the Slow Life

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Volcanoes National Park was the first National Park to be established in Africa.  It lies in north Rwanda, flowing over to become recognized National Parks in Uganda and the Congo.  As you may have guessed, its attractions are the eight majestic volcanic peaks that stretch into the clouds.  They loom on the horizon like silent watchmen to the bustles of Ruhengeri and Kinigi and act as a safe resting place for any traveling eye.

These ancient peaks are breathtaking in and of themselves, but they are also home to one of Rwanda’s biggest tourist attractions:  gorillas.  If you’ve ever heard of Dian Fossey, you probably have heard of the gorillas of Rwanda.  Dian Fossey was the advocate for gorillas that Jane Goodall is for chimpanzees.  Today, due to Dian’s efforts, about 250 silverback gorillas roam the forests of Volcanoes National Park. 

However, human expansion, illegal hunting, and inbreeding threaten their numbers.  Their precarious state has made them an even more sought after tourist attraction, as they might soon disappear.  The tourist companies are taking full advantage of this fact.  USD$500 to see the gorillas with a limit of one hour.  Transportation included. 

What!  You’ve got to be kidding me!  Andrew’s major conservation calling all his life has been gorillas and he’s not even ready to front that kind of money.  So, we settled for hiking to Dian Fossey’s gravesite instead. 

There are fields of flowers at the base of the National Park that are strained for their oil and then it is sent to the States for processing and then is used as a pesticide. 

We hiked with two guides, one of which was a young woman in training.  She was my age and shocked to hear that I live on my own.  Apparently that’s not normal here.  A woman can’t be her own person; what else is new?  Once we neared the park border we were joined by not one, not two, but four fully camoued armed guards!  We were told it was to protect us against any buffalo or gorillas we came across, which are legitimate reasons, but our final destination was also very near the Congolese border.  Mom, no Congolese with AK-47’s or enraged buffalo were going to touch a hair on your precious daughter’s head.  You can rest easy. 

We also hiked with a wonderful older couple from Holland.  He was originally from Great Britain but had fallen in love with his Dutch wife when they were 23.  Their adventures pretty much describe them:  they had met on a volunteer community living site almost 30 years ago, hitchhiked the entire perimeter of Australia and southeast Asia before getting married, and later had two daughters (now about my age) who have taken part in their many other travel adventures, though they were left at home for this couple’s five month tour of 

Africa from Tanzania to Cape Town.  To say the least, we had some decent conversations in those hills.

The conversation was wonderful and the forest was nothing like I’d ever hiked through before.  It is a virgin cloud forest but has an amazing amount of both ground and canopy cover.  Its trees are widely spread compared to many rainforests and the mud bogs near the top are completely unique.  Let’s just say it didn’t look like I had proper shoes on by the time we had descended the mountain.  My favorite moments were also observing a few duikers and a pair of forest bushbuck.  The duikers were a new species but the forest bushbucks were my favorite, as they were elegant, beautiful, and unlike the plains bushbuck I had previously seen.  We didn’t see any primates (including gorillas) while we were up there, though it is known to happen; but we did hear a troop of gorillas calling just on the next hill over.  Pretty spectacular to think they were so close yet so far away.

Bushbuck (top) and duiker (bottom)

  

The gravesite itself was very moving.  At the end of the trail lies twenty or so headstones marking gorillas’ resting sites, of which the majority had been lost to poaching.  On the far right of the gravesite rests Digit and Dian’s headstones, forever side by side.  Though I knew little about her at the time and had far less of a life-long connection to her memory than Andrew had, I felt invigorated and grateful by this place.  This woman dedicated her life to an animal restricted by human wrath, no matter the sacrifices she had to personally make or the very dangerous and, ultimately, fatal consequences that faced her.  If the world had more people like her it might very well be a place more beautiful than I could ever imagine. 

Dian Fossey’s Tale:

Later that evening, after thoroughly scrubbing the brown out of my trousers and making my shoes resemble anything but the feet of a mud monster, Andrew and I sat beneath our mosquito net and he told me the tale of Dian Fossey.  If you’ve ever read or seen Gorillas in the Mist, this is nothing new for you.   

Much like Jane Goodall, Dian was a young, attractive woman, and hired by Lewis Leakey to conduct similar research on gorillas that Jane was doing on chimpanzees.  In fact, her and Jane became very close friends when Dian trained with Jane before heading off to the Congolese gorillas.  People in the Congo didn’t like her much, so she moved her operation to the Rwandan hills.  There, she also found much opposition.  ORTPN, the largest stake holder in tourism here in Rwanda, wanted to turn gorillas into a large tourism industry.  The local townspeople and government also wanted to encroach into the gorilla’s territory because of human population growth and the poachers wanted gorilla heads. 

Dian was having none of it.  She had fallen in love with the gorillas there.  She spent every day tracking and observing them and was even the first person to make recorded contact with a gorilla.  Her opposition to other authoritative figures caused her many issues.  The local government would only grant her three month work permits, ensuring that she would regularly have to come off her mountain and leave doors open for the government to enact measures on the mountain while she was gone, and even possibly restrict her from returning all together.  Frequently, she returned from the field to find her cabin in the forest rummaged through and items missing.  No one knows if the government, locals, or poachers were infiltrating her personal things but it could have been any or all of them.  She was not well liked locally except by her staff, which she treated very well. 

They all lived together up in the mountains at the Kisoke Research Center.  Due to her death and the events of the genocide, the site fell into disrepair and is currently being retaken by the forest.  

Digit was an adolescent black-backed male that earned a special place in Dian’s heart.  Dian expressed a desire to be buried next to Digit after she had found his decapitated body.  This request was honored after her death in 1985, when she was found the day before Christmas, her favorite holiday, having been murdered by a machete blow to the head in her own bed.  Her killers were never found, though her favorite tracker on staff was jailed and died there as a suspect.  Just weeks earlier she had been in Kigali and received a two-year work permit from the government there to work in the mountains.  Many people call this her Death Ticket, because someone locally must have known that she would not leave unless she were killed.  Many people believe the local Kinigi government was responsible for her death to ensure their own priorities were met.

Today, it is almost dishonoring Dian to have tourism groups that go up to her resting place.  She did not want the mountains to become a tourism attraction, but to be solely for conserving and researching gorillas.  Unfortunately, gorillas bring in much revenue for the country and I believe the only hope there is for conserving them is to ensure that they still incur revenue for the local economy. 

Traditional Rwandan dancing to welcome us to the National Park and prepare us for our hike.