Gorilla Warfare in Rwanda

‘The woman who lives alone in the forest’

Photo by Marcel Muller

Fossey’s simple stone marker begins with the word “Nyiramachabelli” (meaning “the woman who lives alone in the forest”). That Rwandan nickname given her in life is also accurate in death, since she is the only woman, the only human, resting in this cemetery. All the other graves are those of mountain gorillas and are marked by wooden blocks nailed onto poles, bearing the names and dates of birth and death of gorillas she had known during her research in Rwanda, and some who died after 1985. Each had been murdered by poachers, including the famous Digit, whose grave is closest to Fossey’s.

The question of whether the walk is “worthwhile” is purely subjective. It was, for me, both for the experience of the walk itself and the insight of seeing how isolated it is, how remote the location, how damp and difficult the circumstances during monsoon season. I could only imagine those but it was plenty humid now, in dry season, and the mud splotched my boots and rimmed my pants.

The sight of Fossey’s grave, with Digit’s marker almost close enough to touch, and others whose names I had heard, vaguely, over the years, was a surprisingly emotional experience. I hadn’t yet read the book or seen the movie, so the emotion came mainly from imagination. A woman, alone, a passionate animal lover, obsessive, alcoholic, probably racist, perhaps more than a bit mad, had chosen to spend 18 years in a makeshift hut in this remote location. She had single-handedly made a DIFFERENCE, and she had died for her beliefs.

The difference between “active” and “theoretical” conservation was driven home to me as I and my entourage of guide and guards left Karisoke to return to park headquarters. We heard gorillas to the right and left of the trail as we descended — the crash of branches as the animals thrashed around in the foliage, sometimes within plain sight.

A group of permit-holding tourists was watching the group to our right, and we could see some of them as well. To our left was a research group, Fidel said. He was in constant communication with park authorities so we would not run into either group. The government is paranoid about the possibility that a tourist might accidentally see a gorilla without the $500 permit.

“Hey, guys,” I wanted to say, “I paid for three permits on this trip; doesn’t that cut me a little slack?” After all, I hadn’t climbed all the way up to Karisoke to see gorillas without a permit. If they happened to cross my path by chance, was that so dreadful?

For the park authorities, it was. For them the gorillas are performers in a spectacle staged to maximize revenue. Any deviation from — or exception to — the rules of that spectacle are intolerable. Once on my trip I heard the trackers yelling at the animals to make them change direction, move more quickly, modify their comportment, for the benefit of an arriving tourist group. Fossey would have been mortified, as was I.

Nevertheless, I find it comforting that this area remains attractive for gorillas, that they consider it home, that they are more or less safe here . . . BECAUSE of the tourist revenue they generate.

At the nadir of gorilla preservation, when Dian Fossey arrived in 1967, there were only 250 mountain gorillas left in the world. Today there are about 800, and the credit goes to her, because she created world awareness. She also created a tourist industry that, on the one hand, contradicts everything she believed in and, on the other, pays for the gorilla conservation to which she had dedicated her life.

“Sorry, Dian,” I whispered at her gravesite. “Sorry, guys,” I whispered to the gorillas while making my way down the mountain.

Claudia Flisi is a freelance writer based in Milan, Italy. www.flisi.net

For another perspective on visiting the gorillas, see this post from last year: Visiting the Gorillas