Wild Spirit (19 page)

At the far end, the combination of the heat and the acrid stench of the guano became overpowering and breathing
grew even more difficult. It was time to turn back. I paused before we began our awkward progress back to daylight, and reflected on the miracle of this place – that it supported so much life, that it was so ancient, and that it also provided a home for one of the world's rarest birds.

Outside, we gulped in the clean, fresh air and squinted against the sudden brightness. Sunlight filtered through chinks in the canopy. The forest lay cool and quiet in the lull of midday. We sat down on some rocks beside the stream and washed the sweat, urine and insects from our skin, then swallowed mouthfuls of water from our bottles.

‘The Pygmies come here sometimes to hunt the bats for food,' André said. I tried to picture the little people with their crossbows and poisoned arrows, or perhaps with their nets. André's mind had skipped back ten years, and he was reliving it. ‘Each evening at dusk we would watch the bats exit the cave to feed, and at dawn watch them return to roost. I never tired of the spectacle; it took three hours for the stream of animals to pass over. By observing the speed and density of these movements, we calculated the size of the population.' He explained that the three species of bats were mainly insect-eaters; they exploited the food niche that birds occupied during daylight.

‘Bats carry many parasites and diseases,' he said, ‘including filariasis. Even the guano harbours a fungus which can be harmful to humans.'

I wished we could linger to witness the nightly exodus and the dawn return. I knew we would never come here again. My understanding of the cave had just begun, but our time had run out. We stood and stretched, drank some more water, then slowly began the steep climb out of the stream bed and the long trek home.

We reached camp mid-afternoon, just in time for farewell drinks before the scientists needed to leave. We gathered to sit in the old armchairs on the porch, overlooking the forest. Louise, Annie and Jean-Pierre wanted to hear all about the cave excursion, so, still on a wave of euphoria, I related in French everything we had seen. As I did, a group of giant casqued hornbills swished across the clearing, calling raucously. To me, they were the sound of Belinga. I never tired of seeing and hearing them.

While I had the chance, I asked Annie about the rehabilitation program that was underway for the orphaned great apes. I really wanted to see the gorillas and chimps, but hesitated to suggest we visit.

‘How many apes do you have there, and how does the program work?'

Annie was quick to respond. ‘Rather than tell you, why don't we show you? Come down for a weekend. There's so much to see – we'd love to have you.'

I looked across at Win and Rodo, who were nodding vigorously. ‘Oh, we'd love to!' I breathed. ‘Thank you!'

‘You can have the two spare bedrooms in my house,' Louise offered. ‘There's plenty of room. Just let me know over the radio when you can come, and I'll pick you up at the SOMIFER compound.'

Suddenly a new world had opened up to us. I hadn't dared to hope that we might see the apes. Now it was certain, I could hardly wait. The prospect of visiting the research station would keep me going for weeks as I battled the workaday frustrations of life in the camp. And it meant we would see these generous and dedicated scientists again. As we waved them off, I felt we had been uniquely privileged. André had shown us a natural wonder that
only a handful of Europeans had ever seen. The sounds and smells of the cave, the prehistoric feel of the stinking darkness and the rush of those beating wings would stay with me forever. I hoped that
Picathartes
would continue to flourish, and that La Grotte du Faucon would always remain as we had seen it – timeless, hidden and filled with wonders. That night, I went to bed with my mind full of visions of an Africa before white people had ever come.

We had been at Belinga nine months. In all of that time, there had been no other white woman resident in camp, and my attempts to get to know some of the Gabonese women in the village had not succeeded. Many seemed shy and reticent, and I felt I would need to spend long periods around them before we could truly communicate with one another. I'd had to adapt to a masculine environment, where toughness and resilience were the personal qualities that counted most. My job had handed me more authority and autonomy than I had ever had in my working life, and my self-confidence had soared as I met the constant challenges and filled a crucial role in the management of the camp. My colleagues respected me, and I drew satisfaction from the knowledge that I had so far been equal to whatever life in the camp had demanded of me. The sense of empowerment was heady – for the first time in my life, I believed I could follow any career I chose.

Despite this strength and optimism, the daily frustrations of camp life continued to press in on me, and Win
and Rodo felt them too. For the three of us, the antidote was always the forest. The noisier and more crowded the camp became, the more we felt the need to escape into the peace it offered. Six days a week, trucks and bulldozers rumbled past the guesthouse up to the maintenance bay. The constant stream of complaints from workers about rations or other grievances wore us down, and we found the only way to avoid being harassed was not to be there.

One Saturday morning, my tolerance ran out. Nothing had gone to plan, and I was fit to scream. When Rodo and Win came in for lunch, I saw that they were at boiling point too.

‘Why don't we camp overnight at the Djadié tonight?' I suggested. ‘The weather's fine. We could spend tomorrow swimming and exploring, and nobody could get to us. Come on! What do you think?' We had never done it before, but since Eamon had widened and graded the Djadié route, the drive to the river was an easy forty-minute run, and there was a wide sandy clearing at the riverbank where we could camp. ‘We might even get to see an elephant,' I urged. Eamon had said that our best chance of seeing one would be to drive down to the Djadié at night.

The two of them needed little persuasion, so we spent the afternoon packing food, bedding and gear. Rodo would take the Toyota Land Cruiser; we'd go in the Kombi. At nine o'clock, we drove out into a clear, starry night. The forest lay bathed in silver from a bright moon: every leaf shone, and the soaring grey tree trunks stood out like columns in a cathedral. We led off in the Kombi, equipped with a game-spotting floodlight, and Rodo followed closely behind.

About twenty minutes out, we reached a fork in the track where the bulldozers had cut a bypass around a boggy area. The new section wound through dense forest, and piles of fallen trees littered the verges.

As we rounded a bend, the lumbering grey shape of an elephant appeared. It was side-on to us, slowly rocking from left to right and back again, blocking the road. My first wild elephant! I'd waited nine months for this moment. All I could think was how beautiful it was, how calm, how majestic.

We pulled up just ten metres away, with Rodo close behind, and climbed out. In the glare of the headlights it could not have seen us, but it would have smelled our scent and heard our whispered exclamations. It was so close we could see its tiny amber eyes glinting, and the pattern of wrinkles in its hide. Its tusks were tinged with pale pink just as Jacques had described. Moved beyond anything I could have expected, I swallowed hard to subdue the lump in my throat.

We must have stood watching it for ten minutes, although any sense of time had vanished. The elephant calmly stood its ground, the only acknowledgement of our presence a turn of its head in our direction. I wanted to fix this encounter forever in my mind, because I doubted it would ever happen again. I took in every detail – its sloping back, its round feet, the hypnotic swaying of its body. Its ancestors dated back to the woolly mammoths, and just as I had in the bat cave, I felt drawn back to an ancient world. I thought back to all the elephants I had seen in circuses and zoos, and the ones we had encountered on the roads in India with their mahouts on their backs, moving with grace and dignity through a dust-drenched landscape.
They had all spoken to my spirit. Now the great African forest had delivered me another gift.

We could go no further until the elephant chose to move away, and it had only two alternatives: continue down the road or move off into the forest. The latter choice was hazardous, as the road followed a ridge, and off to the sides, the land sloped steeply away. We watched it look around, assessing the options. In the end, it chose to re-enter the forest, moving slowly towards the mass of fallen trees, stopping to make sure the way was safe, then picking its way delicately over the logs and through the tangle of branches. On the muddy slope below it never once lost a foothold, placing its huge feet with total precision. We followed its progress with the spotlight until it had negotiated all the obstacles and disappeared among the trees.

Win sighed. ‘That was really beautiful.'

‘
Ja
, he wasn't scared of us, was he?' Rodo said.

‘Eamon was spot on,' I said. ‘He promised us one.' All the way to the Djadié, I thought about the elephant. I hoped it would never be hunted, and that the new road would not spell its death warrant.

 

At the river campsite, bright moonlight lit the expanse of white sandbank and shone off the surface of the water. Rodo had brought his small tent, so we helped him erect it on the sand close to the Toyota.

‘Oh, this feels good already,' I sighed. ‘What a glorious night.' I was cut dead by a throaty half-cough, half-bark that erupted from the swamp just metres away. Win reached for the spotlight and trained it on a line of branches overhead. I half expected to see a crouched leopard
preparing to spring, but in the dappled moonlight there was nothing to see.

Then it came again – a roar, louder, more guttural, that sent the three of us running for the safety of the Kombi. We squeezed into the front seat, locked ourselves in, and shone the spotlight through the closed window. Again and again the sound shattered the silence of the river and set our imaginations galloping.

‘Maybe coming here wasn't such a brilliant idea,' I muttered. We sat immobile for half an hour, scanning the darkness, alert for any movement. But none came, and eventually there was only silence.

‘I'm going to sleep in the tent anyway,' Rodo announced.

‘Rather you than me,' I said. ‘You wouldn't get me out there.' Win and I climbed over the front seat of the Kombi onto the bed to avoid getting out, while Rodo made a dash for his tent.

‘What do you reckon that was?' It was a rare occasion that Win couldn't answer a question about wildlife, but he had no idea about this one.

‘I can't pick it. It's not one I've heard before.' We lay awake for what seemed a long time listening for a scream from Rodo, but it never came.

We woke to a bright, clear dawn. ‘I've had a visitor in the night,' Rodo called out. ‘Come and look.' A pattern of neat cloven hoof prints in the sand around his tent revealed that a small antelope, perhaps a duiker, had been nosing around.

I put the kettle on and made tea, and we sat on the sandbank and drank it in the cool of the morning. Flocks of egrets stirred on branches overhanging the river.
Hornbills and touracos called raucously from the canopy. As the sun climbed higher, it bathed the tree crowns in golden light. Before breakfast, we swam in the silky coolness of the river and floated on our backs, looking up at the sky. I could feel all the tension of the week ebbing away and the peace of the forest taking over.

All morning we swam, picnicked and explored, looking for tree orchids and ferns growing along the riverbank. Only one trial clouded the day for Rodo: tsetse flies attacked his legs and neck so badly that by midday his skin was covered in bright pink lumps the size of boils.

After lunch, we lay on the sandbank and let the warm sun dry us off. Already I felt myself bouncing back. When the time came to head back to camp, it seemed we had only just got away. I wasn't ready to go, but we wanted to return before dark. On the way we stopped at the place where we had seen the elephant, and I photographed its deep footprints in the soft mud.

 

All the benefit of our day away vanished the moment we pulled up at the guesthouse. We were just in time to hear one of the men asking Eamon for a vehicle to go out and collect the carcass of a huge male gorilla he had shot that afternoon. The hunter's face glowed with pride and elation.

Eamon told them they could take the Toyota utility. If I'd had a say they would have had to drag the carcass back on foot, if they could move it at all. The hunter had several others with him to help lift it. As they drove off, I caught Eamon's eye and shook my head.

He read my thoughts. ‘You'll never stop 'em, you know. It's in their blood.'

At dusk, the Toyota pulled up in front of the guesthouse, and we came out to look, despite our revulsion. In the back, an old silverback lay slumped against the cabin, his massive face frozen in a mask of agony and shock. Half his hair had turned white, and his huge potbelly rolled over the tops of his legs. A gaping mouth revealed broken, dirty teeth. Win lifted up one of the silverback's hands and placed his own inside it – the small pink human one was dwarfed by the enormous leathery black gorilla palm.

Rodo, Win and I leaned in silence on the side of the ute tray and stared sadly into the animal's rigid face. Meanwhile, the hunter repeated over and over, ‘
Lui était très méchant!
He was very wicked. He attacked me.'

‘Some attack!' Win grunted in disgust. ‘The bullet's entered in the middle of his back!' In the background, the other men crowded around murmuring ‘
beaucoup de viande, beaucoup de viande
' – plenty of meat.

The tragedy was that the silverback had probably died trying to defend his family, but we guessed by his condition that he couldn't have moved very fast. He looked about fifty years old and we estimated he weighed over 200 kilos.

I realised then that Eamon was right: we were powerless to influence these hunting behaviours. They were part of a pattern that would be repeated over and over, irrespective of the ban the company had on paying for gorilla meat, and despite the fact that gorillas were protected by law. Trying to change these practices was like trying to stop the sun rising. Once again we could only look on, mute in the face of reality. Gorillas had no hope against guns combined with the hunger for bushmeat and a belief system that demonised them.

That night, we told Eamon about the roaring we'd heard at the Djadié.

‘What do you think that would have been?' Win asked.

‘Most likely a crocodile, I'd say. There are certainly some in those swamps. You're lucky it didn't come after you.'

 

Our weekend at CNRS was set for the middle of March. We would spend two days there and watch the field biologists at work. I thought about it constantly for weeks, and could hardly wait. The research station was not open to tourists, so for us to be invited there was a special privilege.

Win, Rodo and I left on the Friday afternoon for the drive to the Djadié. The day was crisp and fine. We crossed the river in a small pirogue, and were picked up in a company vehicle on the other side. At noon the next day, Louise called for us at the Roux house in a Land Rover. Already my heart raced at the prospect of what lay before us at the reserve. Again, I reflected on my transformation since we first arrived at Belinga. In the process of tackling my difficult job and learning about the forest and the animals, I had become a different person. My whole focus had shifted. The world of cities, traffic, consumerism and packaged entertainment meant little to me now – the life of the forest had pervaded my mind so deeply that I felt I belonged in this remote place. It was an identity I wore with pride.

As we bumped along in the Land Rover, I tried to picture the encounter with the great apes that awaited us. I believed it would be one of the most memorable days of my life, but even so I could not begin to imagine the wonder I would soon experience, and the profound effect it would have upon me. The half-hour drive took
us along a red dirt road that ran parallel with the river and passed through small villages. At the gate of the reserve, a sign proclaimed ‘Laboratoire de Primatologie et d'Écologie Equatoriale'.

‘We have 100 square kilometres of forest here, abutting the river,' Louise explained. ‘It provides us with a natural laboratory to study the entire ecology of the forest.'

‘It's fenced?' Win asked.

‘Yes. It has to be, otherwise people would come in to hunt.'

We approached a complex of low-rise buildings that nestled among flowering shrubs and gardens, and pulled up outside a low-set bungalow just in time to see André Brosset feeding fresh meat to a brown falcon perched on a tree stump in his garden. He strode over smiling and shook hands with each of us. ‘
Bonjour!
Welcome to the station! I'll see you soon at lunch.'

At Louise's bungalow we dropped our bags off and drove straight to the mess for lunch, where a dozen people, all wearing crumpled army surplus shirts and pants, sat around a long refectory table. Annie and Jean-Pierre greeted us warmly and introduced the others. Georges and Sylvie Michaloud, an outgoing young couple, managed the station. Hugo, a young French veterinarian, cared for all the primates. A French radio journalist, sitting at the far end of the table, was there to record field interviews. The others – all young men with tousled hair and intense expressions – barely stopped eating and talking to acknowledge our arrival.

I listened to the rapid-fire scientific conversation that ricocheted across the table. To my surprise, I could follow most of it. Everyone wanted to share their latest field news.
The botanist had finally located the fig tree he had been searching for. Hugo was nursing a scratched face from some aggressive chimpanzees, but had made some progress with a sick one. André had caught the falcon and Annie recounted her latest monkey sightings. Around the walls, poster-sized colour photographs of primates, bats, birds of prey, reptiles, fungi and insects gave the room the flavour of a natural history museum.