Pink Boots and a Machete (9 page)

But when I'm being charged by an elephant bull, I never have to wonder if he's chasing me because I'm a woman. Nope, I can rest assured that he's coming after me simply because of my stinky human scent. Elephants do not discriminate in whom they trample. This is why I love working with animals. Animals are more perceptive than humans and don't pay any attention to my gender or the color of my boots.

Being a woman in the field has advantages and disadvantages, but at the end of the day it is only experience, performance, and skill that ensure survival. It hasn't been an easy road, but it has been an amazing one. I was in my early 20s when I first took a field job, full of energy, excitement, and
hope. My dream to work with animals had come true. Every day that I step out of my tent is different and unpredictable. I never know if I am going to be tracking gorillas in Congo, capturing giraffes in Namibia, scaling a mountain in Venezuela, chasing monkeys in Japan, or herding wildebeests from a helicopter. The one thing I can be sure of is that it isn't ever going to be boring. I've grown some thicker skin and learned to accept that even after getting dangerously close to spitting cobras and black mambas, I will always have to contend with some reporter commenting on how I fill out my tank top.

No, I never thought I'd one day set foot in the Explorers Club, let alone be invited to join. As a former NFL cheerleader, I would not feel welcome in the scientific community for years. Now when someone says, “You don't look like a scientist,” I simply say, “Well, this is what a scientist looks like,” and smile. I will never apologize for being a woman. Or for shaving my armpits and wearing lip gloss. The lemurs would argue that it is my alpha-female right.

Deep in the heart of darkness in the lush rain forest of the Congo, the gorillas were dozing under the rays of morning sun that pierced the dense vegetation, exuding their infectious, albeit misleading, aura of calm. I, on the other hand, was swatting at sweat bees trying to make their way into my ears and up my nose. These bees are attracted to salt in human sweat, and although their sting is almost painless, their constant presence is a total pain in the butt. Especially when one is trying to observe gorillas and share in their Zen-like state. Ironically, the
more I waved my hands to get rid of the annoying creatures, the more I sweated and added to my appeal. By the dozens, they clustered on my arms and legs and dive-bombed into my eyes. What satisfaction it gave me to crush them.

While digging a bee out of my eye, I heard a noise behind me. Like most primates, gorillas are usually heard before they are seen. Not having a mirror, I was using the lens of my camera to pick sweat bees out of my pupils. Suddenly, reflected behind me was a gorgeous, 400-pound silverback. As if responding to an inaudible command, the gorillas had stopped dozing and now surrounded me. This wasn't good. The females let out a piercing shriek. There were only three of them, but it sounded like a dozen or more. Frozen, our guide whispered to me to cower and pretend to eat leaves. Why pretend? I ingested several. Evidently feeling threatened, the females prodded the silverback to charge. So like a husband, at first he pretended not to hear, but the females began running at us. Our only weapon a ballpoint pen, I quickly ate more leaves. The silverback joined in the charge. Just inches from us they all stopped and began furiously slapping the ground. Now pacified, the wives went back to foraging.

Being charged by gorillas is part of my job description. I am a primatologist first and foremost, so in spring 2002, when National Geographic asked me to do a film on gorillas, I was ecstatic. At long last, I would have the chance to live out my Dian Fossey fantasy! I would be working with a British film crew, including Dave Allen, an award-winning natural history producer and cameraman, a soundman, and a field producer. I
had spent many years in Madagascar, but this would be my first time on the African mainland. I could barely contain my excitement, never giving a thought to just how difficult and dangerous this mission would be. Central African Republic, on the border of war-torn Congo, was in the midst of military upheaval. Government forces were burning entire villages to the ground and executing large numbers of suspected rebels. And the rain forest is never safe, even at the best of times.

To reach this besieged tropical outpost I flew from Washington, D.C., where National Geographic headquarters is based, to Paris, where I met up with the film crew, and then to Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world's poorest countries. Bangui is a heartbreaking city, its inhabitants intimidated and browbeaten by decades of violent coups d'état by officers of the ruthless national army. Soldiers walk the streets carrying automatic rifles, and at checkpoints around every turn your passport is inspected and payment exacted.

Slightly smaller than Texas, CAR is a sweltering and searing remnant of French colonialism plagued by run-down buildings, eroded roads, and crumbling monuments to former dictators. In Bangui I watched fat Frenchmen solicit prostitutes as young as 12, and hotel pool areas and bars were crowded with seedy characters speaking sotto voce in French or Sangha, the local language. In the many open-air markets, flies swarmed over stacks of dried fish and smoked bush meat, including great ape and elephant. The multihued dresses of Bantu women resonated against the gray and dusty backdrop of the city.

Film crews don't travel light, so with some 30 bags piled onto the one SUV the city offered, we departed Bangui headed southwest. The heat was intense, and through our open windows a fine layer of dust settled on us and our gear. After a while the only other vehicles we saw were huge logging trucks, which came at us at such incredible speeds we'd have to swerve into a ditch to avoid collision. There goes one of my nine lives, I thought to myself each time this happened. The closer we got to our destination in the Dzanga-Sangha forest, the more BaAka Pygmy villages we saw, their domelike huts made of sticks and leaves. Nomadic hunter-gatherers standing only four to four and a half feet in height, the BaAka (“forest people”) are one of CAR's more than 80 ethnic groups, each with its own language. Village children would run alongside our SUV and wave excitedly. Just as excitedly, I waved back.

Twelve hours after we started out, we arrived in Bayanga, a small logging town at the edge of the forest, which featured a landing strip of beaten red dirt used by cars, planes, pedestrians, and goats. It was only a few miles from Bai Hokou, the camp that would be our window to the gorillas. On this night, we would stay in simple bamboo huts with mosquito netting. I was exhausted and could barely wait to eat, take my antimalarial pill, and crash. But through the night, visions of black hands reaching through bars kept waking me. I'd force open my eyes, but even awake the images got closer and closer. There was no escaping those hands. Terrified, I ran to Dave's bungalow and begged to sleep in one of his bunks. I fell asleep there, and the images stopped. In the morning I realized the
antimalarials had caused the hallucinations. Dave looked at me as if I were crazy when I described them, but as I handed in my key, the hotel clerk told us my bungalow sat on land once used as a prisoner burial site. Neither Dave nor I spoke, but we both looked as if we had seen a ghost. Only difference was, I actually had.

The trip from Bayanga initially followed an old logging trail and then a meandering elephant trail, taking us through open fields until gradually the forest canopy closed in. The base camp, Bai Hokou, was named after a forest clearing in which elephants had dug a large hole for its mineral-rich soil (
bai
means “clearing,” and
hokou,
“hole,” in Sango, the BaAka language). It was a series of basic, wooden, thatched huts for dining and office work. Sleeping took place in tents and bathing was done under a beautiful sandy-bottomed waterfall, a five-minute walk away, close to a bat-filled cave.

At Bai Hokou we met Chloe Cipolletta, an Italian wildlife biologist who knew these gorillas better than just about anyone else. She had spent the last five years following and gaining the trust of a family group she and her trackers named the Munye, meaning “good thing” in BaAka. Chloe and her team had revolutionized the strategy for saving western lowland gorillas in this remote corner and for the first time were showing success in habituating them to humans. If the program succeeded, tourists instead of loggers would be trekking in to visit the gorillas.

No more than a minute after we arrived at camp, the bees moved in. The soundman got stung in the eye, and it soon
bulged grotesquely from its socket. Amid this possible medical emergency, Chloe came out to greet us.

It was easy to see why she had succeeded where many others had failed. Chloe's feistiness and determination came through before she even opened her mouth. She is the daughter of an Italian banker and could have lived a luxurious life in a Roman villa with a closet full of Dolce & Gabbana. How appealing an idea, I thought, as I stood drenched in sweat, waving off bees! Instead, she ran around in ripped tees and unshaven legs and lived in a thatched hut at Bai Hokou. I was eager to ask her questions, but there was no time for more than a quick introduction before she ordered me into a vehicle. We quickly headed out to pick up the BaAka tracking team, who'd had two weeks off in their village. A swarm of bees accompanied us.

Later that afternoon, as I pitched my tent at the edge of the Bai, I noticed cans a few feet away attached to barbed wire surrounding the camp. Chloe later explained that this was an elephant alarm system. The cans were filled with rocks, and should the elephants try to break through the fence, the cans would cause such a racket you would at least have a few seconds to escape. She warned me that elephants did frequently come into camp and that under no circumstances should I attempt to engage them. The thought had never crossed my mind. She explained that a young male elephant gored a young Italian woman here. “And,” she added, “the large hole in the kitchen that looks like a window—elephant.” Visions of being trampled in my sleep consumed me. I spent my entire first night at camp awake, listening for rattling cans.

Exhausted from my vigilant night, I staggered out of my tent to a thatched hut for a breakfast of fresh bread the BaAka had baked in a stone oven. I spread preserves and took a bite, then felt a sharp sting on my left shoulder, which left my arm almost paralyzed with pain. Then another and another. Bees. I instantly became aware of a growing hum and realized it was hundreds of African honeybees, also known as killer bees, hanging out in the dining area near the sugary treats. From then on, whether in camp or the forest, I could count on not only the annoying sweat bees but also multiple stings a day from the killer bees. We began documenting who got stung first, most, and least. Even in my tent, I wasn't safe; bees flew down my pants and into my shoes, making getting dressed hellish. Freaking bees! Their presence here had taken me completely by surprise. Had this been edited out of
Gorillas in the Mist
? Getting trampled by elephants somehow didn't seem nearly as bad.

Chloe and the trackers briefed us on how to find and track the gorillas, and, most important, what to do if a gorilla charged. I learned you must stay at least 20 feet away from one to prevent passing on germs. No matter how tempting, no hugging allowed! If charged, Chloe said, you must look confident but not overly, letting the gorilla know you're not scared but keenly aware of who's boss. I wondered if waving a white flag would work. For centuries our close, forest-dwelling relatives have known humans only as hunters, who have killed them by the hundreds. Not surprisingly, the relationship between man and gorilla has been based on violence
and fear. Early explorers described gorillas as “half man, half beast” and slaughtered as many as they could in the name of science. Given that horrible track record, the silverback, named Mlima, was still aggressive, Chloe warned. A silverback's job is to protect his family, and it is not uncommon for them to fight to the death. Mlima had attacked, bitten, and clobbered two trackers. In one instance, he charged a tracker and ripped his shirt off in a single motion.

My fantasy of sitting among a group of gorillas having a tickle fight had quickly vanished. Because of their habitat, western lowland gorillas are much more difficult to follow than Dian Fossey's mountain gorillas. Whereas you can see mountain gorillas—and they you—from miles away, dense vegetation serves as a shield for lowland gorillas, making it easy to stumble upon and surprise them. Not until the 1960s did scientists try to study lowland gorillas in the wild. And then their fear of humans made it difficult to habituate them, so that they would go about their normal activities tolerant of human observers. After many failed attempts, it was assumed they were simply unable to accept a human presence. Because of this, lowland gorillas were the least understood of the great apes.

As Chloe was well aware, her project's stakes were very high. Habituation was not without risk. Habituated animals are easy prey for poachers. When Chloe first encountered them, the Munye group consisted of the silverback Mlima (Swahili for “mountain”), four adult females, two infants, and possibly a subadult black male. Chloe and her team had devised a nonthreatening clucking sound to alert the animals
to the team's presence even in the densest forest, in the hope they'd eventually associate clucking with friendly humans. At first Mlima tried to discourage the approaches with impressive charges, but gradually over the years the team earned his trust and were allowed to get close enough to gain knowledge of the family.

The most testing stage of habituation, the aggressive period, can last for more than a year. But, as Chloe learned, that was only the beginning of the process. After that period, silverbacks may ignore human observers, but females resist far longer. The reasons are unclear. Perhaps the females are just more sensitive to us as risks to their young, or as competition for food. Funnily enough, it might also be that they think we are after their mates. Mlima was handsome, but I could assure the females that big, hairy males were not my type.

There is absolutely no glamour in gorilla tracking. Covered in sweat-bee residue, bitten by chiggers, and usually soaked by rain, we would spend up to 14 hours in the forest, half of it searching for the animals. Despite their massive size, they left only the slightest of trails, whose signs the BaAka deciphered like a CSI team. No one goes into the forest without the BaAka. These guys can spot a snapped twig at 50 paces and then recognize it as snapped by a gorilla. Female. Thirty minutes ago, give or take. Extraordinary.

One day I lay down in one of the nests the gorillas build every night and noticed how much more comfortable it was than my tent's foam mattress. Clearly, these are intelligent beings that enjoy comfort. Then I realized that my head rested
on a mound of gorilla crap. We collected the dung in bags made of large leaves to later analyze for the fruit species the beasts consumed. Suddenly, Chloe and the trackers sensed something. We clucked and looked around, but there was no gorilla in sight. All of a sudden, I was hit by a very strong, musky, distinct odor. For a moment I thought it was me needing a bath. But it wasn't. It was the smell of the silverback.

Watching gorillas is not unlike watching a soap opera. The Munye family had its history of drama, jealousy, and violence. Though Mlima initially looked like a smooth operator with a four-female harem, he did not seem to have an easy time with the ladies. In November 1999, Chloe and her team found him horribly wounded. Adding insult to injury, two of his females, one with a still dependent infant, had deserted him. Based on the evidence, it was thought that a leopard, or perhaps another silverback, had attacked. Mlima slowly recovered, but two months later a third female departed, leaving Mlima with a sole female, Matata (“problem” in Swahili), and their infant, Ndimbelimbe (named for a local herb). It was while the silverback was injured and weak that Chloe was able to move closer and begin to earn his trust and the group's.