Gorillas in mind

I’ve just come back from Africa and I’m thinking about mountain gorillas. Still. I did a quick search through my blogs and found that, since 2020, five of them have mentioned gorillas. It’s definitely been a recurring theme. I started out thinking how wonderful it would be to see them in the wild and then eventually, in a flurry of anticipation, I booked a trip. However, as the day grew closer, a sense of trepidation started to filter through the excitement. It wasn’t the gorillas I was concerned about, but my own ability to trek through the African jungle.

I prepared and planned months in advance, but as it turned out I needn’t have worried. On the morning of the trek I looked around at the groups of excited people ready to start and knew that I was far from the least fit there. Or the oldest. I think you have to have faith in experts, the people who are highly trained to do their job, whether they’re tour guides, plumbers or neurosurgeons. I knew that these gorilla treks were conducted by experienced, knowledgeable, people who knew exactly what they were doing. Our group of eight was led by a guide, plus two men with rifles who walked at the front and back of our group to protect us and deal with any aggressive forest elephants we might encounter. All three had machetes. Although I can see that some people might not find this at all reassuring, I felt happy that we were in safe hands. In fact, we didn’t encounter any elephants, snakes or even spiders, just glorious gorillas.

I could hardly believe it when we found them, a whole family of gorillas – the head silverback, younger blackback, mothers and babies – so close and so unconcerned by our presence. We followed them across a river and deeper into the jungle and I can still feel that sense of wonder and disbelief that I was actually there with them.

As soon as we got home, I decided to relive the experience and rent Gorillas in the Mist, the film with Sigourney Weaver playing Dian Fossey, the American primatologist. I think this might have been a mistake. Admittedly, the film is beautiful to look at and it’s wonderful to see Sigourney Weaver developing a bond with the gorillas. However, I know that some were actually people in gorilla suits and I kept wondering which were which and thinking about Planet of the Apes, which was distracting. There was also a schmaltzy Hollywood love story shoe-horned into the middle that seemed completely out of place. Dian Fossey might have loved gorillas, but she didn’t seem too keen on people. In fact, she increasingly came across as an arrogant white westerner with colonial attitudes, and she was horribly cruel to poachers. The only surprising thing about her murder in a remote camp in the Rwandan mountains was that it hadn’t happened sooner. The sainted Sir David Attenborough she wasn’t.

I haven’t quite got Africa out of my system yet. I’ve already watched Out of Africa, so I think Born Free is next. I really need to move on. The orangutans in Borneo look awfully appealing…