I stare into the eyes of an enormous regal beast who regards me with indifference. A mere eight feet with no barrier separates Kwisanga and me. At 450 lbs., the big silverback knows how easily he could destroy me, but why bother? I’m puny by comparison and experience tells him I will leave peacefully in an hour. Even so, his tolerance feels otherworldly. In my quest to visit these rare and reclusive primates, I anticipated if fortunate, a shadowy encounter with me hidden behind a bush watching a mountain gorilla family pursue its daily routine from a distance. Never did I expect a full-blown audience with the monarch.
Kwisanga makes clear he could care less that we share 98% of our DNA. It’s his universe and even though it’s threatened, at this moment he controls the space. He is after all the largest silverback on the mountain, head of household, protector, and propagator of his 23-member family. As I snap iPhone photos and gawk, Kwisanga, his thirteen wives, and the rest of the family proceed with bamboo breakfast, amazingly untroubled by our invasion of privacy.
Kwisanga’s name means “welcome” in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda. His somber visage reflects a calm, pensive, philosophical aspect, but for sure, none among us want to see him angry. Francois, our guide calls him a humble silverback. He offers no explanation for the designation, but as do I, Francois and the other rangers regard Kwisanga with respect and awe. For me, his name sounds powerful, maybe a bit romantic. He left another mountain gorilla family and lived on his own for a few years, but now has this large family of his own, including two other silverbacks and a runt he protects.
The Kwisanga family is newly habituated to human presence over the past year. Habituation means the rangers of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park have spent almost every day of that year sitting quietly near this family of mountain gorillas until they grow accustomed to the human presence and cease to feel threatened.
The habituation process is anything but a relaxed endeavor. Periodically, agitation erupts including charges by male gorillas, a terrifying experience by report. The charges aim to intimidate and scare off the human intruders. The gorillas only bodily attack if physically assaulted themselves, but the charge has its intended effect as related by anyone who has experienced a charging, screaming gorilla rushing at them all the while tearing brush, beating his chest and the ground, and baring his teeth. Only the highest of intellectual function allows a ranger to remain calm in a submissive posture in the face of such a charge. After weeks and months of this activity, the rangers’ non-threatening approach allows a tourist such as me to visit these rare creatures.
As I gingerly roam among the Kwisanga’s family, I imitate the low grunts and growls made by the rangers who urge us to do same to indicate we’re friendly. It feels silly, but then I’m in Rome or rather northern Rwanda. Mountain gorillas are found only in two locations in the world, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwest Uganda and Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Besides guiding small group treks, the National Park rangers patrol and protect the mountain gorillas and have successfully habituated twenty-two gorilla families to accept human visits. The last census counted 1062 mountain gorillas, up from the near extinct population of 250 when the famed primatologist, Dyan Fossey, began her pioneering work in 1967 (story beautifully recounted in the 1988 Sigourney Weaver movie, “Gorillas in the Mist.”).
My personal adventure began early this May 2024 morning when our group arrived at Park Headquarters. We enter a secure compound and join a beehive of Land Cruisers, jeeps, people dressed in hiking gear, guides, drivers, rangers, and other personnel. I marvel at the size of the operation. The rangers have already sent out scouts to find the gorilla families who move nightly to new feeding areas. They organize the crowd into ten groups of eight tourists each to visit ten different mountain gorilla families in the high forest. Each tourist has paid $1500 for the guided trek and one-hour visit with the primates. It’s big business. Rwanda derives its third largest source of income from the gorilla tourist dollar.
As we sort, the scouts, having located gorilla families, radio their GPS position to our ranger-guides. We pile into a Land Cruiser with Francois and drive to the appropriate trailhead that will lead us to Kwisanga’s family. Our trek begins across agricultural fields tended by women with their children close by. Their farming so essential for survival goes right up to the stone wall marking the park boundary with the dense forest beyond.
Our section of the stone wall is particularly tall (shades of King Kong). We cross it courtesy of steep wooden stairs and porter assistance. Our trail leads uphill through thick brush that stretches above our heads. As we hike, the rangers chop a path through dense scrub with their pangas to keep us moving forward. Deep elephant tracks provide good footing on the slippery trail. In the thick undergrowth, we could easily find ourselves nose to nose with a forest elephant. The rangers carry AK 47s to fire warning shots to frighten away the elephants or occasional cape buffalo.
We hike uphill for an hour and a half, then stop to catch our breath at the 8800-foot elevation. Francois tells us to put down our day packs and hiking poles and don surgical masks with intent to prevent us exchanging any air borne pathogens with the gorillas. I notice fresh gorilla dung at the edge of the small clearing.
Our group moves forward a few yards and without fanfare, I look down to find a young gorilla feeding on tasty strips of bamboo in the brush very close to my feet. I and my seven companions realize the Kwisanga family is in the brush all around us, seemingly unperturbed by our presence. A few yards farther I’m ushered into the presence of stately Kwisanga himself, holding court accompanied by one of his wives. I, the supplicant begging a photo, make small growls. If he notices, Kwisanga must be amused.
As I imprint this dramatic encounter in memory, a female gorilla moves down the path we’re blocking. She gently pushes a woman in our group out of the way leaving a muddy handprint on my companion’s backside. The woman vows she will never wash the slacks. Such is our marvelously intimate meeting with primate cousins.
Having visited so comfortably with these fearsome, yet docile and magnificent creatures, I leave awed by the experience, humbled by the privilege, and possessed with a new and greatly heightened personal resolve to help promote the delicate balance that has so far prevented their extinction. I realize how temporary this ecological opportunity may be, given the conflicting forces that bear on it, and its dependence on a stable national government in a developing nation. Moreover, my cynical self believes that never in a million years will the lion truly lay down with the lamb. But at this brief moment, mutual fear is erased, and the better nature of two distantly related species prevails.