African Silences Read online

  Finding their voices, the frightened guides yell at the gorilla, “Wacha maneno yako!” a Swahili expression often used to silence impertinent inferiors; loosely it means, “Don’t give me any of your guff!” One of the Bashi, Seaundori, is scared and delighted simultaneously; grinning, he first asks eagerly if all had seen the charge of the gorilla, and then, imagining he has lost face by betraying excitement, he frowns as deeply as M. le Conservateur himself and fires nervous and unnecessary orders. The visitors, too, are babbling in excitement; only the small Batwa trackers, grinning a little, remain silent. They follow the gorillas, never rushing them, just flicking steadily away with their old pangas in the obscuring tangle of lianas. Even when the creatures are in view and no clearing is needed, the trackers tick lightly at the leaves as if to signal their own location to the gorillas and avoid startling them and provoking a panicked charge. This is the only danger from gorillas, which are as peaceable as man allows. Though a leopard has been known to kill an adult male, Gorilla has no real enemies except for Homo, and after years of protection at Kahuzi-Biega two of the three gorilla troops that are more or less accessible have placed an uneasy trust in man’s good intentions. For the second time they permit us to come within twenty feet before the bushes start to twitch and tremble, a sign that the ones still feeding in plain view might be covering for those that are withdrawing. And though our views are mostly brief, there comes a time when Homo and Gorilla are in full view of each other for minute after minute, not thirty yards apart. The apes are more relaxed than we are and also more discreet, since they do not stare rudely at our strange appearance; on the contrary, they avert their gaze from the disorderly spectacle that we present, lolling back into the meshwork of low branches of big leaves and staring away into the forest as they strip branches of big green leaves and push the wads of green into their mouths. At one point a dozen heads or torsos may be seen at once in a low tier of green foliage just below us; the black woolly hair is clean, unmatted.

  I count twenty-six white human beings and ten black ones in a loose line on the steep slope, slipping clumsily on the slick green stalks cut down by the pisteurs; at the fore, amateur cinéastes are jockeying for position, while from the rear come muffled cries of pain. Once again our path has crossed that of the safari ant, siafu, which is biting the hell out of women and children alike. Forbes-Watson and I try to move the tourists from harm’s way, but supposing us to be competing for a better snapshot angle, they keep on milling until it is too late. By now Alec is reduced to desperate oaths, apologizing to Sarah for each obscenity and vowing that never, never again will he observe wildlife under such conditions: I wonder what my friend George Schaller, who pioneered gorilla observations when gorillas were still considered very dangerous, would have made of this peculiar woodland scene. To cries of “Silence!” from the adults, much louder than the original disturbance, unhappy children fret in the dark forest, and the conservateur assistant, gazing at the sky, makes an erroneous forecast of hard rain by way of an inducement to depart.

  In the confusion the gorillas sink again into dense thicket. Departing, they must cross the path made by the trackers in trying to head them off, and at least fifteen pass in view, including le gros mâle, With a sudden roar he rears up, huge-headed, from the green wall, as the nervous Bashi guides yell, “Rongo!”—“Bluffer!”—and the whites fall over one another in the backward surge: the head of the adult gorilla is so enormous that it seems to occupy more than half the width between the shoulder points. But the threat display seems perfunctory and rather bored; le gros mâle regards us briefly before turning to give us a good look at his massive side view and the great slope of his crown. Then he drops onto his knuckles once again and shoulders his way into the forest. From neckless neck to waist he is silver white.

  The apes are gone, and man troops down the mountain. Despite the frustrating indignities of this hot day, Alec, Sarah, and I are exhilarated and excited, but for our companions their first sight of the wild gorilla was “très fatiguant” and even “un peu déçevant,” or so they write in the park register; one took advantage of this opportunity to register a public complaint about the high price of film here in Zaire. Part of the group identifies itself as “la famille Poisson” and it may be that the others were “la famille Boeuf.”

  Before leaving Zaire I crossed paths again with these inheritors of King Léopold’s bloody legacy. At Goma airport, their voluminous luggage had been increased by enormous crates of vegetables, one to each person, and they were abusing Air Zaire’s black agent for charging them overweight; had they traveled this primitive airline for two weeks only to be repaid with his stupidity? (“Merci, messieurs,” the agent said.) Tourists would never come back to the Belgian Congo as long as they received such ungrateful treatment! The Belgians slap their money down, they wheel, they rant: “Ça non, monsieur!”

  Next morning we return again to the realm of the gorillas, taking a direction south and west and moving higher on the mountain. Still unsettled by the throngs of yesterday, we had suggested to the conservateur assistant that we would be happy to make do with a single tracker and no guide, but this antihierarchical idea upset his sense of order very much. (“Les guides ne sont pas les pisteurs! Il y a le Conservateur—c’est moi! Puis, les guides! Puis, les pisteurs!”) As special visitors with a letter from le Conservateur Mushenzi, we were entitled to two guides and three pisteurs, and that was that.

  I had assumed that the small trackers were Batwa or Twa, the name used by Bantu speakers for all of Africa’s small relict peoples, including the Bushman and the Pygmy. But these pisteurs are called Mbuti by the guides, and Adrien Deschryver later told me that they are apparently Bambuti or Mbuti hunters from the Ituri forest to the north who were hunting gorillas in these mountains even before colonial times and maintain a small, separate village about five miles away from the nearest Bashi. Perhaps a certain mixing has occurred, for these little people are not “yellow,” as the Mbuti Pygmies of the north are said to be, and may even be a little larger, though none of the three pisteurs has attained five feet. They have large-featured faces—big eyes, big jaws, wide mouths, and wide flat noses—in heads that seem too big for their small bodies. But it is the way they act and walk that separates them most distinctly from the guides, for their bearing is so cheerful and self-assured that one is soon oblivious of their small size; they move through the undergrowth and with it, instead of fighting the jungle in the manner of white people and Bantu. In the presence of the guides the leader of the three identifies himself as Shiberi Waziwazi; waziwazi, in Swahili, signifies one who comes and goes and is rather derogatory. But later he murmurs that Shiberi Waziwazi is the “African” name given to him by the Bantu, and that his true name, his “forest” name, is Kagwere. At this, the one called Kahuguzi says eagerly that he, too, has a forest name: it is Mukesso! And the forest name of the third Mbuti is Matene. Kagwere’s left hand has been shrunken to a claw by fire, and he and Matene have the incised scars between the eyes and down upon the nose that are a mark of the Mbuti. All three have lightly filed brown broken teeth and small, neat, well-made legs, which stick out from beneath diminutive olive-colored raincoats and disappear into olive-colored rubber boots so old and torn that one wonders what might serve to keep them on. This pisteur uniform, with rain hats to match, is a sign of high prestige, to judge from the fact that they wear it over rough sweaters in this humid heat even while hacking at the torpid thickets with their pangas. The color hides the Mbuti in these forest shadows, through which, like the gorillas, they know how to move in utter silence, even in these ragged rubber boots.

  Before entering the forest the Mbuti set up a kind of altar of sharp sticks stuck upright into the earth; they kneel before it, chipping at the soil in a strange manner with their pangas and crying out some sort of invocation, then pluck fresh leaves and press them down in seeming offering. Yesterday Alec dismissed this ritual as some sort of nonsense folklorique for tourists, comparing it to the “Chika dances” in Kenya’s Embu region, but later our kind friend Semesaka, headman at the Bashi village and a former soldier in the rebellion (known locally as the Vita ya Schramm, or “War of Schramm,” after that last and most notorious mercenary in Kivu Province), assured him that it was sincere, and so, today, we pay the ceremony more attention. Afterward Forbes-Watson asks some questions, but because he does so in front of the two Bashi, Kagwere is apparently embarrassed. He says what we had already supposed, that the ceremony is to help in locating the gorillas and to keep the trackers safe; pressed, he says in a false, wheedling tone that the mungu they are praying to is Jesus Christ. I watch Mukesso and Matene; they stare at Kagwere, look shy, then begin to laugh, and Kagwere is trying very hard not to laugh himself. We laugh, too, as Alec answers in Swahili, “Oh, come on, now, I’m no missionary!” At this all three Mbuti laugh much harder, but they cannot change the story now, not in front of the Bashi, who look from the whites to the Mbuti and then back again, sullen and mystified. So Forbes-Watson asks what the ceremony meant before the missionaries came into the forest, and the quickwitted Kagwere says, “How could I know? I wasn’t here!” At this all three of the little men roll on the ground, and even the two Bashi laugh, and the whites, too.

  The trackers point their pangas at high forest to the south, consulting in a rapid murmur as they roll thin cigarettes with makeshift papers. Then they set off up the mountain in a small-stepped amble that reminds me of the Hadza hunters of Tanzania, checking gorilla droppings, following the gorilla paths in search of some fresh sign of feeding; a place is marked where the gorillas have exposed a whole large bed of small white woodland mushrooms, and these will be gathered on the return journey. Tambourine doves hurtle down the path, and from the forest all around come their long, sa
d, falling notes; we climb onward as a green-blue stretch of Lake Kivu comes in view, down to the east.

  Mukesso stops short, he has heard limbs cracking. We hear nothing. But Mukesso is sure, and Kagwere and Matene do not doubt him; the Mbuti strike off into dense jungle, making no effort to keep down the noise, and have not gone a hundred yards when they cross the gorillas’ path. The guides are nervous in this tangle, and even the trackers seem uneasy. They stop to listen every little while, ticking the vines and branch tips with their pangas to let the hidden shapes know where they are. One whistles to the others, backs away a little. There is a big dark movement in the nearest bush, only feet away. We see the branches move, glimpse shifting blackness. Then the apes are gone, and the Mbuti do not follow. This place is dangerous, we must wait a little to see which way the apes will go.

  Not so long ago, we had been told, a gorilla had killed one of the Mbuti and carried the body about with it for several days, but like the story of the exotic past of the old steamboat Lt. Col. Potopoto, this exciting story is not true. It was a Bashi who was seriously bitten, not so long ago, when a panicked gorilla charged past him in making its escape, and this may account for the nervousness of the two guides. Most of the time Seaundori and the other guide, Rukira, are sullen and officious; no doubt they know that we don’t feel we need them in the forest, for the conservateur assistant is not tactful with his staff, to put it mildly. To track gorillas, to hack paths through the forest is Pygmy work; since the guides carry no rifles, like true askaris, they must know that they serve no purpose here whatever. Like people all over Africa who have lost touch with the old ways, they live in mixed fear and contempt of the wild animals. Seaundori yesterday, Rukira today, were unnerved by the threat display of the great apes, although both must have observed it many times, and so, to save face, they shout a lot of senseless orders and answer questions in querulous, aggressive ways.

  Eventually, though we hear nothing, Kagwere jumps quickly to his feet and heads away into the forest, hacking and clipping, with Mukesso and Matene close behind. They trace an old path for perhaps a half-mile, following it around the east face of the mountain, pausing to listen, moving on again. The creatures are now well below us, working their way slowly up the hill; the Mbuti have anticipated their route of forage, we have only to ease along the mountainside, they will come to us. And soon the Bashi, growing bored, stop ordering us about, even let us walk ahead so that we may observe the Mbutis’ deadly tracking. “Real bushmen,” Forbes-Watson mutters. “I love being with people like this.” I do, too, there is nothing I like better.

  Soon a young gorilla comes in view, climbing high into a tree. From a point a little farther on, a vast female is visible, sprawled in a comfortable crotch, in sun and shade, perhaps fifteen feet above the ground. Avoiding our stares, she stuffs big, broad leaves into her mouth and pulls a thin branch through her teeth to eat the fresh light bark.

  Slowly we sink down into the foliage. Through the wind light of the canopy the sky is blue, and to the nostrils comes the pungence of crushed leaves, the fresh green damp from this morning’s rain, the humus smell of the high forest. Overhead a honeyguide, a tinkerbird sing fitfully; in the thrall of apes we pay them no attention. Observing the big female as she eats, a big male leans back into the vines on the ground behind her; probably he is too heavy now to climb. And seeing his vast aura of well-being, one understands the Africans’ theory that the gorilla was formerly a villager who retired into the forest in fear of work.

  Young gorillas come, still curious about the forest; they play with each other and with the trees, using their opposed toes to brace their climbing. One juvenile lies belly down over a branch, all four limbs dangling; he rolls over and down, to hang by one hand in the classic pose and scratch his armpit. He has wrinkled gray bare fingers and gray fingernails. Briefly he roughhouses with an infant, who flashes a little pale triangle of bare rump that I had not seen before, and the Mbuti laugh, mopping the sweat from their wet faces with handfuls of fresh leaves. For a time the young ape hangs suspended by both arms like a toy gorilla; lacking the discretion of his elders, he leers at man in a thin-lipped, brown-toothed grimace that matches his brown eyes, those eyes with the small pupils in a flat and shining gaze that does not really seem to see us. The gorilla face looks cross and wild and very sad by turns, though scientists assure us that no primate but man is capable of emotive expression.

  To sweet-scented dung, like rotted flowers, comes a yellow butterfly; somewhere unseen the flies are buzzing, and a tambourine dove calls. From the undergrowth come deep contented grunts, then stomach rumblings and the sharp crack of a branch that does not break the rhythmic sound of the females’ chewing.

  Soon the last of the gorillas has swung, climbed, lolled, chewed, cleaned its bottom, beaten its chest in those soft tappeting thumps in different series, lowered to the ground the bellyful of vegetation that makes gorilla legs look small and thin, and vanished once more into the forest. We have watched them for an hour, and we are delighted; we talk little, for there is little to be said. On the way home the Mbuti cut themselves packets of bark strips for making bush rope and gather up the small white mushrooms to take home.

  Deschryver had said he would come around on Thursday evening to confirm departure plans for Friday, and when he fails to appear, we find ourselves fretting once again, in this continual frustration about transportation; even Alec, who has stayed calm throughout all the delays and difficulties, grows a bit morose. Neither of us is used to traveling in this helpless way, entirely dependent on expensive, uncertain transport, and we vow that it will not happen again. I keep on saying hopefully that Deschryver must have got in late and is sure to turn up in the morning; now it is 9 A.M., and still he has not come. We are just looking for a car to go in search of him when he turns up at the door of the hotel. He is ready to take us to Obaye, he says, but he cannot stay, since later today he must fly government dignitaries from Goma north into the Ruwenzori. Since otherwise I shall be stranded, I have no choice but to return with him to Goma, on the first leg of my departure.

  At the airport entrance, under a big sign reading TOUS POUR MOBUTU, MOBUTU POUR TOUS, a number of ragged Africans are chopping weeds. As we arrive, the airplane of the U.S. embassy is coming in, and we wonder aloud why the United States maintains consulates in such out-of-the-way corners as Bukavu and Lubumbashi, in Shaba. “There is the CIA plane,” Deschryver remarks, and I ask if he shares the popular opinion that Lumumba was murdered at the instigation of the CIA, that CIA agents are merely errand boys for international big business. Deschryver shrugs as if to say, What does it matter?

  Deschryver is worried about the weather, which looks heavy toward the western mountains; in this season the good flying hours are in the morning. We are airborne a little after ten, circling slowly in the single-engine plane before climbing westward toward Kahuzi and Biega. The plane will cross between these peaks, which, unlike the Virungas, are not volcanic but granitic, a part of the great central rift of Africa. The highland forest of great trees, many of them now in flower, gives way with increasing altitude to the light feathery greens of the bamboo zone; somewhere below, hearing our motor, the gorillas may pause briefly in their chewing, though I doubt it. On the western slope, white torrents cascade steeply down into the Congo Basin, setting out on the long passage to the sea. To the north, leaning over at an extraordinary angle, a mass of granite rises out of the deep greens like a stone whale; otherwise the green extends unbroken as far out to the west as the eye can see. This is the Maniema Forest, a stronghold of cannibalism until after World War II, when measures such as execution may or may not have put the practice to a stop.

  At lower altitudes a few Bantu huts appear; penetration of the forest here, Deschryver says, is very recent. He picks up the road that crosses the mountains and follows it north and west toward Walikale, less for purposes of navigation than because it is the only place to land in case of trouble. “Otherwise you are finished,” he remarks, gazing out over the green expanse and making a cutoff motion with his hand. He points down at the small village of Hombo where several years ago, in the company of Lee Lyon, he had bought a snared paon de Congo for about two dollars. “They sold it to us like a chicken. I gave it to the international research station at Bukavu, but it died.”