Like the Pied Piper, Fidel leads us deeper and deeper into the dense, wet forest that sweeps through Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park. His shining machete cuts a path through the glistening curtain of leaves that surrounds us. Squelching leaves into floor putty we slip and slide until Fidel stops, lowers his machete and points to a clearing full of light where fabulously long, tadpole-black arms reach out for leaves.
“This is Guhonda,” Fidel whispers proudly. “He is the head of the Sabyinyo Mountain gorilla group.”
Sat with his back against a tree, Guhonda chews on a bamboo shoot and slowly turns his head to face us. Soft brown eyes meet our own while leaves bounce bright sunshine into the clearing around him like mirrors in a changing room.
From a bamboo thicket behind Guhonda, a troupe of six playful gorillas come bursting through. Guhonda’s youngsters, Gihishamwotsi and Ijicho, tumble around him, impervious to the stinging nettles they land on. He watches Ijicho make a slide out of the slippery moss-covered trunk of a fallen hagenia tree and then moves to sit next to the pregnant Gukunda, closely followed by the doll-sized Shirimpuma.
This is the Sabyinyo Mountain gorilla group at play. Their mountain back yard is one of the greenest, most fertile places in Africa – a living kitchen fully stocked with bite-size pieces of nutritional green magic. Sitting down now, we’re at eye level with Guhonda for what seems like a family lunch. Baby Shirimpuma sucks on a bamboo shoot like a lollipop while her brothers reach up for leaves, the tiny emerald engines that fuel both these big beasts and the forest itself.
As the group downs wild celery, herbs, leaves and more leaves, Guhonda, on all fours, moves off in search of new green deliciousness. The group follows. Gorilla parties make for moveable feasts.
Were Guhonda to climb to the top of Sabyinyo instead, he would straddle the countries of Central Africa. Sabyinyo is a mountain on a cusp where Rwanda rubs shoulders with both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Looking left and right, Guhonda would see the nine-piece set of the Virunga mountain range that gives the Volcanoes National Park its name. It’s also the safe home of the world’s last remaining – just 300 or so – mountain gorillas and one that provides them with vital official protection.
Turn back the clock 15 years ago though and Guhonda would have seen something far less peaceful. Rwanda was drowning in the blood of its own people. Rwandans weren’t using machetes to help tourists find gorillas. They were using them against each other. Men, women and children – no one was safe. Rwanda’s rivers ran genocide red.
Gorillas were silent witnesses to these human horrors. As the Volcanoes National Park shut down, they moved deeper into the forest. Unmonitored and unprotected, the gorillas looked after themselves and remarkably, as over a million Rwandans lost their lives, remained safe and relatively unscathed.
Now Rwanda has found peace. The Park is open again and men like Fidel have found good work here, sharing their gorillas with visitors. In a shattered economy, the income generated from gorilla tracking is helping Rwanda rebuild. It’s something Rwanda readily acknowledges, as Fidel makes clear to me.
“We need our gorillas for money, to help Rwanda move on. We have learned we must look after and respect them well. We want people to come to Rwanda and see how we really are. Terrible things have happened here, but there is so much beauty and peace now too,” shares Fidel.
Walking back through carefully cultivated fields, I see that Fidel is right. Heartbreaking poverty is all around but Rwanda, Africa’s green and glittering heart, is beautiful and it shines with hope. I see it in the barefooted children that appear on the wayside. All they have are their smiles and they give these away like sweets.
As I reach the jeep, a slender girl of around seven calls out to me. “You tell your friends about us and come back soon. We will be making things for you to buy,” she says and skips back to her mother standing at the doorway of their small hut. “But don’t leave it too long,” she adds, eyes shining. “Here in Rwanda, we are all growing up very quickly.”