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from his home on the slopes of Mount Kahuzi, so that they could all go on together to the national park. Once preparations had been made, and after a goodbye that felt rather awkward on Mathew’s part, Lucienne sped away in the Park Department’s open jeep with a flourish of farewell waves and the happiest of smiles.

 
     
     
     
     
    2
    Mount Kahuzi’s Kingdom of Gorillas
    It had been just after 7 a.m. the following day that Deschryver had picked up the two Pygmy trackers by the entrance to the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. They joined Lucienne in the back of the four-wheel drive vehicle, while Mathew sat in the front passenger seat as they drove on for twenty minutes or so, until turning off onto a small track and parking under the shade of a sizeable stand of bamboos.
    Lucienne seemed quiet in comparison to her high spirits during their lunch the day before but during the journey, Mathew was relieved that she was directing secretive smiles and glances towards him when the opportunity arose. Deschryver’s opinion was so important to Lucienne that she didn’t want him to think that anything – or anyone – was distracting her from their mission.
    ‘OK, now we’ll follow the trackers into the forest,’ said Deschryver in a hushed voice. ‘Just remember to keep vigilant, silent and calm. They know exactly what they’re doing.’ The three of them followed the trackers along a well-worn trail into the denser foliage of the montane rain forest of Mount Kahuzi, where the trackers kept stopping to examine food remnants, faecal deposits and gorilla spoor that looked comparatively recent. As they had picked up such a recent trail, they became as alert as a brace of tracker dogs having just caught scent of their quarry – although in contrast to a pack of hounds they now remained silent, only communicatingwith each other by way of hand signals. As they continued to deftly cut their way through the thick blankets of bamboo with their menacing-looking metal pangas, laying each bundle neatly to one side, they continued searching for every telltale sign of the direction that the gorilla family had taken.
    The small party negotiated their way through the density of the vegetation – in some places it was impossible for them to even walk upright. They had on a number of occasions to either crouch, or even crawl, through the undergrowth in order to follow the gorillas’ spoor. Some of the mature stands of bamboo measured up to 8-10 cm in diameter and their lush feather-like branches reached almost 20 m into the light mountain air. After almost an hour there had become increasing evidence that a group of gorillas had only recently traversed the trail that the guides were following. Small piles of sheaths of bamboo shoots, deposits of light-coloured faeces, broken branches and varied sizes of foot and knuckle prints could be seen in the forest’s sponge-like peaty ground, which all provided additional evidence that a gorilla family was close by.
    ‘Have you seen piles of shoots like these before?’ whispered Deschryver to Mathew during one of their brief pauses for rest. Mathew shook his head. ‘At this time of the year, between September and February, bamboo shoots are in season around here – the gorillas take full advantage. They gather a handful, settle down in a favourite spot and enjoy the delicacy of the hearts of the shoots. Once they’ve eaten what they want, instead of discarding the leftovers like a troop of baboons would, the gorillas arrange them in neat little piles of between four and twelve.’
    As they progressed further, Mathew’s nostrils detected the familiar effluvium musk odour of the gorilla, an aroma that he had been first exposed to in the late 1960s while viewing the solitary male lowland gorilla (Willie B.) in his original Victorian-style cage at the Atlantic Zoo, and later whileobserving some of the gorillas at the Yerkes Primate Research Center. The guides soon became more hesitant, stopping