A day as chief guide
Tracker Cirimwami Mongane Lambert
At the time of writing I am fifty years old. Since I began working for the park in 1989, as a young man with a love of nature and wild animals, I have experienced a change in my state of mind. I seem to have acquired an acute sense of professional duty – when I’m not in the forest, it’s as if I feel ill.
I seem to have acquired an acute sense of professional duty 鈥� when I鈥檓 not in the forest, it鈥檚 as if I feel ill
My average day runs as follows: each morning at half past six, after a breakfast of tea with bread, it’s time to leave my large family (wife and ten children) to deploy in our staff 4x4, seven kilometres up the unpaved, bumpy road to my place of work at Tshivanga. At 0730, a military parade and briefing for the security teams takes place; at 0800, I brief the tourism team and trackers, and these 40 or so men are sent out into the forest to locate and follow the twelve different families of gorillas we currently know about in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
Depending on the family being followed, and whereabouts they are situated, it takes between an hour or two of walking through thick forest to find them. This sometimes takes a lot longer, depending on the time of year – wet season or dry, fruit season or bamboo – and on what they are currently eating. But come rain or snow, we must go and find them. It is very hard work, which demands a lot of getting used to, but for us, it is our passion.
I love Kahuzi-Biega National Park, I love the gorillas, and the people who come to visit them.
(Chimanuka) is the grand patriarch of our park. Every day, I give thanks for the day we found him
As for Chimanuka, we found him completely by chance, as if he had fallen from the sky. During the 1996 war, a lot of gorillas in our park were killed, in what we call an ecocide. Just when we were fearing that we would never again find a resident gorilla family – essential for justifying the park’s existence – a routine patrol ran into a semi-habituated male with three females. And the lead tracker exclaimed: “Nous avons trouvé!” Very gentle, kind, and not given to stress, Chimanuka welcomes our visitors. He is the grand patriarch of our park. Every day, I give thanks for the day we found him.
