Gorilla gazette no 11

Welcome to Gorilla gazette!

Postings from the gorilla inhabitants of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in Western Uganda.

Well, this time it’s my turn to do the Gorilla gazette. I’m Kasigazi, the dominant silverback of the  Kahungye 2 family. (It’s called ‘Kahungye 2’ as the Kahungye family actually split in two and we’re the second half). I know what you are going to ask: “Does he have a wife?” Well, actually all the females in the group belong to me! You’ll find us in the area we live in in the Rushaga Southern Sector of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. 

Now, you might just have had breakfast or dinner. I’m eating dead wood of the myrica  species of trees, which is  indigenous to tropical Uganda and Central and East Africa. It’s locally called ‘Omushengyeshi’. (Please do try to say it!) You may take vitamin pills but I’m eating this dead wood for sodium nutrients. As I think you know, we gorillas normally eat leaves, straight off the branches, but I do have to say that they were getting a bit dry in the last month or so, until the rains came. Now they are tasting much better and are ‘much softer on the palate’. 

Talking of the rains this photo has been taken of Bwindi at the beginning of this rainy season. For us, this is a quiet time as visitors don’t come to see us as it’s too muddy and slippery. We can get around as we have strong arms and anyway we generally walk around on our ‘hands and feet’, but not quite like you, when were crawling around as a little child. We can also climb up the trees remarkably quickly if we want to. The younger ones do that, of course, to show off, but they’ll have to wait a while until the visitors come back to perform their antics to an audience.

The rainy season means that the women and their children in the nearby village of Nkuringo don’t walk through the forest so much. The women stay home and spend time making baskets and bowls out of grasses that have been dyed. While the rains are filling the water tanks, they have time to spare as they don't have to go down, or up, the mountain and it means that they don’t have to keep their children out of school to help.

Thank you for letting me tell you about life in our area of Bwindi and please do support Commat’s efforts to help the Nkuringo women and children.

If you wish to make a donation, you can either donate to Commat directly at:

THE COMMONWEALTH MEDICAL TRUST
Lloyds Bank plc
SORT CODE: 30-94-97
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 00988751
IBAN: GB40LOYD30949700988751
BIC: LOYDGB21029

Or via PayPal.

Gorilla gazette - Issue 10

Hello. I don’t think we have met before. My name is Tabu, and I’m one of the young guys in the Nkuringo family. I’m afraid I haven’t yet got a photo of me, so you can’t see me in person, but I’m second-in-charge in the family. Currently, the Silverback is Rwamutwe. But my time will come, and when it does, I’ll challenge him and win, and he will have to go. Meanwhile, I’m keeping myself busy and that’s why I volunteered to do this edition of the Gorilla gazette. 

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Gorilla gazette: Issue 9

No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that one, the 25^th of December, I meant me, Christmas, of the Xmas family, who was born on 25 December a few years ago. I’m very sorry that we gorillas haven’t been writing our Gazette recently. No excuses, but we’ve had a lot visitors in the dry season and even though they only come for an hour, it breaks up our usual routines and, of course, sometimes we're just a bit lazy. But as you can see, I’m a silverback, and nothing pleases me more than having nice, fresh, young leaves to eat. 

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Gorilla gazette - Issue 8

Yes, it’s me, Christmas, again! And I have quite a lot to tell you.

First, I don’t know if any of you, who live in the U.K., saw on morning television, or heard  on the radio recently, but the BBC climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, was talking about us, the Mountain Gorillas who live in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Unfortunately he didn’t talk about my Xmas family, as we would have really liked to be on the ‘tele’ and I have a such a beautiful ‘silver back’. Instead he featured the Nshongi family. What he didn’t say was that this family, like us, lives in the Southern sector and was the second family in this sector to be habituated after the Nkuringo family.

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Gorilla gazette - Issue 7

Well, hello again. Yes, we have met before. I am Kabukojo, the Silverback from the Rushegura family, and I headlined in Gorilla Gazettes Nos 1 and 2. In this photo I am talking to my youngster. And, we still haven’t decided on this little one’s name, or should I say “they” haven’t. Our children know whom we want, when we call them, but the “powers that be” in the Uganda Wildlife Authority haven’t yet decided.

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