We were guided by the full moon through the misty hills of Rwanda and equally led by the plough welding farmers carrying their produce to their Saturday market, on our way to meet Rwanda’s mountain gorillas.
It hits one that there is no litter to be seen anywhere, but being a military state citizens are expected to give 3 hours of service, once a month, to maintaining their country.
Another observation is that there loads of young children, but very few old people to be seen. One of the hardest sights was seeing a young man getting on board a taxi, who legs had been chopped off, with a bucket with wheels attached on each stump, a tyre under is bum and a pair of slip slops on each hand for protection, getting around without any assistance. That blew my mind.
So after the obligatory tourist entertainment at our meeting point, we drove for another hour to the foot of the Virunga Volcano Mountains followed by an hour and half trek up the lush slops to the edge of the reserve where the Titus group of mountain gorillas hang out.
The entrance to the Virunga Mountain reserve is guarded by somewhat friendly military personnel who accompanied us for a further 40 minutes to a our cousins!!
The jungle was thick with nettles, flying insects and the hugely contrasting light, made capturing our cousins quite tricky.
And then we found A breastfeeding mommy, daddy and their sprogi, a slightly grumpy married family member sitting on his own, probably contemplating divorce, two adolescents, who were in the thick of destroying the TV room and managed to bowled one of our group members over in style and as well a grey back who was plotting how to over throw the oldest member of the family, a silver back, who refused to show much more of himself in the hour that we had.
Having met 8 of the 700 gorillas on our earth, this experience sits firmly at the top of my experiences!
But having captured portrait studies for the past 10 years, these certainly sit proudly next to my precious Stolen Moments – fleeting, fragile moments in time that mean so much to me on a number of levels.
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