Day 3 in Rwanda: A morning with golden monkeys
On my last day in Rwanda, I woke up at a more sensible time: half past five. Despite getting over seven hours of sleep, I could not convince my body that it was not tired from yesterday’s gorilla trek, nor could I persuade my legs to stop hurting every time I went up or down an incline. At half past six, the driver picked me up and drove me once again to the Volcanoes National Park visitor centre. The sky was much clearer that morning. Only a few clouds hung above the five volcanoes, which I now saw stretching from my left hand to my right and towering above the fields hoed by colourfully clad women.
There were
noticeably fewer tourists at the visitor centre on Sunday than there were on
Saturday, and several people on our golden monkeys tour had already gone on the
gorilla trek. Since our congregation numbered more than twenty people, we were
sorted into two smaller groups – or rather, the guide simply announced that the
young people and old people should form two groups, and we were left to decide
who fit into which category.
The “young
people group” drove to a slightly farther location where the bamboo forest
seemed quite thick. After parking our cars and leaving our drivers behind, we
set off through the potato fields to the stone wall of the national park,
walking past cows, curious children, and yet more hoeing women. I noticed that
many of the fields were encircled by thorny bushes growing prickly yellow
fruit. The guide explained that these bushes kept the cows and sheep from
wandering into the fields, and that their bitter fruit had medicinal qualities.
Namely, women use it as a natural abortifacient and feed it to cows to help
them get rid of their placentae after birthing.
A few small
grass huts also lay sprinkled about the fields. The guide told us that the men
slept in these huts as the harvest approached so that they could scare away
monkeys, elephants and buffalo if they came during the night. He said the
monkeys were particularly fond of potatoes and could be seen carrying one in
each hand and another in the mouth when the field was left unguarded.
Allegedly, they can smell a potato almost half a metre under the ground and
have no qualms about getting themselves dirty and digging it up.
The
trackers found the golden monkeys right at the edge of the forest. They were
jumping through the bamboo and occasionally eating its leaves and pith, which
crumbled from their mouths and landed at our feet. Another favourite of the
monkeys were the white flowers of a short reddish plant, the flavour of which
they found so compelling that they abandoned their heights and joined us on the
ground to taste them. They seemed completely nonplussed by the ten-odd tourists
taking pictures of their shiny coats. The alpha male even thought it a
propitious occasion to make love to two different females before passing out on
the treetop.
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