Parenthood
This one comes to you from Gabon. I've been sent out here with my good friend Max Köbl, tasked with filming one very special family of Western Lowland gorillas. As I sit here writing this, I find myself wrestling with why exactly I keep coming back to the jungle.
We came back from the field early today, it was impossible to film and keep the camera dry. Even the gorillas decided it was too wet, settling down together in a huddle that looked, frankly, as miserable as we felt. On the boat back, raindrops bounced off the surface of the water like tiny ping pong balls, so full of energy they refused to merge with it. Our energy went into bailing the boat.
Right now I'm sitting under the main shelter, rain hammering against the palm frond roof above my head. Every so often a new leak makes it through, threatening to land squarely on this keyboard and shut down the whole operation. My clothes on the line outside are soaked through again. The t-shirt I'm wearing is slowly rotting off my back. My feet look like I've spent a month in the trenches, and Max has just taken his second Ivermectin tablet to deal with the worms that have taken up residence in his legs. I haven't got around to dealing with mine yet.
Tomorrow we will be back out again, this rain will have washed away all the tracks and if the gorillas move off tonight we might not find them at all.
But I've done this enough now to know that these are the moments you look back on and laugh. In many ways I'm writing this not for you, but for me. It's a good way to remind yourself to appreciate life and everything it throws your way. Yes, I'm soaked through and freezing and yes, most of my clothes have rotted away. But today I got to spend the day in the presence of a family of gorillas! A species that when you look into their eyes they don't just look back, they see you.
The filmmaking process requires getting close to to animals and making them feel comfortable. We call this habituation and to be honest with most animals its more of a tolerance, more of a, fine I can't be bothered running of anymore so if you sit still and don't move ill get back to what i was doing before you came into my life. But with the gorillas its different. It isn't a process of tolerance its a process of acceptance, a slow and deliberate building trust.
When you get too close, they don't get up and leave. You get the dreaded side eye. It's a look that says, really, you're going to try that, are you? It's the same look my mum used to give me when I swore I'd finished all my homework and could I please go outside now. You know immediately that you haven't fooled anyone.
We have been working with these gorillas for almost 4 weeks now, and shared moments that will live with me for the rest of my life. Today in the rain, both as miserable as each other. The elephant charge, were we all looked at each other has we huddle together in the shelter of the mangroves. Science says we can't communicate but I'm telling you in that moment everyone was saying the same thing, wtf did that really just happen. There is something ancient and completely humbling in that gaze. A recognition that crosses every boundary we've invented between us and the rest of the natural world.
Out here they call me a director. But I don't direct shit. We came to this jungle, their jungle. We came to their home and they let us in. They accepted us and were the most gracious of hosts. Surely the least we can do is make sure they still have one.