My Continuing Journey into the Belly of Africa

It’s 5 a.m. I’ve been awakened by an avian chorus outside my window. Resistance is futile, even in darkness. In no time I’m wide awake, back on expedition, climbing mount improbable. There’s no stopping this forward march.

I hesitate before getting up. Kigongo is asleep next to me but she doesn’t stir. It’s not her I’m concerned about. Four keen-eared creatures are curled up on our living room couch, eagerly awaiting the first waking footfall. But I must have coffee - Ugandan coffee.

I rise, wrap myself in a turquoise kanga, slip into a pair of flip-flops, and slowly open my bedroom door. So far so good. But I am given up by the compound cock. The ensuing canine assault brings all four dogs lapping at my heels in a blur of white fur.

It's both suffocating and irresistible. Each one vies for my attention with a display of dancing skills, as though auditioning for the circus. Amadeus, a Schnoodle (Schnauzer-Poodle mix) with a sweet disposition but absolutely no manners, bounces repeatedly as he tries to lick my face. He’s the unlikely leader of the pack.

Cleopatra, his mate, a silky white Yorkie, stands on her hind legs, clawing frenetically at an imaginary door. Her bitch puppies, Aldebran and Biafra, are a confusion of youth and breed, with none of her finesse. All together they make up the Schnorkydoodle Gang.

The moment my cup of Joe is brewed I retreat with it to my bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind me. Cleo’s the only one allowed in here, as she tends to conduct herself in a lady-like fashion, and always hunts for mice.

My computer boots up automatically at six every morning, but there are some minutes to go, so I turn to my iPad. It does everything the Mac mini does but in a fraction of the time. I launch BBC World Service radio, and listen for news that may impact my work, either as inspiration, research or a travel advisory.


At the moment I am struggling between careers in wildlife conservation and publishing, having abandoned the former too soon. Consequently, the first thing I do every morning is try to think up new ways to earn a living.

My changeover career as a safari guide has been disastrous. I can't imagine a more gratifying job but I’ve yet to attract enough patrons or profits to earn a living out of it. Some clients don’t pay on time, others demand refunds, and the company remains perpetually in the red. Truth be told, I don't have an entrepreneurial bone in my body.

Thankfully, a new career in publishing looms, though it has yet to materialise. It’s now a year and a half since I completed my manuscript for Gorillaland, but I still haven’t earned a penny from it. Who knows if or when copies will sell. Nevertheless, I must triumph, as anyone trying to cross a deadly wasteland must. Surrender’s not an option.

I switch from the Beeb to vintage radio, replacing ethnically-diverse broadcasters with hardboiled private dicks. Listening to Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett convey a mood, in just a few choice words, spoken through characters like Philip Marlow or Sam Spade, is a lesson in clarity.

Detective series are followed by darker mysteries: "tales well calculated to keep you in… suspense." Two vintage radio shows that really know how to work frightening twists into their half-hour episodes are "The Whistler" and "Suspense." After a double-header of each I'm inspired, and ready to start writing.

We live in the Najera district of Kampala. The satellite image on Google Earth looks like a picture of an alcoholic's dissected liver. Giving directions can be a chore. "After Zanzi pork joint, take a series of left turns, signposted by obvious landmarks: a mango tree, some chickens... You'll find it." 

By now Kigongo is awake, seated on the bed with her back against the wall, tapping away on her Blackberry. I watch her elegant fingers roll nimbly across the tiny black keyboard. She deserves better than this, and its for her that I keep going. Kigongo is my muse, the love of my life, and finest woman I’ve ever known.

The well-being of our Schnorkydoodles is another motivating factor. I can picture them on the Swahili Coast, chasing seabirds and crabs on the fine white sand. We'll own our own beach house. I'll write for a living, Kigongo will enjoy the fruits of my labours, and the dogs will be free. Free, I tell you, free!

Kigongo has transferred to the kitchen where she's preparing my breakfast - something I would gladly prepare myself if I knew what to do with the strange ingredients in there. For the rest of the day I'm happy with what's put in front of me. But local morning dishes are just too stodgy for my tastes. Consequently, a great deal of effort goes into finding me a palatable "muzungu breakfast."

Morning ablutions are fun. Before I can bathe, the water must first be heated on a charcoal stove which takes a couple of hours. Entire forests get felled to provide me with my daily wash. When it’s ready I enter a shower room and, after filling a basin with a mix cold and piping hot water, use a plastic cup to pour the contents over my body.

After my bath I dress, splash on some cologne and drag a brush through my unruly mane. Shaving is a challenge. I find it best to use my electric razor for as many days as possible, and only a straight razor when it's absolutely necessary. In this way, I make myself presentable for the African day, come what may.


I'm writing like a whirling dervish now, but the prospect of having a drink with my mates keeps invading my trains of thought like a gang of football hooligans. I'm not one to suffer writer's block, and can keep working as long as time and concentration allow. But writing is a lonely game, and before long I'm craving company.

Kigongo’s in the next room with her BFF, Fatuma, and they're ripping each other up in Luganda. Those two are inseparable, and have been since they were young teenagers. It’s an unlikely relationship. Kigongo’s a converted Catholic, Fatuma a Muslim. Kigongo's heritage is Bugandan and English, and she comes from a middle-class family. Fatuma’s heritage is Somali and Swahili Coast, and she comes from a refugee family. Kigongo possesses an energetic intellect, and can hold her own in a heated political discussion. Fatuma is just energetic, and can hold her own arm-wrestling soldiers.

Fatuma and Kigongo on Eid

I could listen to their wicked laughter for hours but I decide to go out. Having saved my work to iCloud where it will forever be, I slip the iPad into my leather satchel. A backup wireless keyboard is already packed in there, as well as an Apple power cord. Ostensibly I magic my entire office into a small leather bag, which I then sling over my shoulder as I say goodbye to Kigongo and Fatuma.

On my way through the living room, I spot Amadeus gnawing on a plastic bag. When I try to take it away from him, he snarls at me, for which I buffet him soundly on his nose. He runs off with his tail between his legs and hides under a bed. But this is a dog who truly understands the game, always giving back enough love and gratitude to get what he wants: food, attention and forgiveness. He can never be in trouble for too long. And I can’t leave without bigging up my boy.




At dusk, I’m Billy No-mates, seated at the bar in Iguana, a second-storey establishment in Kampala’s Kamwokya district. I’ve spent the last hour watching a new mall get built across the road. The DJ’s playing a string of 80s hits to an empty dance floor. The entire venue is empty, which suits me. It will soon fill up.

With its steep thatched roof suspended by blackened eucalyptus beams, the place has the look of a safari lodge, if not the ambiance of one. I feel at home here. But it’s crunch time. After dark, transport to Najera is difficult to find and more expensive. I must decide: should I stay or should I go. Kigongo and Fatuma are at a wedding reception at the Sheraton. So, there’s no one at home to keep the Schnorkydoodles company.

Everywhere are posters encouraging me to stay: “Happy Hour From 6 till 8 pm. Buy 2 Beers Get 1 Free,” “Party Till You’re Homeless!” There's a speedy wireless connection, and I remember it’s been months since I last backed up my device to iCloud. I order another Club beer, plug into a socket at the bar, and start working.

How quickly the light of the day gets replaced by the light of my screen. And after several bottles of beer the alcohol has ultimately drowned my inventiveness. Accordingly I put away my gear, secure my satchel, sit up and adjust to the vibe in the room. It’s close to midnight and the Iguana is heaving.

There is a gaggle of malayas by the door, grinding up against each other to a throbbing Swahili hip-hop beat. An outlier decides to get in on the act, and sort of dance-walks with her drink in her hand to join the party and grind with the others. The DJ never lets up.

Predictably, as a muzungu seated by himself at the bar, I get approached by a girl half my age. “How old are you?” she asks.

“Much too old for you,” I laugh.

“No. Tell me how old you are?”

“Fifty,” I say.

“Really? I thought you were older." I smile. "Listen," she continues, "my father-in-law is coming from Britain next week, and he’s sixty two. Maybe you could show him around.”

Half an hour later she’s French-kissing the Frenchman she only just met. Shortly thereafter he’s taking her home. It doesn’t matter that she's collapsed on the floor, he knows a good thing when he sees it. I wanted to intervene on her behalf but I don’t think I could have done much good for that girl. She was determined to go home with someone.

Home-ways is best-ways for me too now. But getting there is going to be tough. Alas, I’m pleasantly surprised to find a boda who knows where Najera is, parked right outside Iguana. The price is right so I hop on the back, spark up, and don my pimpin’ white Marshall headphones. “We go?” he asks. I nod, and we’re off.

With the wind in my hair, Nas’s “You Wouldn’t Understand” in my ears, and feeling every pothole where it counts, I am contented. That was a day well spent. With any luck tomorrow will be a day well earned.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Najera, Kampala, Uganda

The Old Man and the Seafood Restaurant at the End of the Universe

This is the ultimate in right brain crafting. I can just lie here, reclined on a day bed in my coastal room, with my head against the pillow, gazing anywhere I choose, while typing on the wireless keyboard on my lap. I don't even have to look over at the iPad to see what I'm writing. It just flows directly from my thoughts to my finger tips, then on to some kind of digital paper that then floats up into something called an iCloud.

Hurray for technology, and for Mrs Larson, for teaching me to copy type. This is a mad skill that has served me in so many ways during these digital times. Yet she taught us when we knew nothing of the future. The most spectacular piece of consumer electronics any of us had seen at that time was a Texas Instruments calculator.

Now, thanks to her, I can lay back on the Swahili Coast and write my manuscripts seemingly into thin air, while reclining on a sedan chair, listening to Miles and Coltrane, and smoking a joint. The Black Label has been consumed, though I tried not drink too much tonight.

There's been a blustery offshore breeze blowing through the Blue Marlin all afternoon and evening, in that way a full moon raises the tides then strengthens the wind, though it seems to have died down now. Sandra's been up in Mombasa visiting Fatuma's relatives all day, while I've been working on the Hartley itinerary.

Propped up at the bar this afternoon, putting the finishing touches to my next safari, while watching the women's 100 metre qualifiers in the Olympics and the kite surfers, who numbered a dozen at one point, carve up the surf between the beach and the reef, I found myself asking, "Is there anywhere better I could situate the office?"


I'm nearer Gorillaland now than at any time in the past six years, and by that I mean the lifestyle I set out to make for myself when I began writing the novel. This is close, very close. This idyllic beachfront hideaway is only a two hour flight from Entebbe. Once I get it all worked out, I'll not know where I want to be. The choice of superb retreats I've set up for me and Sandra, and our sphere of influence, will serve us very well in years to come. It's important to plan for one's future. Hell, I'm still only 50!

There is something about watching the lovely young things milling around on this beach in their skimpy bikinis that reminds me of my age and wisdom. You go, girls! Greta Scaatchi in White Mischief comes to mind, or maybe that's just wishful thinking... Presently four buxom asses have just lined up at the bar, and I'm trying not to get


distracted. What I actually wanted to write about was the ten kite surfers out there cutting up the gleaming turquoise reef, butt...


This has been an extraordinary year, from day one, when I walked out into the waves of the Sea of Cortez and sated my soul with the fragrance and glow of a place and a time that really made me happy. I was missing was my baby, my dogs, my home, but glad of the gulp of fresh air. In the following months I traveled through a myriad of towns and places, across three continents, hung out with some of the solid people in my life - old and new friends - spending quality time with them that I'll always cherish. I was nourished with such stimulation and inspiration as I might have been a character in a story book. It's a book I've yet to write.

But nothing feels better than being a heartbeat away from home - not home, but on the fringes of the homestead, close enough to call Ol' Yeller out from the yard. In such a place, the heart grows fonder. And to be here with my baby, chillin' in the glow of the Swahili Coast, where the vibe is just right, makes me feel gelebt.

This is what I've sought all my liife: sun, sea, sand, satisfaction, freedom, all the while being with my baby-baby, at last. Just gotta figure out how to get the dogs down here and make this a permanent thing.


Blessings from the heart of an old soul, who is currently residing where strength rolls in on every curling wind-blown crest of a wave. The old man and the seafood restaurant at the end of the Universe, says "Karibuni." Life begins at fifty.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Diani Beach, Kenya

The Fire That Consumes

Out here in remotest rural France, seated beside a roaring fire, I feel the warmth of all the good vibes that have been bestowed on me this year - the generosity, support and encouragement from my friends and family. Yet I'm

happy to let their kindness burn up in the wood stove of my ambition. This is my conceit, to be the fire that consumes rather than warms.

I leveled that harsh criticism at a very dear friend of mine recently, someone who's done more to support me these past few years than any other person. At the time, harsh criticism seemed the only way to express my gratitude. But now I'm one dear friend poorer.

That's why I'm determined to get it right this tim e, and pay proper tribute to Martin and Sally for the loan of their cottage in Capelle-lès-Hesdin. Martin, my publisher, is a good friend whom I've known for years. He keeps a steady course and always manages to sail through rough seas with an even keel. Two years ago he rescued me from the clutches of hell, with the offer of a publishing deal for GORILLALAND, and has helped steer me between careers in wildlife conservation and publishing.

Sally's an extraordinary woman, a solicitor who chooses to put her formidable powers of persuasion to rescuing battered women when she could be making a fortune elsewhere. That's why her friendship means so much to me. If it weren't for the two of them - not just their generosity but their understanding - I'd be sizing up the beams.

The idea was to set me up somewhere secluded where I could concentrate on completing the manuscript for PIRATES, my next novel. So, here I am, alone in their 17th Century house in northern France, filling the hours, as I have been doing for the past three weeks, with everything it is possible to do in a place like this, except write my manuscript.

It's not often I experience such solitude. There was the time in 1981 when I spent a few weeks on an island in Lake Ontario, trying to write a play. Then in 1986 at The Quarry at Tuesley Manor in Surrey, and as recently as December 2009 when I spent two weeks alone in a cabin upstate New York. Each occasion was an act of faith and kindness on the part of a friend who believed in my talents. And each time I trusted the results would prove their generosity. But thirty years later and I'm still unable to make isolation work for my writing.


"There were all the technical problems. But the fire and the night and the stars made them all seem small."
- Ernest Hemingway


I just put down Hemingway's True at First Light, and I'm feeling his style. Long sentences that repeat words, sometimes with just one jaded word between them, meandering descriptions of African mornings, hunting prowess, and seemingly harmless conversations with local safari guides. No one comes closer to describing the Africa I know than Papa Hemingway.

Coincidently, the thing that has occupied more of my time than anything else while in Hesdin is my effort to set up a couple of gorilla safaris for some Hollywood clients. They're prepared to pay top dollar but they've just not given me enough time. Communications has been a big challenge. I bought a useful device made by Hwayei, an elegant little white tablet that fits into the palm of your hand. It uses a micro SIM to generate a wireless Internet hub that connects all the computers within range. Bandwidth is seriously lacking though. There's virtually no fast network in this little backwater - not for Orange customers that is. Add the hassle of topping up credit when it runs out, as it just has, when the nearest shop's a half-hour bike ride away, downhill.

It's as peaceful as an ashram here. But for birdsong, lowing and the wind through trees, all is quiet, though my heart pounds like a native drum in the forest. Why such anxiety in so tranquil a place? Is the house haunted? Yes, there are ghosts here, but they're all ones I brought with me. That's just it... I'm never alone.

From time to time I receive curious visitors: the lean and elusive hunting dog that scampers on to the lawn for a shit, the birds that chatter from every branch, and

a family of rabbits straight out of Enid Blyton. But I have never seen any people, not even from the busy farm next door. I hear machines and cows all day and night but, even when I go a roaming with my wireless hub in one hand and my iPad in the other like some lost prophet with asymmetrical laws, no one ever materializes. No need to worry about making impressions then.

I no longer try to make a good impression anywhere but in my novels. I've been conducting myself with dignity, as Kigongo suggested, which is new for me, but I don't give a damn what anyone thinks. All I really want is to retreat to the African wilderness where, like Papa, I'll need do nothing more than listen to wood pigeons and wind in dry grass, and write novels. It's where I feel most at home.


To anyone who has spent a lifetime traveling to the far ends of the earth, as I have, home is an abstract idea. For me, any sense of belonging is always fleeting. Not that I don't crave it. I do, with all the fibre in my heart, body and soul. But I'll throw my hat anywhere I'm allowed to spend the night, and call it home.

This little cottage in Capelle-lès-Hesdin feels like home. There's a simpler vibe here. I'm inconspicuous. Live and let live; love and let love... It's another reason I am so grateful to Martin and Sally, they've given me a home these past three weeks.

It's a peculiar house. The angled windowsills and steep roofing all warn of heavy winter storms. Yet its age and isolation tell another story. It was built around the time Queen Nzinga was on the throne in Angola, pitting the Dutch against the Portuguese, and destroying the Kingdom of Kongo. Thank you France for taking a back seat for the first three hundred years of European colonialism. You were busy fighting the English, I know, and building little houses for your peeps to live in. I understand
.
It's sometime later and I find myself again cozied up to a blazing fire, sitting with my wireless keyboard on my lap and my iPad on the coffee table next to a half-finished bottle of Black Label, the current issue of The Economist, my moleskin note pad, two phones - one for France, one for Britain - my reading glasses, a small pipe and small stash to burn therein.
There's no better soundtrack for this setting than Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5, Fourth Movement. Nothing soothes a homeless heart like sentimental Teutonic strings. Yet the beat goes on.

I'll be leaving in a day's time. Pity. Thank you Martin and Sally for lending me your ancient cottage to write my book. I wish I could have made more of the opportunity, though it has been a balm to this tortured soul, even if I didn't manage to complete my manuscript. I will soon.

How strange the fire recalls the African bush: the last few embers steadily dwindling, along with the contents of a bottle of Scotch, and a sense that other creatures are out there hunting, staying up much later than is sensible - early rise creeping up with the dawn - but reluctant to sleep until the last flames have burned down. And after all the wood is consumed, there is still warmth.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Rue de l'Obled, Capelle-lès-Hesdin, France

The Silverback of LA

When drinking Harvey Wallbangers and smoking bongs, alone on a terrace in the Hollywood Hills, always check what you lift to your lips and for what purpose. It gets confusing after a while. The consequences can be rather unpleasant.

I suddenly find myself in an empty house, sheltered from the Santa Ana winds by the steep slopes of a weather-beaten canyon, watching lizards scurry out of shadows into fleeting warmth, and listening for the loosening sands of another gofer avalanche. With the sun rising from one ridge mid-morning and setting on the next mid-afternoon, it's like Alaskan winter time in this place. 

Sound too travels in strange ways. I hear conversations that bounce off the irregular contours of the canyon walls, disguising their location - malicious machinations that their perpetrators think no one else hears. Boiling cauldrons of pulp simmer in the canyons late until the night, like festival candles...

At last I'm in bed with the entertainment industry, having sex with a seductive screen idol who can't remember my name. At least I can testify that at this point in the negotiations, one doesn't believe one's selling one's soul to Mephistopheles. 

You soon see the warning signs: the producer who wears an impossibly trim goatee and laughs a lot, the director of development who moves uncomfortably around in his plush leather chair, the rotund company partner who flashes you an imperceptibly brief glare, during which you think you hear extraneous voices. You leave wondering whether or not, unbeknownst to you, your sleeping orifices were just surreptitiously probed by the Forces of Darkness. 

How far will it take me, this affair with the Black Dahlia? If the sex is good, good things will come. How long before I have my own line of safari apparel..? Maybe I don't last the afternoon, as the entire side of Nicholas Canyon breaks loose and crumbles on top of me. I hear little land slides sidling gravity's way. There is nothing up there, I checked. It's just foreshadow and verisimilitude in allegiance with the Fate Clowns. This after all is the stuff of entertainment.

Gorilla Goes to Hollywood

It was 1991, on a cold November afternoon in London, when I sat down to watch Gorillas in the Mist for the very first time. My heart was pounding, even before the title sequence began. I could hardly contain myself. 

Nominated for five oscars and well received by the critics, no doubt it was a great movie, but I had other reasons to be excited about the Dian Fossey biopic. I’d just received a phone call inviting me to interview for the position of UK director of the Digit Fund, the organisation she founded.

Not many positions offer a feature-length Hollywood motion picture as a guide for interview. But, in spite of the fact that I had grown up in Africa, I’d never met a wild gorilla nor visited Rwanda, so this film, shot on location, was my introduction.

The silver hairs on my back stood on end as I watched the opening scene, which faded in to the strains of Maurice Jarre’s sumptuous score. A DC 3 carrying Dian Fossey, played by Sigourney Weaver, descends between the majestic Virunga volcanoes, and lands in an airfield next to the mountains.

I could not have known then that I was watching scenes from my future life, a life that would be quite unlike the one I led then, and that years later I would arrive at that same airfield, aboard movie mogul Barry Diller’s helicopter.

SILVERBACKS ON THE SILVER SCREEN

Hollywood and gorillas : the two could not be farther apart. One showcases the culmination of human imagination, the other, the complete lack of it. Yet there has always been a symbiosis between them.

Since Hollywood’s Golden Age, movie makers have pitted beast against beauty and turned the gorilla into a box office sensation. Ingagi released in 1930, was the first to trade heavily on the suggestion of sex between a woman and a gorilla, and it’s success spawned the mother of all gorilla movies, King Kong, which earned $2 million during its initial release in 1933, putting RKO Radio Pictures in the black for the first time since they started making movies. It ranks among the greatest motion pictures of all time.

Hollywood has been kind to the gorilla. Unlike chimpanzees and orangutans whose screen exploits have attracted scorn from animal rights advocates, gorillas themselves have largely been left out of the picture. Instead, they’re usually played by long-armed actors in an ersatz gorilla getups, known as gorilla men, people like Steve Calvert, Ray Corrigan, and Bob Burns (the most beloved).

In later years as production standards improved, ape actors like Dan Richter and Peter Elliot perfected their craft to match the ever more sophisticated suits they were being asked to climb into.

Some of the best make up and effects artists have made their reputations crafting believable movie gorillas. Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen are among those from the Golden Age, while in recent years Rick Baker and Stan Winston are credited with many of the modern silverbacks on the silver screen.

Nowadays, CGI and motion capture technology gives gorilla men like Andy Serkis, star of the 2005 remake of Kong, the freedom to give more convincing performances. Still, who isn’t moved when Peter Elliot, playing Tarzan’s adopted chimp father, gets shot in Greystoke, ("C'est mon père!") or when Dan Richter throws the bone in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Other blogs have adequately dealt with the subjects of gorilla movies and gorilla men, which I won’t go into, except to say, thanks Hollywood for turning the gorilla into a screen idol. It made my job saving them a whole lot easier.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My personal association with the movie business began one sunny summer morning, shortly after I started my job as director of the Digit Fund. I received a call from Warner Brothers in London. “I believe you wrote to Sigourney Weaver requesting a meeting,” said a young woman, which I confirmed. “Well, she can see you this afternoon, at the Barkley Hotel.” I quickly jotted down the address then examined my scruffy attire: jeans and a t-shirt. They might have at least been given enough notice to dress for the occasion.

A couple of hours later I was inside the second floor suite I’d been instructed to go to. It was plush, decorated in a classical style, and overrun with assistants catering to the needs of a queue of journalists waiting to see Ms Weaver. I spotted her through the crowd, seated in front of a large Alien 3 poster, answering questions from the British entertainment press about her latest movie.

A pretty, young assistant ushered me into an adjacent room and told me I could use the phone while I waited. “You’ll never guess where I am...” is clearly the call she thought I’d make, but I was cooler than that. The next time the door opened, I expected it to be her again, but it was the movie star herself, unescorted.

“Hello,,” said Sigourney, shaking my hand, “I’m sorry I’m late.” She looked stunning, dressed in a bright orange 1960s top, with large, strategically-cut holes arranged around it. Her hair was quite short - as she hadn’t had much of a chance to grow it since playing a bald Ripley - and it was done in tight brunette curls that accentuated her diamond-cut features.

We talked for twenty five minutes about her role as honorary chair of the charity, and my fundraising and awareness raising activities. I told her we had recently changed the name to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. “I will have to work harder now,” she said, smiling. ”People identify me closely with Dian.” I was startled by her loyalty to the cause. She was determined not to let Gorillas in the Mist become “an unwitting memorial to an extinct species.”

That was the first of many celebrity appointments I kept in my twenty-year career as a conservationist, including many more with Sigourney, but I will always cherish that first face-to-face encounter I had with a genuine Hollywood movie star.


DAWN OF MAN

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey with Stanley Kubrick, and with whom I had been friends for years, opened up a world of possibilities for the gorillas. He also gave me my most cherished contact in the movie business.

"I think Roger Caras who was Stanley's VP at the time would be happy to be interviewed, explaining how the ape sequence was arranged in 2001," Clarke wrote in a fax to me. Clarke, who rarely left Sri Lanka, introduced me to Caras by fax. We met for lunch at a posh London restaurant. Caras struck me as one of the last true gentlemen in the movie business. As one time vice president of Hawk Films, Kubrick’s production company, in due course he gave me and introduction to the great filmmaker himself.

Though we never actually met, Stanley Kubrick subsequently made two financial donations to the Fund, both in response to editions of our newsletter, Digit News. Then, on March 6th 1999, I sent him a fax, as I had done to many other high-profile supporters that day, informing him of an impending air strike by the Zimbabwean air force on the town of Goma, and the collateral damage it might cause to the gorilla habitat. Not that my fax had anything to do with it, but the next day, Kubrick died in his sleep of a heart attack.

On a happier note, my association with Clarke also led me to Dan Richter, who played the ape Moonwatcher in the “Dawn of Man” sequence in 2001. He arrived one day at the London office saying Clarke had recommended us to him. A few months later I would take him and his son, Will, to meet the real gorillas in Rwanda. It was to be the start of a lasting friendship.

In a thank-you letter that she wrote to Arthur Clarke, Sigourney said, “You probably don’t recall meeting me at my parents, Pat and Liz Weaver’s when I was eleven. I took a ‘Playboy’ magazine out of your briefcase and read it. I’d never seen a ‘Playboy’ before so your visit is indelibly recorded in my memory!”

Her gratitude was in response to Clarke’s sterling efforts, through his contacts in the Space industry, to acquire imagery of the gorilla habitat from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which had been taken on two Space shuttle missions in 1994. It is a story I’ve reported elsewhere in this blog, but I mention here because it was pivotal to the Fund’s next encounter with Tinsel Town.

One day, another ape actor, Peter Elliot (pictured above), also turned up unannounced. As the foremost ape actor of his day, he was compelled to run rampage through my office, climbing on to my desk, ripping up my cigarettes, and throwing stationery against the walls. He gave a surprisingly convincing performance as a chimpanzee, even without a suit. Lucky for him considering the mess he made.

Peter had come with an urgent message: Paramount Picture was making an ape movie, to be based on Michael Crichton’s adventure novel, Congo, and if we got in early enough, we might be able to secure their support for the cause.

After rushing out and buying the paperback, I quickly discovered something quite serendipitous about Congo. It involved detailed satellite imagery of the gorilla habitat in central Africa, the same as we'd just acquired from NASA/JPL. I called producer Sam Mercer and offered him a bit of verisimilitude for his movie.

“WHERE YOU ARE THE ENDANGERED SPECIES”

My first visit to Hollywood, in the Spring of 1994, followed on the heels of that call. I can remember the feeling of elation that came over me as my co-director Jillian Miller and I drove up Melrose Avenue to the Paramount lot in a convertible, with the sound of big band swing playing on the car radio. Thanks to Peter Elliot’s timely heads-up, the Fund was in at the ground level with Kennedy/Marshal’s production of Congo. And, in the course a few short days, we would be subjected to every manner of Hollywood schmooze.

On one occasion, while we were seated in a restaurant on Rodeo and Wiltshire, having lunch with Congo associate producer Michael Backes, and his publicist Beverly Magid of Guttman Associates, Dick Guttman himself arrived at our table, with a female friend in tow. “I was wondering if you could give a ride to my client,” he said, “She’s staying close to your hotel. May I introduce you to Patricia Hearst. ” Low and behold it was Patty Hearst, aka Tania, the famous newspaper heiress, who in 1974 was kidnapped by Symbionese Liberation Army. 

Ten minutes later were were driving up Wilshire Boulevard together, with Patty warning the consequences of breathing too much LA air, and insisting we close all the windows and turn on the air conditioning. Never one to miss a fundraising opportunity, I asked her about making an appeal to her family foundation. “Oh, you won’t get any money from them,“ she laughed. “Campaigners are always on their ass. They own half the Californian coast, you know.”

It’s important to be assertive in Hollywood. The industry expects nothing less of it’s solicitors. It wasn’t easy convincing Paramount that we were the cause on which to pin Congo. At one point, while Kennedy/Marshall were prevaricating over a plush gorilla doll, I asked Sigourney to phone Kathleen Kennedy and urge them along. “We'd appreciate not being blindsided like that,” said producer Sam Mercer.

But gorillas are not generally polite, and when their situation gets desperate, yes, I get pushy. The big bohunkases needed a champion. Hence being called an “asshole” by Michael Crichton, and a “hustler” by Dave Gilmour, were to me badges of honour. My intentions are good. What's your excuse?

Paramount Pictures eventually paid for $10,000 for our space images, even though NASA/JPL had given them to us for free. We also ended up with all the box office returns from Congo's London premier at the Odeon Leicester Square, and an on-pack promotion to adopt a gorilla that went out with the video, raising nearly $150,000 for gorilla conservation on the back of the movie.

However, despite it's success at the box office, the critics panned Congo. I’ll never forget Douglas Adams stomping out of the cinema after the film had ended, and bellowing at the top of his voice, “WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT!” Roger Ebert was the only critic to give Congo a thumbs up, citing it as “a splendid example of the jungle adventure story,” a quality that was not lost on me.

GORILLA MAKERS

Hollywood legend Ray Harryhausen is someone who knows the jungle adventure story better than most. I first met the special effects guru at an event in Paris in 1999, where he was being honoured with a Jules Verne Lifetime Achievement Award. We discovered we shared a passion for hairy apes and immediately hit it off.

On my return to London, he invited me to dinner with his wife Diana at their home in Holland Park. Diana Harryhousen, I learned, was a descendent of David Livingstone, which was evident from the many water colours displayed on the walls of their Georgian house, painted during the great explorer’s Zambesi Expedition. 

Ray led me up the stairs to his attic where he kept scores of stop-frame animation characters from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Clash of the Titans, films that made his name in special effects. It was a rare privilege that left me at a loss for words. Ray couldn't say enough about how much he loved the gorillas. He recalled his early days in the business, and how thrilled he was when they hired him to work on Mighty Joe Young, alongside Willis O’Brien, who was responsible for the special effects in the original 1933 King Kong. "Willis wasn't there much. And by doing most of the miniature set wizardry myself, I saved lots of money."

After dinner, I showed off my new Palm Pilot. At that time digital hand-held technology was still largely unknown to the world. While seated around the coffee table, I demonstrated how I could look up Ray’s work on the IMDB database. “I'll tell you who to look up,” he laughed, “Gustav von Seyffertitz.”

Within a few seconds I’d found him, a German actor of the silent era, who’d lived to the ripe old age of 80. “He’s sure been in alot of movies,” I said scrolling down the page. “Over a hundred, going all the way back to 1917.”

“And he didn’t even start until he was middle aged,” said Ray.

“Shall I fax this page to you?”

“Go ahead,” he chuckled. Suddenly his fax machine began spouting yards of paper, and Ray just stood there laughing and shaking his head at my absurd use of the technology. That evening was one the most memorable in my career.

Like many of the Hollywood legends I’ve met over the years, Ray became a regular donor to the cause. Gorillas owe much to the movie business for their survival. Gorillas in the Mist created public enthusiasm that snowballed into a global campaign. Congo galvanized that support. And later appeals allowed me to work with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Daryl Hannah. Suffice to say the big bohunkases have benefited enormously from their iconic screen image.

I’ve also benefited personally, attracting celebrities and movie executives to my safaris. Barry Diller (pictured), Diane von Furstenberg, Bryan Lourd and Christian Louboutine were among those on just one gorilla trek I led on New Years Day 2005. That was the time I flew in Diller’s helicopter. The following year I took Tom Brokaw, who invited me to join him on the Today Show in return, and the year after that, Tony Robbins, who also flew in by helicopter. "Hollywood people are carnies with good teeth," my good friend Michael Backes used to say. I say bright, erudite, talented people are the best to show around places you love.

But, while all these exploits provided a touchstone for show business philanthropy, one thing I’ve learned in my twenty years working there, is that in Tinsel Town, content is king. There’s nothing quite like owning your own content. It was that crucial realisation which would lead me into the next phase of my gorilla career.

800lb GORILLA! 

In a flip to the usual script, six years ago Turner-prize winning director Steve McQueen hired me to lead him and a film crew into the heart of the Congo jungle. He wanted to make a movie about coltan, the valuable ore used to create a plethora of electronic goods. On this occasion it was the filmmaker who took me to the subject matter, as I was to make my first visit to the jungle proper, the primordial cathedral where I would received the flame to a new career.

Toting two 35 mm cameras and bags of gear, we enlisted the services of twenty one porters, a chef and a priest, and set off on the expedition on foot into the forest. During the many hours spent drudging through the mud and the steaming heat, the idea for my debut novel was born. 

It took me another five years to write Gorillaland, but using the knowledge I had gleaned from my exposure to the movie industry, I attempted to evoke the bygone era of the jungle adventure story, and write a bestseller that was destined to be a box office hit. 

“In the best tradition of Wilbur Smith and Clive Cussler, Cummings sets his adventure in the strife-ridden Congolese jungle. Blood diamonds, kidnap, inter-tribal warfare and natural disasters form the background for a cast of adventurers, NGO campaigners, warlords, boy-soldiers, UN Peacekeepers and one of the most wicked villainesses readers will ever encounter. Gorillaland with its story based on fact is set to be a global bestseller.” 


I'm headed back to Hollywood next week, my first visit in over five years. This time I’m going armed with something more powerful than King Kong. This time I’m bringing my own 800lb gorilla. Gorillaland's going to Hollywood!

What's In A Name?

“All humans are exactly equally close cousins to all gorillas.” - Richard Dawkins

Last week researchers at Cambridge University announced they had deciphered the genetic code of the gorilla, the penultimate Great Ape genome sequence to be completed (they’re still working on the bonobo’s). The findings will shed important new light on the human condition. 

Richard Durbin of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who led the study, said, "I'd like to think that in the next 20 or 30 years we will get a deeper understanding of what happened genetically in our evolutionary history, and of how those genes affect the brain and other properties that make us modern humans." 

It turns out that, although on average humans are closer to chimps, 15% of our genome is closer to that of the gorilla than the chimpanzee, including a gene that enables us and the gorillas to hear better than other apes. 

At last, we’re beginning to see the forest for all the phylogenetic trees. We’re now one step closer to understanding how we came to stand upright and think great thoughts.

Ten million years ago the common ancestor of humans and gorillas made her night nest in the Congo River Basin. She may have been bipedal and even more humanoid than gorillas: something akin to a “Humarilla.” There is no fossil evidence to prove her existence because her bones could not sustain the ravages of deep forest acidity that disintegrated them over time, leaving us speculating about this crucial period in human history.

What we do know is that towards the middle of the Late Miocene, Africa’s equatorial jungles contracted and our arboreal existence soon gave way to stomping the terra - the start of the hominid migration to the savannah. The fossil evidence in and around the Rift Valley at sites like Odupai, Lake Turkana and Awash confirms this.  

Either the gorillas chose to remain in the forests or returned after an unsuccessful bout on the plaines. We may never know. But presently all the sub-species of both the Eastern and Western gorilla - Gorilla gorilla gorilla, Gorilla gorilla diehli, Gorilla beringei graueri, and Gorilla beringei beringei - can be found in a band of equatorial forest in Africa, between the Bight of Bonny in the west and the Albertine Rift in east. The area encompasses ten gorilla range states: Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Angola, the two Congo republics, Rwanda, and Uganda. 

What Do They Call This Place?

It occurred to me that the gorillas might benefit from having one name to describe the region in which they range. Many place names in Africa have been changed more than once throughout history. The tendency of European explorers to name the landmarks they “discovered” after their own royalty was understandably loathsome to the locals, as was the tendency of post-colonial dictators to name them after themselves. 

Following independence new names were given to many lakes and towns, honouring African heroes and history. Changing Murchison Falls to Kabalega Falls, for instance, transfered the eponym from a Royal Geographic Society director who had never even visited the continent (yet considered it a tedious place to explore) to the Bunyoro King who fought the British back across the Nile.

The Bantu convention for place names is to use a U as the prefix. On that account the land of the gorillas would be Ugorilla. But adhering to this convention is too anthropocentric and, for a population of apes, too contentious. Indeed, many traditional African legends regard their local apes as humans who fell from grace, and this folklore remains ingrained in their cultures today, even amongst the diaspora. 

Furthermore, this misconception harks back to European explorers who regarded the native people of the forests as closer to chimpanzees and gorillas than to themselves. “This is not only factually wrong,” says geneticist Richard Dawkins, “it violates a fundamental principle of evolution. A pair of cousins are always exactly equally related to any outgroup, because they are connected to that outgroup via a shared common ancestor.” 

It’s not an easy concept to grasp, the cladistic fact that gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans are not sufficiently different from us (we share 98% of our genetic makeup with gorillas) to warrant exclusion from the charmed circle in which we place the human species. 

Racism was endemic in our culture late into the twentieth century but it is now mitigated by the knowledge that all human beings originated in Africa. So too will speciesism decline as we come to understand that we are all in fact African apes. 

Gorillaland

I chose Gorillaland for the title of my debut novel because it recalls the Golden Age of African adventure, and acknowledges the original ape inhabitants of its setting, in the deep forest that was once the limit of the known universe.

As far as I can tell, references to a “gorilla land” have been made three times in the past. The first time was in 1876, when Sir Richard Burton published a two-volume account of his explorations along the West Africa coast during his governorship of Fernando Po, entitled Two trips to gorilla land and the cataracts of the Congo. Twenty years later, it was again used in the title of a Frank Merrywell adventure, in which the upright American college boy goes hunting ape and searching for the missing link in Africa. It last appeared in 1940, in a Fantoman comic, as the name of a place not unlike the Congo jungle where one Professor Wright leads an expedition to communicate with large, intelligent gorillas. 

Hollywood was once in love with Gorillaland. Following the release of King Kong in 1933, gorillas, cannibals and the Congo jungle became hot box office topics. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s the name Congo appears in no less than a dozen feature film titles. So, what happened? 

While I was researching my book I stumbled on an interesting inconsistency. In the six years between 1958 and 1964 TIME magazine published five cover articles featuring Africa’s emerging sub-Saharan leaders, Sekou Toure, Tom Mboya, Abubakar Balewa, Moishe Tshombe and Julius Nyerere. But in the twenty six years that followed, they published only two: General Ojukwe, the leader of the Biafran rebellion, and Idi Amin, Uganda’s dictator. The reason for this is the 4^th December 1964 issue featuring American missionary Dr Paul Carlson on the cover. He was murdered during the Simba Rebellion along with, it would seem, America’s enthusasm for the Congo.

Since independence the Congo has undergone a series of armed struggles and civil wars, resulting in the largest casualty numbers anywhere since World War II. It’s no coincidence that human conflict has surrounded the gorillas, especially the Mountain gorillas. Their habitats are located in some of the most fertile regions on the continent which are, as a result, the most densely populated.  

I am a gorillaphile (strictly platonic, I can assure you), the result of a career in gorilla conservation spanning two decades that took an immense toll on my life and steered me in directions I could never have foreseen. I consider myself an honorary ambassador to gorillas, and that it is my destiny in life to inspire empathy for their plight. 

But the award-winning conservation programme I helped design was about community-based initiatives for people, not gorillas. This was deliberate. We knew the best way to ensure the gorillas’ survival was to engender support among the desperately poor, war-ravaged people living adjacent to their habitats, and the only way we could achieve that was to demonstrate the value of gorilla conservation in real terms to those people. 

All our efforts were channeled into projects that sought to provide direct support to their communities, through micro-credit, agro-forestry, beekeeping and education, to name but a few, as alternative livelihoods to those that were destroying gorilla habitats. It was a plodding, long-term approach but the only one that made any sense. The population of Mountain gorillas has risen by 20% in the last two decades.

Between Apes and Angels

Gorillaland is also a state of mind. There is untold magic in those forests. I can remember once trekking through the Congo side of the Virungas. My friends Popol and Gapira were taking me to see a group whose incumbent silverback had recently been shot and killed by soldiers. Uniquely, a wild, un-habituated, ex-lone silverback had subsequently assumed leadership of what was a group of habituated gorillas (familiar to human presence). 

As we approached he became quite agitated and refused to allow us any closer, yet he could not convince the other gorillas to flee. He screamed and beat his chest and thrashed about the vegetation like a demon. Eventually we gave up our pursuit and sat down in a dried-up riverbed, a sunny, meandering rift through the otherwise pristine afro-montane forest. All at once the gorillas began to emerge from the trees and cross the riverbed, just a few metres ahead of us,: large, black, shaggy, charismatic mammals that moved silently and stoically like shadows. They wanted to see us. It was the very first time that I felt their kinship.

Ultimately, my experiences with gorillas allowed me to realise my dream of becoming a published author, which had consumed me since before I began working for them. In many ways Gorillaland wrote me. Accordingly, as a show of thanks to my hairy forest cousins who gave me a worthy vocation throughout my adult life, and the setting for a damn good yarn, I pledge to donate 10% of the my earnings from the book to protect gorillas in the wild. 

It’s even more personal now; I just found out my father may have dementia. One genetic difference that’s come up in the gorilla genome is the mutation that results in dementia in humans, but leaves gorillas completely unaffected by the condition. Hopefully, with these new studies, they’ll find a quick cure, in my dad’s lifetime. Short of that, relief is on its way to so many others who suffer. What is clear is that the welfare of the human race is in no small way dependent on the survival of gorillas. Welcome to Gorillaland!

Finding Gorillaland

Subject: GORILLALAND ...   surely that's not the title?

Dear Greg

I am responding to your email to Ed.   Ed passed it on to me because he is away in California for a few weeks.   He also passed it on because I happen to be from Dar es Salaam, have been to most countries in Africa (also lived in Botswana) and have been looking for a BIG AFRICAN NOVEL for a long time.   And of course I remember you from the Douglas days ... It's still hard to accept that he isn't with us any more.

I'm very intrigued by the synopsis you attached, and would very much like to read more.   Would you like to send it, and I will read and react as quickly as possible?

Many years ago I travelled through what was then called Zaire - quite an alarming experience!   We drove in from Central African Republic, then down to Buto (Buta?) where the local army Adjutant made us give him and his serjeant a lift to Kisangani, to find out why they hadn't been paid for 3 months ...    The roads were unbelievably bad.   I saw no gorillas - but the biggest bats you can imagine, and the smallest pygmies!   Then on into Uganda, which seemed almost sane and sensible after Zaire, even under Idi Amin.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes

Maggie Phillips

Managing Director
Ed Victor Ltd

It's five years (almost to the day) since I received that email from Maggie Phillips at Ed Victor Ltd.  To get the attention of one of the top literary agents in the world (Douglas Adams, Ranulph Fiennes, Jack Higgins, Nigella Lawson) was something in itself. Living up to her expectations was altogether something else. You be the judge as to whether I've written the "BIG AFRICAN NOVEL." Because, at long last, Gorillaland has landed!

Quest for a Plot

Ever since I was a child I wanted to be an author. My aspiration grew out of reading books by Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, and Graham Greene, about far away, exotic places. This fascinated me, mostly because I too was living in a far away, exotic place. 

Growing up in Africa and Asia bestowed me with experiences I was certain would make me a good writer. Yet it was those experiences that ultimately stunted my work, as I was convinced that retelling them would be enough to captivate readers. It was not. There’s no substitute for a good plot.

My quest continued until one day, I was accompanying some brainiacs through the jungles of central Africa, among whom was cognitive dissident John Perry Barlow. As we crawled on our hands and knees through the thick foliage JPB asked the question, "How do you get into the mind of a Congolese rebel warlord?" At that moment the story's antagonist was born.

But it was only after I spent some time in Walikale, in the Congo River Basin, that the novel’s central intrigue begin to emerge in my mind. Trekking through the jungle, crossing rivers and swamps, and fighting off swarms of insects in the windless heat, everyone quickly became drained and irritable. What would happen if we were all suddenly ambushed and kidnapped by a rebel warlord? How long could we cope with held hostage in such a harsh environment? 

My return from Walikale coincided with the start of a six-month, paid sabbatical, during which I was expected to write my novel. However, it was not until the last month that the story finally came together. Gorillaland was to be a jungle odyssey, full of unsavory characters - not just rebels, but also foreign and local operators - like the ones I had met or heard about in my travels, all tangled up in the heart of the Congo, which would itself be one of the characters.

Fact would also blend with fiction, though I feared some of the actual incidents I knew about could prove too strange for fiction. One terrible event, the abduction and subsequent massacre of tourists at Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, was vital to my research. First-hand accounts by the survivors would help me add authenticity to a situation I had thankfully never experienced myself. 

The name Gorillaland is somewhat deceiving. I fully intended for the story to include gorillas, those sentient monks of the forest with whom I'd been communing for so long. I was certain such charismatic creatures would be the easiest thing in the world to write about, but perfection in nature can be quite humdrum. Nonetheless I had all the characters I needed to get started. All I had to do now was write the book.

“All God's angels come to us disguised.”

After receiving such an encouraging email from Maggie, I expected to complete the manuscript in just a few months. Sadly though, at the start of 2007 my marriage of seventeen years began to unravel, and by the summer it had ended. I struggled on with my writing, while shifting from one friend's sofa to another one's floor, but work on my manuscript was piecemeal. Gorillaland was getting nowhere fast, and something had to give.  

Seeking a fresh start, I resigned my job, uprooted from London - my adopted home of over twenty years - and moved to Kampala. It would take a couple more years to get back on track, but at the start of the new decade I was living with Kigongo, the most wonderful woman in the world. 


Although we had no regular income we were a happy family, Kigongo, our puppy Amadeaus, and me. But the bills were mounting, and it was high time I got back to the one prospect I still had: Gorillaland. I bought a desk on the Gaba Road and began writing again in earnest.

Kigongo turned out to be my muse. She had a real knack for story-boarding, and helped me concentrate on what was most dynamic about the story, suggesting some characters that needed eliminating, as they were superfluous to the plot, while helping me strengthen others. 

All through the summer, we worked on tidying up the first seven chapters, following a revised, more elegant story arc than any of my previous drafts. I sent the results to my friend Martin Hay in London, who had just launched a new publishing company Cutting Edge Press, and anxiously awaited his reply. 

Dusk descends on the shores of Lake Victoria and my Australian clients, Margot, John and William have just arrived to start a three-week safari across East Africa. We're sitting down to dinner with Kigongo at the beautiful Jahaza Grill, surrounded by wild primates and rare birds, and my phone rings. I answer. “It’s actually quite good,” says Martin, "I'm prepared to send you a publishing deal." This is the call I've been waiting for all my life. 

From then on I worked ten hours a day, often by candlelight during Kampala's regular power cuts, and four months later, even before I signed their contract, CEP had the finished manuscript in their hands. It would take another year of content and copy edits, typesetting, and formatting, before the book was finally ready for publication. Still, in the fullness of time Gorillaland has landed. Enjoy the odyssey! I certainly enjoyed writing it.


Gorillaland by Greg Cummings - now available to buy here.