Wild Spirit by Annette Henderson Page A

leopard wandered into someone’s living room one night.’
    â€˜Was anyone hurt?’
    â€˜No, not that time, but people here can tell you stories of leopards taking their relatives from inside a house. Just ask Étienne.’
    â€˜What about the research scientists who worked here?’
    â€˜We had lots of people working in different fields – birds, bats, monkeys and so on – but mainly with the western lowland gorillas. There was a French primatologist, Annie Hion, who hand-reared eight of them here. One of them was called Arthur; he was like a member of the family. When we used to sit around having a drink at the end of the day, Arthur would be there with us, sitting on a chair, drinking beer out of a glass. He was included in all our social gatherings.’
    I sat transported, trying to imagine how that must have been.
    Peter’s face softened and he smiled. ‘People used to carry Arthur around on their backs while they worked. And oneof his favourite pastimes was friendly wrestling. Some of the men used to wrestle him while everyone else watched. He loved it.’
    My knowledge of gorillas was minimal, but these stories of Arthur fascinated me. We talked until almost midnight, by which time the fire had burnt down to a pile of ashes and we were all ready for sleep.
    To Mario’s relief, the water pressure had returned to normal in the morning. I shook Peter’s hand as he prepared to leave for Makokou after breakfast.
    â€˜It’s been a joy talking with you,’ I said. ‘I won’t forget.’
    â€˜You’re a strong woman, Annette. Make the most of your time here. You won’t find another place like this.’
    I watched him climb into the Toyota with Mario and drive off for the débarcadère , and thought about what he had said. I had already fallen under Belinga’s spell just as he had all those years ago.
    Our night encounter with the leopard came just days after Peter had left. As I recounted the episode to the surveyors over breakfast the following morning, I thought of Peter telling me a leopard had come into one of the old bamboo houses in the early days. Little had changed in the intervening fifteen years. Belinga was still a place where people and animals met in an uneasy relationship.
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    During that first week, I took every opportunity I could to learn from Mario about how the camp operated and who made up our workforce. The camp and the whole project had captured my imagination, as they had Win’s. With everything I did, I had to know the detail – a general impression was never enough. In addition, I wasdetermined to be accepted as a useful member of the camp team, not simply a young wife along for the ride, and that meant fitting into a man’s world. So I asked endless questions, and I wrote up my diary every evening.
    The company employed fifty-seven men from three different tribal groups – the Bakota and Bakwélé formed the majority, and there were a small group of Fang and two Pygmies. They all spoke French, but it was a distinctively African form of French, with sounds and speech rhythms unfamiliar to me.
    The names of mountains in the SOMIFER exploration area had been officially recorded when the first geological surveys were carried out. The peaks surrounding the camp were called Bakota North, Bakota South, Mombo and Bakwélé. The whaleback ridge we had seen while travelling up the river was Babiel, which was the Bakota word for eagle. Babiel North and South contained the main body of iron ore.
    Some of the old survey points had names, too. The crest of a steep rock escarpment close behind camp was Grand Crête Un or Belvédère (Great Crest 1 or Viewpoint), so called because it afforded a view right out over the forest into the Congo. I decided that one day, when the old tracks had been cleared, Win and I would drive up there so we could see that view for ourselves. Everywhere the forest