Forest Elephants

...and PTSD, and knowing when to ask for help

(photo credit: Nate Rudy)

This will be a short post; I’m taking a little break, and I’ll explain why:

Over July 4th, we went, with a small group of other embassy folks, to a place called Nyonie, a village near the Wonga-Wongué National Park, accessible by a boat ride across the estuary here and up a river, and then by dirt road for 45 minutes on the back of a safari truck.

We stayed at what is described as a “rustic safari lodge” on a beach (air-conditioned cabins, shared bathhouses, communal meals, open bar). We went on a driving tour the first afternoon, and the next morning we left at 5:30 a.m. for a three-hour hike through the forest.

It’s beautiful there:

The land is what’s called a “forest savannah mosaic” (Nate gets credit for this photo, too). And unbeknownst to me, until I sent the youngest child some pictures and she texted back “that looks like where they filmed Survivor Gabon,” this is where they filmed Survivor Gabon.

We’d seen a mother and baby elephant near the start of the drive through the forest; they were in the road but then let us watch them for a little while as they moved through the trees. (Forest elephants are the smallest of the three living elephant species, and are critically endangered; the largest population of them is in Gabon, because there is still a lot of suitable habitat for them here).

The herd in the picture is at the edge of the woods in a small section of open savannah; we had been watching them from a distance for about 15 minutes and everything was fine; they were just grazing and moving along together, the baby looping in and out of the legs of the larger animals. One of them had a deformed back leg and limped badly, but seemed able to keep up. The guide drove a little closer.

And then, not long after Nate took this picture of them (they are already standing in a defensive formation), the guide reversed the truck, an old pick-up with three benches across the back, and got even closer.

The mother, who is heavily pregnant, charged. She was furious.

The truck sped away, but she kept coming. There had been warnings; no trumpeting, but low, deep rumbles, which I realized later that I have on video.