Free Gorillas in the Mist by Farley Mowat

had to give it up, not knowing if I would be able to return or not.
    By the time I reached the village below I thought I was steeled against further emotional outbreaks, but many of the women and children had gathered to say
kwa heri-
good-bye-and I started crying all over again, causing great wailing and mourning. I’m sure all this sounds like something out of a Grade C movie-I know I felt kind of hammy walking stalwartly in front of my line of sweating porters through the village huts with the mountain rising majestically behind me, and the tears brimming in my eyes while I said to those who had gathered to pay their respects, “I shall return.” Come to think of it, I don’t even think a Grade C movie would accept that line!
    The forty-five-minute drive from the village to the park headquarters was really a nightmare, with troops everywhere and roadblocks and barricades at every turn. At each place some ass in a military uniform, full of beer and carrying a machine gun, would interrogate the driver and really glare at me. It was all so stupid and unnecessary.
    I’m now penned up in the huge castle built by the Belgian colonial administrators at park headquarters and am receiving visiting “dignitaries.” I think everyone in the area has been here at least twice, dragging all their relatives and children behind. I made a mistake by inviting the first batch into the two-acre living room and serving tea. They stayed four hours, during which not more than two intelligible sentences were exchanged! I also made a mistake by playing football with the children-they were using the inflated bladder of a sacrificial cow-and now they are here constantly.
    I chose a small room in the front of the castle that commands a wonderfully spectacular view of the Virungas. However, it puts me on permanent exhibition, and the porch is usually lined with spectators! I can also see oneof the military roadblocks down in the valley from my window, and the day it is gone is the day I’m going to get to the Traveler’s Rest to find out what’s going on and to post and pick up mail.
    In her book,
Gorillas in the Mist
, Dian tells that she spent an extremely unpleasant two weeks at park headquarters in Rumangabo and for the first week was unable to discover why she was being forbidden to leave for Kisoro in Uganda. From bits and pieces of conversation I learned that the park headquarters was being secured for the visit of a general who would soon be arriving at Rumangabo from the besieged town of Bukavu. It was only after a “visit” to the army camp that I realized, on reading a military cable, that I was earmarked for the general. With chances for my release lessening each hour I remained in captivity, I decided to escape.
    Dian’s version of the adventure she was living through was colored by the writer in her. When she was taken to military headquarters in Goma, it was at her own request because she wanted to resolve a bureaucratic muddle that had arisen over the registration for Lily, her Land Rover. Her contact with the dreaded military consisted of an afternoon spent filling out motor vehicle registration forms. As for “the general”—it seems probable that his ominous and lecherous shadow was created to add zest to the story.
    What actually happened is detailed in two sworn affidavits written by Dian soon after the events described had taken place. One was prepared for the American embassy in Rwanda, the other for Louis Leakey. They are somewhat less thrilling than her published version, though harrowing enough in their own right.
    The tale begins on June 1. While on one of her regular shopping trips to Kisoro, Congolese customs officials at the frontier noted that Dian’s permit to keep Lily in the Congo was due to expire in a week. They reminded her that if she neglected to renew it, she would forfeit a three-hundred-dollar bond she had posted on first taking the Land Rover into thecountry. Dian argued that there had been an