Titus update

He is not doing well at all. Yesterday he moved with the group but did not eat, and today he is alive, but very weak, not eating; it is a matter of hours or days. I hear this is how Shinda died too - just faded away. Shinda was a silverback who controlled a large group. When he died there was not another silverback strong enough to hold the group together, so it split into two groups. He was a juvenile when I was here in 1985, and in Beethoven's group - the group I was fortunate to visit. I remember Shinda well, because when we arrived and saw my first wild gorilla group, I stood slack jawed, staring. Shinda walked past me with several other gorillas, and he pushed me over with his back leg - as if to say "You should crouch in the presence of gorillas!". So I did. I hear Shinda maintained this attitude into adulthood, and was a strong, demanding leader until his death last year. I wish I could have seen him again.

Death is a natural process, I understand that, and Titus has had a very long and good life, but it is still difficult, especially as a veterinarian, to do nothing. I've been waging moral battles in my head since he got sick... doing nothing at this point seems philosophically the best thing to do. We've had many discussions with Veronica at Karisoke Research Center and she agrees. If we were to intervene, and were somehow able to provide him with several more weeks or even months of life, Titus would be a shadow of his former self, a tag-a-long in the family he used to control. My heart is heavy for the trackers and researchers who have known him for many years.

On a happier note, today I went for a long walk with Julie, who runs a GREAT NGO called Art of Conservation - she teaches art at local grade schools, but incorporates hygiene messages, conservation messages and natural history messages into her lessons. Magda, Jean-Felix and I each spoke to a class last week about MGVP and it was so fun! The school is in Kinigi, serves 8-12 year old kids, roughly. It is a series of long brick structures that are divided into classrooms. Each classroom has a blackboard and wooden table/chair combos that seat 2-3 students each. Kids are required to wear "uniforms" which consist of a blue dress for girls and a blue or tan shirt for boys. The school serves 1700 kids who come for 1/2 days each day. Evidently during the planting and harvest seasons girls are often absent - they are the first that are made to stay home to help... but there are about 30% girls in the class I spoke to.

Through an interpreter (although they are learning English in the classroom) I talked about gorilla health, and how we know when a gorilla is sick (trackers are very important and know the gorillas well, etc.), how the get sick (snares, respiratory disease, etc.) and how we can treat the gorillas. I took the dart gun and showed them how we use the dart to deliver medications - they were AMAZED! I even let the two kids who got the top score on last week's test shoot the gun. At the end, I asked how many kids in the class wanted to work with gorillas as trackers or guides or even veterinarians and many raised their hand. I told them to work hard and maybe they can work for MGVP when they grow up. I hope one of them does. Here are some photos from that classroom, along with AoC's Code of Conduct and Staying Healthy posters - I am so impressed with Julie's work!