My little "heart of darkness" – part one

Images and words ©Bruno D’Amicis/www.brunodamicis.com

Who knows why but I never dreamed of meeting a lion. Bears and wolves, oh yes, many times, and even tigers, pumas, jaguars and leopards; but no, a lion, just no. Is the indigestion of documentaries about savannah that I had as a child or perhaps the hundreds of stunning images taken almost daily in the most famous areas of Africa, but the lions have never stimulated my curiosity. And hence my vision and my photographic projects naturally developed in other climates and around other subjects. I swear, I never had plans to photograph a lion. Ever. Or at least until January of the past year...

After having previously worked there in December 2008, in the early 2012 I went back to Ethiopia, and more precisely in the remote region of Kafa, on behalf of the German NGO NABU to document landscapes and biodiversity of newly formed UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve. In addition to photographing an incredibly rich wildlife and the cultural sites of the region, I had been sent there with a precise "top secret" mission: to look for possible signs of lions in the lush mountain cloud forests, where rumors about sightings and attacks on livestock reported by the local population raised hope to find a small but possible core of individuals living in an environment and an elevation somewhat unusual.

As the name might suggest, Kafa, the legendary kingdom that endured until 1879 when it was overthrown by the Emperor Menelik II, is universally regarded as the birthplace of coffee. For centuries, protected by steep and misty mountains and wide chocolate-colored rivers, coffee plants of the wild variety, Coffea arabica, grew in virgin forests of the region, providing valuable benefits to local people, long before the Western world would discover the black beverage. But the current rate of population growth combined with an exponential increase of poverty has led to a rapid deforestation: with the axe and fire people are forced to turn the rainforest into agricultural areas or to sell off their land to foreign investors. Where once, Ethiopian forests used to cover more than 30% of the country, now they do not arrive at 3%. Much of what is left of these is in Kafa and represents the threatened biome of the afromontane evergreen forests, which beside the latest wild coffee plants hides many more treasures. Although it would take perhaps a few dozen pages or a monologue of a couple of hours to tell all what you can see in that place and make you understand what really these forests are, is nevertheless worth a try ...

After the pink color of dawn has abandoned the fog that covers the forests of Boginda, a new day in Kafa is announced by the harsh cries of guereza colobus monkey echoing along the valleys, while the hornbills, always in pairs as the police, fly slow by. Along the Gojeb river, the rare black crowned cranes leave a huge skeletal tree on which they spent the night together with elusive De Brazza's monkeys; chug the hippos in the water and scare dozens of giant and colorful butterflies. Troops of bushpigs and sketchy baboons patrol the forest floor at the feet of tall dracenae. In Mankira, beautiful turacos, green, red and blue, run quickly along the silvery branches of the coffee bushes, more like squirrels than birds. Calls, flights, jumps and whispers wake up the rare bamboo woods, so beautiful and perfect that seem to come out of a movie by Ang Lee and utterly out of place in this little piece of Africa. The light finally dissolves nocturnal feline shadows, which have concealed from terrified eyes the spotted mantle of a leopard, the scales of mamba and the jaws of hyenas. With more than 210 species of birds, 60 species of mammals and a ever-growing checklist of reptiles, amphibians, fish and plants, this kaleidoscopic ecosystem does not seem to miss anything. Yet until the early 1900s there were even elephants, perhaps the last true masters of these lands. But the lion? Possible that in such a diorama made of vines and giant ferns, epiphytes and fig trees, which grow up to 2500 meters above sea level, does roam the King of the savannah?

Before leaving, I diligently did my homework and researched about the species. But, apart from the famous paintings by Henri Rousseau, a song by the Evening Birds ("in the jungle ... the mighty jungle ... the lion sleeps tonight ...") and perhaps Disney's cartoons, honestly I did not find much more in the literature confirming a possible presence of Panthera leo in mountain cloud forests. I was really skeptical, but I would have still given it a try: there was nothing to lose and I had a couple of aces in the hole...