This is an excerpt from my wildlife photography memoire that I am writing 📖 ✍🏼
My first experience seeing animals in the wildness of East Africa was in the Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. This remarkable region is a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to the Gelada Mountain Monkeys. These enchanting primates are an endemic species, only found in the high mountain meadows of Ethiopia. They are also called Gelada baboons and bear some similarities, but they diverged from baboons millions of years ago.
I stayed at the Simien Lodge, owned by Nick Crane, a British man. I accompanied Nick to a hilly area walking distance from the lodge It was carpeted with short golden grasses. I was literally astounded by what I saw. There was a large troop of hundreds of mountain monkeys dotting the whole hillside. Many of them were making grunting, moaning, barking , and squealing sounds. Some males were looking at eachother and smacking their lips. Their golden brown fur was shimmering in the sunlight. A mother with a baby riding under her belly walked past me. She looked right in my eye, looked away, walked further in the distance, and looked over her shoulder suspiciously at me again.
These primates were sitting down, frantically digging the earth with their hands, plucking and eating the grasses. There were so many infants playing with each other and jumping on their mother’s backs. There was an impressive looking male who had a large mane of fur on his head. His eyes were a light bright brown and I could see flashes of white when he would blink his eyes. On the Gelada’s dark brown and silvery chest was a bright hour-glass shaped scarlet red patch. As another male approached him, he opened his mouth wide, and curled his upper lip back over his snout revealing pink gums, displaying long vampiric looking canines.
Geladas are the world’s most terrestrial primates aside from humans. They are the last surviving species of grazing primates of the genus Theripithecus which includes several extinct species. These monkeys can be found in massive groups up to 1,000 individuals. At night, Geladas sleep on the edge of high cliffs. Of all the primates with the exception of humans, Geladas have the most complex set of vocalizations and sounds.
Researchers theorize that because they live in such large groups, vocal communication is even more important especially since they don’t spend as much time grooming each other as other primates do. Male Gelada’s have harams of females and these females will form troops. Only one dominant male breeds with them so there is a constant fight for hierarchy. Females can also drive out the dominant male and replace him with a younger male.
The spectacular landscape down below was vast and stretched out to eternity. It was a series of jagged mountain peaks latticed with greenery, deep undulating valleys, and gorges. The hazy blue sky was a compelling backdrop for the sharp precipitous cliffs. A feeling of immense wonderment washed over me like nothing I have felt before in my life, as if destiny placed me exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I was born to do in my complicated world. I was engulfed in a powerful reverence for mother earth as I absorbed this whole scene of exceptional natural beauty.
All of my struggles, and sadness that I carried inside me from my past dissolved away and vanished. I realized at this moment how much I belonged here in Africa. As I sat here taking in the stunning views of the Simien Mountains, my soul was overflowing here. I possessed a compelling feeling of belonging with the people, culture, and places; a feeling that I never felt elsewhere.