SHARED SNAPSHOTS
The Lady Made of Light
She came in the night during some very precarious times, and I have never forgotten her presence.
Back around 1996-97 I was contacted by Partridge Films Ltd., a nature film production company out of Bristol, UK. They were interested in producing a documentary on hammerhead bats in the Gabonese rainforests. I had already spent prodigious amounts of time doing my own work there on social spiders and they wanted my help.
They were looking for someone who could speak French, knew the physical area, and had made acquaintances with tribal chiefs and local politicians. I fit their bill enough to be flown back to the Ogooué-Ivindo Valley with a British Film crew.
My official position was forest guide and science advisor. Our cameraman, Hugh, was a roughhewn patriot with a heavy accent. Matt, a spectacled guy with a jack-of-all-trades position, had been added at the last minute to the crew. And Peter Venn, the producer and director of the efforts in the Valley.
We had located a hammerhead lek — something deserving of its own story — on the riverbank upstream from our base at the Man and Biosphere field station near Makokou. Right across the river was the village of Mayibout 2.
