NATURAL ORDER

ACROSS RWANDA, COMMUNITIES ARE QUIETLY COMING TOGETHER TO RIGHT PAST WRONGS, ONE SAPLING AT A TIME.

- NOO SARO-WIWA

We are crouched among the towering hardwoods of the Nyungwe National Park forest in Rwanda's southwest. Orange butterflies ricochet between us and the plants. On a gentle incline, through a gap in the vegetation, we watch a baby chimp twirling from a branch while her mother lies supine beneath her, kissing her youngster's feet-a scene of silent tenderness. It's the payoff after an hour spent trying to keep up with their group, scrabbling through the forest slopes. The apes are now, finally, resting after their breakfast.

Our guide recounts the time he witnessed a group of them celebrating the birth of a newborn between the tall buttress roots of a tree. "The males stood in a line and they took turns to hold the baby and kiss it," he smiles. The humanness of such behaviour, though, should come as no surprise: chimpanzee cultures are rich in variety and improvisation, just like humans. It's sewn up in our shared DNA.

We are observing one of two habituated groups among Nyungwe's 500-strong population. The national park is a conservation success story, going strong despite humanity's best efforts to reduce it. Hacked down for timber, honey collection, farming, and gold mining, the forest and its riches were plundered with abandon. Poachers picked off the last buffalo in 1974. Then came the Tutsi genocide of 1994, and the forest buckled under the strain of refugees seeking subsistence meals and wood for shelter. Since then, however, Rwanda has made a turnaround, guarding and nurturing its natural treasures with the same ardour that once depleted them, ensuring that Nyungwe remains Africa's largest protected montane forest.