My gorilla journey - Helen Attwater

This is the story of life with fifty or more of the most endearing animals in the worldHelen Attwater met her husband Mark while they were working at London's Royal Festival Hall. They both had a sense for adventure, but little did they realise then that they would soon be heading off to set up an orphanage for baby gorillas in the heart of Africa. And even less that they would become embroiled in a bloody civil war..It is a story of hope and endurance set in Congo, one of the last truly exotic locations in the world - as detailed by Redmond O'Hanlon in his bestselling Congo Journey. Indeed, the Attwaters appear in that book.They reared gorillas orphaned by poachers until they could be reintroduced into the wild, in a supposedly 'protected' area of the rainforest. They battled against terrible living conditions, tropical disease and a high mortality rate among their very distressed charges, but came to gain the gorillas' trust, that of the community around them, and the respect of the wildlife protection establishment.