Afiya gently patted his shoulder. “Tell her. I will not be angry.”
He sighed. “It was five years ago. Dembe was only a year old. Our crops were failing, and I could not feed my family. I joined a group of men from Bunagana who planned to sneak into the Impenetrable Forest to hunt gorillas. In the old days it was common for men to hunt them as food for their families, but now the bushmeat trade puts a high price on eating gorillas. The wealthy believe it’s prestigious to dine on them, and there are those who believe that some parts of a gorilla’s body can be medicinal or hold some magical charm. Then there are the collectors who wish to have the hands, heads, or feet as prizes. There are the poachers who kill a few gorillas at a time, but there are others who abduct infants for researchers
