A Look Out of the Green

Lake Manyara starts with forest. Straight past the gate you drive into a groundwater forest, genuinely dense woodland in a country that is otherwise mostly dry and open, fed by water running down underground off the Rift wall. You cannot see far in there, and that is exactly why you meet different animals than you do out on the plains.

The road here sits higher than the forest itself. On our side the ground dropped away, so instead of craning up into the canopy we were looking more or less straight into it. That is where he was, at eye level, calmly playing with the leaves around him.

He stayed put for a while, which is not a given with monkeys. Everything in this frame is green: the leaf in front of him, the forest behind him, the light coming through it. The only thing that is not, is his face.