Rodrigue Katembo, Ranger of Virunga Central Sector, says, “All that could happen to me, I will accept it. I am not special.” But he is special. Lengxue tells Liu Dong he always asks for money for the patrol. She leaves it for him before dawn. Andre Bauma says in his heart he continues to miss Kaboko. Melanie Gouby says it can be intense, this is one of the last chances Virunga National Park and this region has, and there are emotions she couldn’t show before. Liu Dong says goodbye to the mountain patrol with a tear down his face before the drive for Dawa’s doctor. He doesn’t see them again.
Please write 3-4 double-spaced pages in which you explore details from Virunga, directed by Orlando von Einsiedel, and Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, directed by Lu Chuan. For this writing, you can bring in other sources also, including ones we’ve explored together this term (you can bring in sources we have not talked about if you would like too!). If you do decide to include sources you have written about before, try choosing different moments and details than ones you have already looked at, to allow yourself that diversity of possibilities. You might also include elements or moments from David Quammen’s “The Song of the Indri” and look at how Bedo may be torn between a forest world and one located outside, and how the indri are trying to survive. Also, Natasha Myers’ “Are the trees watching us?” suggests a possibility of coming closer to imagining the beings with whom we share this planet, like trees. You could return to Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction?”—but then allow these sources, if you include them, to bring you back to focusing mostly on Virunga and Kekexili: Mountain Patrol.
You do not need to start with a paragraph-length representation but can include micro-representations (a few sentences) of Virunga and Mountain Patrol when you first introduce those sources so that you offer context to readers who may not know about Kekexili or Virunga National Park. Also, you can target your attention, as we have practiced together, to moments and specific situations in the films, to reveal for readers what you “see” happening in those moments. You might include paragraphs that dive into single moments deeply and other paragraphs that work by juxtaposition, bringing in multiple moments, quotes, situations, including those from different sources. That way, you can vary your writing, allowing some deeper dives into individual moments or situational contexts and other more associative paragraphs that evoke connections ACROSS moments and sources in close proximity with one another.
Your work can create a kind of weave pattern of your own making that takes readers on a journey across moments and situations from your sources. This is a chance to help bring awareness about the plight and fate of so many species suffering right now, losing ground through habitat fragmentation; lack of migration corridors; climate alteration occurring too fast for adaptation; toxification of soil, water and air; resource extraction; illegal poaching; and removal of wild lands. And instead of telling readers what to do or how to think regarding cloud forests or high elevation deserts or species in peril, this might be a chance for sharing, bringing out smaller details, “named” dynamics you find going on in specifics in the movies, focused particulars you interpret, so readers can start to explore with your help elements and facets of experiences of other species on the brink and humans trying and sacrificing to save them.