It has all the elements of a first-rate soap opera: the head of a successful family gunned down in a kidnap attempt, a struggle for power over the family estate, an orphaned son who is befriended by an outsider and then grows up to become the new patriarch. It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction, but the story of Titus - a powerful silverback mountain gorilla - beggars belief.

Titus is one of the last 300 or so mountain gorillas that survive in the war torn Virunga Volcanoes, where Rwanda, Uganda and Congo (ex Zaire) meet. He is also an old friend - and I use the word deliberately. I would argue that when you share 97.7% of your DNA with someone, as well as a relationship based on mutual trust and, if I read him right, pleasure in each other's company, the term friend fits.

I visited Titus and his family recently and was relieved to find them alive and well in the midst of the political turmoil and tensions in post-genocide Rwanda. Having lived in Rwanda in the late 1970's and visited almost every year since, it is hard for me to reconcile what has happened there with my lasting memories of a peaceful nation of hard-working farmers.

Before Rwanda became synonymous with bloodshed and refugee suffering, it was best known to most of the world as the place where Dian Fossey made friends with the famous "Gorillas in the Mist". And one of those gorillas, a baby whose birth she documented and whose early years she observed, was Titus.

Titus was also the first mountain gorilla I saw. Back in 1976, fresh out of University, I travelled to Rwanda to work as Dian Fossey's research assistant at her Karisoke Research Centre. At that time, Titus was a two year-old infant in Group 4, one of the gorilla families being studied by Dian and her team. The reason I saw him first was because he was being chased up a small tree by his younger brother, Kweli.

My introduction to the gentle art of gorilla etiquette on that day was by Tim White, an American assistant to Dian. I was his replacement. Dian had explained her technique for approaching close to gorillas - keep low, make soft gorilla contentment sounds and don't stare or make sudden moves - but first we had to find them. We set off early with Rwelakana, a skilled tracker.

Gorillas perambulate around their forest in stable family groups of usually 10-20 individuals. They spend nearly half their waking hours selecting, preparing and eating many different foodplants. Thus it is relatively easy to see where they have been because of the litter they leave behind. We had been following the trail of discarded celery peel, knuckle-prints and bent-over plants for two hours when Rwelakana paused and tapped his nose. Even my untutored nostrils picked up the sweet, musty, sweat-like smell of the gorillas in the still forest air.

Tim beckoned me to follow him as he dropped onto all fours and crawled beneath a thicket, making gentle throat-clearing sounds to reassure the gorillas and alert them to our arrival (the last thing you want to do is to take a silverback by surprise!). We emerged into a glade to see the infants playing a kind of game of tag up and down the sapling, while their enormous father, known as 'Uncle Bert', sat peacefully near Titus' mother, Flossie, and their older daughter, Cleo.

People often ask me if I was afraid on this first contact with such powerful, potentially dangerous, wild animals. I can only stress that despite my excitement, the mood was totally relaxed.

It was like being invited to join a family picnic. The adults sat around snoozing or plucking and peeling an occasional stem; the kids chased and wrestled each other and climbed trees; and adolescent males strutted around showing off their muscles in front of young females. The only thing missing was the picnic hamper, but that was hardly necessary because there was food all around.

A mountain gorilla lives like a vegetarian in a saladbowl: just reach out a hand and there is an edible leaf or stem or berry, as long as you know which ones are nutritious and which to avoid. Sometimes their choice of food plant is surprising: wild celery, bamboo shoots and blackberries are quite palatable but nettles, thistles and bramble leaves - complete with stings, spines and thorns - are rather harder to swallow.

By the time we located Group 4 the gorillas had been feeding all morning and had settled down in comfortable day-nests. While the adults relax, the youngsters chase around in energetic and inventive play within the area occupied by their dozing parents.

It is during this period that gorilla visits are most rewarding to those wishing to study, photograph or film their social life. On this first contact, however, my job was simply to put names to the faces and learn to recognise all the group members by their 'noseprint' - the pattern made by folds of skin above their nostrils.

Gorillas tend to dine alone, or at least a few yards from each other, to minimise conflict over particular food items. But once sated they nest closer together. At such times, grooming each other aids the making and reinforcing of social bonds.

At the end of their midday siesta, Uncle Bert moved off. This was the signal to begin the afternoon's travel-feeding. Move a bit, eat a bit....and so on until dusk.

But not everyone immediately followed the boss. One 10 year old blackback male - not yet with the silverback badge of maturity - knucklewalked into the day-nest Uncle Bert had just vacated and sat surveying the scene. It is not uncommon for young males to do this, as if trying out the seat of power for size.

This particular, rather shabby-looking, young male, I was told, went by the unlikely name of Beetsme. As an unknown blackbackmale, he surprised everyone by moving IN to Group 4 (shortly after Dian Fossey had co-authored a scientific paper saying only females transferred into other groups). His name derives from Dian's shrugged response when a guest asked her who he was!

Why would Uncle Bert allow an almost mature rival male to join his harem? Perhaps he felt the need for back-up when defending his females from other silverbacks, but didn't see the immature Beetsme as a threat to his leadership? Beetsme won grudging acceptance from Uncle Bert's females by playing ostentatiously with their infants, including the tiny Titus and Kweli. He also made a great sparring partner for the two other adolescent males, Tiger and Digit, and they would thump and chase each other around the fringes of the group, play-chuckling noisily.

This idyllic life came to a sudden end on the last day of 1977, when Group 4 ran into a gang of poachers setting antelope snares. Digit, as the peripheral male, died fighting them off while his family fled to safety. The poachers, we later found out, knew of a trader who would pay US$20 for a gorilla skull and hands to be sold as grisly tourist curios. There is no market for gorilla meat in Rwanda, but because of this demand from ignorant foreigners, Digit was decapitated and his hands were hacked off. Two days later while out on an anti-poacher patrol, Alphonse Nemeye the tracker and I found his body.

Only a few days earlier I had filmed him strutting by, every inch a silverback. The shock of finding his mutilated corpse was made worse by the fact that I knew I must find Dian and tell her the news. Dian had known him for ten years. She had seen him grow from a playful bundle of fluff into a massive mature male. It was almost like losing family. And yet once she had absorbed the shock, Dian's first concern was for the others. Had anyone else in the group been injured in the attack? Nemeye and I tracked them down that evening and found, to our relief, that Uncle Bert had led them all to safety.

The death of Digit changed everything at Karisoke. Dian began to focus more on conservation and less on research, and she sought the help of conservationists all over the world. She set up a charity called The Digit Fund to raise money to step up anti-poacher patrols. At the same time, several other charities formed a consortium with the Rwandan Government called the Mountain Gorilla Project, which among other things developed Gorilla Tourism.

More gorilla deaths followed when poachers attempted to kidnap the infant Kweli to sell to an illegal animal dealer. They shot and killed his mother and, when he charged in defence of his family, Uncle Bert. Kweli escaped with a bullet through his collar-bone, but with both parents dead he just seemed to lose the will to live. He died three months later. Titus and Beetsme were among the survivors, but the attack marked the end of Group 4. The females, including Titus' mother, sought the security of a new leader in neighbouring groups, leaving the immature males to form a batchelor group with another young silverback.

In the years that followed, Titus seemed to look up to Beetsme as an older friend, almost a big brother, though they are not related. Eventually, Beetsme attracted some females, fathered offspring and built up his own family group. But all the while Titus stayed with him, leading to the present unexpected situation.

Titus is now a superb silverback, and for the past few years he has been the dominant male of the group. All the rules of sociobiology would predict that Titus would not tolerate an unrelated male in his group. But the strength of their friendship has over-ridden the selfish gene behaviour and so these two silverbacks, who should be fierce rivals, share their group.

This kind of discovery is what makes long-term field studies so exciting. It is only possible because we know the family history of the cast of characters. And like any soap opera, it is important not to miss key episodes. When Dian Fossey was murdered in 1985, her work was continued by the Digit Fund (subsequently renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund). When war ravaged the homes and families of our Rwandan staff, we helped them rebuild their communities within weeks of the conflict ending.

Unfortunately, despite the hopes of all but the extremists, the troubles rumble on in Rwanda. The security situation deterioratedagain in 1997 and research, like so many aspects of life in post-genocide Rwanda, is on hold at the moment because of the continuing threat of violence.

Regardless of the danger, however, the staff of the Karisoke Research Centre continue monitoring and protecting the gorillas whenever the military allow them access. The cabins of the Centre have been destroyed and the Park des Volcans is a military zone. But it is essential that gorilla conservationists maintain a presence. Dr. Liz Williamson, a Scottish zoologist and the current Director of Karisoke, is working with the Rwandan Government to help rebuild the National Parks infrastructure. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (DFGF-UK) has an active community development programme to encourage a culture of conservation in the Virunga Volcanoes region.

It was into this strange melange of optimism and despair that I descended when I paid my latest visit to Titus and Beetsme justover a year ago. At that point, we were allowed into the park but had to report to the military commander whose troops were camped near the ruins of Karisoke.

As soon as the military gave us the all clear, we moved on to locate the gorillas and for a couple of hours our spirits were lifted by the familiar sights and sounds of gorilla family life. My task was to photograph and film Pasika, a young female whose childhood is being followed by thousands of DFGF-UK supporters through the "Pals of Pasika" scheme. For much of the rest period, she sat next to the vast bulk of Titus, grooming him occasionally while her brothers and sisters played around her. Beetsme lay just a few paces beyond, no longer the centre of social attention but apparently accepting his protege's rise to power.

When Titus arose to leave, Beetsme and several females and infants followed, vacating their daynests. And then I experienced a 20-year flashback as Ndatwa, a rumbustious blackback, strutted across the glade and sat in Titus' still warm nest. I felt I was seeing a movie sequel - "Gorillas in the Mist, the Next Generation" - and I knew that this dynasty would go on forever or, more accurately, for as long as we humans keep their habitat safe.

Anyone who visits the Virungas and exchanges a glance with a gorilla will come away with a new perspective on human nature. If, as is now widely accepted, humans are just one more species of African ape, consider this irony: whilst it is our wars, poaching and deforestation that threaten our cousins in the forest, their survival into the next millenium and beyond may depend on the return of the prodigal ape in the shape of a fee-paying eco-tourist.

GORILLA FACTFILE

Where to see Gorillas: As trekking starts early in the morning, you must be on site the night before.

Congo: Two sites in the Virunga Mtns, 3 families each: Djomba, 6km from Uganda border; Bukima, 12km from Uganda. 8 people per family per visit. Permits US$120 each.

Rwanda: Two sites in Virungas. Access via Ruhengeri (basic hotel). 3 families; 8 people per family. Permits US$126 each. Currently closed.

Uganda: Mgahinga (in the Virungas): Small park, 1 family which often moves to Congo. 6 people per family. Permits: US$150 each. Basic hotels nearby, plus camping. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, approx. 25 km from Virungas. One family. Six people allowed. Permits US$180 each, to be increased to US$280 this year, plus US$20 park entry. Must be prebooked and prepaid one year in advance. One family (4 people allowed) on standby, sometimes available on the day. Another family being habituated. Two luxury tented camps, plus basic lodging and camping.

The Trek: All gorilla treks can be long, muddy and steep. A permit does NOT guarantee you will see the gorillas, although 99% of people do. No refunds in Uganda if you do NOT see gorillas, but refunds given in Rwanda and Congo. Tourists can only spend one hour with the gorillas once a day, at a distance of 5 metres to minimise disturbance and the risk of disease transmission.

Access: All sites about 10-12 hours drive from Kampala. Most people overnight en route . Airstrip being built at Kisoro on Uganda -Congo border for charter flights.

Who can Trek?: No-one under 16 allowed. Sick people not permitted and, if declared, refunded on site.

Who to Book With: Key operators include Wild Frontiers, Abercrombie & Kent, Mantana, African Pearl Safaris, UTB and Rafiki Africa. Other companies can book, but subcontract services.

Other Sub-Species: The Western Lowland and Eastern Lowland gorillas are more abundant than the Mountain Gorilla. The former sub-species are found in Cameroon, Gabon and the Congo (Brazzaville), the latter in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ian Redmond is a Wildlife Consultant specialising in apes and elephants. He is the founder and chairman of the Ape Alliance, which brings together 34 organisations working on ape conservation and welfare issues, and enjoys guiding film crews and special interest tours into close encounters with wildlife.

Published in Travel Africa Edition Three: Spring 1998. Text is subject to Worldwide Copyright (c)