April 11, 2010
An impartial observer seeing the grace and agility of these animals on the mountainside and our clumsy attempts to hang on (on all fours) and not roll down the mountain.....at least not too far down at any one time....could be forgiven for thinking evolution over-rated. I did....I was scratched by every thorn, and bitten viciously by ants with wicked pincers...our trek took us over nests of ants and the residents were understandably infuriated at the invasion and set out to make their displeasure evident—yours truly had the honor of being singled out for their attention—we slid down the mountainside, neither gracefully nor voluntarily, much of the way, on all fours—the force was definitely not with us—and along the way, adding our bit to soil erosion by simply transferring substantial amounts of clay from the slope onto ourselves.
It was all worth it and I would do it again…..with the possible exception of the ten-hour spine rattling ride that getting to Bwindi entailed. Locals refer to the roads (loosely defined) as the African massage….your body gets stretched and pulled apart in ways that nature never intended and therefore never planned for in its design ...I was made acutely aware of just how many different muscles and ligaments there were in my back by the discrete points of soreness the following day.
In getting to Bwindi from Kampala by road one traverses the breadth of the country; I saw vast areas of cultivated land with huge tracts of banana and sugarcane fields yielding t
o rolling hills with tea plantations, that in turn give way to shrubs and grassland where the Ankole people rear cattle with immense curved horns—iconic symbols of the land—and Bwindi with its steep fissured mountainsides, dark mysterious ravines and ancient forests, —home to several species of monkey and the large primates, the gorilla and the chimpanzee—where experts agree that some acts of the great drama of evolution were enacted.
I also saw the appalling conditions in which many of the local communities live, pools of stagnant water that accumulate with every rain, pot-hole pocked roads that turn into clayey morasses at the slightest hint of rain, poor drainage of water, lack of sanitary facilities… conditions that could have been made to order for proliferation of mosquitoes…and the widespread prevalence of malaria that takes a deadly toll of lives each year, especially young lives. (~ Eighty out a thousand children under the age of five dying of malaria is a truly horrifying statistic).
I saw poorly equipped and poorly staffed clinics and hospitals that had little beyond acetaminophen and cold -cough remedies of questionable rationale in stock, and no physician or qualified medical staff in attendance.
I saw children walking barefoot to school; I saw children who should have been in school, herding cattle, chopping sugarcane or digging up root vegetables instead.
Such abundance of rich soil, rain and sunshine, and the bounty of the Nile in the abundant harvests of fruits and vegetables of every sort.... and the great natural beauty of the place with its spectacular flora and fauna (rare primates, over a thousand species of birds and butterflies, I’m informed)…and all the international aid pouring in should have made this a truly prosperous place....
As Winston Churchill wrote in his My African Journey (1908):
Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or more rapidly realized. Uganda is from end to end, one beautiful garden where the staple food of the people grows almost without labor. Does it not sound like paradise on Earth?
It is tragic that it has not....for reasons that have to do with just one species –homo sapiens! There is much that needs to be done to realize the promise of this paradise.
I went to the Bwindi (Impenetrable) National Forest over the Easter holiday weekend to see the mountain gorilla......seeing this magnificent animal was exhilarating.
Bwindi in southwestern Uganda, is one of Africa’s most ancient forests from the last ice age --
over 25000 years ago. It is one of two places that is home to the mountain gorilla, the other being the Virunga Volcano. There are approximately seven hundred of these animals alive today, thanks to a successful conservation effort.
Tracking a gorilla family of five involved a climb in damp clay up a steep mountain slope. Bwindi is a rainforest and this is the rainy season; the steady drizzle and the clay morphing into a gooey gel underfoot made for treacherous walking terrain. We held on to branches and vines for gaining a foothold each step up the steep incline. This ranks among the most challenging treks I've taken; the Annapurna trek in Nepal seems like a walk in the park in comparison!
Fortunately for us, the gorilla family we were tracking came halfway down the mountain to meet us, so to speak, and saved us three hours of strenuous climbing. They are used to humans beings from the habituation program that the Uganda wildlife authority has undertaken; the silverback, --the alpha male who is the head of family--parked himself five meters from where I stood, immobile in awe and delighted wonder at this encounter; he had casually lumbered past the walker ahead of me, who nearly fainted when she realized what it was that had brushed against her.... (It felt like a dog! Oh my god! It was a GORILLA? OH! MY GOD! Gasp! Gulp!! Hyperventilate!!)
I tried to move back from him to maintain the twelve-meter distance that had been drummed into me in the pre-trek brief....but the silverback moved in and settled close by and seemed to be fine with my proximity.....he estimated that any animal that couldn’t move two paces without stumbling and did not show any interest in his food source was no threat at all……...the rangers and trackers signaled to me to stay where I was, a wise decision considering the consequences of any move on the precarious position of the rest of the group, many of whom were crouching on their knees by this time, and trying very hard not to look down the slope that we’d j
ust ascended.
The silverback diligently applied himself to the task at hand—eating—pausing every once in while to give us—gawking misfits in his environment— a pitying look, as we struggled to maintain our balance while aiming our cameras and incoherently exclaiming in delight and delirium! He didn't seem to find eye contact objectionable—we had been instructed to look away if an animal looked like he /she were going to charge—Gorillas have brown gold eyes— it was poignant to see these gentle giants with arms as thick as tree trunks tearing away at the foliage at arm’s length. What truly beautiful cousins we have!
Bwindi in southwestern Uganda, is one of Africa’s most ancient forests from the last ice age --
over 25000 years ago. It is one of two places that is home to the mountain gorilla, the other being the Virunga Volcano. There are approximately seven hundred of these animals alive today, thanks to a successful conservation effort.Tracking a gorilla family of five involved a climb in damp clay up a steep mountain slope. Bwindi is a rainforest and this is the rainy season; the steady drizzle and the clay morphing into a gooey gel underfoot made for treacherous walking terrain. We held on to branches and vines for gaining a foothold each step up the steep incline. This ranks among the most challenging treks I've taken; the Annapurna trek in Nepal seems like a walk in the park in comparison!
Fortunately for us, the gorilla family we were tracking came halfway down the mountain to meet us, so to speak, and saved us three hours of strenuous climbing. They are used to humans beings from the habituation program that the Uganda wildlife authority has undertaken; the silverback, --the alpha male who is the head of family--parked himself five meters from where I stood, immobile in awe and delighted wonder at this encounter; he had casually lumbered past the walker ahead of me, who nearly fainted when she realized what it was that had brushed against her.... (It felt like a dog! Oh my god! It was a GORILLA? OH! MY GOD! Gasp! Gulp!! Hyperventilate!!)
I tried to move back from him to maintain the twelve-meter distance that had been drummed into me in the pre-trek brief....but the silverback moved in and settled close by and seemed to be fine with my proximity.....he estimated that any animal that couldn’t move two paces without stumbling and did not show any interest in his food source was no threat at all……...the rangers and trackers signaled to me to stay where I was, a wise decision considering the consequences of any move on the precarious position of the rest of the group, many of whom were crouching on their knees by this time, and trying very hard not to look down the slope that we’d j
ust ascended.The silverback diligently applied himself to the task at hand—eating—pausing every once in while to give us—gawking misfits in his environment— a pitying look, as we struggled to maintain our balance while aiming our cameras and incoherently exclaiming in delight and delirium! He didn't seem to find eye contact objectionable—we had been instructed to look away if an animal looked like he /she were going to charge—Gorillas have brown gold eyes— it was poignant to see these gentle giants with arms as thick as tree trunks tearing away at the foliage at arm’s length. What truly beautiful cousins we have!
An impartial observer seeing the grace and agility of these animals on the mountainside and our clumsy attempts to hang on (on all fours) and not roll down the mountain.....at least not too far down at any one time....could be forgiven for thinking evolution over-rated. I did....I was scratched by every thorn, and bitten viciously by ants with wicked pincers...our trek took us over nests of ants and the residents were understandably infuriated at the invasion and set out to make their displeasure evident—yours truly had the honor of being singled out for their attention—we slid down the mountainside, neither gracefully nor voluntarily, much of the way, on all fours—the force was definitely not with us—and along the way, adding our bit to soil erosion by simply transferring substantial amounts of clay from the slope onto ourselves.
It was all worth it and I would do it again…..with the possible exception of the ten-hour spine rattling ride that getting to Bwindi entailed. Locals refer to the roads (loosely defined) as the African massage….your body gets stretched and pulled apart in ways that nature never intended and therefore never planned for in its design ...I was made acutely aware of just how many different muscles and ligaments there were in my back by the discrete points of soreness the following day.
In getting to Bwindi from Kampala by road one traverses the breadth of the country; I saw vast areas of cultivated land with huge tracts of banana and sugarcane fields yielding t
o rolling hills with tea plantations, that in turn give way to shrubs and grassland where the Ankole people rear cattle with immense curved horns—iconic symbols of the land—and Bwindi with its steep fissured mountainsides, dark mysterious ravines and ancient forests, —home to several species of monkey and the large primates, the gorilla and the chimpanzee—where experts agree that some acts of the great drama of evolution were enacted.I also saw the appalling conditions in which many of the local communities live, pools of stagnant water that accumulate with every rain, pot-hole pocked roads that turn into clayey morasses at the slightest hint of rain, poor drainage of water, lack of sanitary facilities… conditions that could have been made to order for proliferation of mosquitoes…and the widespread prevalence of malaria that takes a deadly toll of lives each year, especially young lives. (~ Eighty out a thousand children under the age of five dying of malaria is a truly horrifying statistic).
I saw poorly equipped and poorly staffed clinics and hospitals that had little beyond acetaminophen and cold -cough remedies of questionable rationale in stock, and no physician or qualified medical staff in attendance.
I saw children walking barefoot to school; I saw children who should have been in school, herding cattle, chopping sugarcane or digging up root vegetables instead.
Such abundance of rich soil, rain and sunshine, and the bounty of the Nile in the abundant harvests of fruits and vegetables of every sort.... and the great natural beauty of the place with its spectacular flora and fauna (rare primates, over a thousand species of birds and butterflies, I’m informed)…and all the international aid pouring in should have made this a truly prosperous place....
As Winston Churchill wrote in his My African Journey (1908):
Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or more rapidly realized. Uganda is from end to end, one beautiful garden where the staple food of the people grows almost without labor. Does it not sound like paradise on Earth?
It is tragic that it has not....for reasons that have to do with just one species –homo sapiens! There is much that needs to be done to realize the promise of this paradise.
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