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Thursday, May 21st, 2009
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7:12 pm - O.K. Here we go.
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The house has sold! And at a good price.
I've got the Chicken Pox! No I never got it as a kid.
And things are now going to get very interesting! The master plan is moving forward. Huge garage sale this Memorial Day weekend.
More details to follow....STOP.
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| Friday, September 14th, 2007
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12:40 am - First Journey - part 5
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The road was scarcely wide enough for two vehicles to pass. It was surfaced with red clay and gravel murram, and deeply rutted in some places. These depressions filled with water during the afternoon rains; their still surfaces reflected back only red, as old iron leeched from the rock and dust.
On either side of the road, scrub woodland pressed close, at some places leaning over precariously, and others forming a canopy creating a light dappled roadway full of abrupt transitions between light and shade. As the road pressed forward toward the escarpment it undulated and rolled, curving this way and that, changing from a perfect camber that shed water, to concave mud holes that could tip a lorry on it’s side.
On that first trip the road was wet from monsoon rains, and the clay was greasy. Joseph was tense and alert, gripping the wheel tightly, avoiding ruts with quick jerks left or right. Water was running in rivulets in heavily eroded ditches on either side of us. The ditches themselves were fascinating to watch as they appeared to be miniature canyons, with smooth alluvial plains, steep cliff walls revealing alternating layers of color and sand. Here quartz pebbles in yellow sand, above red clay and silt, still higher course pebbles covered by yet another fine layer. The bottoms were smoothed by recent water and paved with golden mica flakes.
The road surface itself was a wonderful red that reminded me of the color of the earth around the iron mines of northern Minnesota where I spent time as a child. The leaves and tree trunks of the woodland around us are dusted the powdery red as fine as talcum. In the rain this dust sought to return to the road in bloody rivulets creeping down bark and dripping from leaves.
In some places large outcrops of rock revealed themselves, pushing up through the road surface. Joseph slowed the vehicle and we eased over these bumps so not to crack the Suzuki’s frame.
As we sped down the rolling track, hemmed in on either side by woodland, I marveled at the sun dappled view ahead. Often we’d round a corner, or mount a rise, to see ahead of us the road covered in brown forms, some sitting, others moving slowly. Movement would reveal each to be a baboon, the total numbering over fifty at times, all seeming tired of the endless forest, wanting to escape the humid dew covered vegetation, to feel the breeze, and sit on the bare ground.
Drawing closer our presence now inevitable, most of the baboons would move off left or right back into the green. The young would flee at alarming speed enjoying the drama and fun of it, the adults would saunter off, casting backward glances as they went. Mothers would pause a moment watching our approach until their babies leapt onto them, at which time they’d hurry out of sight. The big males were usually last to leave the road. They’d watch, sometimes barking their sharp dog-like bark, hair on neck and ruff bristling slightly.
As we’d draw even with the spot where the first baboons left the road a glance to either side would reveal faces peeking out of the undergrowth, baboons hurriedly climbing up small trees, and youngsters wide-eyes with curiosity and excitement.
The road would peppered with large baboon droppings, usually greenish brown in color, sometimes yellow, depending on the fruits the animal had been eating.
Once we’d passed, looking behind I could see the tribe returning in the order they fled. Big males first, adults next, then the youngsters, who’d race out onto the road, come to an abrupt stop, and then stand on hind legs to watch us recede.
Now the lowering sun breaks through into blue sky and beams of light streak down onto the wet road. Steam begins to rise where the sun strikes. I can smell the clay. The smaller puddles have begun to dry a little and most are now ringed by dozens, or in some cases, hundreds of butterflies, all feeding where the muddy water has recently evaporated. As we approach they break into flight, a multicolored cloud caught in a sunbeam that is whipped into disarray by our passage. Blues and yellows, whites and spotted, they catch the light and seem to catch fire, then cool as they enter shade.
Looking behind out the window I could still see Igisi hill, a golden shaft of sunlight picking out its uppermost crest. Finally it disappeared behind trees. The road suddenly dipped and turned a bit west. Ahead it ran straight for half a mile, a v-shaped cut in the land that was like looking down the gun sight of a rifle; and beyond it there were no more trees, no road or red earth. Only a blue haze. It looked out over empty space. We were approaching the escarpment of the western rift valley.
As my eyes were fixed on the fleeting view ahead we dropped down into a small hollow, and the distant view was obscured. An enormous puddle stretched across the road ahead of us. Some forty feet wide it looked like it could swallow the entire vehicle. Joseph slowed to a stop, then shifted into 4-wheel drive, revved the engine and released the brake. We rushed into the water displacing sheets of red water to either side. With the water getting deeper still Joseph kept driving forward. When the water reached half way up the doors, and little sprays and jets of water trickled in along the door-jambs, the wheels spun and we stopped moving forward. Joseph eased back on the accelerator and the wheels caught and we slid sideways a second, then began moving forward again. Soon we were climbing out of the puddle. Water streamed out of the vehicle as we climbed then muddy embankment. Water sloshed around our feet and we opened rubber drain plugs in the vehicle floor and the muddy water drained away.
And then we were there. The escarpment. Even the name brought old childhood associations to mind. It was the barrier Tarzan so often climbed in the old movies. So high it was in crisp in black and white. In the old movies they climbed up to the wild place, here at Murchison we had to go down.
The park stretched out below rolling savanna running over a hundred miles ahead. To the west, the sun was lowering over the purple and gold mountains or Zaire. I glimmer of silver lay at their foot. Lake Albert. Lost in the distance ahead I knew lay the Nile river, bisecting the park in two, emptying into Lake Albert, and flowing northward out of that lake again into the Sudan on its way to Egypt. The road below fled ahead into the hazy distance.
We had stopped so I could get out and stretch my legs before the descent. A heavy fly landed on my leg. I paid no mind. A bite like none I’ve felt. God. I looked down. I was bleeding through my pants. My first tse-tse fly bite. Jesus.
Pontius and Joseph looked at each other, probably wondering what this new muzungu would do.
“Lets go,” I said and got into the vehicle. The got in and we started down. The western rift valley was at this point some seven hundred feet deep. The road was carved out of living rock, switch-backing downward steeply. As we descended the heat grew. In our lowest gear we eased downward, here tipping sideways as we crept over bare crystalline rock, there pitching downward so steeply that I feel sure the tires will lose purchase and we’ll hurtle downward to out deaths. Then to road straightened out and leveled. We picked up speed. I could see Joseph smiling quietly to himself. Over three small hills and we were down.
“Welcome to Murchison Mr. Owen,” Pontius says mischievously with a grin on his face. I smiled. I was sweating heavily in the new humid air.
The sun must be nearly set now. It was growing darker. Darkness falls quickest at the equator. Twilight lasts minutes only, as the light travels through lass atmosphere. Soon we reached another gate. The windows rolled down, the heat and the dust entered, as did more tse-tse flies. A river burbled nearby. Later I would learn its name. The Tangi river.
Two uniformed rangers rushed out of their uniport. They saluted Pontius and greeted Joseph. Soon the gate was raised and we were off. I asked Pontius why he didn’t have them radio Rabongo of our progress.
“The sun is down Mr. Owen. The park radios close down at sunset. The radio repeater is solar powered,” he answered.
A radio repeater sits on a high point and “listens” for radio signals from other weaker radios, and then amplifies and rebroadcasts those signals so that they might reach all parts of the park. Otherwise radio signals broadcasting from behind a low hill, or down in a river valley, would never be heard.
“The parks repeater is back on Igisi hill,” Pontius continued.
I was getting tired now. I had been traveling a long time. My eyes closed now and then as darkness grew around us. The red road faded until it became a pale grey surrounded by the dark trees and tall grasses on either side. My eyes closed again. I dreamt.
In my dream I am making love with Carrie. We are entwined, moving in unison, her scent cinnamon and sensuous. More darkness and then I am a young boy and my mother is holding my hand and lifting me up at the viewing platform so I can look down into the great open pit iron mine back home. All is red, the walls of the pit, the tiny trucks a thousand feet below crawling slowly up out of the pit loaded with iron ore, even the cars at the view point.
A jolt and I’m awake. We are slowing. The headlights are on now, picking out a white metal sign and arrow on a post ahead. We slow to a stop.
“I must make water,” Pontius announces.
I too need to relieve myself. When I get out the smells and sounds of the night thrill my senses. Crickets and cicadas hum and whine. Far off a laughing bark – hyena. I look up at the sign on the post. By the light of the headlights it reads “Rabongo Forest,” with an arrow pointing to the right. There a narrower one-lane track branches off from the main road. We get back in as lightning flickers overhead. As Joseph puts the vehicle in gear thunder rumbles in the distance.
The rain comes in patters on the roof, then steadily with another rumble of thunder. Tall elephant grass rises high beside us. Wet and heavy it bows down over the road and we plow through it in places unable to see the road ahead. Windshield wipers smear grass seeds back and forth across the window.
Down we go, up again, straight. I float, hearing snatches of conversation from the front. My eyes close again. I open them again. I look at my watch. An hours has passed. We’re still driving on into the night, but without headlights. God, I think, how typical… the headlights have burned out. Only in Africa I think.
I tap Pontius on the shoulder. “Did the lights burn out?”
“No. Joseph has turned them off the “save” them.”
Only in Africa I think again.
On we go running at speed through tall grass. I can sometimes see a road ahead, most often not. Time passes. We break out into an area with no grass around us, and the headlights come on to pick out short trees scattered alongside the road. Ahead the eyeshine from an animal glows green, then is gone.
The rain stops, and the moon comes out of the clouds. We descend steeply and cross a narrow bridge, then climb up steeply. Pontius is shifting in his seat now, gathering his things. I’m alert now. The road angles down a bit and the road becomes bumpy… then suddenly – as if entering the Bat Cave – darkness surrounds us and we enter ancient forest, headlights picking out the boles of enormous trees. Then we enter an open expanse of smooth gravel.
Rabongo at last. It’s a bit of a blur those first moments in my new home. People running towards us from the darkness to our left waving and shouting. We stop, engine idling. Bags of produce are passed out the windows to waiting hands. Smiles, and many new faces. Then we continue through the night camp. The road turns off in some places and I glimpse dark buildings.
The moon is shining down through the trees. It is very cool now. A mist is rising in the forest. We pull up to a wooden cabin with dark stained wooden walls. The engine stops, but Joseph leaves the lights on.
“Welcome. This is to be your home,” Pontius informs me.
I get out gingerly, stretching after five hours bent over in the back. Joseph is already carrying my bags around the far side of the cabin. Pontius takes me by the arm and we walk past a window, and another and round the far side of the building. There’s an expanse of grass to the left, and ahead a drop, and I see dark fast flowing water.
Step up onto a porch. Joseph is unlocking a padlock securing a white wooden door. It opens and he hands me the key.
“You are welcome bwana,” he says as he hefts the bags inside.
They show me each of the four rooms by lantern light. One enters the main through the front door. To the left on the wall runs a white wooden counter with shelves below. To the right a lower wooden writing table is built in along that wall. There are two small bedrooms each with a wooden bed frame and foam mattress, and a bathroom with tub and toilet that drain by manual flush down into a septic tank. The main room has four glass louvered windows. Each bedroom has only two windows.
Exhausted I say my goodnights and decide to eat some bread and fruit and go to sleep. It’s quite late. As overwhelming as the journey has been, meeting all the new people, seeing new sights, it’s not what is occupying my mind as I chew my food. A sense of strangeness and unease has grown in me ever since we arrived.
I spread out me sleeping bag on the bed in the larger bedroom and place the lantern on a chair next to the bed. I turn the lantern down low, and the moonlight outside streams in through my windows. As I’m undressing I am still oddly unsettled and stirred up. I decide its tiredness and climb into bed. My sleeping bag feels comfortable and familiar in this unfamiliar setting. I close my eyes.
As I lay quiet in the dark images dance in my head – the long journey from Kampala, the slapping of elephant grass against the windshield as we drove through the night, the view of the park from the escarpment… but my brain kept coming back to the moonlight coming in through the window by my bed.
I can’t make sense of it. I drift near sleep. Then something ticks over in my brain. I get up out of bed and walk bare foot across cold wooden boards. As my eyes adjust I can see out the window, to the moonlit road, silver boles of great trees, dark vegetation.
My brain jolts. This is THE window. This window. This place. I’ve stood here a hundred times. How? Goose bumps rise on my skin. The hair on the back of my neck goes up. God damn. I’m trembling.
I stand at the window a long time before going to bed.
current mood:  thoughtful
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| Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
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5:10 pm - First Journey - Part 4
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We slowed a bit. A couple of men under the tree raised their hand in greeting. It started to sprinkle again and Joseph started the wipers on low. Up and over two hills the road carried on more or less straight. At the top of the last hill - a couple of mud huts and a shamba. This I would later learn to be the home of one of the rangers at Pabidi (a small forest preserve ahead, but before the park), a man who a year later I would pick up in this same vehicle while he was in the throes of yellow fever and near death. But this day it was just another homestead.
Up ahead the road dipped steeply and rose up again a half mile away before leveling out. There where the road was flat I could see a gate across the road and a group of seven huts and a couple of metal uniports (prefab metal huts). The entrance!
The Suzuki charged down the hill, splashed through the seeping spring at the bottom, and rose up again and slowed to meet the gate. The gate itself was a green painted pipe about two inches in diameter. On either side stood signs telling drivers to stop.
Uniformed rangers approached and seeing Pontius they saluted and waved. Pontius waved one of the men towards us. In kiswahili he requested the ranger to radio Rabongo and inform them we have passed the gate and were on our way with the new warden. The ranger nodded and looking at me he gave a furtive salute before trotting to the uniport that had a solar panel on the roof, and a radio mast beside it.
The gate was raised and we drove on. I knew from studying maps that the forest on either side of us now was game reserve, a sort of protective buffer surrounding the national park. A blur to our right, a road, and huts – Pabidi, I’m informed. Ahead a large hill grows larger.
“That place is Igisi,” Pontius says formally enough that I take notice. There’s more he wants to say. “It is a place of spirits for peoples of the north. They say it’s haunted. Beyond is the escarpment.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Some of the places in the park loomed large in my mind. And also in the minds of everyone who lived there. There was the Nile of course, and its famous falls. And then there was the escarpment. To me it was kind of a wall that sealed us in - a barrier to be crossed; and once crossed you’d enter another world, either a world of animals and timelessness, or a world of people, villages, and the hardships of life. For me, an outsider, each passage of this barrier was a shock.
Looking out over the park from the escarpment’s edge, seeing the mist rising from the rolling woodland savanna framed by a hazy blue sky, one soon picks out a thread of winding red following the contour of the land – the road! It disappeared and reappearing further away as it climbs out of a vale. Looking out on this scene I always feel a sense of wonderment, but also a sense of forbidding harshness. A sense of urgency would seize me those days – to pass the barrier and unforgiving land ahead so that I might arrive safely at home before my energy would disappear, before night.
Of course I didn’t feel any of this the first time I approached.
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| Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
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4:24 pm - Through the eyes of a bird
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I'm sitting in my green camp chair on the porch. The rice for dinner is cooking silently on the paraffin stove. Water is dripping in the water filter. I can finally stop. The twilight sky is deepening to purple, and hornbills soar heavily with whistling wings, to alight on branches of the dead ironwood across the river.
I role my shoulders, to ease the tension cording the muscles. too much panga work today. The red blossoms of the flame tree are catching the golden evening light. They burn bright against the dark green leaves. In the distance a Colobus calls. I close my eyes.
I start awake. Dozed off for a minute. I get more comfortable in the chair, and lean back, stretching out my legs in front of me. The sharp caw of the hornbills carries across the river, and draws my eyes the dead branch the pair sit on. Black silhouettes against the mauve sky. One rubs its long bill on the tree bark, the other swivels its head left and right, watching, always watching.
I close my eyes again, and play the game I've played since I was a young boy. In my minds eye I visualized the Hornbills far across the river on their high perch. Then I am one of them. I can see far from my vantage, across rolling tree canopy in all directions. The twilight illumination casts everything into relief. I look north across the small ribbon of stream, and see myself a small white skinned figure sitting on the porch of the small cabin, perched above the river rocks.
I think of the new places I surveyed in the southern forest today. I think of the palm tree I saw at the southern most limit of the southern most patch. That image fixed in my mind, I launch myself from the branch and spread my wings and take a few easy wing beats. I swoop down towards the cabin, seeing myself again, as I bank west and follow the river westward. In a moment I pass over the campsite and I imagine I see Okema collecting water.
Over waterfalls, past the swimming place with its water smoothed boulders, up higher, and then past a Cynometra full of Black & White Colobus basking in the last rays of sun. I tick off the familiar landmarks one by one as I pass each, like stepping stones leading me southwest towards the southern forest.
I'm higher now, and looking to my left the forest opens into yellow savannah grass scattered with terminalia trees. There where the Wairingo makes it's hairpin turn at forest's edge, I see the bridge piers where the trail crosses into grassland. It was here that the lions were roaring from the other day.
Turning south now I soar high over zone five's forest. I'm moving fast now. Ahead of me a large hill is rearing it's head, and at it's foot the southern forest patch. Bisected by brown river and swamp of deeper green grass, I see it's many great trees rising above the canopy. In many, Colobus' run and leap, in one I see chimp nests, and at the furthest marge I circle around a single palm tree.
I open my eyes. The birds are gone. I'm back in my chair. Steam is escaping from under the lid of the sufaria. Rested, I get up and go get an onion to cut up for dinner. From overhead comes the whistling rush of hornbill wings, and then the scolding call of the owner perched in the snag in my front yard.
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| Thursday, August 16th, 2007
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4:07 pm - First Journey - Part 3
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Joseph was a short, powerfully built man with a broad kind face, graying at the temples. He jumped out and grabbed my pack. While he loaded it into the back of the Suzuki, Pontius explained that we needed to drive to the market and get some food and supplies before returning to the park.
We turned out onto the now puddle filled road and drove back into Masindi and turned right and continued on a block until we came to a street right out of the old west. The wide red dirt street was full of rain filled potholes, and cambered so that the centre was high and the sides functioned as ditches. They were now filled with water and filth. Concrete sidewalks bordered the street and rose up over two feet to the shop level. Many were cracked or broken revealing brick underneath.
Dozens of small shops lined the street along these sidewalks, their colorfully painted double-hinged metal doors stood open against the outside walls of the shops, while barred windows in the thick brick walls gave pothole views of a riot of color and form inside. Plastic bowls, cups, lanterns, bolts of cloth, bread, sides of slaughtered goat, medicine, candles, blue soap, more cloth, aluminum nested cook pots; the variety was endless.
The walls of these one-story brick buildings were plastered smooth, and whitewashed, or painted dark colors below, and light creams above. The large metal doors were often deep rust red, or light blue. Shopkeepers sometimes sat on simple wooden chairs or stools just outside their shop to escape the heat and watch passersby.
All this I took in as we slowly motored down the rutted street. A minute later we pulled up besides a long low building with a gate leading to an interior courtyard. On the arch above the gate block letters picked out Masindi Market. Joseph and Pontius went into the market, and I was content to sit and watch the town come alive again after the afternoon monsoon rains.
Boda boda boys with their bicycles came out of their hiding places and again waited for fares. Women in brightly colored dresses strolled into the marketplace. Some children spotted me and ran to the vehicle smiling broadly and almost shouting “Muzungu, you give me money.” I scolded them in kiswahili and they ran off laughing.
I closed my eyes, near sleep. Thunder rolled in the distance. The afternoon sun again spread across the wet land, and the red earth steamed.
Pontius and Joseph soon returned carrying plastic sacks heavy with onions, potatoes and other vegetables. When we got back on the road we soon left Masindi behind us and began winding our way northward on road narrow, rutted and interspersed with deep water filled holes large enough to swallow our vehicle. Joseph is driving and Pontius in the front passenger seat. I’m in the back sitting on a fold down bench seat over the wheel well.
I strain to see the countryside around us as we bounce along the wet muddy road. I catch glimpses of wet teenage girls, baskets of food on their heads, in soaked cotton dresses, walking barefoot alongside the road. Tall grass – taller than our vehicle. A shamba (farm field) with a woman in the distance stripped bare to the waist, her hoe raising and lowering like a metronome – keeping time… lost as pass an embankment; more tall grass.
At intervals thatched mud huts – bandas – with earthen walls dried deep red, or white washed, with roofs thatched in grass. Most have a little tin door made of corrugated iron pounded flat and nailed onto a wooden frame, hung on hinges to a wooded doorjamb made of two by two lumber. On the occasional fancier homes, read more “westernized,” the structures are rectangular in layout, with not a curve in sight. Doors are finished planks. Windows are barred and shuttered, and roofs are the ever-present rusty corrugated iron.
Pit latrines and crude shower and bathing areas sit adjacent to these huts. A few are substantial, most are merely poles sunk into the hard ground with banana leaves or plastic sheeting wrapped around them.
The ground around the huts, swept daily and kept free of vegetation, is as hard as concrete from the weight of so many feet passing over generations. To enter the huts one has to stoop low. Inside they are dark and cool – an important thing on the equator.
Joseph slows our vehicle as we approach a spot on the road where the dirt surface is interrupted by outcrops of hard reddish lava that rise out of the road a couple of feet, like a iron hard cauliflower, and flow in ripples frozen in time. The driver eases the Suzuki onto the rock, turning the wheel left, then right, as he navigates the best path over the obstacle. Inside we tip first one way, then the next, grabbing roll bars instinctively. At last we ease back onto the regular road surface.
Ahead – a gathering of girls. Some in faded and torn cotton dresses. A couple in school uniforms. They’re exclaiming about something on the ground at their feet. As we get closer Pontius says, “Look… a vehicle has knocked a Puff Adder.” I watch the flattened snake as we pass by and pick up speed again.
Outside the air is golden again as low angled sunlight shines on distant thunderheads scattered on the horizon. The settlements thin and the countryside begins to look less lived in and more wild. We pass huge deciduous trees, shaped like elms, but covered in blue flowers. I see palm trees interspersed with broadleafs. Up ahead the road curves left, and a smaller and less traveled road shot on straight.
“That road goes to Masindi airfield,” Pontius pronounced.
“Do planes land there?” I ask.
“Not often. They need to slash the grass. It is all bush’” he answered.
After another fifteen minutes of rattles, bumps, and fish-tailing through mud and rocky murram we pass a collection of about seven ramshackle huts and buildings – one a dhuka with blue doors and shutters, all on the left side of the road and a number of men sat on stools in the shade under a large tree.
“This is the last village before the gate Mr. Owen.”
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| Sunday, August 12th, 2007
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2:58 pm - First Journey - part 2
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Five hours later the matatu van drove up the long red dirt main street of Masindi. To my left one story plastered brick buildings with rusty corrugated iron roofs. Colorful hand-painted signs hang over doorways, advertising dhuak’s (shops), dawa (medicine), tailor shops, and barbers. To the right a large grass football field and tall broadleaf trees arch over the roadway leaving sun-dapples scattered ahead and behind us. We accelerate and slow, weaving around pot holes and sections of broken tarmac sitting isolated like islands in a road now reverted to ochre dirt and mud. Passengers begin to pull their things together in anticipation of arrival.
We pulled onto a wide shoulder and through an archway into a small taxi park hidden from view of the street. A big tamarind tree cast shade over half the park. We pulled up against a wall and the engine stopped. The turn boy opened the sliding door and people stepped out into the heat and light.
The driver looked at me and said “Masindi Hotel?”
“N”dio bwana,” I replied.
Soon the turn boy got back inside and we are underway and back onto the street.
Our passage throws up a dusty cloud behind us, and the sunlight falling through the tree branches illuminate beams that seem to roil and tumble while remaining motionless. A few hundred yards past the main centre of town (about four blocks of shops), and just past a police barracks on the right, and an ancient Shell station with “no petrol” sign, we slowed at a tall hedge and turned into the drive of the Masindi Hotel.
It was a long low colonial style building, with white walls punctuated by archways and dark windows, with a red tile roof. Vines climbed up its walls in places. I thanked the driver and got out. The turn boy opened the back hatch and picked out my pack and set it beside me before climbing back into the vehicle. The matatu engine turned over again, and it swung out into the circular drive beyond the hedge and onto the road again. I followed it with my eyes, and caught sight of it pulling into the gas station across the street. I wondered why, with no petrol.
So what now I wondered. I was supposed to meet the number two man in the park, John Bosco Nuwe at one o’clock at the Masindi hotel. I just stood there. There was a gentle wind. I looked up to see clouds building bright towers high overhead. They grew perceptibly as I watched; the long thin streamers of white vapor already being carried away in front of the approaching thunderhead.
A couple of children ride by on bicycles. Two girls walk by on the road towards town. They wear white blouses with some sort of emblem on the breast, and blue skirts – a school uniform.. One catches me looking at her and returns my glance for a moment; then she’s lost behind the hedge.
I shoulder my bag and step into the dim interior. My eyes adjusted quickly. There were no lights on inside the hotel. The lobby’s only light came from outside. A couple of threadbare couches, and a few tables with chairs were scattered to my right. The décor was a sort of weird cross between colonial and the 1960’s “Tiki.” A thirty year old map of Uganda hung above a fireplace. The spot where Murchison was supposed to be was rubbed away smooth by uncounted fingers reaching up. The map legend says “Uganda Hotels.”
To the left of the door, a counter with pamphlets, a man in black slacks and a white shirt. I greet him and ask if anyone from the park has come to meet anybody. Who am I waiting for? I tell him.
“Ah, Mr. Nuwe. I know him well. He has not come here today.”
I thank him and go sit down on a couch. Outside a rumble of thunder runs across the countryside, and the light begins to fail as the towering clouds block the sun. I get out my book and sit so I can see out the open front door. It was one thirty.
I try to read but I can’t concentrate. Soon gusts of wind outside rescue me, and I get up and stand in the doorway. Thunder rumbles again. Soon fat drops of water fall from the darkening sky. A few squeals of girlish delight carry from the street as people scatter for cover. Then with a suddenness that catches me by surprise the downpour begins.
The rain falls in sheets; so heavy that the world turns grey and ghostlike, buildings across the street fade in and out of view. I reach out and catch water on my palm. It’s warm rain. My sleeve soaked, I turn to go back to my book, but jump at a flash and clap boom overhead. The rain continued for nearly two hours.
As it tapered to sprinkles and bird song carried down from the trees again, a green Suzuki four wheel drive vehicle pulls right up to the front door. On its door was the Uganda National Parks insignia. Above the insignia the letters M.F.N.P. A handsome man, a little shorter than myself, and perhaps a year or two younger, got out of the passenger side. He smiled when he saw me at the door.
“Hello. You must be Mr. Owen.” His voice was a wonderful dusky tenor accented with Ugandan/British.
“You must be John Bosco Nuwe,” I replied.
“Ah no. I’m afraid Bosco couldn’t come. He sent me to pick you. I am Pontius Ezuma.
“Oh … we’ll be working together. I am very please to meet you. We shook hands. His hands were warm. Pontius, as I came to know him, introduced me to Joseph our driver.
current mood: thoughtful
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| Saturday, August 11th, 2007
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12:28 am - Giraffe darting
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Yesterday was full of surprises, and in the end was a delightful day. While waiting for Bosco in his office in Paraa, in walks Gladys, the UNP vet, and three white men. One of them old and grizzled, obviously an old Africa hand, and the other two my age who it turned out were an Australian television camera crew. The older gentleman it turned out was a famous white hunter from Zimbabwe named Clem. He is apparently somewhat of a legend down in that country. One story has him culling elephants thirty years ago. He walked on foot into a heard of eighty-five elephants and shot fifty of them without missing once or getting himself trampled.
Anyway he, Gladys and the film crew had come to Murchison to dart a giraffe and get blood and skin samples to help determine what the skin condition afflicting some of our giraffes was. No giraffe has ever been darted in Uganda, and that means no Rothschild giraffe has ever been darted before.
So Pontius and I were drafted, very willingly, to be part of the darting team along with Bosco. Mark Jenkins would fly overhead and guide us to a group of giraffe. So at ten o’clock we crossed the Nile and headed north towards Pakuba in search of our quarry. When we came to a group an hour later we decided that Pontius, a ranger, and I would circle on foot to get behind the group to drive them towards Clem. It was a hot dry day, with a hazy blue sky. We ran through shoulder high tall grass the color of honey. The day smelled hot and dusty, sort of a summer smell.
So we ran, crouching low, trying an end-run around the giraffes. After a kilometer or so they saw us and took off to our right. So we followed Mark’s orbiting airplane and tried to get around them again. A second time they got wind of us and ran off; a big black male in the centre, a full two metres taller than any other animal.
God we ran Two km. Three. Finally at a full gallop, looking like dinosaurs, they topped a rise and disappeared. Pontius and the ranger kept running. I tried to call them back, but no use. I figured there was no way we’d get around them now. They were too spooked. So now I started walking back towards the vehicle, all alone, in the swaying grass of the savanna. Not the best situation.
As I was walking back I saw Mark’s plane circling high above me. I called him on my radio, but my batteries were dying. Then the plane banked low and swung around a small rise beside me and swooped low over my head a couple of times. I waved and I could see him tapping his radio headset. I pointed to my radio and drew my finger across my throat. He wagged his wings and was off again. I made it back to the road O.K. On the way I collected Adam and Gladys who were trying to follow us, and got a bit muddled.
An hour later everyone was back together in the Cruiser, again closing in on the same black male. Clem got close enough as we drove along beside them that he felt he could get a shot. He loaded 8 mg of tranquilizer. POP, the dart flew and, SMACK, hit the animal in the left thigh. Off he went at a gallop. That amount usually will bring down an elephant.
We followed off road. Soon the animal’s ears sagged a bit, but he showed no other signs of impending collapse. Clem was surprised. His white sideburns wiggling as he clenched his jaw. He loaded up another 6 mg. Again he shot. The dart went home. Now the animal fairly flew through the savanna. Just then our vehicle conked out. Clem followed on foot. Once the animal went down it would be important to work fast.
An hour later when the vehicle again was again running, and we had regrouped Clem was dumbfounded. He had followed the big male for a long ways and it showed no sign of going down. He wondered about a possible dart malfunction. We struck out into the savanna again, looking for the big black.
The trouble was we kept seeing other dark males. When we’d investigate, which involved a long bumpy ride across a kilometer of savanna, they all turned out to be not the same animal. We’d lost our animal.
It was then decided to try for a female, on the theory that she would take a smaller dose to put her down. The male had been huge, the biggest Clem had seen, and it had the skin problem. So we motored out to a group of about thirty, many youngsters around, as well as hundreds of kob. Clap went the gun, and smack went the dart as it hit home. You could see the dart in her leg. This time Clem put 12 mg straight away to bring her down quick.
When finished we’d give her an antidote. She didn’t run, just slowly walked away from us. Mick and Adam filmed furiously. Soon we were obliged to follow as she was getting far away. So we started up the vehicle and bumped slowly after her. About a kilometer away we caught up with her again. She was acting funny. Ears down, taking little mincing steps. Clem, now remarking on how tough Ugandan giraffes appeared to be shot her again with a second dart, this one containing 5 mg. Still no dropping the animal.
By now we’re all hot, thirsty, and tired - very tired. The camera crew was just bagged. I was taking a lot of photos too. After some five minutes we had to shift again as she wandered off. Normally, Clem informed us, giraffe are lassoed with a rope to knock them off their feet. They only need a little jolt and they’ll go down. Unfortunately we had no rope. It had been left in Paraa by mistake.
Now the giraffe was walking in circles only ten feet from us at times. The first time she approached close the driver panicked and the vehicle flew into reverse, almost knocking us out of the back. After all the cursing and shouting for him to stop, that she couldn’t kick that high, he relented. Still she was wobbling around. I got some magnificent close-ups of her face.
Clem was now exasperated. When she wobbled unstably towards a dead skeleton tree Clem exclaimed, “That’s it you bitch, hit the tree.” She walked right into it, and that’s all she needed to knock her down like a fighter down for the count. “Come on,” Clem roared as we all jumped down and raced towards the animal.
Soon I was holding her head up so she wouldn’t get hypertension. The giraffe’s blood pressure is largely dependent on keeping that big head up, so I was holding my arms around her neck, one leg braced under the neck. She smelled like a hot dusty horse. Her big eyes looked panicked. She was very strong, weaving her neck back and forth, unable to rise. Gladys was taking skin samples from the ringworm-like patch of skin on the neck, while Clem filled three syringes with arterial blood. I felt like someone holding onto a palm tree trunk.
Soon the antidote was given, we pushed her neck up until she stood up, and we ran like hell for the vehicle. Later back in Paraa I asked Mark why he had kept buzzing me with the plane, after the radio batteries had died. “Oh,” he said, “I was just trying to scare away a big female lion that was laying up against the side of the hill watching you.”
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| Friday, August 10th, 2007
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1:13 am - A'sia
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I think I’m starting to understand why she became so important to me. Her name was A’sia. She was about 19 when I first met her; already the mother of two children. What she did for me was profound. In a way she saved Africa for me.
I’d been there a few years by then, and the isolation of our station along with the undercurrent of fear had recently tempered the wonderment of the place. Every day the beauty of the place would wound me to the point I’d wonder if I could ever be happy elsewhere. But the losses, and the uncertainty left marks too.
The station was especially hard to the rangers and staff. The park was so large, and transport so difficult that for a ranger with family in a village adjacent to the park, being stationed at Rabongo was to be largely cut off from loved ones. They worked hard and sent the bulk of their money home.
Other stations in the park allowed family members to live on site with rangers, but our site was too remote, too apt to be cut off, and too hard to evacuate family from in the event of medical emergencies. And so the policy stood until one summer day when I was at headquarters for a meeting.
As the other senior staff got up to leave Bosco, the Chief Warden, waved for me to remain seated.
“You are aware of the policy about dependents at your station?’ he asked not looking up from a paper on his desk. I suddenly felt ill at ease, fearful that my repeated memos requesting to change the policy had offended him.
“Yes, and I understand the reasons why the rule exists… it’s just that…”
“You leave that one.” Bosco interrupted.
Handing me the paper from his desk he looked up and smiled in a disarming way.
“Effective today dependants may stay at Rabongo on a rotating basis. I radioed your people this morning when you had already left and informed them. You will go to Pakwach immediately to pick up the family of Ayub Wadriff, and return this evening to Rabongo.
Stunned, I could only manage a weak,”Thank you.”
And so at half past two I was crossing the river on the ferry and driving north towards Pakwach on the northwest boundary of the park. On the ferry I check my weapon as a nervous habit making sure the action was clean. I’d be driving by last month’s ambush site and I didn’t like it. I slowed as I neared that spot. I hadn’t been there since the immediate aftermath. The scorch marks had faded somewhat in the red dirt of the road.
After crossing the rickety bridge over the Albert Nile, I arrived in the dusty town. Waiting outside the Post Office was a young woman with two you children. Bundles of clothes, aluminum pans, plastic washbasins, and food in plastic bags were heaped around them. I got out to help the woman with the kids. A boy of around two, and a baby of maybe six months.
She was beautiful. I greeted her and introduced myself. She said her name was A’sia. Like Wadriff, she was Muslim, and had dressed in her finest for travel. Robes of deepest purple and reds, embroidered with metallic thread, and silver baubles. Her headscarf was purple too, but edged with silver thread, bits of mirror, tiny silver beads, and even glints of gold.
On that long ride back to camp she took care of her children and was quiet and shy, her eyes flashing with mirth at some joke, then looking down again, remembering propriety. We arrived back home at nearly two in the morning in the rain.
Wadriff was near tears as he helped his family towards their new home. He thanked me warmly and grasping my arm. Then he was carrying a sleeping child towards a dark doorway.
A change started to come over our home with A’sia’s arrival. She brought life and hope to camp. Gentle and firm, she was a magnetic, almost regal personality. What came to amaze me was her frank and level gaze. She was so very young, but so old at the same time. Many months later I asked Ayub if I could sketch or paint his wife. He said he would ask her. She said yes.
She never asked why. She just came out and sat on a stool. Years later I turned that sketch into a painting. It was a wrenching experience. I cried often, and worked obsessively until it was done. Recently I was thinking about that experience, painting A’sia, and it came to me that she had saved Africa for me.
Without her spirit, the life she brought to difficult days, my memories would have tipped toward darker things. She showed us all that even amidst insanity life is good, and it goes on.
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| Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
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12:59 am - The Lion Dream
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Before the journey there was the dream.
THE DREAM
It’s almost dark. I’m standing with my back to the dark wall of a small wooden cabin. I look out into the dusk light; across the gravel road that sweeps across my field of vision right to left, to the darkening green vegetation hanging over and beyond the road. I pick out the sentinel boles of trees and climbers amid the furious undergrowth. I strain to see the unknown thing I know is out there. I can feel it. I am here because it is coming.
A lone cricket begins its tentative song, only to stop after a few moments. I strain my eyes harder to see into the gathering twilight. Did something move off to the right? Then I see it. Walking gracefully, unhurried, wheat colored fur bunching over muscles, the lioness comes walking down the road towards me. She doesn’t look at me, seems not to see me. My breathing has almost stopped. I want to run but cannot.
Her footfalls are silent. Only thirty feet from me now, she stops and looks across to me. The white fur of her chin seems to shine brighter than all else. She coughs from some dark animal place of wet fur and gazing green eyes. I’m unable to move; caught in the grip of fear. She looks across the distance between us, into my eyes and I look back. With a sudden swing of her head she resumes walking along the road, continuing past the cottage, and soon disappears into the twilight. Not now, not yet ... her eyes told me. Suddenly my dreamfright relaxes its grip and I ran.
I sat up violently in bed with a shout. It was dark, and I lay in my bed. Beside me Sue rose sleepily on one elbow. “Are you O.K.?” she asked.
Trying to breath deeply, I’m searching for the dream, which woke me, find it, and pull it back until it is clear in my thoughts. “I was in a forest. By a house. It was almost dark.” I looked at Sue before continuing. She was being very patient.
“Then a lion came. Came walking down the road out of the forest. I couldn’t move.”
Interested she asked, “Did it try and get you?”
“No. It just looked at me. But I think it wanted to come back.”
Sue looked over at our alarm clock. It was three a.m. “Look, if your O.K. I’m gonna go back to sleep. Alright?”
“I’m O.K.” We snuggled up, and I put my arm around her. I thought lazily about my dream for a short time before following Sue into sleep.
* * * * *
A week later my dream-self was again standing beside the wooden cabin in the deepening twilight. I remembered this place from the last dream and guessed what was out there this time. I could feel it in the forest around me. In the air even. Expectation. Something was about to happen. Then, as last time, the lioness came walking down the gravel road from my right, slipping in and out of night shadows, as she approached. As before I couldn’t move. Again she stopped and looked at me, and again she turned away and continued walking down the road to the left, out of view.
I jerked out of sleep and made some sort of noise. I sat up breathing heavily in the bedroom. From beside me Sue asked, “Bad dream?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m alright now.”
After a time I heard Sue’s even breathing. I quietly got out of bed and found my way to the bathroom, to shaken to sleep right away.
From this point on the dream came to me every week to ten days, always in more or less the same fashion. Then, after about three months or so, the dream began to change. I had gotten almost used to the dream, and no longer woke up afterward. When it happened the change was a surprise.
This time I became aware that I was standing on the gravel road. It stretched ahead of and behind me into the twilight. All around lay the dark forest. Off to my left a gravel drive led down to the wooden cottage I remember from before. In one of the windows a yellow light shone dimly. As I was looking around at this scene the feeling of expectation seized me. I knew the lion was coming, and began to feel panic about being out on the road. I looked up the road to see if I could spot her. Something moved in the shadows a hundred feet away.
I started to walk quickly towards the cabin. Glancing over my shoulder I saw the lioness trotting after me, suddenly very threatening. As I passed under a large tree branch I heard a groan above me, and looked up in horror to see a second lion, this one maned, draped over the branch, now bunching it’s rear legs to jump down upon me.
I ran. Past the cabin wall, I peeled around its corner and found a wooden door, which I flung open and slammed behind me. Breathing hard, fear making me sick, I cautiously approached the window that looked out onto the road. There in the near darkness I saw the lions prowling about, their tails slashing the air in agitation.
Again I woke with a shout and a start. “Jesus,” I breathed. This time I’m trembling violently. Sue woke up and put her arm around me and whispered to me that it would be all right.
With its new script, the lion dream came to me every week or two, scaring the shit out of me every time. The scenery never changed, and the plot rarely varied. Then, about six months after the dreams first began, they got truly terrifying. This version of the dream began where the last one left off. I now stood inside the cabin looking out on the road as night fell. Again I felt that sense of expectation. My skin crawled with it.
Looking up in the tree to the large branch overhanging the drive, I saw the male lion laying in wait. The lioness must be up the road still, I thought. I felt relieved that I was safe inside the cabin. Then to my horror I saw Sue walking down the road towards the cabin. “No,” I screamed.
“Sue!,” I yelled to her. “Run! Run! ....Lions.”
She looked up, cocked her head pointing to her ear, then waved as she continued walking towards me. I was sobbing now yelling, “No. No.”
As she passed under the branch the lion fell upon her and seized her by the throat, shaking her now lifeless body like a doll. The lioness walked up the road and joined its mate in dismembering Sue’s body. I pounded on the walls yelling for them to stop. They paused, muzzles dark, and looked in my direction, then resumed their feast.
I woke up screaming and sobbing. While Sue held me I told her what had happened in the dream. She told me not to worry, that it was just a dream, and that she was safe. After an hour I was able to lie back down. This more horrific version of the dream came to me a dozen more times. Each time I awoke trembling, near tears. Over the year during which I got these dreams Sue and I began calling them the “Lion Dream.” Then the dream stopped coming and I forgot about it. I wouldn’t think of the Lion Dream again for six more years.
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12:29 am - A journey that was a beginning, and an end of who I was.
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It was a different place then. One war was just over. Another simmered in the North where I was bound. Buildings were scarred by bullets and fire. Many stood as shells. But life was, as always,... life. People struggled, worked hard, and did business.
I hadn't yet met those people who live on today in my dreams. I was just trying to get on with my life, trying to get to my new park, another post in Africa. I didn't know where any of it would go.
I stood on a busy street above the "old" taxi park in Kampala in the early morning air. I had caught a taxi from Entebbe around sunrise and made the ride into the city in silence; my thoughts full of what the days ahead would bring. When I arrived downtown at seven o'clock the street was already busy with vendors setting up their impromptu roadside stands, people and bicycles careened around each other, and vehicles honking horns while pedestrians scattered in front of them. A noticeable haze hung over the city, product of both natural mist and woodsmoke, the scent of which seems to hang over all settlements in tropical Africa.
The street I stood on perched fifty feet above the rectangular gravel surfaced taxi park, with it's multitude of white minivans. The park was bounded by streets on all sides, mine being on the uphill side. Below me were hundreds of identical white japanese-made minivans, all unmarked, all bound for different destinations. From above I could see no way to determine which vehicle was going where. The taxis were arraigned in sinuous rows; between each line of vehicles a lane just wide enough for the arriving or departing vehicle to squeeze through. And moving all around the taxis was a tide of people; not a white face among them.
A din of voices rose from below into unintelligible roar. Already the noise of the city was unpleasantly loud compared to the calm of Entebbe. I knew I was supposed to catch the Masindi taxi at the "New" taxi park located about a block on the other side of this, the "Old" taxi park I now looked at, but I didn't know how to get there. Tightening my grip on my pack I descend into the chaos below, by way of crudely hewn steps cut into the steep red clay embankment, and ask directions. I started down, careful not to slip on the slick hardpacked clay soil, still wet from rain during the night.
Down on the floor of the taxi park I lost all perspective and was soon lost in a jumble of bodies intent on going different directions. I tried to keep moving in the direction I remembered should take me to the far side of the taxi park. Soon I was amid the taxis and the novelty of a white person wandering alone in the crowd attracted attention.
"Mzungu... where to?"
"Mzungu... where you want?
"Mzungu. Give my my money."
"Mzungu... kuja hapa." (Come here)
"Mzungu... are you lost?"
"Where to Mzungu?"
Soon about a dozen poorly dressed men were all competing to be "at my service," for a price. They were even shoving each other to get closer to me. Suddenly unnerved by all the attention I pressed ahead past the group, who responded with cat calls and laughter.
I squeezed between taxis parked so close together that I had to turn sideways. Looking around I noticed that some men wore a kind of a white frock over their clothes, and stood near a vehicle calling out a name over and over in a sing song voice. These men were older that the street youths who first accosted me when I entered the park, and looked trustworthy to me.
Many I noticed were Muslim, wearing a cap. Some were Tabliques, a branch of Islam, and they wore beards, caps, and rolled their trousers cuffed high above their ankle to avoid soiling them. One such man soon saw me and shouted out," Mzungu, where do you wish to go?"
"Masindi," I blurted out.
"Ah. You must go to the new taxi park.
"Go straight that way until you pass the bus park. It is past there on the right."
"Thank you Mzee," I replied.
He smiled at the honorific and resumed shouting.
Once I reached the far side of the taxi park I walked down the busy road along with a tide of pedestrians, bicycled, boda bodas, taxis just arriving or departing and the occasional lorry which revved its engine and honked to get people out of the way.
The Bus Park was interesting. It was much smaller than the main taxi park, but it made up for it's size in colorfulness. About a dozen brightly painted buses were parked in the lot. Each had vividly painted names on their side which I later learned indicated both the ownership and destination of the vehicle. Also many of the buses had signs indicating that they were "Videolized coaches." I later learned these had a TV and VCR up in the front of the bus in a wire cage hanging from the ceiling or built into a partition. These video coaches subjected their occupants to either nonstop kung-fu movies, or amateurish local music videos, at full volume for the duration of the journey. Needless to say I avoided them like the plague.
Beside the Bus Park was a sewage filled ditch about four feet wide. Here and there wooden planks bridged the gap and people bustled across to and fro, seemingly headless of the reak coming up from the sludge-like waters that flowed languidly below them.
Beyond the Bus Park lay the new taxi park. I crossed the ditch and passed the public latrine ( 50 =/ per use) before passing into the main expanse of the taxi Park itself. This one was much like the former, but this newer staging area is surrounded by shops on three sides. All was ordered chaos to my eyes. Men hawking wares, neatly suited businessmen and women passing through, voices calling out destinations, and all around the dust has begun to rise.
"Mzungu, where are you going?"
"Masindi Ssebo"
"You go just there," he said pointing to a taxi bus (Matatu) some 40 yards away. I picked it out immediately because the dhuka behind the vehicle had a prominent banner above it's wide door that read '" Masindi Dry Goods."
"Thank you Ssebo"
Even though I now knew where I was headed I was besieged by anxious to assist taxi turn-boys asking me where I was going. Some asked in english, but not a few asked in kiswahili, and I was glad that I was able to recognize and understand their questions. When I responded in kind, my answer was greeted with smiled and delighted laughter, and often as not a flurry of fast paced kiswahili that I couldn’t make heads or tails out of.
Reaching the vehicle, the operator got up from the bench in the shade where he had watched my approach.
"Masindi?"
"Yes Ssebo," I replied tiredly.
"Let me take your luggeges," he offered while beginning to help me off with my pack. I was a little nervous letting him take it out of my sight and load it into the rear of the taxi where the hatch back stood wide open. I walked around to watch where he was going to put it. He also watched me watching him, and I immediately understood that he was tired of the suspicions of whites regarding their bags. He didn't say anything, but I immediately trusted him and let him alone while he stuffed it in underneath the rear seat. I walked around the left side to the open sliding door and entered the vehicle.
There were a couple of people already waiting for the taxi to fill and depart. I choose the next to the last seat, mostly on the theory that if we're in a head-on collision the people in the first three rows are likely to be badly hurt, and that if we get rear ended all the baggage and a row of people will cushion the blow.
About eight-thirty we ready to go; a full complement of twentythree in a vehicle licensed to carry only fourteen. The last few minutes before departure are signaled by the driver getting into his seat and starting the vehicle. The turn-boy hurries to collect a few more passengers at the same time he directs people where to place their packages, children and selves. The driver gets out and walks away to haggle with a representative of the taxi park and they appear to haggle on a price to let the vehicle leave the Park. Sometimes this activity is accompanied by much hand waving and about-faces. Finally the discussion is over, an amount presumably agreed to and the driver gets back in slamming his door, and begins revving the engine.
He pulls forward a foot while passengers tired of being packed like sardines stand beside the door. They scramble in and the turn-boy, last to board, swings in sliding the door closed behind him, and sits in the lap of the unlucky passenger seated nearest the door.
The driver is looking for an avenue of escape amidst the passing vehicles and passengers. He inches out into the stream, revving his engine, pulling in his side mirrors where needed to scrape by a parked vehicle, and having words with other drivers trying to the same thing. At times a taxi park employee intervenes, waving one vehicle forward while standing bravely in front of another that's revving it's engine and lurching forward in fits and starts.
After five or ten minutes we manage to escape and attain the street which isn't much less crowded. Weaving our way through pedestrians, lorries, and bicycles loaded with all manner of goods soon we run down an empty side street and pick up speed. The cool air rushes in the windows cooling us off. It is only nine o'clock and already the day is getting hot. Out of the center of Kampala, we now pass under the dappled light cast through shade trees overhanging the street.
Relieved to be under way I settle back into my seat and look at unfamiliar streets lined by colonial buildings run down with neglect, rusting tin roofs a counter point to brightly painted wooden doors set amid flaking paint over concrete block and plaster.
Abruptly we pull into a petrol station to fill up for the journey north. The vehicle keeps running while a attendants, almost always young women, rush to fill the tank and banter a few words with the driver who they obviously talk to each day at this time. The we are off once again. Past Wandagaya and its huge outdoor furniture and produce markets, past numerous business centers....
The road to Gulu is pavement of varying degrees of intactness. Some stretches are being repaired and others are largely potholes and makeshift repairs.
I watch a landscape of rolling green hills punctuated by clusters of mud buildings and matoke patches and shambas. In the fields I can see men and women naked to the waist swinging hoes in the heat, silent windows to the past keeping a rhythm of cultivation unbroken since when?
Out of the tangled bush by the roadside I spot something ahead of us on the left side. I focus on it as we pass by and realize it is the ruined form of a tank, barrel pointing south, treads gone, turret rusting; a monument to a decade of war and sadness. It must be too heavy to remove I think. Later I wonder if people have left it as a reminder.
The further north we travel the browner the land becomes. The rolling hills give way to flat, and the palms and bananas are replaced by shorter savanna trees. Every half an hour we pass a largish village that has become a local trading center, complete with small hotel, restaurant, small bars, a petrol station, and a local police detachment. These small towns are characterized by one story brick buildings which have been "plastered" with cement, and painted- usually white or beige. The roofing is usually rusting corrugated iron sheeting. The smaller shops (dhukas) still are wattle and daub (mud and Sticks) with thatched roofs.
As we approach such a village we slow a bit as ahead people on bicycles, small boys herding cows and other lorries loom ahead. But before we pull even with the bustle of the village, I see what the driver has been angling towards. Under a shady tree, resting on carved three legged stools, are a number of policemen. As we pull to a stop in front of the spiked tire strip I hadn't noticed before, the youngest looking policeman, who is also the only one wearing a helmet in the heat, strides down to talk to our driver.
The passengers watch quietly to see what the police will do. Sometimes police will shake down a vehicle, forcing all passengers and baggage out of the vehicle for inspection. This is done ostensible to enforce the passenger load limit, but in reality is merely a game whose only mystery is is how much money will it take before the police let them on their way again. The young lieutenant wearily greets the driver and glances back into the grossly overloaded vehicle.
A see a few of my fellow passengers glance back at me. To see what I think of all this I wonder? The driver produces his license. It is looked at. He's asked to get out of the van, which he does. A kind of groaning sigh goes up from a few of the passengers. The officer and driver walk around the vehicle, the uniformed man pointing at all the vehicle deficits that he will have to write-up-for safety's sake. The policeman gestures that the side door should be opened and people begin to gather belongings and prepairing to exit the vehicle.
As the policeman walks past my window and sees my white face staring back at him he's obviously surprised to see a Mzungu this far into the bush on public transport, he disgustedly gestures to the turn-boy to get in the vehicle and close the door. To the driver he says something I gather to the equivalent of, "let that be a warning to you. We'll meet again soon." As the driver jumps in his seat and starts the engine, the lingala music starts back up, and some relieved laughter bubbles out. A couple people again look at me , and this time I get the joke. My presence kept them all from being shaken down by the cops.
As we pull away I get to thinking that probably the greatest service to commerce we expats could do for the people of this country would be to ride the matatu's endlessly, foiling the police in their extortion attempts.
We stop again a hundred meters further on in the village proper. As soon as we stop food vendors rush to the open windows thrusting muchomo (roast pork in a skewer), roast maize, roasted bananas (delicious), samosas, cold sodas, and sweet biscuits from Kenya with names like "Sukari." I buy some maize and a soda. I must pay extra if I plan on taking the bottle with me when we depart. I slam down the ice cold coca cola. There is a god, I think.
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| Monday, August 6th, 2007
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7:44 pm
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The stars are unfamiliar here. Many of the usual constellations still pinwheel through the sky with the seasons and hours; but here the hunter dances on his head, the swan flies back home, and a glittering fog winds its southwards towards a small cross of stars that for some reason moves me to tears. When the moon rose for the first time, turned on her side I knew was far from home. That upturned rising crescent I find echoed on every mosque.
Here at Rabongo I experience the stars in glimpses – a patch of the southern sky; portions of familiar landmarks seen through dark branches. Walking under the night forest I look up beyond the dark swaying tree limbs; through the gaps, stars of many colors hum with a furious silence.
So sharp is their light, that as I walk along the road through camp at night I am almost grateful for the tattered shield of the forest canopy, which protects me from the full force of their gaze. Here, in this place far from home, I relearned something I once knew as a boy; that something could be so beautiful that it burned.
current music: crickets
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12:52 am - A day going to Paraa
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Thursday 26 September
... having one last task to complete in Paraa I drove into the village to the dispensary. The midwife, Rose, was very busy preparing some serious drugs, syringes, etc... Apparently one of the women in the village was in a bad way.
She sent a runner to the other nurse. The last thing she gave the runner before sending him off was adrenaline. Serious business. She counted out the chloroquine, aspirin, flagyl and some antihistamines for Okema while I waited sitting on a broken plastic chair.
Her drug cabinet was an old broken refrigerator, door half propped open. Looking for some papers she yanked out the whole drawer out of the wooden desk. Plonking it on the desk top she rummaged around for a while before she found what she was looking for.
Outside in the growing heat of the day a group of small children played on an overturned cast-iron bathtub. Most of them were clad only in frayed shorts, or possibly a rag of a shirt. Some would sit on the curved surface, others reach their arms down into the drain hole. The metal was worn smooth as silk by years of play.
Unable to get the drawer back in properly, Rose set it on the dirt floor. She labeled the old plastic medicine containers with medical tape, writing on each a notation like this: “Chloro - 1x3 day.” When done there I wondered how the sick woman was doing.
current mood: thoughtful
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, December 17th, 2006
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8:57 pm - Test Ned
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