The Blind Man Society

Happy Tuesday everyone, this is the latest excerpt from a chapter I wrote today on tracking the mountain gorillas in the Impenetrable Forest of Uganda.

It was a sunny day, and I was watching a cobra swim in the pool. I had just flown into Entebbe, Uganda from Nairobi and arrived at the hotel with some time to unwind before being picked up the next morning to travel to The Impenetrable Forest to track the mountain gorillas. My head was spinning from the anti-mosquito spray used in my room, and I slowly ate my food on the balcony and wrote in my journal.

The next morning, my guide Ali picked me up in a Volkswagen bus. We set out for a two- day journey across the bottom of the country to the forest that sat on the southwest border with DRC and Rwanda. My arm hung out the window, and I lit a cigarette. I asked Ali about words and phrases in Kiswahili. Lenny Kravitz’s “I belong to you” was on the stereo.

We cleared Kampala and drove through police and military checkpoints. I saw businesses named the Nintendo Hair Salon, and the If Not, Why Not? Café. We passed many villages, communal clay solar ovens, homes with walls but no roofs, and plenty of longhorn oxen. Ali stopped at the official equator line and I got my certificate of crossing it. I took rolls worth of pictures.

We arrived at the White Horse Inn in Kibale at sunset, and I went to my room. There were three channels on the television, and I settled on a Ugandan soap opera. Then I went to the central area of the Inn and wrote in my journal. I overheard international white travelers talking about hunting, guns, race and the USA.

The next morning I ate my breakfast and we left for the mountains. The mountainsides looked like patchwork quilts of terraced fields of red and green and I quickly understood why Uganda is called the Pearl of Africa. Women climbed the mountain sides with infants slung on their backs and loads on their heads, and in the distance were thatched huts with banana trees at their entrance.

We ascended into the mountains, through logging camps, and the scent in the air was just like that of the upper peninsula of Michigan. We rounded a corner and found a gigantic tree fallen across the road, blocking our way. In a flash I was out of the van with my gloves on, and Ali and I attached a rope to the winch and to the tree. He backed up and I pushed as hard as I could. The tree slowly swung around and the two of us managed to roll it off the mountainside. We got back in the bus, and he said “some trips get cancelled because of things like that…but, not today.”

We arrived at Bwindi in the early evening, and I brought my gear into the camp. I stood in the guest house and signed the guestbook, then walked to the veranda and looked at the forest. There were cauldrons of mist and steam rising from pockets all around the mountains, and it rained every couple hours. I was so overstimulated that I couldn’t decide whether to sit down, tie my shoes, or get my camera. Ali walked up with a glass of straight vodka, handed it to me and said “relax, you are finally home.” I smiled because he was exactly right.

I spent the night with a tank and soldiers 40 feet from my front door. Two years before rebels called the Interhamwe (the group responsible for the genocide in Rwanda) had descended into the forest, attacked the camp and taken all the visitors and some of the staff hostage. When the rebels didn’t get their ransom from the government, the people were hacked to death with machetes and set on fire. There was international outrage, and the Ugandan President soon installed a strong military presence in the forest.

In the morning, our group of six people gathered at the forest trail entrance. Soldiers stood talking and laughing at me because I wore a bandana. Only women wear bandanas in Uganda. The guides gathered, and we were given the ground rules for tracking the mountain gorillas. We would spend 30 minutes with Mubare group and be given the chance to track another day if we had a cold or cough. There were so few gorillas (around 340) in the forest and they could catch what we had and die. Then we were told if confronted by the gorillas, to stay low to the ground, lower than them, and not make eye contact. If they charged, we were to stand our ground.

Crossing the river, everyone fell in. The sales pitches from the employees at REI stores about “aggressive tread” on boots meant nothing at that moment. We entered the forest. There were two trackers with machetes, two AK-47 wielding soldiers and us, winding our way through the foliage. The guides recorded where they had found the gorillas the previous day, and we picked up the trail from there. It was so hot I almost passed out, and being a smoker was kicking my ass.

Spiders dropped on silk web lines out of the treetops like paratroopers on us, and one of our group got Velcro-stuck to plants called stinging nettles. We had to be on the lookout for cobras, scorpions and other venomous animals, and I exclaimed that the forest was not named “impenetrable” for nothing as we wound our way up the mountainside.

Finally, the guides spotted alfalfa looking blocks called gorilla spoor and we knew we were close. Branches had been broken and undergrowth was mashed down. There were tracks in the muddy ground. The guides hushed us and went on ahead into the bush. We could hear vocalizations and grunts – the guides were calling to the gorillas to let them know we were there.

A clang of the machete and a wall of growth fell to reveal Mubare group on a nest of leaves and branches taking a nap. We slowly walked up, twenty feet from the family and saw the Silverback Rwandese (the old man, in Kiswahili) being groomed by a female holding a three month old baby. The baby watched his mother picking at his father’s fur and reached over and grabbed a handful and pulled on it. Rwandese reached around quickly and gave the baby a swat, like hitting the snooze button on an alarm clock. The startled youngster froze and then started crying. His mother made a face and then rocked him gently.

There were two three year old gorillas in the group. One of them rose and climbed halfway up a tree. He sat there watching us and then turned to his sibling and tried to coax him to come play. The brother sat by his mother watching and dejected the youngster in the tree dropped his head into his hand. Finally, the young gorilla sprang forward and ran up the tree trunk. Both gorillas raced into the treetops and were swinging and baring their canines as they roughhoused in the canopy.

We watched. Then Rwandese rose up on his hind legs and smashed forward into the forest. The family rose to follow, with the mothers calling to the two young gorillas in the treetops. They came racing down the tree and jumped on their mother’s backs as the group disappeared into the forest. I was thrilled. I had taken many pictures but used most of my time to watch these magnificent animals.

We wound our way back down the forest and emerged an hour later at camp. Ali was there to meet me, and we moved my gear back into the bus for the two-day journey back to Entebbe. I had one last cigarette, and Ali told me that I had achieved my dream at last. I told him the Mountain Gorillas were a gift to the world. He put the Back Street Boys on the stereo and we were off. I just smiled, and prepared myself for Mombasa.