His name is Agashya. He’s the dominant male of a family of 25 wild mountain gorillas. I was hanging out with him this day last week, he’s pretty sound once you get to know him. Our tracker had a blatant disregard for the ‘7 metre distance rule’ as we were only about a foot and a half from the 200 kilogram bigman. He sat at the top of the hillside keeping an eye on his relatives whilst stylishly stripping a bamboo branch. When we first arrived the tracker let out a series of a grumbly ‘hmmmmhmmmms’ to let him know it was him and everything was ok. He was talking to a gorilla. Dr. Hughlittle had a rival. We saw the females, juveniles, blackbacks and babies. It was indisputely the quickest hour of my life.
There’s a church about 100 yards from our hostel where hundreds of innocent Rwandans were murdered 17 years ago. They all had sought refuge there thinking it was safe from the rebels but they threw hand grenades into the building and shot anyone who managed to flee. There’s a picture in the Genocide Museum of this church’s courtyard where there is a carpet of corpses left to decay. There are thousands of these individual stories that are spine-shudderingly horrific. Stories of neighbours, co-workers and even family members turning on each other due to dilligent propaganda and successful hate-rallies. This genocide wasn’t just contained to a few pockets of violence within the country, everywhere in Rwanda was ruthlessly devastated. When we’re driving through the villages it’s pretty much a fact that everyone we see was directly affected. These people were inflicted with a substantial trauma that none of us will ever experience. I didn’t want to use the phrase ‘put into perspective’ but next time something small and insignificant is upsetting you, try to consider the plight of these people and how much you have to be thankful for.
We had our first sleep in Tanzania last night. It’s a guesthouse run by the chief of police for the town of Nyakanazi and the locals were certainly not used to Muzungu presence. Moses says that the stretch from here to Zanzibar is raw Africa, Kenya and Uganda are a bit more tourist savvy. A lad called Johnbosco gave us a tour around Nyakanazi, we walked through the markets with chickens, goats, donkeys and cows everywhere. After about 10 minutes of walking, we turned around to our very own entourage composed entirely of children. A simple thumbs up put them in fits of giggles. They followed us right back to the big garda man’s gaff and stood at the gate just watching us.
I don’t see many mirrors throughout the day here. So my beard has surprised me twice. I’ll be ready for him next time.
In a space of 5 minutes, I found a chameleon, had a beer bought for me and was told there was a Chelsea match on in the bar. I nearly imploded. We watched the Blues win and the Manchester derby and then got ready for our first African night out on the town. The club was called ‘Lips’ and we were advised to be there by half nine. We were the only ones there for about two hours. Within those two hours I got two tours of the place from a giant man.
‘This is the dancefloor, that’s where you dance’
‘Yeah, cool, gotcha’
‘There’s the DJ, he plays the music’
‘Oh right yeah’
There’s a reason he’s a security guard and not a tour guide. As we were sitting there having a drink watching the Real Madrid-Barcelona match (projected onto the wall at the back for some reason) waiting for more people to arrive, there was a blackout. If someone had approached me this time last year and said;
‘Hugh, this time next year you’ll be in Mwanza in Tanzania, in a club with 6 people you just met, hoping Ronaldo doesn’t score, in the pitch black silence..’. I’d have said
‘Who are you and how do you know my name?’. I also wouldn’t have believed him. When we left the place was packed and if this was an Irish essay I’d avoid the phrase ‘Bhì sè dubh le daoine’ for fear that it may be misconstrued.
We’ve been eating Ugali, they call it N’Shima further south. It’s maize meal mixed with water and some butter. It’s regarded as the principal foodstuff of Africa and I love it. It’s got consistency like mashed potato but very springy and a bit stickier. It’s a perfect student food. You can have with anything and I’d say it’s very cheap. You’ve seen it here first, I’m bringing Ugali to the light-walleted youth of Ireland. There’ll be one difference though. Ireland will refer to it as Hughgali.
For the last three nights I have stayed in three different bush camps. The first was on the outskirts of the fenceless Serengeti National Park. We all signed up to do a game drive that night. We set out with an impressive spotlight in search for the nocturnal creatures. We were about 30 yards from our site when we found a bush full of hyenas. They were very shy and as we were waiting for them to poke a head out when the guide found a baby chameleon on a branch. He let me play with him for a while before we moved on. We saw a serval, African wildcats, a bushbaby and the very rarely seen aardvark. Google ‘serval’, She’s sexy.
During the campfire that night, a man apparated at our camp. He had a stern look on his face, a trenchcoat kinda thing and a bow and arrow. He lit himself a fire and prepared himself for a night of Muzungu guarding. He only had three arrows and we asked him what happens if four lions come, to which he replied ‘I’ll get two with one’. He was probably as cool as those rafting guys.
We did a morning game drive in the Serengeti yesterday, still no leopard. However, we saw an encounter involving a hungry male lion and an isolated mamma buffalo with her calf. The lion kept lunging for the calf only to be charged by the mom. This happened a good few times before a brigade of the biggest bravest male buffalo broke off from the herd to rescue the distressed pair and they succeeded. It was proper National Geographic stuff. On top if that we saw a herd of elephants that had at least 70 members. They were everywhere, there was even a hippo invited to the party. The younger ellies were chasing the poor blob all over the place.
On our way to our second bush camp we were assaulted by Tsetse flies. They’re nasty bloodsucking little ****s (those stars are for you grandma). It’s a sharp sting and they can get you through clothes. I’d take mosquitoes over tsetse flies any day of the week. When we got there we lit a fire to repel them and people starting getting ready for showers. Moses was the first to walk over for one and next thing I heard was ‘HE-OOOOOO!’. Mo was calling me in his thick Kenyan accent. I legged it over to him and when I arrived, he said ‘Green Mamba’. I saw an acid green snake desperately trying to climb the trunk of an acacia. If there was no such thing as neurotoxic venom, I would have kissed her right there and then. I sat at the bottom of the tree watching her for ages when she finally summited it. I need to have a serious word with St. Patrick sometime soon. Hyenas watched me, and laughed at me, from a bush as I cooked sausages that evening and the next morning there was a buffalo behind the shower so we had to be extra extra careful.
Last night we stayed at Simba camp on the edge of the Ngorongoro crater. We pitched the tents beside three grazing zebra. We were told that where there’s prey there’s predators, also there was a high chance of elephants coming in the night. We had a campfire and a few beers, we chased some zebra around the field and went to bed. One of the girls heard a loud growl at three o’clock and didn’t go back to sleep. Unfortunately I slept through it.
I’m currently in Arusha and shall be on Zanzibar Island on Saturday. The men are heading out for a testoterone filled day of big game fishing while the ladies go off and play with Barbie dolls or something girly like that. There’ll be snorkelling, diving, turtle and dolphin swimming, seafood BBQ’s (I’m there) and hopefully a full moon party. There’s an island to the north that is the world capital of voodoo. So if you suddenly keel over or fly into a wall, try to be nicer to me in the future.
Tonight is Moses’ last night with us so we’re planning to go out on a bender. Kanyo is the name of the tour leader taking over. Kanyo is taking us West, I’ll use that one to break the ice later. We have more reason to celebrate as we have four newbies joining us and our big yellow truck. Tomorrow will mark four weeks since I left so there’s another reason to celebrate. It’s gonna be a messy one.
Silar erbody
