Saturday, 31th July. Semliki Time: 06:15pm
Jee whiz, cripes and cor-blimey! Just a short blog entry. We got a message from the head of the Semliki Ugandan Wildlife Association today saying that, if we could not produce permits, prompt-haste, we would be ejected from Semliki. Tomorrow it looks like we’re off to Kampala on a London-transport-deisel-engine-97-horsepower-omnibus. Or whatever the Ugandan equivalent is…. With luck we’ll be able to pick up the appropriate permits and not loose too much money in the process. Its all a bit sudden, but hopefully a change of scenery will do us good. Seeing the same five huts and the same jungle for the best part of four weeks has caused my brain to start eating itself, and the mild heatstroke hasn’t helped either.
In other news, Alex found an elephant tooth today in the river. When elephants get very old, they loose their back molars. Rather an enviable paper weight if we can clean it up. Though if she gets the elephant tooth, I bagsie the chimp skull.
More from the capital.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Thursday, 29 July 2010
What's "to know"?
Thursday, 29th July. Semliki Time: 04:29pm
Straying, somewhat, from the topic of bio-anth, I’ve recently been having a rather extended debate with a friend about the meaning of the term “knowledge”. Both definitions are based on the assumption that there is such a thing as “true” and post-modernists, ontological relativists and the criminally delusional can take a seat in the naughty corner for the remainder of this blog entry. My friend, a philosopher of some renown, argues that for something to be knowledge it has to be “true”, as opposed to “belief”. I, on the contrary, think that knowledge does not have to be true, but just has to be a piece of information that is justified, somehow.
Okay, so by my definition, one could have knowledge about ‘God’ based on reading the bible. One would know what made God angry, what made God tick, how many days God created the world in and anything else that could be gleaned from various sources about what God was like. I would argue that, even if God doesn’t exist, knowledge about God would still be knowledge. Replace God with Harry Potter, homeopathy or Lady Gaga’s adherence to ‘normality’ if the deistic example is distasteful to you. One both has knowledge about what is written about God, knowledge about what he did and knowledge about God himself. Whether he exists or not is moot.
The esteemed philosopher would argue, however, that this knowledge about God, assuming that God (/Harry Potter/Acupuncture/L. Ron Hubbard’s sense of shame) doesn't exist, would not be knowledge about God at all. It would only be knowledge about what has been written about God (/Harry Potter/Peter Pan), not knowledge about God himself.
Got that? Let me give you another example, just to drive home the distinction between our two opposing definitions. Let’s take Isaac Newton, a fellow who reputedly knew a lot. While gravity and ‘the cat flap’ are still considered fairly sound concepts in this day and age, not all of Newton’s beliefs still hold much water. For example, Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and he knew, through rigorous empirical tests, that it was possible to turn base metals into gold. Ignoring the obvious issue of hyperinflation and the irreparable devaluation of gold in seventeenth century Britain, I would argue that all the techniques that Isaac had recorded all constituted knowledge. Isaac knew that if he mixed certain chemicals, he could get gold. We now know that he was completely wrong. Despite not working, however, I would argue that Isaac's many methods of creating valuable metals constitute knowledge of alchemy, despite the fact that none of them work.
My philosophical friend, let's call him “Socrato”, would argue that, while knowing what Isaac thought about alchemy would constitute “knowledge”, Newton’s techniques themselves would not be knowledge of how to turn base metals into gold because they did not turn base metals into gold. I would argue that his techniques would be knowledge about how to turn base metals into gold, just fairly useless knowledge, due to the fact that they didn’t turn base metals into gold. In the same way, I would argue that the knowledge that Australia’s capital is Sydney is knowledge about Australia and the knowledge that the world will end in 2012 is knowledge about the end of the world. It doesn’t matter to my definition that the two previous statements are entirely fallacious (we hope).
So, there you have it. Does knowledge have to be fact, or can knowledge be fiction? Would you use knowledge in either of these two ways? Would you define it as something completely different? Which definition fits yours the best? Please give an answer as unbiased as possible and ask your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, spouses, cellmates, life-partners and sugar-daddies to do the same! E-mail your answers to dnes2@cam.ac.uk or slap them in the comments.
Then, we shall know!
Straying, somewhat, from the topic of bio-anth, I’ve recently been having a rather extended debate with a friend about the meaning of the term “knowledge”. Both definitions are based on the assumption that there is such a thing as “true” and post-modernists, ontological relativists and the criminally delusional can take a seat in the naughty corner for the remainder of this blog entry. My friend, a philosopher of some renown, argues that for something to be knowledge it has to be “true”, as opposed to “belief”. I, on the contrary, think that knowledge does not have to be true, but just has to be a piece of information that is justified, somehow.
Okay, so by my definition, one could have knowledge about ‘God’ based on reading the bible. One would know what made God angry, what made God tick, how many days God created the world in and anything else that could be gleaned from various sources about what God was like. I would argue that, even if God doesn’t exist, knowledge about God would still be knowledge. Replace God with Harry Potter, homeopathy or Lady Gaga’s adherence to ‘normality’ if the deistic example is distasteful to you. One both has knowledge about what is written about God, knowledge about what he did and knowledge about God himself. Whether he exists or not is moot.
The esteemed philosopher would argue, however, that this knowledge about God, assuming that God (/Harry Potter/Acupuncture/L. Ron Hubbard’s sense of shame) doesn't exist, would not be knowledge about God at all. It would only be knowledge about what has been written about God (/Harry Potter/Peter Pan), not knowledge about God himself.
Got that? Let me give you another example, just to drive home the distinction between our two opposing definitions. Let’s take Isaac Newton, a fellow who reputedly knew a lot. While gravity and ‘the cat flap’ are still considered fairly sound concepts in this day and age, not all of Newton’s beliefs still hold much water. For example, Newton was a firm believer in alchemy and he knew, through rigorous empirical tests, that it was possible to turn base metals into gold. Ignoring the obvious issue of hyperinflation and the irreparable devaluation of gold in seventeenth century Britain, I would argue that all the techniques that Isaac had recorded all constituted knowledge. Isaac knew that if he mixed certain chemicals, he could get gold. We now know that he was completely wrong. Despite not working, however, I would argue that Isaac's many methods of creating valuable metals constitute knowledge of alchemy, despite the fact that none of them work.
My philosophical friend, let's call him “Socrato”, would argue that, while knowing what Isaac thought about alchemy would constitute “knowledge”, Newton’s techniques themselves would not be knowledge of how to turn base metals into gold because they did not turn base metals into gold. I would argue that his techniques would be knowledge about how to turn base metals into gold, just fairly useless knowledge, due to the fact that they didn’t turn base metals into gold. In the same way, I would argue that the knowledge that Australia’s capital is Sydney is knowledge about Australia and the knowledge that the world will end in 2012 is knowledge about the end of the world. It doesn’t matter to my definition that the two previous statements are entirely fallacious (we hope).
So, there you have it. Does knowledge have to be fact, or can knowledge be fiction? Would you use knowledge in either of these two ways? Would you define it as something completely different? Which definition fits yours the best? Please give an answer as unbiased as possible and ask your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, spouses, cellmates, life-partners and sugar-daddies to do the same! E-mail your answers to dnes2@cam.ac.uk or slap them in the comments.
Then, we shall know!
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Wednesday, 28th July. Semliki Time: 03:22pm
The reason I’m in Semliki is because I’m working on a project for my third year dissertation and a couple of you have asked to hear more about the project itself. I’m studying the ‘bark eating’ habits of the local Chimpanzee population, a project which is rather more interesting than it sounds. Bark eating is almost always completely disregarded in the literature and, in the few articles discussing it, the conclusion has been “it’s obviously a fallback food”. Interestingly, at Semiliki, while I’ve yet to examine the seasonality of bark eating, it seems that chimps eat bark both when food is scarce and, peculiarly, when food is plentiful. I’ve therefore constructed five hypotheses which I’m going to try and systematically disprove.
Number One – Ne’er a drop to drink.
Water, at Semliki, is less available that at other sites. The rainfall is significantly less than at Mahale, Budongo, Kibale and the like, and chimpanzees are forced, during the dry season, to dig wells in order to quench their thirst. Incidentally, they sometimes dig wells during the rainy season as well, but that’s Alex’s project. Why then, would chimpanzees turn to chewing on trees? Maybe they want to extract extra water from the bark to make up for the water which is lacking in other areas of their life.
This is supported by the fact that they chew the phloem and the cambium, the parts of the tree where the most liquid is found. Sadly, this hypothesis is disproved by almost anything else. While I’ve been here, steams have been flowing freely, though admittedly they’re a rather long way down. The one wad of freshly chewed bark I’ve managed to collect (my numerous other samples are all dry), however, had not been sucked dry and, conversely, actually contained more liquid than you’d expect a non-chewed piece of tree to, due to excess saliva. Last but not least, the other foods that the chimps have been eating while I’ve been here, such as ‘Saba’ fruit, look to have a far higher water content than tree bark. Of the two times I’ve observed bark-eating ‘in the flesh’, as it were, they have been between bouts of feeding on juicier food all together. Okay, one down, what’s next.
Number Two – Mr Masticator
Chimps in other sites have been seen to chew up large wads of leaves and/or pith at the same time as other foods such as meat or eggs. Nishida (ninteen-seventy-something…) proposed that this was either to retain the taste of the second food for longer, or to help ‘digest’ the food even further before its swallowed. Are you thinking what I’m thinking B1? I think I am B2!
Could it be that the chimps are chewing up bark along with some other food source in order to grind it up even more? Or maybe to extract and preserve the toothsome flavours? Well, the first collection of wads I found supported this hypothesis quite well. Almost all of them contained pieces of acacia leaf that had been mashed up. Furthermore, one of them contained two pieces of snail shell which had obviously been heavily ‘mashed up’ by the bark. Sadly, all further pieces of bark, except for one or two containing a very few leaves, have been free from detritus of any kind. On top of that, of the two times I’ve observed the chimps chewing bark, one of them was not directly preceded or followed by any other form of food eating and, the second, while combined with leaves, was ejected too quickly to have been used to mash up food or conserve flavour. In fact, the second incident of bark eating looked more like the bark and the leaves were being used more for the purposes of cleaning Saba fruit off teeth, which brings us on to…
Number Three – The Dental Hygiene Hypothesis.
Chimpanzees, if they could, would live almost solely on fruit. They eat leaves and pith during seasons when fruit is scarce, and they eat meat when they can get it (which is rarely), but the vast majority of chimp foods are fruit. Fruits are filled with two things – natural acids and copious sugar – both of which aren’t great for the teeth. But chimps can’t buy Colgate, so how do they get rid of all that plaque. Maybe the bark, which they chew into wads, is actually not being eaten, but is being used as a makeshift toothbrush.
Indeed the first piece of behavioural evidence I recorded seems to directly support this hypothesis. Fuller, a young adult male, after eating Saba fruit for several hours, leapt over to a cola tree, tore off strips of bark and shoved them into his mouth. The bark was then moved to the front of the mouth and seemingly rubbed around the front teeth. Leaves were then inserted into the mouth and chewed for a few seconds before Fuller spat everything out and started to pick leaves, pieces of bark and pieces of saba from his teeth and lips. Sadly, I’ve yet to find any other evidence to support the dental hygiene hypothesis. For one, very few of the trees we’ve discovered with stripped bark have had evidence of chimpanzee-eaten fruit nearby. For a second, Buzz, the other chimpanzee who has been observed to bark strip, had hardly touched any fruit all day. Thirdly, Fuller's bark chewing bout came directly between feeding bouts – why clean your teeth and then start feeding again? Sadly, because of the fact that the Semliki chimps are unhabituated and run away each time they see us, it will be very difficult to establish a correlation between feeding on sugary foods and bark chewing. From the ‘etho-archaeological evidence’, however, it looks like the chimps strip bark less often when feeding on saba, rather than more often.
Soon I hope to be able to find some method of testing fresh samples for plaque. After that, all I need is some more fresh samples (five to be statistically significant, more’s the pity) and I can knock this one out of the park for good.
Number Four – A taste of your own medicine
As one is quite often told, tropical rainforests contain a whole wealth of plants whose medical benefits remain untold. Secondary compounds found in treebark and used to fight off bacteria can, very often, have a positive effect when eaten by humans and might have mild antibiotic properties or contain other, so-called, ‘active ingredients’. Indeed, a number of interviews which I conducted earlier today have revealed that four out of the seven known trees that chimpanzees eat bark from are used in medicine. The phloem and cambium of two species of Acacia and Tamarindus are boiled with other herbs to create a cough medicine. Tamarindus fruit is juiced to create a liquid which ‘purified the blood’. The outer bark of Ficus Mucuso is also boiled with leaves by the Mkonjo people to cure “problems of the uterus”. Excellent.
The problem here is that even if these barks are used locally as medicine, this is no guarantee that they actually work. Furthermore, even if they do work, something I have no way of finding out without embarking on a full-on, double-blind, 50-subject bark-eating binge, there’s no way to tell if it's the bark or the other leaves and herbs which cure coughs and uteral complications. Finally, half of the darned plants are never eaten by the locals and, quite possibly, have no medical benefits whatsoever.
Hypothesis Number Five – Dinner
Fallback food. Maybe Nishida was right. Maybe it's a fallback food. Hopefully I can use some backdata to try and see if bark eating correlates to food scarcity. If it does, then there’s your boring answer!
Any other ideas? And questions? Anything you think I should be looking for? Give me an e-mail or a comment, do!
The reason I’m in Semliki is because I’m working on a project for my third year dissertation and a couple of you have asked to hear more about the project itself. I’m studying the ‘bark eating’ habits of the local Chimpanzee population, a project which is rather more interesting than it sounds. Bark eating is almost always completely disregarded in the literature and, in the few articles discussing it, the conclusion has been “it’s obviously a fallback food”. Interestingly, at Semiliki, while I’ve yet to examine the seasonality of bark eating, it seems that chimps eat bark both when food is scarce and, peculiarly, when food is plentiful. I’ve therefore constructed five hypotheses which I’m going to try and systematically disprove.
Number One – Ne’er a drop to drink.
Water, at Semliki, is less available that at other sites. The rainfall is significantly less than at Mahale, Budongo, Kibale and the like, and chimpanzees are forced, during the dry season, to dig wells in order to quench their thirst. Incidentally, they sometimes dig wells during the rainy season as well, but that’s Alex’s project. Why then, would chimpanzees turn to chewing on trees? Maybe they want to extract extra water from the bark to make up for the water which is lacking in other areas of their life.
This is supported by the fact that they chew the phloem and the cambium, the parts of the tree where the most liquid is found. Sadly, this hypothesis is disproved by almost anything else. While I’ve been here, steams have been flowing freely, though admittedly they’re a rather long way down. The one wad of freshly chewed bark I’ve managed to collect (my numerous other samples are all dry), however, had not been sucked dry and, conversely, actually contained more liquid than you’d expect a non-chewed piece of tree to, due to excess saliva. Last but not least, the other foods that the chimps have been eating while I’ve been here, such as ‘Saba’ fruit, look to have a far higher water content than tree bark. Of the two times I’ve observed bark-eating ‘in the flesh’, as it were, they have been between bouts of feeding on juicier food all together. Okay, one down, what’s next.
Number Two – Mr Masticator
Chimps in other sites have been seen to chew up large wads of leaves and/or pith at the same time as other foods such as meat or eggs. Nishida (ninteen-seventy-something…) proposed that this was either to retain the taste of the second food for longer, or to help ‘digest’ the food even further before its swallowed. Are you thinking what I’m thinking B1? I think I am B2!
Could it be that the chimps are chewing up bark along with some other food source in order to grind it up even more? Or maybe to extract and preserve the toothsome flavours? Well, the first collection of wads I found supported this hypothesis quite well. Almost all of them contained pieces of acacia leaf that had been mashed up. Furthermore, one of them contained two pieces of snail shell which had obviously been heavily ‘mashed up’ by the bark. Sadly, all further pieces of bark, except for one or two containing a very few leaves, have been free from detritus of any kind. On top of that, of the two times I’ve observed the chimps chewing bark, one of them was not directly preceded or followed by any other form of food eating and, the second, while combined with leaves, was ejected too quickly to have been used to mash up food or conserve flavour. In fact, the second incident of bark eating looked more like the bark and the leaves were being used more for the purposes of cleaning Saba fruit off teeth, which brings us on to…
Number Three – The Dental Hygiene Hypothesis.
Chimpanzees, if they could, would live almost solely on fruit. They eat leaves and pith during seasons when fruit is scarce, and they eat meat when they can get it (which is rarely), but the vast majority of chimp foods are fruit. Fruits are filled with two things – natural acids and copious sugar – both of which aren’t great for the teeth. But chimps can’t buy Colgate, so how do they get rid of all that plaque. Maybe the bark, which they chew into wads, is actually not being eaten, but is being used as a makeshift toothbrush.
Indeed the first piece of behavioural evidence I recorded seems to directly support this hypothesis. Fuller, a young adult male, after eating Saba fruit for several hours, leapt over to a cola tree, tore off strips of bark and shoved them into his mouth. The bark was then moved to the front of the mouth and seemingly rubbed around the front teeth. Leaves were then inserted into the mouth and chewed for a few seconds before Fuller spat everything out and started to pick leaves, pieces of bark and pieces of saba from his teeth and lips. Sadly, I’ve yet to find any other evidence to support the dental hygiene hypothesis. For one, very few of the trees we’ve discovered with stripped bark have had evidence of chimpanzee-eaten fruit nearby. For a second, Buzz, the other chimpanzee who has been observed to bark strip, had hardly touched any fruit all day. Thirdly, Fuller's bark chewing bout came directly between feeding bouts – why clean your teeth and then start feeding again? Sadly, because of the fact that the Semliki chimps are unhabituated and run away each time they see us, it will be very difficult to establish a correlation between feeding on sugary foods and bark chewing. From the ‘etho-archaeological evidence’, however, it looks like the chimps strip bark less often when feeding on saba, rather than more often.
Soon I hope to be able to find some method of testing fresh samples for plaque. After that, all I need is some more fresh samples (five to be statistically significant, more’s the pity) and I can knock this one out of the park for good.
Number Four – A taste of your own medicine
As one is quite often told, tropical rainforests contain a whole wealth of plants whose medical benefits remain untold. Secondary compounds found in treebark and used to fight off bacteria can, very often, have a positive effect when eaten by humans and might have mild antibiotic properties or contain other, so-called, ‘active ingredients’. Indeed, a number of interviews which I conducted earlier today have revealed that four out of the seven known trees that chimpanzees eat bark from are used in medicine. The phloem and cambium of two species of Acacia and Tamarindus are boiled with other herbs to create a cough medicine. Tamarindus fruit is juiced to create a liquid which ‘purified the blood’. The outer bark of Ficus Mucuso is also boiled with leaves by the Mkonjo people to cure “problems of the uterus”. Excellent.
The problem here is that even if these barks are used locally as medicine, this is no guarantee that they actually work. Furthermore, even if they do work, something I have no way of finding out without embarking on a full-on, double-blind, 50-subject bark-eating binge, there’s no way to tell if it's the bark or the other leaves and herbs which cure coughs and uteral complications. Finally, half of the darned plants are never eaten by the locals and, quite possibly, have no medical benefits whatsoever.
Hypothesis Number Five – Dinner
Fallback food. Maybe Nishida was right. Maybe it's a fallback food. Hopefully I can use some backdata to try and see if bark eating correlates to food scarcity. If it does, then there’s your boring answer!
Any other ideas? And questions? Anything you think I should be looking for? Give me an e-mail or a comment, do!
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Thirty Seven Much
Tuesday, 27th July. Semliki Time: 09:06pm
Still feeling not-too-hot. These three Semliki colloquialisms cheered me up, though:
“Thankyus”: A phrase expressing gratitude to everyone, including oneself.
“Thirty seven”: ‘Satisfied’, when pronounced in the local accent, sounds a lot like ‘thirtyfive. If you’re more than satisfied, you are, therefore, thirtysix or maybe even thirtyseven!
“Three much”: A little more than too much.
Still feeling not-too-hot. These three Semliki colloquialisms cheered me up, though:
“Thankyus”: A phrase expressing gratitude to everyone, including oneself.
“Thirty seven”: ‘Satisfied’, when pronounced in the local accent, sounds a lot like ‘thirtyfive. If you’re more than satisfied, you are, therefore, thirtysix or maybe even thirtyseven!
“Three much”: A little more than too much.
Monday, 26 July 2010
I Rat
Monday, 26th July. Semliki Time: 09:30pm
A very, very short entry today, as I’m afraid I might have a mild case of heat stroke. Or maybe I’m just a little tired out.
Anyway, at dinner, as we were finishing our beans and dough, a tremendous clunking was heard in the kitchen. We ran to look and were confronted by a humongous rat. It was almost the size of small dog and probably far stronger. The rat, not at all fazed by the company, continued with his merry task of making off with a whole jar of peanut butter. I’ve no idea how he was planning to open it but, again, the rat was not fazed. He would have got away with it too if weren’t for our speedy cook, who wrestled the peanut butter from his slavering fangs. Now the kitchen surfaces are empty and everything is locked away in sturdy boxes. Next time, rat, come at night.
In other news, I saw a Kingfisher.
A very, very short entry today, as I’m afraid I might have a mild case of heat stroke. Or maybe I’m just a little tired out.
Anyway, at dinner, as we were finishing our beans and dough, a tremendous clunking was heard in the kitchen. We ran to look and were confronted by a humongous rat. It was almost the size of small dog and probably far stronger. The rat, not at all fazed by the company, continued with his merry task of making off with a whole jar of peanut butter. I’ve no idea how he was planning to open it but, again, the rat was not fazed. He would have got away with it too if weren’t for our speedy cook, who wrestled the peanut butter from his slavering fangs. Now the kitchen surfaces are empty and everything is locked away in sturdy boxes. Next time, rat, come at night.
In other news, I saw a Kingfisher.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Black and White and Red All Over
Sunday, 25th July. Semliki Time: 04:41pm
-- The below entry, in the interest of unbiased cultural commentary, contains words and concepts of a graphic nature and should be skipped by elderly relatives ---
I’d like to say that the Guardian was my favorite British newspaper, I really would. It fits my namby-pamby, vaguely liberal political sympathies better than any of the other broadsheets and I needn’t comment on the discrepancy in standards of journalistic integrity when it’s compared to the tabloids. My favorite British newspaper, I’m ashamed to say however, is The Sun. A mere 30p opens the gates to a whole world of excellent headlines, laughable journalistic bias, lovably backwards social commentary and, my favorite feature of all, ‘Dear Deidre's Photo Casebook”, where partially-clothed ugly people routinely commit acts of gross infidelity. And then there’s the particularly wonderful ‘news in briefs’, where topless women deliver their take on politics, current affairs and the lofty drama of the world stage. Free from the vitriol of the Daily Mail and the smug self-indulgence of Private Eye, I didn't think The Sun could ever be bettered. Uganda, however, has proved me wrong. Uganda has shown me Red Pepper.
On the face of it, Red Pepper looks like any other tabloid. Ugly type-setting, a sensational headline and promises of “Hot Goss” emblazon the front cover. Flick through the pages, however, and you enter a land of whimsically disgusting euphemisms and bizarrely graphic and frank accounts of regional travesties. To give you just a small taste of the strange, depraved, accidentally bizarre world of Red Pepper, here are a few choice excerpts:
Bonk Your Own babes - Kabakumba
THE MINISTER OF Information, Matsiko Kabakumba, has urged the Banyoro men to bonk their own babes to reduce the level of Aids in their area… “Stop distributing your whoppers to other women,” Kabakumba vowed, before adding that all women are the same… “Do not overlook your husband because the law protects you. They will leave you and shaft others”.
No. I didn’t change the wording of that at all. And that one’s relatively tame. Here’s an oh-so-painful story about a man suffering from badly-timed case of lymphatic philariasis, a mosquito-borne parasite that causes irreversible swelling of the lymph nodes and can be easily cured with a single course of an affordable drug. Fear not, I’ve kept the original grammar intact:
Man Shafts Neighbor’s Wife, Loses Whopper
The latest shocking news from Mbale Municipality is that a man who reportedly shafted his neighbour’s wife is at the verge of losing his whopper and leg. Sobbingly narrating his ordeal to this reporter, Martin Ochwo, 27, a resident of Namakwekwe village said his whopper and leg started swelling after he had a quarrel with juicy Jane Nambozo’s husband. With tears rolling down his cheeks, Ochwo said he used to have steamy romps with Nambozo when her husband had been transferred to Kampala.
“When Nambozo’s husband left for Kampala, we feasted on each other as if our lives depended on sex.
We would shaft from hotels in Mbale town and at Nambozo’s house. She is so sweet a lady that I could not imagine dying without having a piece of her Kandahar”, horny Ochwo said. The steamy bonking sessions crumbled after Nambozo’s husband caught the duo red handed shafting in his matrimonial bed.
"Nambozo’s husband vowed to finish me off for feasting on his juicy wife.
I am not surprised that my leg and whopper swell every day,” Ochwo said.
One of sexpest Ochwo’s relatives says they have tried all kinds of medication in vain.
Poor sexpest Ochwo! Okay, okay, sorry, this is just getting gratuitous. Maybe I just have an immature sense of humour. But, y’know, at least I didn’t mention the “OMG Magazine Special Report”:
Top City Homo Bonked To Death
- Had Swallowed 5000 Giant Whoppers
- Fallen Homo star Was King Of Blow Job
- Even Some Government Officials Worked His Bum.
Or the mystifying advert for:
Maama Wabaana Mwajjuma Nalwadds
Specialists in:
- Fibroids
- Miscarriages
-Prolapse of the Rectum (Emmeeme)
-Size of the Weapon.
- Body boast and body loose.
- Women fluids in 1 day.
- Returns lost lovers urgently and properly.
- Breast firming and other body parts.
- “Liquid form” for Sexually weak man.
- Twin tower services
(Delivery is made to respective places)
Or even the gloriously schadenfreude-filled article:
Man Thumps Father Into Coma.
I even spared you:
Elderly Shafts Toddler (Survives Lynch), Ciara Causes Massive Scrotal Eruptions at YMCA and I NEED COW HOOVES – CAROL!.
And, before I thump your Western sensibilities to death with this tremendous whopper of a blog entry, I’d better skip town. Red Pepper has just told me that Osama Bin Laden is coming, and he’s got bombs.
-- The below entry, in the interest of unbiased cultural commentary, contains words and concepts of a graphic nature and should be skipped by elderly relatives ---
I’d like to say that the Guardian was my favorite British newspaper, I really would. It fits my namby-pamby, vaguely liberal political sympathies better than any of the other broadsheets and I needn’t comment on the discrepancy in standards of journalistic integrity when it’s compared to the tabloids. My favorite British newspaper, I’m ashamed to say however, is The Sun. A mere 30p opens the gates to a whole world of excellent headlines, laughable journalistic bias, lovably backwards social commentary and, my favorite feature of all, ‘Dear Deidre's Photo Casebook”, where partially-clothed ugly people routinely commit acts of gross infidelity. And then there’s the particularly wonderful ‘news in briefs’, where topless women deliver their take on politics, current affairs and the lofty drama of the world stage. Free from the vitriol of the Daily Mail and the smug self-indulgence of Private Eye, I didn't think The Sun could ever be bettered. Uganda, however, has proved me wrong. Uganda has shown me Red Pepper.
On the face of it, Red Pepper looks like any other tabloid. Ugly type-setting, a sensational headline and promises of “Hot Goss” emblazon the front cover. Flick through the pages, however, and you enter a land of whimsically disgusting euphemisms and bizarrely graphic and frank accounts of regional travesties. To give you just a small taste of the strange, depraved, accidentally bizarre world of Red Pepper, here are a few choice excerpts:
Bonk Your Own babes - Kabakumba
THE MINISTER OF Information, Matsiko Kabakumba, has urged the Banyoro men to bonk their own babes to reduce the level of Aids in their area… “Stop distributing your whoppers to other women,” Kabakumba vowed, before adding that all women are the same… “Do not overlook your husband because the law protects you. They will leave you and shaft others”.
No. I didn’t change the wording of that at all. And that one’s relatively tame. Here’s an oh-so-painful story about a man suffering from badly-timed case of lymphatic philariasis, a mosquito-borne parasite that causes irreversible swelling of the lymph nodes and can be easily cured with a single course of an affordable drug. Fear not, I’ve kept the original grammar intact:
Man Shafts Neighbor’s Wife, Loses Whopper
The latest shocking news from Mbale Municipality is that a man who reportedly shafted his neighbour’s wife is at the verge of losing his whopper and leg. Sobbingly narrating his ordeal to this reporter, Martin Ochwo, 27, a resident of Namakwekwe village said his whopper and leg started swelling after he had a quarrel with juicy Jane Nambozo’s husband. With tears rolling down his cheeks, Ochwo said he used to have steamy romps with Nambozo when her husband had been transferred to Kampala.
“When Nambozo’s husband left for Kampala, we feasted on each other as if our lives depended on sex.
We would shaft from hotels in Mbale town and at Nambozo’s house. She is so sweet a lady that I could not imagine dying without having a piece of her Kandahar”, horny Ochwo said. The steamy bonking sessions crumbled after Nambozo’s husband caught the duo red handed shafting in his matrimonial bed.
"Nambozo’s husband vowed to finish me off for feasting on his juicy wife.
I am not surprised that my leg and whopper swell every day,” Ochwo said.
One of sexpest Ochwo’s relatives says they have tried all kinds of medication in vain.
Poor sexpest Ochwo! Okay, okay, sorry, this is just getting gratuitous. Maybe I just have an immature sense of humour. But, y’know, at least I didn’t mention the “OMG Magazine Special Report”:
Top City Homo Bonked To Death
- Had Swallowed 5000 Giant Whoppers
- Fallen Homo star Was King Of Blow Job
- Even Some Government Officials Worked His Bum.
Or the mystifying advert for:
Maama Wabaana Mwajjuma Nalwadds
Specialists in:
- Fibroids
- Miscarriages
-Prolapse of the Rectum (Emmeeme)
-Size of the Weapon.
- Body boast and body loose.
- Women fluids in 1 day.
- Returns lost lovers urgently and properly.
- Breast firming and other body parts.
- “Liquid form” for Sexually weak man.
- Twin tower services
(Delivery is made to respective places)
Or even the gloriously schadenfreude-filled article:
Man Thumps Father Into Coma.
I even spared you:
Elderly Shafts Toddler (Survives Lynch), Ciara Causes Massive Scrotal Eruptions at YMCA and I NEED COW HOOVES – CAROL!.
And, before I thump your Western sensibilities to death with this tremendous whopper of a blog entry, I’d better skip town. Red Pepper has just told me that Osama Bin Laden is coming, and he’s got bombs.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Wild Chimp Chasers
Saturday, 24th July. Semliki Time: 03:33pm
Bill McGrew, my dissertation supervisor and the ultimate source of chimpanzee knowledge this side of the Channel (and maybe the Atlantic!) has always referred to his job as ‘chimp chasing’. I used to think of this as an indulgent joke - primatologists must be predominantly involved in research and, after all, the chasing must surely be only a small part of their daily lives. Oh how wrong I was. Having now spent two and a half weeks trying to collect behavioral data on wild chimps, I can happily say that the title ‘Chimp Chasing’ is no understatement.
Today we happened upon chimps very early, at 8 am. “Hurrah”, I thought to myself, pulling out a notebook, “now to collect some data”. A chimp somewhere out of sight hit the buttress of a tree very hard and the rest, to the man, promptly vanished. We crashed through the undergrowth, hot on their trail. On top of the usual collections of thorns, twigs and spiderwebs, I also managed to garner a large smear of an unidentified botanical irritant, which burned my forehead. The tracks led us out on the savannah, where we tracked their passage through the grass. Sadly, chimps weren’t the only animals to have been through the grass, and we soon found ourselves carefully following a wild buffalo. Despondently we returned to the trail, only to see five or six chimps milling about in the trees. The notebook emerged. The chimps vanished. Que another thrash through the undergrowth, culminating in our guide, Moses, bending a thorn branch towards him and letting it spring back right into my face. I staggered out of the forest into the beating heat of the savannah again, nursing the laceration which neatly divided my mystery acid burn. Okay, maybe more of a scratch than a laceration, but it still hurt. The chimps had gone. Back we went to the trail. Again we saw the chimps. The chimps saw us and made off in the opposite direction. We thrashed through more undergrowth, but had lost the blackguards for good. It felt more like we were chasing wild geese than chimps.
Incidentally, the expression “wild goose chase” comes from a 16th centuary custom where a man on a horse was chased by other men on horses and eventually caught. It’s interesting how these expressions become bastardized over time. In keeping with the traditional meaning of the expression, while today’s wild goose chase may not have culminated in chimps, we did catch the goose… As we were wearily heading back to camp, we stumbled upon a scared, baby mongoose in the cavity of a hollowed out tree. It was wonderfully cute and fluffy, and terrified as anything of the huge eyes that were staring down at it.
As if to goad us, the chimps have started making noises very close to the camp. Tomorrow is Sunday and, while I suggested delaying the weekend by a day, the look of horror on our guide’s face made it seem best not to press the issue...
Bill McGrew, my dissertation supervisor and the ultimate source of chimpanzee knowledge this side of the Channel (and maybe the Atlantic!) has always referred to his job as ‘chimp chasing’. I used to think of this as an indulgent joke - primatologists must be predominantly involved in research and, after all, the chasing must surely be only a small part of their daily lives. Oh how wrong I was. Having now spent two and a half weeks trying to collect behavioral data on wild chimps, I can happily say that the title ‘Chimp Chasing’ is no understatement.
Today we happened upon chimps very early, at 8 am. “Hurrah”, I thought to myself, pulling out a notebook, “now to collect some data”. A chimp somewhere out of sight hit the buttress of a tree very hard and the rest, to the man, promptly vanished. We crashed through the undergrowth, hot on their trail. On top of the usual collections of thorns, twigs and spiderwebs, I also managed to garner a large smear of an unidentified botanical irritant, which burned my forehead. The tracks led us out on the savannah, where we tracked their passage through the grass. Sadly, chimps weren’t the only animals to have been through the grass, and we soon found ourselves carefully following a wild buffalo. Despondently we returned to the trail, only to see five or six chimps milling about in the trees. The notebook emerged. The chimps vanished. Que another thrash through the undergrowth, culminating in our guide, Moses, bending a thorn branch towards him and letting it spring back right into my face. I staggered out of the forest into the beating heat of the savannah again, nursing the laceration which neatly divided my mystery acid burn. Okay, maybe more of a scratch than a laceration, but it still hurt. The chimps had gone. Back we went to the trail. Again we saw the chimps. The chimps saw us and made off in the opposite direction. We thrashed through more undergrowth, but had lost the blackguards for good. It felt more like we were chasing wild geese than chimps.
Incidentally, the expression “wild goose chase” comes from a 16th centuary custom where a man on a horse was chased by other men on horses and eventually caught. It’s interesting how these expressions become bastardized over time. In keeping with the traditional meaning of the expression, while today’s wild goose chase may not have culminated in chimps, we did catch the goose… As we were wearily heading back to camp, we stumbled upon a scared, baby mongoose in the cavity of a hollowed out tree. It was wonderfully cute and fluffy, and terrified as anything of the huge eyes that were staring down at it.
As if to goad us, the chimps have started making noises very close to the camp. Tomorrow is Sunday and, while I suggested delaying the weekend by a day, the look of horror on our guide’s face made it seem best not to press the issue...
Friday, 23 July 2010
All's Well
Friday, 23rd July. Semliki Time: 05:50pm
The reason that I’m actually in Semliki chasing chimpanzees isn’t just for fun. Oh no, somehow I’m going to have to work the measurements I’ve been taking here into some sort of cogent dissertation which counts towards half next year's mark. Or something terrifying like that. Luckily, while I have only seen chimps eating bark – the behaviour I’m studying – once, I’ve found plenty of chewed-up wads and trees with pieces of stripped bark hanging off them. Alex, who’s studying well-digging behaviour, has been less lucky. We’d been here just over two weeks and only seen four wells- two completely inundated. It was decided, therefore, that today’s jaunt to the forest would consist of a river walk.
This started well for me. I had Derry boots while Alex had only brought her walking boots, and my feet remained pleasantly dry for a good twenty minutes. Sadly, my luck changed and the smug smile of a man with dry toes was washed clean off my face! More matter less art, you say? Well, in short, I put my foot into knee deep mud. Suddenly my boots weighed about three times as much as they had before and the going became a lot tougher. Walking through water and sand is quite hard going and it took us about an hour and a half to walk a pitiful two km. The trudge was made more exciting by the appearance, on the stream edge, of “Afromum”. No, not a matriarch with a hip hairstyle! “Afromum” is a small, acidic red fruit with white insides that tastes something like a lemon, something like a dragonfruit and something by a banana. I was much enthused by “Afromum” and it made the mundanity of taking GPS readings and substrate measurements for each and every sandbank far more bearable.
While we saw no chimps, towards the end of our upstream slog we found a nearly dead, very large crab with three legs missing. It waved its pincers at us pathetically while we tried to put it the right way up with a phoenix palm frond. Sadly, in our attempts to right the crab, we accidentally pushed it into a fast-flowing current and possibly sent it to Davey Jones’s locker. R.I.P. damaged crab. Towards the end of our voyage, we also chanced upon four three-day-old wells and happily measured every last facet of their creation. From the depth of the water at the bottom of the well, to the bacterial content, we left with our notebooks overflowing with data.
Tomorrow, let them eat bark, then bring on the weekend.
The reason that I’m actually in Semliki chasing chimpanzees isn’t just for fun. Oh no, somehow I’m going to have to work the measurements I’ve been taking here into some sort of cogent dissertation which counts towards half next year's mark. Or something terrifying like that. Luckily, while I have only seen chimps eating bark – the behaviour I’m studying – once, I’ve found plenty of chewed-up wads and trees with pieces of stripped bark hanging off them. Alex, who’s studying well-digging behaviour, has been less lucky. We’d been here just over two weeks and only seen four wells- two completely inundated. It was decided, therefore, that today’s jaunt to the forest would consist of a river walk.
This started well for me. I had Derry boots while Alex had only brought her walking boots, and my feet remained pleasantly dry for a good twenty minutes. Sadly, my luck changed and the smug smile of a man with dry toes was washed clean off my face! More matter less art, you say? Well, in short, I put my foot into knee deep mud. Suddenly my boots weighed about three times as much as they had before and the going became a lot tougher. Walking through water and sand is quite hard going and it took us about an hour and a half to walk a pitiful two km. The trudge was made more exciting by the appearance, on the stream edge, of “Afromum”. No, not a matriarch with a hip hairstyle! “Afromum” is a small, acidic red fruit with white insides that tastes something like a lemon, something like a dragonfruit and something by a banana. I was much enthused by “Afromum” and it made the mundanity of taking GPS readings and substrate measurements for each and every sandbank far more bearable.
While we saw no chimps, towards the end of our upstream slog we found a nearly dead, very large crab with three legs missing. It waved its pincers at us pathetically while we tried to put it the right way up with a phoenix palm frond. Sadly, in our attempts to right the crab, we accidentally pushed it into a fast-flowing current and possibly sent it to Davey Jones’s locker. R.I.P. damaged crab. Towards the end of our voyage, we also chanced upon four three-day-old wells and happily measured every last facet of their creation. From the depth of the water at the bottom of the well, to the bacterial content, we left with our notebooks overflowing with data.
Tomorrow, let them eat bark, then bring on the weekend.
Thursday, 22 July 2010
My Day (By dUncan)
Thursday, 22nd July. Semliki Time: 09:01pm
In the great battle between sleep deprivation and obsessive compulsive disorder, a truce has finally been reached. I shall write a blog today but it shall be a short one. Right. So, what happened to Duncs today? Let's hit the bullet points.
1) Woke up in a terrible mood after bad dreams.
2) Ate breakfast.
3) Walked though forest wrestling with terrible mood.
4) Shook off mood and started to enjoy self.
5) Was lead up steep hill.
6) Almost fell to death.
7) Walked for 1km along the side of a ravine.
8) Walked back.
9) Resumed bad mood.
10) Walked up steeper hill in direct sunlight.
11) Sat down, started feeling more cheerful. Anticipated lunch.
12) Saw chimps several miles away.
13) Put away lunch and ran towards chimps.
14) Saw mother chimp holding tiny infant.
15) Mother chimp and tiny infant saw us.
16) Mother chimp and tiny infant promptly vanished.
17) Slid down ravine in bloody pursuit. Death or glory.
18) Walked through 15 spiderwebs (complete with spiders) and one thorn bush at high speed.
19) Lost chimps but in good mood.
20) Walked five miles back home.
The rest of the day I devoted, in roughly equal parts, to War ‘n’ Peace and Ginger Snaps. Most pleasant.
In the great battle between sleep deprivation and obsessive compulsive disorder, a truce has finally been reached. I shall write a blog today but it shall be a short one. Right. So, what happened to Duncs today? Let's hit the bullet points.
1) Woke up in a terrible mood after bad dreams.
2) Ate breakfast.
3) Walked though forest wrestling with terrible mood.
4) Shook off mood and started to enjoy self.
5) Was lead up steep hill.
6) Almost fell to death.
7) Walked for 1km along the side of a ravine.
8) Walked back.
9) Resumed bad mood.
10) Walked up steeper hill in direct sunlight.
11) Sat down, started feeling more cheerful. Anticipated lunch.
12) Saw chimps several miles away.
13) Put away lunch and ran towards chimps.
14) Saw mother chimp holding tiny infant.
15) Mother chimp and tiny infant saw us.
16) Mother chimp and tiny infant promptly vanished.
17) Slid down ravine in bloody pursuit. Death or glory.
18) Walked through 15 spiderwebs (complete with spiders) and one thorn bush at high speed.
19) Lost chimps but in good mood.
20) Walked five miles back home.
The rest of the day I devoted, in roughly equal parts, to War ‘n’ Peace and Ginger Snaps. Most pleasant.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Hairs and Graces
Wednesday, 21st July. Semliki Time: 08:22pm
Every second Wednesday is supply day and we head off to Fort Portal to pick up fresh bananas, eggs, toilet paper and meat. On the journey here, I remember thinking how small and ghost-townish Fort Portal was. When we returned today, it felt like a bustling metropolis. There were people everywhere, and shops and food and, like, ice-cream and chocolate and biscuits and a hotel where I had a STEAK which seemed, at the time, like the best thing that had ever happened to me. I’m quite sad that I won’t be able to renew my acquaintance with steak for another two weeks, but it will be worth the wait.
My hair was getting a bit too long for the jungle and, on top of the fact that I was becoming stuck on every low-hanging branch, it took about half an hour to wash in the trickling river-water shower. I had initially decided to get it shaved but, upon entering the “salon”, I got cold feet and asked for it “a bit shorter”. The hairdresser nodded wisely and began hacking at my head with a razor, brushing it over the top of my hair and occasionally slipping and removing large chunks. I gazed on in impotent horror as huge tufts fell away from the scarecrow in the mirror. I suggested scissors, so he pulled some out and cut my fringe in a straight line. Duncan, the scarecrow-monk, felt himself dying inside. A giggly woman who’d been standing outside came in and wrestled the scissors from the guy’s hand. She said “Don’t worry, it will be good, you’ll see!” and sliced off one of my sideburns. She chopped and plucked and brushed, and I closed my eyes in horror. After a while I peeked and regretted it straight away. “Your hair is very hard to cut!” my new stylist reproached me. I comforted myself with the thought that it might grow out. Sadly, on further inspection, it became all too obvious that the latter thought had been a delusion. Finally I couldn’t take it any more and screamed “JUST SHAVE IT OFF!”
More and more of my hair fell away, revealing a rather thuggish-looking fellow underneath. Normally I would have shrunk at the sight but, as an Eminem-esque wideboy arose from the ashes of my former coiffe, all I felt was relief. I might now look like someone who murdered grannies, but at least I looked like a member of the species. If there’s one haircut that African hairdressers do very well, it's the buzz cut and, while I do look like a “Polish prisoner of war”, as Alex so kindly put it, it actually quite suits me. I’m not saying I’m going to have my hair cut like this ever again ever, but I imagine I’d cut quite a dashing figure as I beat up a school kid behind the bike-sheds. After the haircut was finished, the male hairdresser appeared again and started beating me with a flannel. This was under the pretence of removing hair for my clothing but the strength with which he battered me was a shining example of undue force. Next came the hot, wet towel and my head and neck was systematically scalded. After this, a bottle of “Olive Oil” hairspray was produced along with a clear plastic container bearing the title “Ocean Spray Metholated Spirit”. The Olive Oil was sprayed on my hair and the bright purple metholated spirit dabbed all over my face. Spluttering, I played my £1.30 and left.
On returning to the camp, all the rangers ran around yelling “Who is this and where have you left Duncan”. What I’ve lost in hair, however, I’ve certainly gained in anecdotes.
God shave us! Hair has it all gone?
Every second Wednesday is supply day and we head off to Fort Portal to pick up fresh bananas, eggs, toilet paper and meat. On the journey here, I remember thinking how small and ghost-townish Fort Portal was. When we returned today, it felt like a bustling metropolis. There were people everywhere, and shops and food and, like, ice-cream and chocolate and biscuits and a hotel where I had a STEAK which seemed, at the time, like the best thing that had ever happened to me. I’m quite sad that I won’t be able to renew my acquaintance with steak for another two weeks, but it will be worth the wait.
My hair was getting a bit too long for the jungle and, on top of the fact that I was becoming stuck on every low-hanging branch, it took about half an hour to wash in the trickling river-water shower. I had initially decided to get it shaved but, upon entering the “salon”, I got cold feet and asked for it “a bit shorter”. The hairdresser nodded wisely and began hacking at my head with a razor, brushing it over the top of my hair and occasionally slipping and removing large chunks. I gazed on in impotent horror as huge tufts fell away from the scarecrow in the mirror. I suggested scissors, so he pulled some out and cut my fringe in a straight line. Duncan, the scarecrow-monk, felt himself dying inside. A giggly woman who’d been standing outside came in and wrestled the scissors from the guy’s hand. She said “Don’t worry, it will be good, you’ll see!” and sliced off one of my sideburns. She chopped and plucked and brushed, and I closed my eyes in horror. After a while I peeked and regretted it straight away. “Your hair is very hard to cut!” my new stylist reproached me. I comforted myself with the thought that it might grow out. Sadly, on further inspection, it became all too obvious that the latter thought had been a delusion. Finally I couldn’t take it any more and screamed “JUST SHAVE IT OFF!”
More and more of my hair fell away, revealing a rather thuggish-looking fellow underneath. Normally I would have shrunk at the sight but, as an Eminem-esque wideboy arose from the ashes of my former coiffe, all I felt was relief. I might now look like someone who murdered grannies, but at least I looked like a member of the species. If there’s one haircut that African hairdressers do very well, it's the buzz cut and, while I do look like a “Polish prisoner of war”, as Alex so kindly put it, it actually quite suits me. I’m not saying I’m going to have my hair cut like this ever again ever, but I imagine I’d cut quite a dashing figure as I beat up a school kid behind the bike-sheds. After the haircut was finished, the male hairdresser appeared again and started beating me with a flannel. This was under the pretence of removing hair for my clothing but the strength with which he battered me was a shining example of undue force. Next came the hot, wet towel and my head and neck was systematically scalded. After this, a bottle of “Olive Oil” hairspray was produced along with a clear plastic container bearing the title “Ocean Spray Metholated Spirit”. The Olive Oil was sprayed on my hair and the bright purple metholated spirit dabbed all over my face. Spluttering, I played my £1.30 and left.
On returning to the camp, all the rangers ran around yelling “Who is this and where have you left Duncan”. What I’ve lost in hair, however, I’ve certainly gained in anecdotes.
God shave us! Hair has it all gone?Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Triple Dutch
Tuesday, 19th July. Semliki Time: 09:14pm
Bad news! According to a respected geographer of my acquaintance, Mongolia is about to go through a terrible famine. As far as I understood it, the reason for this famine is that no one gives aid or sends food there because no one’s ever heard of it. And because no one's heard of it, the news media ignore it -- a vicious circle. So go out and tell your fellow man about Mongolia before its too late! There’s still time to save them, whoever they are.
I don’t have time for a long blog entry today, but I never pass up an opportunity to register my disappointment in humanity, so here’s a rant for you. Today we were joined by three Dutch tourists. They had to be the most rude and stupid people I’ve met all year. They turned up at the camp without a ranger, despite the instructions given to them by the Chimpanzee Project. Because of this, they had to borrow ours. Not only that, but despite the fact that we were planning to leave at 7:15, they got impatient and forced us to leave at seven. This was before I’d eaten breakfast or done my toilette and so, bursting with hunger and the rather urgent desire to put the E in MRS GREN, we headed out. They took photos of everything. Seriously, At one point we went past a spider, a completely mundane spider, and the camera zoom lenses were whipped out. Deciding that they might be decent souls who just didn’t understand, I tried to tell them about the Semliki chimps they had come to see. Alex and I tried to explain the uniqueness of the habitat, chimpanzee tool use, chimpanzee ('proto-')language capabilities. They didn’t give a flying funk about any of it. It was clear they were just here to take a few pictures of the chimps and didn’t care about their behaviour, relationship to humans or the uniqueness of the ones they were looking for. To add insult to injury, when some black and white Colobus monkeys turned up and I was talking to Alex about them, the woman turned round, put her fingers to her lips and made a loud, patronizing shushing sound. I almost came back with a “Dear Lady, if you want to bring your own ranger, you may ride your high horse around the forest, but while borrowing our ranger, please at least do us the decency of letting us speak to each other”. Instead I said “I.. I think they heard us already, you see”.
Not only were they rude, they were completely unable to navigate the forest. They wobbled across bridges, fell over their own feet, fell over each other’s feet and fell down short hills. I thought I was clumsy, but having watched them try to climb over a log-bridge without a railing, I now consider myself a balletic and graceful creature of poise, art and finesse. Providentially they didn’t get to see chimps, but when they left for the swimming pool, they didn’t even say goodbye.
In other news, we were practically ‘dogged’ by baboons. They followed us everywhere we went. Have you heard about Chanel perfume? A particular Chanel scent is loaded with civet pheromones and attracts jaguars. I reckon the baboons were attracted to the Dutch woman's smell. They couldn’t have come for the personality.
Bad news! According to a respected geographer of my acquaintance, Mongolia is about to go through a terrible famine. As far as I understood it, the reason for this famine is that no one gives aid or sends food there because no one’s ever heard of it. And because no one's heard of it, the news media ignore it -- a vicious circle. So go out and tell your fellow man about Mongolia before its too late! There’s still time to save them, whoever they are.
I don’t have time for a long blog entry today, but I never pass up an opportunity to register my disappointment in humanity, so here’s a rant for you. Today we were joined by three Dutch tourists. They had to be the most rude and stupid people I’ve met all year. They turned up at the camp without a ranger, despite the instructions given to them by the Chimpanzee Project. Because of this, they had to borrow ours. Not only that, but despite the fact that we were planning to leave at 7:15, they got impatient and forced us to leave at seven. This was before I’d eaten breakfast or done my toilette and so, bursting with hunger and the rather urgent desire to put the E in MRS GREN, we headed out. They took photos of everything. Seriously, At one point we went past a spider, a completely mundane spider, and the camera zoom lenses were whipped out. Deciding that they might be decent souls who just didn’t understand, I tried to tell them about the Semliki chimps they had come to see. Alex and I tried to explain the uniqueness of the habitat, chimpanzee tool use, chimpanzee ('proto-')language capabilities. They didn’t give a flying funk about any of it. It was clear they were just here to take a few pictures of the chimps and didn’t care about their behaviour, relationship to humans or the uniqueness of the ones they were looking for. To add insult to injury, when some black and white Colobus monkeys turned up and I was talking to Alex about them, the woman turned round, put her fingers to her lips and made a loud, patronizing shushing sound. I almost came back with a “Dear Lady, if you want to bring your own ranger, you may ride your high horse around the forest, but while borrowing our ranger, please at least do us the decency of letting us speak to each other”. Instead I said “I.. I think they heard us already, you see”.
Not only were they rude, they were completely unable to navigate the forest. They wobbled across bridges, fell over their own feet, fell over each other’s feet and fell down short hills. I thought I was clumsy, but having watched them try to climb over a log-bridge without a railing, I now consider myself a balletic and graceful creature of poise, art and finesse. Providentially they didn’t get to see chimps, but when they left for the swimming pool, they didn’t even say goodbye.
In other news, we were practically ‘dogged’ by baboons. They followed us everywhere we went. Have you heard about Chanel perfume? A particular Chanel scent is loaded with civet pheromones and attracts jaguars. I reckon the baboons were attracted to the Dutch woman's smell. They couldn’t have come for the personality.
Monday, 19 July 2010
Bump in the nightjar/Yes we Khan
Monday, 19th July. Semliki Time: 08:55pm
The Pennant-winged Nightjar is a very rare and beautiful bird. During the mating season, the males grow long, pennant-like attachments on the end of its long wings, which glide gracefully in the breeze and attract lady nightjars from all around. These airborne Casanovas are also surprisingly thick. Every night, as I trudge up the long path towards the stinky dunny, I almost always step on our nightjar. For some reason he’s decided that the best place to rest in the entire national park is on the rubbley gravel path near the latrine. Yesterday I almost tripped! I knew that Semliki was home to a myriad of rare birds, but I didn’t know I’d be accidently killing them with my walking boots every day.
There are also many other rare and lovely birds here, although they very seldom come close. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a Palm-nut Vulture. The beautiful eagle was perched in a tree and when Alex and I asked us what kind of eagle it was, the guides looked at us as if we were practically thick. “It is a vulture”, they said. It turns out that the palm nut vulture is indeed an eagle and does not scavenge, have a bald head or in any way resemble a vulture. What a mysterious continent this is!
On an entirely different note, the evenings here are quite dull and I’ve had little to do except think. Recently I have been thinking about Mongolians. Where are they? Why on earth do you never hear anything about the Mongols! They’re never on the BBC news, Mongolian is never taught in school and you never ever meet Mongols in person, yet country is one of the largest in Eurasia and had an empire thrice the size of the Romans! I’ve met people from all around the globe; several people from Iran, a couple from Jamaica, a cartload of Brazilians, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Polynesians, Ugandans, Egyptians, people from Laos - you name the country and I’ve probably met someone from it at least once. But no Mongols! Does anyone know where they’ve gone? Do they have a football team? Does Mongolia actually exist or is it just something that the cartographers invented to fill in the blank space between China and Russia?
The Pennant-winged Nightjar is a very rare and beautiful bird. During the mating season, the males grow long, pennant-like attachments on the end of its long wings, which glide gracefully in the breeze and attract lady nightjars from all around. These airborne Casanovas are also surprisingly thick. Every night, as I trudge up the long path towards the stinky dunny, I almost always step on our nightjar. For some reason he’s decided that the best place to rest in the entire national park is on the rubbley gravel path near the latrine. Yesterday I almost tripped! I knew that Semliki was home to a myriad of rare birds, but I didn’t know I’d be accidently killing them with my walking boots every day.
There are also many other rare and lovely birds here, although they very seldom come close. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a Palm-nut Vulture. The beautiful eagle was perched in a tree and when Alex and I asked us what kind of eagle it was, the guides looked at us as if we were practically thick. “It is a vulture”, they said. It turns out that the palm nut vulture is indeed an eagle and does not scavenge, have a bald head or in any way resemble a vulture. What a mysterious continent this is!
On an entirely different note, the evenings here are quite dull and I’ve had little to do except think. Recently I have been thinking about Mongolians. Where are they? Why on earth do you never hear anything about the Mongols! They’re never on the BBC news, Mongolian is never taught in school and you never ever meet Mongols in person, yet country is one of the largest in Eurasia and had an empire thrice the size of the Romans! I’ve met people from all around the globe; several people from Iran, a couple from Jamaica, a cartload of Brazilians, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Polynesians, Ugandans, Egyptians, people from Laos - you name the country and I’ve probably met someone from it at least once. But no Mongols! Does anyone know where they’ve gone? Do they have a football team? Does Mongolia actually exist or is it just something that the cartographers invented to fill in the blank space between China and Russia?
Sunday, 18 July 2010
MAHTOKE!
Sunday, 18th July. Semliki Time: 05:09pm
Sundays, at the Semliki wildlife reserve, are rest days. Edson busies himself with the odd jobs he didn’t have time for during the week. William lounges around and plays draughts against anyone who will indulge him. Moses and Justice listen to the radio in their tents. Alex and I read. I’m now almost four-hundred pages through War and Peace which, at the pace I get through books, is quite an achievement. Alex put me to shame, however, by finishing The Da Vinci Code in the time it took for me to get from page 320 to page 350. Apart from that, there’s not a lot else to do, though simply being able to sleep till past six is a joy. Today, when I emerged from my tent at ten, William actually came to inquire if I was ill. I said that I’d been resting, guiltily aware of the fact that, back in Blighty, 10am was early for me.
Ugandans seem very fond of their just so stories and, yesterday, Edson told us how the Semliki National Park got its name. Apparently, when the first Mzungu visited Semliki, he walked up to a woman washing her clothes in a basket in the river.
“Dear lady”, the intrepid colonial had asked, gazing inquiringly over his specials and gesturing to the river, “what do you call this river?”
The woman, thinking that the man was pointing at the basket she’d just emptied and asking what was in it, replied “Semuriki!”, the local word for “Nothing!”.
The colonial gentleman jotted it down in his notebook and went on his merry way along the newly discovered river of nothing.
Whether there’s any truth in the story is another matter, but its spookily similar to the alleged naming ‘Matoke’, a mashed potato-esque dish made from boiled plantains. Apparently, a long time ago, a colonial British gentleman (maybe the same one) was sampling the local fare. Each dish he was given he greeted with cried of disgust until someone offered up the plantain surprise. Upon chewing the mashed savoury-banana dish for a few seconds the colonial master stood up and shouted “Aha! Now that’s okay!”. To the Africans, this sounded something like “MAHTOKE!” and that's how Matoke got its name. True? Probably not. Good stories? MAHTOKE!
(Oh and while I’m at it, thank you very much for your comments. Its nice to feel in touch with ‘civilization’, albeit slightly. Since the days here are quite similar, I’m slowly running out of things to write about. If there’s anything you’d like to hear, do tell.)
Sundays, at the Semliki wildlife reserve, are rest days. Edson busies himself with the odd jobs he didn’t have time for during the week. William lounges around and plays draughts against anyone who will indulge him. Moses and Justice listen to the radio in their tents. Alex and I read. I’m now almost four-hundred pages through War and Peace which, at the pace I get through books, is quite an achievement. Alex put me to shame, however, by finishing The Da Vinci Code in the time it took for me to get from page 320 to page 350. Apart from that, there’s not a lot else to do, though simply being able to sleep till past six is a joy. Today, when I emerged from my tent at ten, William actually came to inquire if I was ill. I said that I’d been resting, guiltily aware of the fact that, back in Blighty, 10am was early for me.
Ugandans seem very fond of their just so stories and, yesterday, Edson told us how the Semliki National Park got its name. Apparently, when the first Mzungu visited Semliki, he walked up to a woman washing her clothes in a basket in the river.
“Dear lady”, the intrepid colonial had asked, gazing inquiringly over his specials and gesturing to the river, “what do you call this river?”
The woman, thinking that the man was pointing at the basket she’d just emptied and asking what was in it, replied “Semuriki!”, the local word for “Nothing!”.
The colonial gentleman jotted it down in his notebook and went on his merry way along the newly discovered river of nothing.
Whether there’s any truth in the story is another matter, but its spookily similar to the alleged naming ‘Matoke’, a mashed potato-esque dish made from boiled plantains. Apparently, a long time ago, a colonial British gentleman (maybe the same one) was sampling the local fare. Each dish he was given he greeted with cried of disgust until someone offered up the plantain surprise. Upon chewing the mashed savoury-banana dish for a few seconds the colonial master stood up and shouted “Aha! Now that’s okay!”. To the Africans, this sounded something like “MAHTOKE!” and that's how Matoke got its name. True? Probably not. Good stories? MAHTOKE!
(Oh and while I’m at it, thank you very much for your comments. Its nice to feel in touch with ‘civilization’, albeit slightly. Since the days here are quite similar, I’m slowly running out of things to write about. If there’s anything you’d like to hear, do tell.)
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Like alike
Saturday, 17th July. Semliki Time: 09:43pm
So here’s an admission for you. I don’t actually like chimpanzees. Now, don’t get me wrong, I find them absolutely fascinating, but I don’t like them. Unfortunately aimed urination aside, this is predominantly for one reason. They’re too much like humans. If you accept the evidence in vogue at the moment, chimpanzees diverged from humans about six million years ago. A slightly more cautious estimate says that our last common ancestor pottered about Africa some five to seven million years ago. To put that into perspective, molecular estimates put the last shared ancestor of the two known sub-species of orang-utan about 1.5 million years ago and chimpanzees and bonobos parted ways a good three million years ago. The point I’m trying to make is that six million years isn’t such a long time in evolutionary terms, and with the chimps, it shows. Their expressions, the light behind their eyes, the way they react to each other is both incredibly human and unsettlingly animal-like. For me, chimps fall slap-bang in the middle of uncanny valley. Freud, eat your heart out.
I also find their similarity to humans quite depressing. Chimpanzee behaviour, while not nearly as predicable as that of less behaviourally ‘complicated’ organisms such as fruit flies, still conforms to various predictable patterns. When it is profitable for a chimpanzee to bully her subordinates, she will do so. If it's in a chimps best interest to kill and eat the infants of a neighbour's community, those infants should probably quake in their boots. Their similarity to us, coupled with their predictable nastiness always drives home the point that humans are only nice to each other when it suits them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve enough to argue that each and every individual, specific act of human kindness has a biologically determined situational evolutionary benefit. Mrs Rosatia Migsworth at number three doesn't look after Mr Hawthorn’s moggie Peter every other day because the scheming old lady expects her investments to return with interest. These just-so stories tarnish evolutionary psychology textbooks and riddle the pages of cosmo. No, what I’m trying to say is that a general proclivity towards sweetness, light and loving one's neighbour only exists because, by and large, it’s beneficial. When things start going wrong, you can be sure that even humans will turn as bad as they need too. After the fallout clears, Rosatia will hack her path through her starving fellow kin to defend access to the last tins of irradiated Heinz. The ones that don’t follow suit may not last. At least, this sort of thing is what I unavoidably start to think when I’m around chimps.
Incoherent musings on the evolutionary philosophy of morality aside, the other reason I don’t actually like chimpanzees is that the blackguards spent the whole day running away from me. We saw them very early today at ten past seven. I pulled out my notebook and they vanished. After an hour of tearing through the brambly undergrowth in the sweltering African heat, being bitten by insects, loosing my water bottle, almost falling down a steep slope and smashing my face into a tree, the familiar hooting was heard. Again, I produced the notebook, again I looked up and saw the part majestic, part clumsy animals above me, again they swung swiftly away. This time their trail took us up a dried up riverbed, over wobbly tree roots across the side of a cliff and through the sweltering sun-drenched savanna. The tracks through the grass turned round and headed back the way we had come. On our return we saw that the chimps, after leading us on a wild goose chase miles through the forest, had returned to an area very close to the camp, finished off all the fruit and escaped. Some day maybe they’ll be fully habituated to humans. Unless, that is, a frustrated human finishes them off first.
So here’s an admission for you. I don’t actually like chimpanzees. Now, don’t get me wrong, I find them absolutely fascinating, but I don’t like them. Unfortunately aimed urination aside, this is predominantly for one reason. They’re too much like humans. If you accept the evidence in vogue at the moment, chimpanzees diverged from humans about six million years ago. A slightly more cautious estimate says that our last common ancestor pottered about Africa some five to seven million years ago. To put that into perspective, molecular estimates put the last shared ancestor of the two known sub-species of orang-utan about 1.5 million years ago and chimpanzees and bonobos parted ways a good three million years ago. The point I’m trying to make is that six million years isn’t such a long time in evolutionary terms, and with the chimps, it shows. Their expressions, the light behind their eyes, the way they react to each other is both incredibly human and unsettlingly animal-like. For me, chimps fall slap-bang in the middle of uncanny valley. Freud, eat your heart out.
I also find their similarity to humans quite depressing. Chimpanzee behaviour, while not nearly as predicable as that of less behaviourally ‘complicated’ organisms such as fruit flies, still conforms to various predictable patterns. When it is profitable for a chimpanzee to bully her subordinates, she will do so. If it's in a chimps best interest to kill and eat the infants of a neighbour's community, those infants should probably quake in their boots. Their similarity to us, coupled with their predictable nastiness always drives home the point that humans are only nice to each other when it suits them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve enough to argue that each and every individual, specific act of human kindness has a biologically determined situational evolutionary benefit. Mrs Rosatia Migsworth at number three doesn't look after Mr Hawthorn’s moggie Peter every other day because the scheming old lady expects her investments to return with interest. These just-so stories tarnish evolutionary psychology textbooks and riddle the pages of cosmo. No, what I’m trying to say is that a general proclivity towards sweetness, light and loving one's neighbour only exists because, by and large, it’s beneficial. When things start going wrong, you can be sure that even humans will turn as bad as they need too. After the fallout clears, Rosatia will hack her path through her starving fellow kin to defend access to the last tins of irradiated Heinz. The ones that don’t follow suit may not last. At least, this sort of thing is what I unavoidably start to think when I’m around chimps.
Incoherent musings on the evolutionary philosophy of morality aside, the other reason I don’t actually like chimpanzees is that the blackguards spent the whole day running away from me. We saw them very early today at ten past seven. I pulled out my notebook and they vanished. After an hour of tearing through the brambly undergrowth in the sweltering African heat, being bitten by insects, loosing my water bottle, almost falling down a steep slope and smashing my face into a tree, the familiar hooting was heard. Again, I produced the notebook, again I looked up and saw the part majestic, part clumsy animals above me, again they swung swiftly away. This time their trail took us up a dried up riverbed, over wobbly tree roots across the side of a cliff and through the sweltering sun-drenched savanna. The tracks through the grass turned round and headed back the way we had come. On our return we saw that the chimps, after leading us on a wild goose chase miles through the forest, had returned to an area very close to the camp, finished off all the fruit and escaped. Some day maybe they’ll be fully habituated to humans. Unless, that is, a frustrated human finishes them off first.
Friday, 16 July 2010
What's nest?
Friday, 16th July. Semliki Time: 07:42pm
The morning was relatively uneventful. We marched around the forest for a while, almost seeing chimps. Suffice to say, we didn’t see any. Returning early at 12:30, it was decided that we’d head out again at 5 and try our luck. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the first day I had nothing notable to write about. The most exciting things that happened between 12:30 and 5 were a snickers bar (a treasure I’d been saving) and an excruciating half-hour long craving for steak. Or lamb. Or roast beef. Or hey, I’d take a burger. I’d even take a McDonalds. JUST SOMETHING. DEAD. AND BLOODY-AS-ANYTHING, PLEASE.
…Uh. So, apart from the meat craving, nothing happened. When we finally headed out at five, however, we were more lucky. Within 20 minutes, we heard our first hoot. By 5:25 I was contentedly sitting on my back with a fantastic view of Mzee, feeding in a low hanging branch of a Cynomatra tree. I watched for an hour, lying on my back on the forest path and feeling perfectly content with the world. I even stopped dreaming of Yorkshire puddings and mint sauce. Mzee chewed saba, occasionally fixed his deep dark eyes on me and, even more occasionally, emitted a long and strangely majestic fart.
At 6:30, Mzee was off. He swung through the canopy and down the trees. We gave clumsy chase through the undergrowth, cutting ourselves on thorns. Eventually we found him standing on a large, overhanging branch over a steam. He stood and watched. Turning away from us, he climbed the tree and slowly but surely began to build a nest. Leafy branches were carefully selected, pulled taught and snapped, slowly but surely creating a leafy arboreal bed. Once Mzee was snugly tucked up, we headed for home. The sun was setting fast and only one of us had a head torch. As we raced towards the last light of the jungle day, vines crept overhead. We dodged past thick trunks and vaulted over deep ditches, pulling up outside camp just the last rays of the sunset glimmered over the hills.
Must stop writing now, dinners coming. Ah, here’s the sorghum stodge. Fifth day running. Oh! Rice is here too! And… BOWLS OF MEAT! FOUR LUMPS OF WONDERFUL MEAT. Praise be! MEAT!
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
P.S. Just noticed its been Tuesday on my blog for days. I feel it adds character…
The morning was relatively uneventful. We marched around the forest for a while, almost seeing chimps. Suffice to say, we didn’t see any. Returning early at 12:30, it was decided that we’d head out again at 5 and try our luck. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the first day I had nothing notable to write about. The most exciting things that happened between 12:30 and 5 were a snickers bar (a treasure I’d been saving) and an excruciating half-hour long craving for steak. Or lamb. Or roast beef. Or hey, I’d take a burger. I’d even take a McDonalds. JUST SOMETHING. DEAD. AND BLOODY-AS-ANYTHING, PLEASE.
…Uh. So, apart from the meat craving, nothing happened. When we finally headed out at five, however, we were more lucky. Within 20 minutes, we heard our first hoot. By 5:25 I was contentedly sitting on my back with a fantastic view of Mzee, feeding in a low hanging branch of a Cynomatra tree. I watched for an hour, lying on my back on the forest path and feeling perfectly content with the world. I even stopped dreaming of Yorkshire puddings and mint sauce. Mzee chewed saba, occasionally fixed his deep dark eyes on me and, even more occasionally, emitted a long and strangely majestic fart.
At 6:30, Mzee was off. He swung through the canopy and down the trees. We gave clumsy chase through the undergrowth, cutting ourselves on thorns. Eventually we found him standing on a large, overhanging branch over a steam. He stood and watched. Turning away from us, he climbed the tree and slowly but surely began to build a nest. Leafy branches were carefully selected, pulled taught and snapped, slowly but surely creating a leafy arboreal bed. Once Mzee was snugly tucked up, we headed for home. The sun was setting fast and only one of us had a head torch. As we raced towards the last light of the jungle day, vines crept overhead. We dodged past thick trunks and vaulted over deep ditches, pulling up outside camp just the last rays of the sunset glimmered over the hills.
Must stop writing now, dinners coming. Ah, here’s the sorghum stodge. Fifth day running. Oh! Rice is here too! And… BOWLS OF MEAT! FOUR LUMPS OF WONDERFUL MEAT. Praise be! MEAT!
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
P.S. Just noticed its been Tuesday on my blog for days. I feel it adds character…
Friday, 16th July. Semliki Time: 07:42pm
The morning was relatively uneventful. We marched around the forest for a while, almost seeing chimps. Suffice to say, we didn’t see any. Returning early at 12:30, it was decided that we’d head out again at 5 and try our luck. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the first day I had nothing notable to write about. Most exciting things that happened between 12:30 and 5 were a snickers bar (a treasure I’d been saving) and an excurtiating half-hour long crazing for steak. Or lamb. Or roast beef. Or hey, I’d take a burger. I’d even take a McDonalds. JUST SOMETHING. DEAD. AND BLOODY-AS-ANYTHING, PLEASE.
…Uh. So, apart from the meat craving, nothing happened. When we headed out at five though, we were more lucky. Within 20 minutes, we heard our first hoot. By 5:25 I was contentedly sitting on my back with a fantastic view of Mzee, feeding in a low hanging branch of a Cynomatra tree. I watched for an hour, lying on my back on the forest path and feeling perfectly content with the world. I even stopped dreaming of Yorkshire puddings and mint sauce. Mzee chewed saba, occasionally fixed his deep dark eyes on me and, even more occasionally, emitted a long and strangely majestic fart.
At 6:30, Mzee was off. He swung through the canopy and down the trees. We gave clumsy chase through the undergrowth, cutting ourselves on thorns. Eventually we saw him standing on a large, overhanging branch over a steam. He stood and watched. Turning away from us, he climbed the tree and slowly but surely began to build a nest. Leafy branches were carefully selected, pulled taught and snapped, slowly but surely creating a leafy arboreal bed. Once Mzee was snugly tucked up, headed home. The sun was setting fast and only one of us had a head torch. As we raced the last light of the jungle day, vines crept overhead. We dodged past thick trunks and vaulted over deep ditches, pulling up outside camp just the last light of the sunset peeked over the hills.
Must stop writing now, dinners coming. Ah, here’s the sorghum stodge. Fifth day running. Oh! Rice is here too! And… BOWLS OF MEAT! FOUR LUMPS OF WONDERFUL MEAT. Praise be! MEAT!
He father forth who’s beauty is without change, praise him!
P.S. Just noticed its been Tuesday on my blog for days. I feel it adds character…
The morning was relatively uneventful. We marched around the forest for a while, almost seeing chimps. Suffice to say, we didn’t see any. Returning early at 12:30, it was decided that we’d head out again at 5 and try our luck. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the first day I had nothing notable to write about. Most exciting things that happened between 12:30 and 5 were a snickers bar (a treasure I’d been saving) and an excurtiating half-hour long crazing for steak. Or lamb. Or roast beef. Or hey, I’d take a burger. I’d even take a McDonalds. JUST SOMETHING. DEAD. AND BLOODY-AS-ANYTHING, PLEASE.
…Uh. So, apart from the meat craving, nothing happened. When we headed out at five though, we were more lucky. Within 20 minutes, we heard our first hoot. By 5:25 I was contentedly sitting on my back with a fantastic view of Mzee, feeding in a low hanging branch of a Cynomatra tree. I watched for an hour, lying on my back on the forest path and feeling perfectly content with the world. I even stopped dreaming of Yorkshire puddings and mint sauce. Mzee chewed saba, occasionally fixed his deep dark eyes on me and, even more occasionally, emitted a long and strangely majestic fart.
At 6:30, Mzee was off. He swung through the canopy and down the trees. We gave clumsy chase through the undergrowth, cutting ourselves on thorns. Eventually we saw him standing on a large, overhanging branch over a steam. He stood and watched. Turning away from us, he climbed the tree and slowly but surely began to build a nest. Leafy branches were carefully selected, pulled taught and snapped, slowly but surely creating a leafy arboreal bed. Once Mzee was snugly tucked up, headed home. The sun was setting fast and only one of us had a head torch. As we raced the last light of the jungle day, vines crept overhead. We dodged past thick trunks and vaulted over deep ditches, pulling up outside camp just the last light of the sunset peeked over the hills.
Must stop writing now, dinners coming. Ah, here’s the sorghum stodge. Fifth day running. Oh! Rice is here too! And… BOWLS OF MEAT! FOUR LUMPS OF WONDERFUL MEAT. Praise be! MEAT!
He father forth who’s beauty is without change, praise him!
P.S. Just noticed its been Tuesday on my blog for days. I feel it adds character…
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Chimpanpee
Tuesday, 15th July. Semliki Time: 08:42pm
A long day today, but none-the-less, a good one. We caught up with the chimps at around 9am. They were in the same spot that they’d been in yesterday, happily rolling about in the trees. Mzee, our friend from yesterday, was there, as well as an old, grey, wizened looking chimp called “Buzz” and a young, hungry chimp named Fuller. Buzz was quite sincerely startled by our arrival and, after some hooting, hid himself in the top branch of a coula tree and gazed at us suspiciously through the leaves. Mzee was less timid and obviously didn’t care. Fuller was less timid still. A young male, he spent most of the morning climbing over our heads and searching for saba, splashing water down as he did. While I lay back admiring his young, energetic, chimpish form, he passed right overhead. The usual dripping of water came off the leaves as he rustled past and some of it landed on my notebook. I looked at it. It was yellow. The dripping became a shower and before I had time to react, I was soaked in chimpanzee pee. As I dived out of the way, a brown lump landed where my head has been and sat there, steaming ominously. My admiration for the fullhardy Fuller waned somewhat.
Fuller, locked, loaded and full of Saba-fruit, picks his next victim
With the exception of my hot shower, the rest of the morning continued with the chimps rustling around overhead, eating saba fruit, resting and occasionally defecating. This was done by all with the exception of Buzz, who sat at the top of his tree, gazing at us with fearful eyes and not eating a shred. I fear we may have been starving the poor creature. Just as all this eating was starting to get monotonous and I was starting to wonder whether chimpanzees actually ever ate bark at all, Edson grasped my shoulder and pointed. Fuller sat, at the top of the coula tree, tearing long strips of bark with his teeth. He then took the bark strip, tore out the vascular cambium and stuck the whole lot into his mouth. Jumping out of the coula tree, I yelled for Alex, who turned her high-mag binoculars on him and described his behaviour. He rubbed the bark around the front of his mouth before spitting it out and picking pieces of bark and saba fruit from between his teeth. He then filled his mouth with leaves which he chewed for a while and ejected. Having had enough of this, he scratched his bottom, turned away and began to eat again.
No sooner had my excitement worn off, Buzz wandered down from his seat to the patch of freshly stripped bark. He, too, stripped some bark in his teeth and ate the vascular cambium, chewing it for a minute before spitting it out. Next and even more interestingly, he ran his hands down the side of the wound in the tree and licked the sap from his fingers.
Sadly, after this, the chimps spent the rest of the day eating, resting and relieving themselves. Buzz, after bark stripping, returned to his perch and cowered. Seven hours of constant observation on top of two hours of trekking is demanding work and, while I certainly hope we see the chimps again tomorrow, something in me wouldn’t mind if they left us a little earlier next time. After eating lots of bark. Of course.
A long day today, but none-the-less, a good one. We caught up with the chimps at around 9am. They were in the same spot that they’d been in yesterday, happily rolling about in the trees. Mzee, our friend from yesterday, was there, as well as an old, grey, wizened looking chimp called “Buzz” and a young, hungry chimp named Fuller. Buzz was quite sincerely startled by our arrival and, after some hooting, hid himself in the top branch of a coula tree and gazed at us suspiciously through the leaves. Mzee was less timid and obviously didn’t care. Fuller was less timid still. A young male, he spent most of the morning climbing over our heads and searching for saba, splashing water down as he did. While I lay back admiring his young, energetic, chimpish form, he passed right overhead. The usual dripping of water came off the leaves as he rustled past and some of it landed on my notebook. I looked at it. It was yellow. The dripping became a shower and before I had time to react, I was soaked in chimpanzee pee. As I dived out of the way, a brown lump landed where my head has been and sat there, steaming ominously. My admiration for the fullhardy Fuller waned somewhat.
Fuller, locked, loaded and full of Saba-fruit, picks his next victim(Photo courtesy of Alex and her zoom lense)
With the exception of my hot shower, the rest of the morning continued with the chimps rustling around overhead, eating saba fruit, resting and occasionally defecating. This was done by all with the exception of Buzz, who sat at the top of his tree, gazing at us with fearful eyes and not eating a shred. I fear we may have been starving the poor creature. Just as all this eating was starting to get monotonous and I was starting to wonder whether chimpanzees actually ever ate bark at all, Edson grasped my shoulder and pointed. Fuller sat, at the top of the coula tree, tearing long strips of bark with his teeth. He then took the bark strip, tore out the vascular cambium and stuck the whole lot into his mouth. Jumping out of the coula tree, I yelled for Alex, who turned her high-mag binoculars on him and described his behaviour. He rubbed the bark around the front of his mouth before spitting it out and picking pieces of bark and saba fruit from between his teeth. He then filled his mouth with leaves which he chewed for a while and ejected. Having had enough of this, he scratched his bottom, turned away and began to eat again.
No sooner had my excitement worn off, Buzz wandered down from his seat to the patch of freshly stripped bark. He, too, stripped some bark in his teeth and ate the vascular cambium, chewing it for a minute before spitting it out. Next and even more interestingly, he ran his hands down the side of the wound in the tree and licked the sap from his fingers.
Sadly, after this, the chimps spent the rest of the day eating, resting and relieving themselves. Buzz, after bark stripping, returned to his perch and cowered. Seven hours of constant observation on top of two hours of trekking is demanding work and, while I certainly hope we see the chimps again tomorrow, something in me wouldn’t mind if they left us a little earlier next time. After eating lots of bark. Of course.
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Go Apes!
Tuesday, 14th July. Semliki Time: 07:11pm
After yesterdays gloomy and exhausting day, I slept well and woke up feeling refreshed. Alex’s alarm hadn’t been loud enougb to wake either of us and, at 6:45, we were a whole 45 minutes late in getting up. This cheered me- off to a good start.
Our good start continued when, shortly into the forest, we heard chimp calls. Only a short time later, we saw chimps. On our arrival, they hooted and screamed, obviously quite spooked. The Semliki chimps are only semi-habituated and, while the males will calmly swing overhead and munch and chew and defecate with pleasure, the young’uns and the females don’t feel at all comfortable in the presence of humans. The two juveniles we’d stumbled upon hastily retreated to the top of a high canopy and sat there for an hour. We too sat there for an hour trying to make notes.
08:40 out of sight
08:45 out of sight
08:50 out of sight
08:55 oos
09:00 oos.
09:05-15: “
20-30: “
Just as I was starting to wonder whether the conclusion to my dissertation would be “Chimps sometimes eat bark but most usually like to sit for long periods at the top of tall trees”, our charges began to scream again. This scream was answered by another scream somewhere in the distance. The distant scream became louder and was accompanied by a rustling. Soon enough, into plain view, clambered another, braver, juvenile with a cute brown face and a large white tuft on his bottom. He gingerly but quickly climbed over an unsturdy-looking low hanging branch and joined his friends in the canopy overhead to a cacophony of hoots and cheerful screams. Ten minutes later, another couple of screams echoed through the valley and a large, black coloured male swung towards us with a smaller individual following behind him, just out of sight. I almost decapitated Edson with my binoculars as I quickly raised them to my glasses. Realising that glasses and binoculars didn’t quite mesh, I raised the glasses to my forehead and peered through the binoculars. Before my very retina appeared a fantastic and highly detailed close-up of a leaf. Blinking, I removed the binocs and tried to relocate the hulking male. This proved difficult as my glasses were on my forehead and all I could see was a blacking blur. I replaced the glasses and, upon locating the black faced chimp and shoved my binoculars back into my face so hard that the frame left a red mark on my nose. By the time I’d finally negotiated the complexities of using two vision aides, he’d wandered out of sight behind a branch.
Soon enough though, we moved round a tree and the newly named “Chimp D” was once again in view. As we were staring at him, the white tufted “Chimp C” swung from the high canopy and greeted Mr “Chimp D” with friendly hoots. With the brawny “Chimp D” around, there was no need to fear the noisy humans on the forest floor. Raising my binoculars I gazed up at Chimp D and looked into his face. The noble beast turned slowly and with a wise, almost human-like expression looked deep into my eyes as if to say “What the f*** you staring at buddy!”. Having understood, I turned away and pretended to groom Edson for lice. Edson groomed himself for lice also, scratched his armpits and hooted. Neither of us found lice but “Chimp D” was satisfied by the display and lay back on the branch, allowing “Chimp C” or “White-bum” to groom him. The grooming lasted for almost forty minutes and, for some reason, was touching to watch. “Chimp D” lounged back and occasionally scratched himself while little white-bum combed every inch of his body. We looked for a long time at the list of chimp IDs and eventually decided that “Chimp D” was not “Chimp D” at all, but “Mzee”, a suspected alpha from 2008.
Mzee, bored of being groomed shook himself and headed into the higher branches to feed on saba fruit. White bum did the same, as did an out of sight juvenile in the trees to the left. The rustling was such that working out which of the circling chimps was witch became like a ball and cup game. By the end, we had no idea who was white-bum, who was Mzee and who was chimp + 1. One thing was for certain, from the pieces of saba that kept nearly hitting us it was easy to tell that they were feeding.
Not being allowed to eat near the chimps, by about one we were all completely starving and, at half one, we cracked. Silently, we snuck off to a nearby path and ate our belated elevenses. Chapattis have never been sweeter. On our return, Mzee was still munching, which he and his friends continued to do for another hour. We lay back and watched, which things crawled under our backs and over our legs. At 2:50, they were off. Screaming and climbing quickly. We have chase stabbing ourselves on twigs and slicing ourselves on thorns. Eventually saw them plop out of the tree in front of us and vanish into an impenetrable thicket. We bravely penetrated the impenetrable thicket at great cost to our clothes and entered the savannah, where chimps were rolling around, happily grooming each other with their teeth and eating vine leaves. When we got closer they got spooked and popped off into the thickest part of the thicket. Having now had an almost eight hour day we decided to call it one and traipsed home. With eight pages of notes and many question marks, measuring behavior is difficult. A few more days like today, though, and I’ll be a pro!
After yesterdays gloomy and exhausting day, I slept well and woke up feeling refreshed. Alex’s alarm hadn’t been loud enougb to wake either of us and, at 6:45, we were a whole 45 minutes late in getting up. This cheered me- off to a good start.
Our good start continued when, shortly into the forest, we heard chimp calls. Only a short time later, we saw chimps. On our arrival, they hooted and screamed, obviously quite spooked. The Semliki chimps are only semi-habituated and, while the males will calmly swing overhead and munch and chew and defecate with pleasure, the young’uns and the females don’t feel at all comfortable in the presence of humans. The two juveniles we’d stumbled upon hastily retreated to the top of a high canopy and sat there for an hour. We too sat there for an hour trying to make notes.
08:40 out of sight
08:45 out of sight
08:50 out of sight
08:55 oos
09:00 oos.
09:05-15: “
20-30: “
Just as I was starting to wonder whether the conclusion to my dissertation would be “Chimps sometimes eat bark but most usually like to sit for long periods at the top of tall trees”, our charges began to scream again. This scream was answered by another scream somewhere in the distance. The distant scream became louder and was accompanied by a rustling. Soon enough, into plain view, clambered another, braver, juvenile with a cute brown face and a large white tuft on his bottom. He gingerly but quickly climbed over an unsturdy-looking low hanging branch and joined his friends in the canopy overhead to a cacophony of hoots and cheerful screams. Ten minutes later, another couple of screams echoed through the valley and a large, black coloured male swung towards us with a smaller individual following behind him, just out of sight. I almost decapitated Edson with my binoculars as I quickly raised them to my glasses. Realising that glasses and binoculars didn’t quite mesh, I raised the glasses to my forehead and peered through the binoculars. Before my very retina appeared a fantastic and highly detailed close-up of a leaf. Blinking, I removed the binocs and tried to relocate the hulking male. This proved difficult as my glasses were on my forehead and all I could see was a blacking blur. I replaced the glasses and, upon locating the black faced chimp and shoved my binoculars back into my face so hard that the frame left a red mark on my nose. By the time I’d finally negotiated the complexities of using two vision aides, he’d wandered out of sight behind a branch.
Soon enough though, we moved round a tree and the newly named “Chimp D” was once again in view. As we were staring at him, the white tufted “Chimp C” swung from the high canopy and greeted Mr “Chimp D” with friendly hoots. With the brawny “Chimp D” around, there was no need to fear the noisy humans on the forest floor. Raising my binoculars I gazed up at Chimp D and looked into his face. The noble beast turned slowly and with a wise, almost human-like expression looked deep into my eyes as if to say “What the f*** you staring at buddy!”. Having understood, I turned away and pretended to groom Edson for lice. Edson groomed himself for lice also, scratched his armpits and hooted. Neither of us found lice but “Chimp D” was satisfied by the display and lay back on the branch, allowing “Chimp C” or “White-bum” to groom him. The grooming lasted for almost forty minutes and, for some reason, was touching to watch. “Chimp D” lounged back and occasionally scratched himself while little white-bum combed every inch of his body. We looked for a long time at the list of chimp IDs and eventually decided that “Chimp D” was not “Chimp D” at all, but “Mzee”, a suspected alpha from 2008.
Mzee, bored of being groomed shook himself and headed into the higher branches to feed on saba fruit. White bum did the same, as did an out of sight juvenile in the trees to the left. The rustling was such that working out which of the circling chimps was witch became like a ball and cup game. By the end, we had no idea who was white-bum, who was Mzee and who was chimp + 1. One thing was for certain, from the pieces of saba that kept nearly hitting us it was easy to tell that they were feeding.
Not being allowed to eat near the chimps, by about one we were all completely starving and, at half one, we cracked. Silently, we snuck off to a nearby path and ate our belated elevenses. Chapattis have never been sweeter. On our return, Mzee was still munching, which he and his friends continued to do for another hour. We lay back and watched, which things crawled under our backs and over our legs. At 2:50, they were off. Screaming and climbing quickly. We have chase stabbing ourselves on twigs and slicing ourselves on thorns. Eventually saw them plop out of the tree in front of us and vanish into an impenetrable thicket. We bravely penetrated the impenetrable thicket at great cost to our clothes and entered the savannah, where chimps were rolling around, happily grooming each other with their teeth and eating vine leaves. When we got closer they got spooked and popped off into the thickest part of the thicket. Having now had an almost eight hour day we decided to call it one and traipsed home. With eight pages of notes and many question marks, measuring behavior is difficult. A few more days like today, though, and I’ll be a pro!
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Never-ever step upon a snake.
Tuesday, 13th July. Semliki Time: 08:34pm
Today was quite a slog. Woke up several times in the night with various nightmares – I blame the malaria meds – and got up thismorning feeling groggy, despite the fact that we were leaving a whole hour later than normal. The usual trek through the jungle ended with the chimps prints vanishing at the intersection that led to the steep slopes or the open savanna. I felt less than disposed to risking my life on the slopes yet again and managed to convince the others that the savannah path was certainly the one to go for. This proved equally challenging, in its own way.
There are no proper trails in the brush land and we had to make our own way through the long grass. With each step, your foot disappeared into a world of biting ant, grass cuts and potential snake dangers (more on those later). The sun beat down overhead and dreanched us in sweat. As we wound uphill and downhill through dense grass and occasional dense thorny shrubland, I felt myself becoming progressively more drained and by the end of the day I was completely shattered. Its amazing how much more tiring it is to walk in the sun.
Today I almost trod on a snake which was curled up, sunning itself. I jumped back and, after regaining my composure, we all gathered round at a respectful difference to take a look. I pulled out the camera and started taking photos, an activity which riled our newfound friend considerably. It began to raise itself off the ground and do a waggling, hissing dance. This made for better photos, but was somewhat chilling. Eventually, deciding that it was probably outmatched, it scuttled of uphill and left us to our own devices. I’ve no idea what species it was, but it looked pretty deadly.
The cloud cover in the latter part of the day and the brief rainstorm has left my computer without much in the way of batteries so I’ll sign off now and call it a night. The isolation of semliki is starting to get to me and I don’t quite know how I’m going to manage ten whole weeks. Six am start again tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Today was quite a slog. Woke up several times in the night with various nightmares – I blame the malaria meds – and got up thismorning feeling groggy, despite the fact that we were leaving a whole hour later than normal. The usual trek through the jungle ended with the chimps prints vanishing at the intersection that led to the steep slopes or the open savanna. I felt less than disposed to risking my life on the slopes yet again and managed to convince the others that the savannah path was certainly the one to go for. This proved equally challenging, in its own way.
There are no proper trails in the brush land and we had to make our own way through the long grass. With each step, your foot disappeared into a world of biting ant, grass cuts and potential snake dangers (more on those later). The sun beat down overhead and dreanched us in sweat. As we wound uphill and downhill through dense grass and occasional dense thorny shrubland, I felt myself becoming progressively more drained and by the end of the day I was completely shattered. Its amazing how much more tiring it is to walk in the sun.
Today I almost trod on a snake which was curled up, sunning itself. I jumped back and, after regaining my composure, we all gathered round at a respectful difference to take a look. I pulled out the camera and started taking photos, an activity which riled our newfound friend considerably. It began to raise itself off the ground and do a waggling, hissing dance. This made for better photos, but was somewhat chilling. Eventually, deciding that it was probably outmatched, it scuttled of uphill and left us to our own devices. I’ve no idea what species it was, but it looked pretty deadly.
The cloud cover in the latter part of the day and the brief rainstorm has left my computer without much in the way of batteries so I’ll sign off now and call it a night. The isolation of semliki is starting to get to me and I don’t quite know how I’m going to manage ten whole weeks. Six am start again tomorrow. Wish me luck.
Monday, 12 July 2010
I knew him, Horatio
Monday, 12th July. Semliki Time: 07:30pm
Well… wow… what a day. Okay. They’ve been a couple of bombs in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. Between 50-60 are dead, but luckily neither Alex or I are among them. One of Edson’s relatives was killed in the blast, however, and there may be more so I have my fingers crossed. Luckily it wasn’t a close relative, but it still must be very very unsettling. Just as long as they don’t declare war on Somalia or something, we should be fine.
That aside, its been the most incredible day. Finally, after a rather despondent three days of trudging, we saw Chimps! Real Chimps. At around 6.57 we heard their calls and charged through the jungle in their general direction. About 20 minutes late, we saw some nests and at 7.24 Edson stopped us and William pointed up into the trees.
“Look!” “There!” “You see it?” “A chimp!!”
Sure enough, happily munching saba fruit directly above us was a medium sized adult male. Craning my neck to see I looked out for one of the many categories we’d been given to identify them. Did he have all his digits? Were his ears in tact? How large was his scrotum and did he have a big pink scrotal line? Sadly, ears, fingers and ball-bag were all impossible to distinguish between the leaves, though a contentedly chewing mouth was clearly discernable from the edge of the canopy. A rustle in the tree to the far right of my hominoid friend indicated the presence of a younger juvenile and rustling behind us highlighted two more invisible chimps. I desperately tried to write down data, opting to concentrate on the visible male while “scan sampling” the both the male and the juvenile every five minutes. After about ten minutes, some tourists from the lodge turned up and stared with us. There were two harmless looking elderly people, someone who looked like a coke addict and a profoundly idiotic looking man with waist length hair and an Australia tourist hat. They lumbered about for twenty minutes, talking very loudly. The chimps were obviously somewhat peeved by the influx of sightseers and at 7:50 the male gave out a loud scream. The other chimps answered with pant-hoots and climbed down the trees and out of sight. As we walked away despondently, the Australian hat-wearer gave us a look of utter gormlessness. I could have slapped him.
Luckily, William, who has quite sharp eyes, picked up the trail. It led us deep into the undergrowth, under thorns, past creepers, over steams, up hills and, eventually, into a patch of golden savannah. The trail turned back into a mesh of hedges and acacia trees and, all of a sudden, William yelled “Look”. Sitting on the ground beneath a tree lay a complete, pristine chimpanzee Skeleton. The cranium was in perfect condition, with only its front teeth missing and almost every other part was present. Before I managed to take a picture of the condition we’d found the body in, however, our guides busily set to the task of putting the bones in one big heap. The skull was so perfect that I just couldn’t help picking it up and reciting a few lines from Shakespeare, though I imagine that this is terrible scientific practice.
We left the bones is a heap, with the skull on top and elected to find them later in favor of persuing the chimps. We caught up with their trail and followed it for hours until it suddenly and mysteriously vanished. We later found out that this was where the tourists from the nearby lodge had bumped into the chimps again and scared them off. Pah. Tourists. On the way back to the chimp skeleton, William spotted another tree which had had its bark torn of- this one about 2 weeks ago. I decided to climb up and take sampled. I jumped on to a vine and dangled ineffectually for a couple of minutes before ingraciously falling off. Alex then stepped up to the tree, jumped onto the vine and shimmied up it with startling ease, taking some fantastic photos of the place where the bark had been stripped and using my huntsman Swiss army knife to cut some chunks to take back to the camp. That girl impresses me more and more each day!
Anyway, my self-esteem shredded only slightly more than it was already but none-the-less dreamily content, we trekked to the bone pile with sandwich bags and back to the camp. I put the bagged-up chimpanzee skull in my back-pack on the way home and it gave me a morbid thrill every time I thought about it. So, that’s today down, tomorrow will bring. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Or was that Macbeth?
Well… wow… what a day. Okay. They’ve been a couple of bombs in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. Between 50-60 are dead, but luckily neither Alex or I are among them. One of Edson’s relatives was killed in the blast, however, and there may be more so I have my fingers crossed. Luckily it wasn’t a close relative, but it still must be very very unsettling. Just as long as they don’t declare war on Somalia or something, we should be fine.
That aside, its been the most incredible day. Finally, after a rather despondent three days of trudging, we saw Chimps! Real Chimps. At around 6.57 we heard their calls and charged through the jungle in their general direction. About 20 minutes late, we saw some nests and at 7.24 Edson stopped us and William pointed up into the trees.
“Look!” “There!” “You see it?” “A chimp!!”
Sure enough, happily munching saba fruit directly above us was a medium sized adult male. Craning my neck to see I looked out for one of the many categories we’d been given to identify them. Did he have all his digits? Were his ears in tact? How large was his scrotum and did he have a big pink scrotal line? Sadly, ears, fingers and ball-bag were all impossible to distinguish between the leaves, though a contentedly chewing mouth was clearly discernable from the edge of the canopy. A rustle in the tree to the far right of my hominoid friend indicated the presence of a younger juvenile and rustling behind us highlighted two more invisible chimps. I desperately tried to write down data, opting to concentrate on the visible male while “scan sampling” the both the male and the juvenile every five minutes. After about ten minutes, some tourists from the lodge turned up and stared with us. There were two harmless looking elderly people, someone who looked like a coke addict and a profoundly idiotic looking man with waist length hair and an Australia tourist hat. They lumbered about for twenty minutes, talking very loudly. The chimps were obviously somewhat peeved by the influx of sightseers and at 7:50 the male gave out a loud scream. The other chimps answered with pant-hoots and climbed down the trees and out of sight. As we walked away despondently, the Australian hat-wearer gave us a look of utter gormlessness. I could have slapped him.
Luckily, William, who has quite sharp eyes, picked up the trail. It led us deep into the undergrowth, under thorns, past creepers, over steams, up hills and, eventually, into a patch of golden savannah. The trail turned back into a mesh of hedges and acacia trees and, all of a sudden, William yelled “Look”. Sitting on the ground beneath a tree lay a complete, pristine chimpanzee Skeleton. The cranium was in perfect condition, with only its front teeth missing and almost every other part was present. Before I managed to take a picture of the condition we’d found the body in, however, our guides busily set to the task of putting the bones in one big heap. The skull was so perfect that I just couldn’t help picking it up and reciting a few lines from Shakespeare, though I imagine that this is terrible scientific practice.
Alas poor Yorik, I’ve severely compromised my scientific principles!
We left the bones is a heap, with the skull on top and elected to find them later in favor of persuing the chimps. We caught up with their trail and followed it for hours until it suddenly and mysteriously vanished. We later found out that this was where the tourists from the nearby lodge had bumped into the chimps again and scared them off. Pah. Tourists. On the way back to the chimp skeleton, William spotted another tree which had had its bark torn of- this one about 2 weeks ago. I decided to climb up and take sampled. I jumped on to a vine and dangled ineffectually for a couple of minutes before ingraciously falling off. Alex then stepped up to the tree, jumped onto the vine and shimmied up it with startling ease, taking some fantastic photos of the place where the bark had been stripped and using my huntsman Swiss army knife to cut some chunks to take back to the camp. That girl impresses me more and more each day!
Anyway, my self-esteem shredded only slightly more than it was already but none-the-less dreamily content, we trekked to the bone pile with sandwich bags and back to the camp. I put the bagged-up chimpanzee skull in my back-pack on the way home and it gave me a morbid thrill every time I thought about it. So, that’s today down, tomorrow will bring. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Or was that Macbeth?
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Saturday, 11th July. Semliki Time: 10:16pm
Sunday, thank goodness, is rest day. I think I slept for more than 12 hours last night, a nap that was really needed after the week of sleeplessness coupled with the 6 hour daily chimpanzee treks. The folks back home have asked me to write about the camp and, since they’re among the only people who read this blog, and since not a lot has really happened today, I will indulge them!
Food
The food here is, to all intents and purposes, delicious. Every morning at six forty we’re given a chapatti for breakfast, a food which I assume arrived here with the wave of Indian immigrants who returned to Uganda after Idi was ousted. This is served with honey and coffee from last-night boiled water and is absolutely delicious. At eleven am, after a good four hours of scrambling through the jungle, we’re treated to an egg, a banana and another chipatti with honey. After the rigors of the morning, this is all the more delicious and I usually gulp down the banana and the chipatti at the same time. Lunch appears between 2:30 and three about an hour after we get back to camp. We’re given bean stew with plantain, yam, a delicious bowl of fruit and an even more delicious glass of freshly squeezed passion fruit juice. Dinner, much like lunch, consists of bean stew, this time served with a large lump of very filling sorghum and millet flour dough which everyone tears at and uses to scoop the bean soup. Yesterday this was replaced by rice, though I think soon matoke will all be on the menu. The food is wonderful though the bean stew lacks variety somewhat and I think that, by the end, I may not be enjoying beans so much. Yesterday, though, Alex and I wondered if we could have an egg and the subsequent omelette was heavenly. Beans are lovely, but next time I get to fort-portal I’m going to murder a burger!
Accommodation and Facilities
Thatched roofed platforms on stilts jut out looking over the valley in which the forest lies. The tents contain beds with mattresses, mosquito nets and boxes to put our things in. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t lugged bills heavy duty suitcase out here. Still, it will be useful if our camp is ever charged by a rhinoceros! There’s also a central area, which has a kitchen, a solar generator, book cases, various pieces of equipment and a tank of boiled river water. This is the center of the camp and is very homely indeed. Down the way are various other tents, to our right, up a path, the latrine and to our left down a parth, the shower, complete with running water
People
The camp is pretty much run by a man called Edison who does the cooking, the driving, the chimp walks, the food trips and almost everything else. He’s a lovely man and mothers his western charges no end, making sure all our needs are seen too! When I talked of my latrine woes, he ever went and sprayed it for me to reduce the smell – I was quite embarrassed! It didn’t help too much, of course. My gag reflex is profoundly sensitive.
That aside we’re also living with several others who are in charge of keeping things ship shap. There’s ‘Justice’, a young, smiling man with the muscles of a bull elephant. There’s William, who is our current ranger and takes us through the forest. He’s the camps draughts master, but as I roundly whuped him twice today, I think the Semliki lodge needs more practice. There’s an old fellow who’s very kind and who washes the cloathes and hauls water from the river. He doesn’t speak too much English and I can’t yet remember his name. With luck, I soon will. There’s also another guy called moses, but he’s in hospital with his wife at the moment, who’s just had a baby.
Down the road there’s a safari lodge, but I’ll talk more about that another time. Chimps were heard making their nests close to the camp earlier today and we’re setting off early tomorrow to catch them before they wake up. Maybe tomorrow will be the day!
Sunday, thank goodness, is rest day. I think I slept for more than 12 hours last night, a nap that was really needed after the week of sleeplessness coupled with the 6 hour daily chimpanzee treks. The folks back home have asked me to write about the camp and, since they’re among the only people who read this blog, and since not a lot has really happened today, I will indulge them!
Food
The food here is, to all intents and purposes, delicious. Every morning at six forty we’re given a chapatti for breakfast, a food which I assume arrived here with the wave of Indian immigrants who returned to Uganda after Idi was ousted. This is served with honey and coffee from last-night boiled water and is absolutely delicious. At eleven am, after a good four hours of scrambling through the jungle, we’re treated to an egg, a banana and another chipatti with honey. After the rigors of the morning, this is all the more delicious and I usually gulp down the banana and the chipatti at the same time. Lunch appears between 2:30 and three about an hour after we get back to camp. We’re given bean stew with plantain, yam, a delicious bowl of fruit and an even more delicious glass of freshly squeezed passion fruit juice. Dinner, much like lunch, consists of bean stew, this time served with a large lump of very filling sorghum and millet flour dough which everyone tears at and uses to scoop the bean soup. Yesterday this was replaced by rice, though I think soon matoke will all be on the menu. The food is wonderful though the bean stew lacks variety somewhat and I think that, by the end, I may not be enjoying beans so much. Yesterday, though, Alex and I wondered if we could have an egg and the subsequent omelette was heavenly. Beans are lovely, but next time I get to fort-portal I’m going to murder a burger!
Accommodation and Facilities
Thatched roofed platforms on stilts jut out looking over the valley in which the forest lies. The tents contain beds with mattresses, mosquito nets and boxes to put our things in. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t lugged bills heavy duty suitcase out here. Still, it will be useful if our camp is ever charged by a rhinoceros! There’s also a central area, which has a kitchen, a solar generator, book cases, various pieces of equipment and a tank of boiled river water. This is the center of the camp and is very homely indeed. Down the way are various other tents, to our right, up a path, the latrine and to our left down a parth, the shower, complete with running water
People
The camp is pretty much run by a man called Edison who does the cooking, the driving, the chimp walks, the food trips and almost everything else. He’s a lovely man and mothers his western charges no end, making sure all our needs are seen too! When I talked of my latrine woes, he ever went and sprayed it for me to reduce the smell – I was quite embarrassed! It didn’t help too much, of course. My gag reflex is profoundly sensitive.
That aside we’re also living with several others who are in charge of keeping things ship shap. There’s ‘Justice’, a young, smiling man with the muscles of a bull elephant. There’s William, who is our current ranger and takes us through the forest. He’s the camps draughts master, but as I roundly whuped him twice today, I think the Semliki lodge needs more practice. There’s an old fellow who’s very kind and who washes the cloathes and hauls water from the river. He doesn’t speak too much English and I can’t yet remember his name. With luck, I soon will. There’s also another guy called moses, but he’s in hospital with his wife at the moment, who’s just had a baby.
Down the road there’s a safari lodge, but I’ll talk more about that another time. Chimps were heard making their nests close to the camp earlier today and we’re setting off early tomorrow to catch them before they wake up. Maybe tomorrow will be the day!
Saturday, 10 July 2010
The Ivory Boast
Saturday, 10th July. Semliki Time: 10:15pm
My my, what a day. So, I’ve now been in Africa for a week and have seen everything from the savannas, to the markets, swamps and jungles. Lizards, antelope, monkeys, warthogs, tsetse flies have all made an appearance and, with the exception of chimps, all that's left to see are elephants, giraffes and lions and my African checklist is complete. On the subject of Elephants, a couple of years ago I embarked on a quest into a south east Asian jungle in order to find them. Despite marching for the miles through a jungle, the closest I got to seeing elephants was their dung. Three days in an African jungle, however, and I’ve already seen ‘em. We were searching for chimp-chewed acacia trees on our routine march through the jungle earlier when there was a tremendous rustling and the top third of a young elephant hove briefly into view. On hearing us, it scuttled, as best as an elephant can scuttle, into some thick undergrowth to the left of the path. We crossed the river and could here elephant jr. happily plodding about and smashing into trees on our left. A smashing sound to our right alerted us to the proximate presence of elephant sr. who was behind some bushes no more than five meters to our left. I was faced with the sight of a large flapping ear and the sound of ominous munching.
Elephants are the subjects of many horror stories and, when upset, can charge like bulls. Unlike bulls, elephants weigh as much as a bus and are twice your height and twice your speed. In short, when you see an elephant, the best thing to do is hide and in no way alert it to your presence. On the other hand, it is not often that one gets to see wild forest elephants and my curiosity was well and truly piqued. As I was treading the difficult line between trying not to be seen by the elephant and trying to see as much of the elephant as I could, the crunching sound to our left grew louder. Elephant Jr. was making a return. Practically cornered by elephants, I started to eye up the nearest trees. Unfortunately, in the spirit of the red queen, the fact that the tallest tree will always get the most sun leads to an evolutionary arms race in rainforests. Tree number one will grow taller than tree number two, which is then forced to grow taller than tree number one. The feedback loop repeats resulting in forests full of very high trees with very few low branches. My lamentations were cut short by William, our guide, loudly hissing. The elephants, startled by the hiss, slinked away. Quite an anticlimax really.
Also of note today, I found my first wads of tree-bark. The aim of my project is to try and work out why Chimpanzees eat bark and the chewed balls of vascular cambium constitute my first proper data. The bark of the acacia (and many other trees) is chewed for an hour or so and then spat out. We also found the acacia tree that the chimps tore the bark from and collected a number of long strips to drag home. Possibly I’ll be able to write something for my project after all.
I was planning to write something about the accommodation and the food (all more than ample), but as my computer is soon going to run out of battery power, I’ll leave it as that. Still no Chimps but, with luck, they’ll turn up soon!
Steps Taken
30, 192
Wads Collected
10
Pieces of Bark Transported
10
Critter Count
Black and White Colobus Monkeys (3)
Dead Black and White Colobus Monkeys (1)
Red Tailed Monkeys (1)
Elephants (2)
My my, what a day. So, I’ve now been in Africa for a week and have seen everything from the savannas, to the markets, swamps and jungles. Lizards, antelope, monkeys, warthogs, tsetse flies have all made an appearance and, with the exception of chimps, all that's left to see are elephants, giraffes and lions and my African checklist is complete. On the subject of Elephants, a couple of years ago I embarked on a quest into a south east Asian jungle in order to find them. Despite marching for the miles through a jungle, the closest I got to seeing elephants was their dung. Three days in an African jungle, however, and I’ve already seen ‘em. We were searching for chimp-chewed acacia trees on our routine march through the jungle earlier when there was a tremendous rustling and the top third of a young elephant hove briefly into view. On hearing us, it scuttled, as best as an elephant can scuttle, into some thick undergrowth to the left of the path. We crossed the river and could here elephant jr. happily plodding about and smashing into trees on our left. A smashing sound to our right alerted us to the proximate presence of elephant sr. who was behind some bushes no more than five meters to our left. I was faced with the sight of a large flapping ear and the sound of ominous munching.
Elephants are the subjects of many horror stories and, when upset, can charge like bulls. Unlike bulls, elephants weigh as much as a bus and are twice your height and twice your speed. In short, when you see an elephant, the best thing to do is hide and in no way alert it to your presence. On the other hand, it is not often that one gets to see wild forest elephants and my curiosity was well and truly piqued. As I was treading the difficult line between trying not to be seen by the elephant and trying to see as much of the elephant as I could, the crunching sound to our left grew louder. Elephant Jr. was making a return. Practically cornered by elephants, I started to eye up the nearest trees. Unfortunately, in the spirit of the red queen, the fact that the tallest tree will always get the most sun leads to an evolutionary arms race in rainforests. Tree number one will grow taller than tree number two, which is then forced to grow taller than tree number one. The feedback loop repeats resulting in forests full of very high trees with very few low branches. My lamentations were cut short by William, our guide, loudly hissing. The elephants, startled by the hiss, slinked away. Quite an anticlimax really.
Also of note today, I found my first wads of tree-bark. The aim of my project is to try and work out why Chimpanzees eat bark and the chewed balls of vascular cambium constitute my first proper data. The bark of the acacia (and many other trees) is chewed for an hour or so and then spat out. We also found the acacia tree that the chimps tore the bark from and collected a number of long strips to drag home. Possibly I’ll be able to write something for my project after all.
I was planning to write something about the accommodation and the food (all more than ample), but as my computer is soon going to run out of battery power, I’ll leave it as that. Still no Chimps but, with luck, they’ll turn up soon!
Steps Taken
30, 192
Wads Collected
10
Pieces of Bark Transported
10
Critter Count
Black and White Colobus Monkeys (3)
Dead Black and White Colobus Monkeys (1)
Red Tailed Monkeys (1)
Elephants (2)
Friday, 9 July 2010
Friday, 9th July. Semliki Time: 3:22pm
Alex got up today at the far more reasonable time of six thirty and, having had a good seven hours sleep, I joined her five minutes later. With the help of a menthol strepsil, I managed to use the dugout without throwing up for the first time. The waft of faeces is banished by the smell of eucalyptus, but the warmth that radiated from the steaming pile of dung at the bottom of the pit still turned my stomach a bit. Not to complain though – the dugout here is western style (you can sit on it) and even has toilet paper – compared to how things could be, it's a practical throne. After a delicious breakfast of chapattis and coffee, we headed into the forest. The ranks of similar looking trees, branches and vines seemed only slightly less confusing and overwhelmingly leafy today but I am making progress in my ability to spot wild animals. I still lag behind Alex, who spots them almost without thinking, but I managed to distinguish several monkeys and even a few birds from the mess of greenery. Black and white colobus monkeys are particularly charming and have cute little white faces, black ears and long, bushy, black and white tails. They also seemed to appear everywhere we went on today’s walk and we ended up seeing about six. If my project were on the time it takes for a colobus to run away from you once its spotted you, I’d be up to my ears in data already.
As the Semliki park lies at the very bottom of the Rwanzori mountains, three of the forest’s trails are on very steep slopes. By trails here I mean barely trodden dusty paths that slip away when you tread on them and by very steep slope I mean sharp 75 degree inclines with pointy rocks at the bottom. These seem to faze Alex and the rangers not at all. I, on the other hand, could not banish the possibly quite rational fear that I was just a step away from my untimely demise. During todays dice with dusty death, I almost slipped twice and by the end was so completely loaded with adrenaline that my legs were wobbling. “You are very tired” our guide periodically noted, but in truth I was sweating with fear at the thought of the all-too imminently approaching here-after. After one particularly disturbing slip, he began to realise that my co-ordination might not quite be my best feature and slowed his pace down a little. Chimpanzees apparently visit the slopes regularly so we will be going there quite often. With luck I shan’t be brought home in a body-bag, but one must suffer for one’s art.
Back in camp now and, after boasting to Alex about my imperiousness to insects, I’ve finally been bitten by a tsetse fly. Twice. Truth be told, it was rather an anti-climax. My dad has, on many occasions, explained their powerful bite. Gerald Durrell, Evans-Pritchard and Nigel Barley all waxed lyrical about the sting on the tsetse and, from the moment we arrived, the rangers and the camp staff have told us to be very careful of the vicious insects. All things put together, I was somehow expecting the pain of 1000 bees, followed by a swollen leg and possible amputation. While the tsetse fly’s bite is certainly not pleasant, its no worse than pricking yourself with a needle and the pain soon wears off once you’ve squashed the blood-sucker. What the tsetse lacks in power it certainly makes up for in ferocity, tenacity and number. The camp and the jungle are swarming with them and once they’ve scented you, they won’t leave until hit or squashed.
Sadly, no chimpanzees, though we did see two of the wells on which Alex is basing her project. Chimpanzees drink water from wells they dig themselves in the silt. Confusingly they do this both when the water table is low and there’s no river running AND when the river is bubbling away a mere few centimetres from the well. Even more confusingly, apart from a slight difference PH, no difference has been found between the quality and composition of the river water and that which filters through the sand in the well. Alex has brought all kinds of exciting kit to test for other variables such as bacterial content, but my own hypothesis is that well-digging has become a habitual behaviour. Chimpanzees dug wells during the dry season to get water, the behaviour spread and, when the water came back, well digging was already a customary behaviour, its ultimate purpose forgotten. A kinda behavioural spandrel! That is to say, well digging during the rainy season is a byproduct of the need to dig wells during the dry season. This theory is countered somewhat by the fact that Chimps have been shown to generally copy the purpose of a task rather than mechanism, but a couple of papers published by Whiten show that mechanism transmission can be important also. At least in labs.
Anyway, enough about that. Suffice to say that all is well with the wells, we are all well and that’s all well and good! With any luck, there will be chimps tomorrow. Now, back to chapter five of ‘Measuring Behaviour” where I will bask in the joy of knowing which situation in which to scan sample and when using a focal sample is the best way to roll. In the mean time, keep well.
Steps walked:
28,000
Times I nearly fell to a bloody death:
2
Critter Count:
Emerald Tree Snake (1)
Red-tail Monkeys (2)
Black and White Colobus Monkeys (6)
Monitor Lizard (1)
Ibis (1)
Blood-sucking Insects (Plenty)
Alex got up today at the far more reasonable time of six thirty and, having had a good seven hours sleep, I joined her five minutes later. With the help of a menthol strepsil, I managed to use the dugout without throwing up for the first time. The waft of faeces is banished by the smell of eucalyptus, but the warmth that radiated from the steaming pile of dung at the bottom of the pit still turned my stomach a bit. Not to complain though – the dugout here is western style (you can sit on it) and even has toilet paper – compared to how things could be, it's a practical throne. After a delicious breakfast of chapattis and coffee, we headed into the forest. The ranks of similar looking trees, branches and vines seemed only slightly less confusing and overwhelmingly leafy today but I am making progress in my ability to spot wild animals. I still lag behind Alex, who spots them almost without thinking, but I managed to distinguish several monkeys and even a few birds from the mess of greenery. Black and white colobus monkeys are particularly charming and have cute little white faces, black ears and long, bushy, black and white tails. They also seemed to appear everywhere we went on today’s walk and we ended up seeing about six. If my project were on the time it takes for a colobus to run away from you once its spotted you, I’d be up to my ears in data already.
As the Semliki park lies at the very bottom of the Rwanzori mountains, three of the forest’s trails are on very steep slopes. By trails here I mean barely trodden dusty paths that slip away when you tread on them and by very steep slope I mean sharp 75 degree inclines with pointy rocks at the bottom. These seem to faze Alex and the rangers not at all. I, on the other hand, could not banish the possibly quite rational fear that I was just a step away from my untimely demise. During todays dice with dusty death, I almost slipped twice and by the end was so completely loaded with adrenaline that my legs were wobbling. “You are very tired” our guide periodically noted, but in truth I was sweating with fear at the thought of the all-too imminently approaching here-after. After one particularly disturbing slip, he began to realise that my co-ordination might not quite be my best feature and slowed his pace down a little. Chimpanzees apparently visit the slopes regularly so we will be going there quite often. With luck I shan’t be brought home in a body-bag, but one must suffer for one’s art.
Back in camp now and, after boasting to Alex about my imperiousness to insects, I’ve finally been bitten by a tsetse fly. Twice. Truth be told, it was rather an anti-climax. My dad has, on many occasions, explained their powerful bite. Gerald Durrell, Evans-Pritchard and Nigel Barley all waxed lyrical about the sting on the tsetse and, from the moment we arrived, the rangers and the camp staff have told us to be very careful of the vicious insects. All things put together, I was somehow expecting the pain of 1000 bees, followed by a swollen leg and possible amputation. While the tsetse fly’s bite is certainly not pleasant, its no worse than pricking yourself with a needle and the pain soon wears off once you’ve squashed the blood-sucker. What the tsetse lacks in power it certainly makes up for in ferocity, tenacity and number. The camp and the jungle are swarming with them and once they’ve scented you, they won’t leave until hit or squashed.
Sadly, no chimpanzees, though we did see two of the wells on which Alex is basing her project. Chimpanzees drink water from wells they dig themselves in the silt. Confusingly they do this both when the water table is low and there’s no river running AND when the river is bubbling away a mere few centimetres from the well. Even more confusingly, apart from a slight difference PH, no difference has been found between the quality and composition of the river water and that which filters through the sand in the well. Alex has brought all kinds of exciting kit to test for other variables such as bacterial content, but my own hypothesis is that well-digging has become a habitual behaviour. Chimpanzees dug wells during the dry season to get water, the behaviour spread and, when the water came back, well digging was already a customary behaviour, its ultimate purpose forgotten. A kinda behavioural spandrel! That is to say, well digging during the rainy season is a byproduct of the need to dig wells during the dry season. This theory is countered somewhat by the fact that Chimps have been shown to generally copy the purpose of a task rather than mechanism, but a couple of papers published by Whiten show that mechanism transmission can be important also. At least in labs.
Anyway, enough about that. Suffice to say that all is well with the wells, we are all well and that’s all well and good! With any luck, there will be chimps tomorrow. Now, back to chapter five of ‘Measuring Behaviour” where I will bask in the joy of knowing which situation in which to scan sample and when using a focal sample is the best way to roll. In the mean time, keep well.
Steps walked:
28,000
Times I nearly fell to a bloody death:
2
Critter Count:
Emerald Tree Snake (1)
Red-tail Monkeys (2)
Black and White Colobus Monkeys (6)
Monitor Lizard (1)
Ibis (1)
Blood-sucking Insects (Plenty)
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Welcome to the Jungle
Thursday, 8th July. GMT: 8:53pm, Semliki Time: 10:53pm
Alex bounded out of bed at 6:10am this morning, a full fifty minutes before we had to be dressed and ready. Speechless, as I usually am at 6am (that’s 4 in the UK, by the way), I stuttered something that probably wasn’t a word and went back to sleep. I finally rose at the moderately more moderate hour of 6:38 and proceeded to stumble about into my clothes and out of the door.
The forest was initially unimpressive. Trees. Okay. I like those. But a little like the south east Asian jungle to impress me. Luckily, as we got further in, the trees got taller. Interesting tropical flowered bloomed round our feet, along with interesting tropical fungus and interesting tropical “other”. Every so often our guide would stop us and say “LOOK”. Five seconds later Alex would say “Aha! Isn’t that something” and a minute and a half later I would say “No… no I.. Um… no, I can't see that”. Still, as we continued, we spotted monkeys and birds of all sorts. Semliki is home to one of the largest collections of endemic birds in the whole of Uganda. I can’t for the life of me remember what any of them were called, but some of them were magnificent. At least, the guide and Alex told me that some of them were magnificent. To me, they all looked like leaves. That or I was looking at leaves. We also soon stumbles across a tree where the Chimpanzees had ripped the bark to eat. This is the very subject of my dissertation and put me in a fine mood. Maybe I’d be able to make something of it after all.
Soon afterwards, my mood was killed by the guide. I told him I was doing a project on tree bark and he said “Aha! This a very bad project! They never eat bark.” Visions of a successful project, a good grade, Phd funding and a future as an academic flittered away in front of my eyes. “Now we move!” he said. As I tried to fight back waves of grief we began to climb the rift escarpment and I ineptly juggled to three tasks of staying awake, trying not to collapse into a heap of tiredness induced misery and self-pity and trying not to fall to my bloody death at the bottom of a chasm. I stumbled along five meters behind, tripping a few times on the dusty steep slopes and miraculously making it to the other side. I don’t know quite how I managed to not kill myself, but I managed. “When the chimps come here, you must move very very fast!” our guide reassured me.
On the way back we saw baboons, who can be described as nothing else but “totally MENTAL”. If you stare at them and dodge left and right, they get very confused and begin spinning around, jumping left and right, bouncing off trees and jumping feet into the air. The whole spectacle was intensely amusing and cannot adequately be put into words, much like the semi-ballet dancing movements of the grotesquely but charmingly ugly Warthog!
Must wrap up as we’ve another early start tomorrow. Once we arrived panting back in camp the rest of the day was largely uneventful except for a few upsetting RCSA e-mails and a reassuring message from Prof. McGrew telling me that Chimpanzees strip bark all the time. Maybe tomorrow, we’ll even get to see them!
Alex bounded out of bed at 6:10am this morning, a full fifty minutes before we had to be dressed and ready. Speechless, as I usually am at 6am (that’s 4 in the UK, by the way), I stuttered something that probably wasn’t a word and went back to sleep. I finally rose at the moderately more moderate hour of 6:38 and proceeded to stumble about into my clothes and out of the door.
The forest was initially unimpressive. Trees. Okay. I like those. But a little like the south east Asian jungle to impress me. Luckily, as we got further in, the trees got taller. Interesting tropical flowered bloomed round our feet, along with interesting tropical fungus and interesting tropical “other”. Every so often our guide would stop us and say “LOOK”. Five seconds later Alex would say “Aha! Isn’t that something” and a minute and a half later I would say “No… no I.. Um… no, I can't see that”. Still, as we continued, we spotted monkeys and birds of all sorts. Semliki is home to one of the largest collections of endemic birds in the whole of Uganda. I can’t for the life of me remember what any of them were called, but some of them were magnificent. At least, the guide and Alex told me that some of them were magnificent. To me, they all looked like leaves. That or I was looking at leaves. We also soon stumbles across a tree where the Chimpanzees had ripped the bark to eat. This is the very subject of my dissertation and put me in a fine mood. Maybe I’d be able to make something of it after all.
Soon afterwards, my mood was killed by the guide. I told him I was doing a project on tree bark and he said “Aha! This a very bad project! They never eat bark.” Visions of a successful project, a good grade, Phd funding and a future as an academic flittered away in front of my eyes. “Now we move!” he said. As I tried to fight back waves of grief we began to climb the rift escarpment and I ineptly juggled to three tasks of staying awake, trying not to collapse into a heap of tiredness induced misery and self-pity and trying not to fall to my bloody death at the bottom of a chasm. I stumbled along five meters behind, tripping a few times on the dusty steep slopes and miraculously making it to the other side. I don’t know quite how I managed to not kill myself, but I managed. “When the chimps come here, you must move very very fast!” our guide reassured me.
On the way back we saw baboons, who can be described as nothing else but “totally MENTAL”. If you stare at them and dodge left and right, they get very confused and begin spinning around, jumping left and right, bouncing off trees and jumping feet into the air. The whole spectacle was intensely amusing and cannot adequately be put into words, much like the semi-ballet dancing movements of the grotesquely but charmingly ugly Warthog!
Must wrap up as we’ve another early start tomorrow. Once we arrived panting back in camp the rest of the day was largely uneventful except for a few upsetting RCSA e-mails and a reassuring message from Prof. McGrew telling me that Chimpanzees strip bark all the time. Maybe tomorrow, we’ll even get to see them!
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Wednesday, 7th July. GMT: 8:03 . Semliki Time: 10:03
On under two hours sleep, my cognitive abilities have begun to loose their edge. None the less, I’ve had such an incredible day that I will attempt to press on regardless. Still on English time, my English time, I couldn’t sleep last night until 5:00 am which was a shame as I had to rise to take the bus to Fort Portal at the ungodly hour of 6:45. At least, that’s when I thought I had to rise. As it turned out, that was when the taxi driver actually wanted to leave. The cheeky fellow charged us an extra 5000 Ugandan Shillings due to my late rising, a fact I was not best pleased with.
Eventually bundled myself onto the bus and we were off. The road immediately out of Kampala was not great. Pot-holes abounded and sleeping-policemen (speed bumps) were so steep that they ricocheted everyone on the bus about a meter into the air every time when went over one. This was rather jarring on the old butocks, but facilitated my enjoyment of the scenery no end. Scenery is best enjoyed with your eyes open after all. Just out of Kampala we passed through a swamp which gradually shifted to verdant rolling hills as we continued on out. Until we began to close in on Fort Portal, the gateway to the Semliki reserve as well as various other national parks, the hills continued to verdantly roll, but after a good four hours tea plantations began to appear, the road became well cared-for and the Ruwenzori mountains materialized as ghosts in the misty distance. At long last, and just before the pain in my bruised posterior elicited actual yelps of agony, we pulled into fort portal and stopped. Alex and I began shifting our giant collection of bags out of the bus and onto the pavement. I’d just climbed up to grab the last one when the bus started again and I was left in the awkward position of yelling “stop” while running away from the exit towards the back. We kept going. I grabbed my bag and charged back towards the driver yelling a little louder. The conductor asked me what the problem was. I said I wanted the bus to stop. The bus was stopped but the conductor stood directly in my way in front of the exit. The driver, impatient, started driving again. I yelled stop again. We stopped again. I jumped past the conductor, nearly decapitating an unfortunately proximate checked and bolted through the door. The door opened. I was free.
This wasn’t the end of our problems though. We’d arranged for the camp supervisor Edson to pick us up outside the supermarket. Sadly, we couldn’t raise him on the phone and found ourselves stranded in what seemed like the supermaket capital of Uganda. By supermarket, we’re not talking tesco here. We’re talking large corner shop with limited refrigeration facilities and a big sign that says “Supermarket”. I left Alex with the bags, and went on a mighty pilgramage to each of Fort Portals numerous supermarkets asking if anyone knew a fellow called ‘Edson’.
“What did he look like”, they asked.
Sadly I didn’t know.
“Where did he live?”
Two hours drive out of town at the foot of the Ruwenzoris. Suffice to say, noone knew a fellow called Edson.
Luckily, we eventually managed to reach him on his phone and a light lunch followed by an hour long wait later (that’s two hours in Africa, we discovered), we headed off to Semliki. The rift valley, which we had to navigate, we stunning. The Rwanzoris set the backdrop for a stark rip in the hillside throughout which the valley wound. Huts precariously perched on the mountain edge where their owners made a living farming the 70 degree slopes. Those of them that were savvy enough to wake themselves up in the morning before stepping out of the front door. We stopped in a small village to pick up some supplies and various curious villagers came to greet the Mzungu, even going to far as to give us pet names. I can't remember mine (Alfred or something), but Alex was lucky enough to garner the title “Kiki”. Was honestly quite jealous.
After the village came the national park. Jungle, grassy savannah and open-forest which is home to one of the largest collections of endemic birdlife in the whole of Uganda as well as Warthogs, Elephants and baboons. Was particularly impressed by the Warthogs, who move with their tails extended into the air, earning them the local nickname ‘Telegraf’ and gallop around as if on drugs. Love Warthogs. Dinner was sorghum ground into a doe and served with a hearty meat stew. Delicious. Internet works like a charm. A very very slow charm. Cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings.
On under two hours sleep, my cognitive abilities have begun to loose their edge. None the less, I’ve had such an incredible day that I will attempt to press on regardless. Still on English time, my English time, I couldn’t sleep last night until 5:00 am which was a shame as I had to rise to take the bus to Fort Portal at the ungodly hour of 6:45. At least, that’s when I thought I had to rise. As it turned out, that was when the taxi driver actually wanted to leave. The cheeky fellow charged us an extra 5000 Ugandan Shillings due to my late rising, a fact I was not best pleased with.
Eventually bundled myself onto the bus and we were off. The road immediately out of Kampala was not great. Pot-holes abounded and sleeping-policemen (speed bumps) were so steep that they ricocheted everyone on the bus about a meter into the air every time when went over one. This was rather jarring on the old butocks, but facilitated my enjoyment of the scenery no end. Scenery is best enjoyed with your eyes open after all. Just out of Kampala we passed through a swamp which gradually shifted to verdant rolling hills as we continued on out. Until we began to close in on Fort Portal, the gateway to the Semliki reserve as well as various other national parks, the hills continued to verdantly roll, but after a good four hours tea plantations began to appear, the road became well cared-for and the Ruwenzori mountains materialized as ghosts in the misty distance. At long last, and just before the pain in my bruised posterior elicited actual yelps of agony, we pulled into fort portal and stopped. Alex and I began shifting our giant collection of bags out of the bus and onto the pavement. I’d just climbed up to grab the last one when the bus started again and I was left in the awkward position of yelling “stop” while running away from the exit towards the back. We kept going. I grabbed my bag and charged back towards the driver yelling a little louder. The conductor asked me what the problem was. I said I wanted the bus to stop. The bus was stopped but the conductor stood directly in my way in front of the exit. The driver, impatient, started driving again. I yelled stop again. We stopped again. I jumped past the conductor, nearly decapitating an unfortunately proximate checked and bolted through the door. The door opened. I was free.
This wasn’t the end of our problems though. We’d arranged for the camp supervisor Edson to pick us up outside the supermarket. Sadly, we couldn’t raise him on the phone and found ourselves stranded in what seemed like the supermaket capital of Uganda. By supermarket, we’re not talking tesco here. We’re talking large corner shop with limited refrigeration facilities and a big sign that says “Supermarket”. I left Alex with the bags, and went on a mighty pilgramage to each of Fort Portals numerous supermarkets asking if anyone knew a fellow called ‘Edson’.
“What did he look like”, they asked.
Sadly I didn’t know.
“Where did he live?”
Two hours drive out of town at the foot of the Ruwenzoris. Suffice to say, noone knew a fellow called Edson.
Luckily, we eventually managed to reach him on his phone and a light lunch followed by an hour long wait later (that’s two hours in Africa, we discovered), we headed off to Semliki. The rift valley, which we had to navigate, we stunning. The Rwanzoris set the backdrop for a stark rip in the hillside throughout which the valley wound. Huts precariously perched on the mountain edge where their owners made a living farming the 70 degree slopes. Those of them that were savvy enough to wake themselves up in the morning before stepping out of the front door. We stopped in a small village to pick up some supplies and various curious villagers came to greet the Mzungu, even going to far as to give us pet names. I can't remember mine (Alfred or something), but Alex was lucky enough to garner the title “Kiki”. Was honestly quite jealous.
After the village came the national park. Jungle, grassy savannah and open-forest which is home to one of the largest collections of endemic birdlife in the whole of Uganda as well as Warthogs, Elephants and baboons. Was particularly impressed by the Warthogs, who move with their tails extended into the air, earning them the local nickname ‘Telegraf’ and gallop around as if on drugs. Love Warthogs. Dinner was sorghum ground into a doe and served with a hearty meat stew. Delicious. Internet works like a charm. A very very slow charm. Cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Market off the list
Monday, 6th July. GMT: 3:48 . Kampala Time: 5:48
Market was an experience. Not that I haven’t been to markets before, but none the less, I’m never quite prepared. The goods themselves weren’t extra-ordinary, with few interesting dishes and strange dead animals. The people, however, were very chatty indeed. I couldn’t take a step forward without someone greeting me, grabbing my wrist, giving me a “fist-pump” and trying to shake my hand. The phrase “Hello Mr. Chinese man” was uttered a few more times than I was quite comfortable with, but usually I was correctly identified as a ‘Mzungu’. A white man.
“Hello Mzungu! You want jeans?!”
“Mzungu, you look, you look!”
“Mzungu! You American? Which state you from Mzungu?”
And once
“Mzungu! You are from UK!”
I thought I’d last in the market longer than I did, but the area was so labyrinthine, the channels between the stores so claustrophobic and the multitude of people all so keen to say hello that I had to escape to catch some air. Sadly, having wandered deep into the maze, I no longer knew the way out. Wishing I’d taken my compass bearing on the way in, I dashed through small tunnels of suit shops trying to work out which direction I’d come from. Now near panicked, I found myself in an especially long, especially claustrophobic alley that smelled distinctly of raw sewage. So much like raw sewage in fact, that my stomach started playing up. Holding my hand over my mouth and fruitlessly trying to ignore visions of covering a humble trader in my half-digested lunch, I charged forward. Cries of
“YOU OKAY MZUNGU!” and
“Mr. Chinese Man, why do you run?!” echoed from all sides.
Eventually I emerged into the beautiful, beautiful sunlight right at entrance I’d entered by and the place I’d arranged my “Boda-Boda” (Motorbike Taxi) to pick me up from. I’d fifteen minutes left before my pickup, so I decided to walk up the road opposite to the market. I hadn’t walked 20 meters before I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. Again. This fact was somewhat jarring, but I kept going and another 20 meters up the road I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. The thought began to dawn on me that all the entrances to the market might look the same and that I had absolutely no idea where I was going to be picked up. I walked up the road asking a couple of stall owners if they recognized me. Luckily when I got back the entrance I’d… initially exited from, I saw someone I’d passed on the way in and, sure enough, my “Boda-Boda” pulled up not long after. Certainly I was nearly pick-pocketed, irrevocably lost and sick on dollars worth of clothes, but I think I had a better day than Alex at the guesthouse. Maybe next time I’ll even buy something!
Market was an experience. Not that I haven’t been to markets before, but none the less, I’m never quite prepared. The goods themselves weren’t extra-ordinary, with few interesting dishes and strange dead animals. The people, however, were very chatty indeed. I couldn’t take a step forward without someone greeting me, grabbing my wrist, giving me a “fist-pump” and trying to shake my hand. The phrase “Hello Mr. Chinese man” was uttered a few more times than I was quite comfortable with, but usually I was correctly identified as a ‘Mzungu’. A white man.
“Hello Mzungu! You want jeans?!”
“Mzungu, you look, you look!”
“Mzungu! You American? Which state you from Mzungu?”
And once
“Mzungu! You are from UK!”
I thought I’d last in the market longer than I did, but the area was so labyrinthine, the channels between the stores so claustrophobic and the multitude of people all so keen to say hello that I had to escape to catch some air. Sadly, having wandered deep into the maze, I no longer knew the way out. Wishing I’d taken my compass bearing on the way in, I dashed through small tunnels of suit shops trying to work out which direction I’d come from. Now near panicked, I found myself in an especially long, especially claustrophobic alley that smelled distinctly of raw sewage. So much like raw sewage in fact, that my stomach started playing up. Holding my hand over my mouth and fruitlessly trying to ignore visions of covering a humble trader in my half-digested lunch, I charged forward. Cries of
“YOU OKAY MZUNGU!” and
“Mr. Chinese Man, why do you run?!” echoed from all sides.
Eventually I emerged into the beautiful, beautiful sunlight right at entrance I’d entered by and the place I’d arranged my “Boda-Boda” (Motorbike Taxi) to pick me up from. I’d fifteen minutes left before my pickup, so I decided to walk up the road opposite to the market. I hadn’t walked 20 meters before I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. Again. This fact was somewhat jarring, but I kept going and another 20 meters up the road I arrived at the very entrance I’d entered by. The thought began to dawn on me that all the entrances to the market might look the same and that I had absolutely no idea where I was going to be picked up. I walked up the road asking a couple of stall owners if they recognized me. Luckily when I got back the entrance I’d… initially exited from, I saw someone I’d passed on the way in and, sure enough, my “Boda-Boda” pulled up not long after. Certainly I was nearly pick-pocketed, irrevocably lost and sick on dollars worth of clothes, but I think I had a better day than Alex at the guesthouse. Maybe next time I’ll even buy something!
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Off to Market!
Monday, 6th July. GMT: 12:33 . Kampala Time: 2.33
Kampala is a geographically interesting city. Built on several hills, it doesn’t feel too much like a city at all. From the areas I’ve visited (admittedly a limited number), it feels more like a sprawling town, broken up by large sections of greenery. The roads aren’t near as bad as India, though still distinctly third world. As Alex took great pleasure in pointing out, most of the cars are from Japan and the proportion of cars to motorbikes is surprisingly high. The number of beggars is also strangely low and things aren’t quite as third world as I expected. From a conversation with some med-students yesterday, the biggest problem in Kampala, like the rest of Africa, is HIV. Infection rates in Kampala are as high as 10% and the roads are covered in “stay faithful” and “get tested together” billboards. None the less, the problem is very difficult to curb- people with HIV stay relatively healthy for years and aren’t going to live a life of chastity just because they have the virus. If they even know they’ve got it.
HIV risks aside, I’m still determined to go out and explore. Sadly, Alex has different ideas and would far prefer to laze around the hostel, so I’m preparing to go out by myself. Sun hat in hand, I’m off to see the big city, more specifically the market. Wish me luck.
Kampala is a geographically interesting city. Built on several hills, it doesn’t feel too much like a city at all. From the areas I’ve visited (admittedly a limited number), it feels more like a sprawling town, broken up by large sections of greenery. The roads aren’t near as bad as India, though still distinctly third world. As Alex took great pleasure in pointing out, most of the cars are from Japan and the proportion of cars to motorbikes is surprisingly high. The number of beggars is also strangely low and things aren’t quite as third world as I expected. From a conversation with some med-students yesterday, the biggest problem in Kampala, like the rest of Africa, is HIV. Infection rates in Kampala are as high as 10% and the roads are covered in “stay faithful” and “get tested together” billboards. None the less, the problem is very difficult to curb- people with HIV stay relatively healthy for years and aren’t going to live a life of chastity just because they have the virus. If they even know they’ve got it.
HIV risks aside, I’m still determined to go out and explore. Sadly, Alex has different ideas and would far prefer to laze around the hostel, so I’m preparing to go out by myself. Sun hat in hand, I’m off to see the big city, more specifically the market. Wish me luck.
Monday, 5 July 2010
Visà-vis
Monday, 5th July. GMT: 11:17 . Kampala Time: 1.17
The second leg of the journey was rather nicer than the first. Egyptian air has a friendly slap-dash feel to it, with the drinks being served out of bottles. The food is several orders of magnitude better than my first flight with “British Midlands International” and the people on the plane friendlier. The canny folks at Egyptian-air seemingly don’t hire Xenophobes as cabin-crew.
Sat next to a near-woodhousian American grand-matriarch and her younger companion. Going by the name of Sandy, my chatty American neighbour loved making friends and I was well and truly befriended. She waxed lyrical about every subject under the sun from how opinion on Obama was divided because Americans were racist to how I had a very English laugh, which was a secret blessing. Her friend was a lot more reserved and, I think, was beginning to despair of how many friends Sandy was going to have picked up by the end of the trip. They both asked me if I’d brought my yellow fever certificate, which was apparently vital for getting a visa. I knew exactly where my yellow fever certificate was: sitting on the dresser at home. A fact that worried me no end.
Luckily, after a long que for visas, they didn’t even bother checking if I’d had the jab, let alone the certificate.
“How long you stay” yelled the sleepy and angry looking airport guard.
“3rd of July to the 17th of September” I replied.
“Ah, Two Month!”
“No, no, um three”, I raised my eyebrows
“TWO MONTH!”
“Three. Thankyou”
I handed over the $50 dollars and headed out, checking my visa. Luckily the two had been scribbled out and replaced with a three. Close shave.
Finding a taxi at the airport was not too difficult. Several smiling taxi drivers jumped on me the moment I walked out the door. Haggling was rather more difficult, but eventually managed to bring the driver round to twenty five dollars. Only two more than the $23 it had been recommended I pay to get to the guesthouse.
The trip to the hostel was very dark, but my first impressions of Africa were positive. If anything can said about the 25 km to Kampala from Entebe, its that it all looked very African. The thrown together huts and shacks, the bird noises, the green banana plants, the markets overflowing with tropical fruits – it was exactly as I’d imagined it, but a bit more-so.
Apart from watching the beautiful Vervets, a species of Catarrhini with bright, aqua-blue bollocks, the last two days have been fairly uneventful. Could not sleep last night so sat awake. The sleeves of my sleeping jumper smelt of Lana’s room, which filled me with homesickness, but these waves of self-pity were cut short by a rather vicious nose-bleed. Nothing like loosing a quart of blood to banish the blues.
Alex turned up this morning and we’re about to head out into town. More on that when I come back.
The second leg of the journey was rather nicer than the first. Egyptian air has a friendly slap-dash feel to it, with the drinks being served out of bottles. The food is several orders of magnitude better than my first flight with “British Midlands International” and the people on the plane friendlier. The canny folks at Egyptian-air seemingly don’t hire Xenophobes as cabin-crew.
Sat next to a near-woodhousian American grand-matriarch and her younger companion. Going by the name of Sandy, my chatty American neighbour loved making friends and I was well and truly befriended. She waxed lyrical about every subject under the sun from how opinion on Obama was divided because Americans were racist to how I had a very English laugh, which was a secret blessing. Her friend was a lot more reserved and, I think, was beginning to despair of how many friends Sandy was going to have picked up by the end of the trip. They both asked me if I’d brought my yellow fever certificate, which was apparently vital for getting a visa. I knew exactly where my yellow fever certificate was: sitting on the dresser at home. A fact that worried me no end.
Luckily, after a long que for visas, they didn’t even bother checking if I’d had the jab, let alone the certificate.
“How long you stay” yelled the sleepy and angry looking airport guard.
“3rd of July to the 17th of September” I replied.
“Ah, Two Month!”
“No, no, um three”, I raised my eyebrows
“TWO MONTH!”
“Three. Thankyou”
I handed over the $50 dollars and headed out, checking my visa. Luckily the two had been scribbled out and replaced with a three. Close shave.
Finding a taxi at the airport was not too difficult. Several smiling taxi drivers jumped on me the moment I walked out the door. Haggling was rather more difficult, but eventually managed to bring the driver round to twenty five dollars. Only two more than the $23 it had been recommended I pay to get to the guesthouse.
The trip to the hostel was very dark, but my first impressions of Africa were positive. If anything can said about the 25 km to Kampala from Entebe, its that it all looked very African. The thrown together huts and shacks, the bird noises, the green banana plants, the markets overflowing with tropical fruits – it was exactly as I’d imagined it, but a bit more-so.
Apart from watching the beautiful Vervets, a species of Catarrhini with bright, aqua-blue bollocks, the last two days have been fairly uneventful. Could not sleep last night so sat awake. The sleeves of my sleeping jumper smelt of Lana’s room, which filled me with homesickness, but these waves of self-pity were cut short by a rather vicious nose-bleed. Nothing like loosing a quart of blood to banish the blues.
Alex turned up this morning and we’re about to head out into town. More on that when I come back.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Big Beef
Saturday, 3rd July. GMT: 6:03. Cairo Time: 8:03.
$7 for a muggywuggling burger? Who’d credit it. After a solid 20 minutes of good hard sleep, I set off on my voyage to Africa this morning. Bid goodbye to my dad at the Heathrow after a macchiato and a conversation about weed and wandered through the departure gate at 7:45. First leg of the journey: Egypt.
Egypt: Disappointment. Big disappointment. Looking out of the plane window, straining to see past the demure Egyptian woman seated next to me, I was greeted by miles of sand. There were buildings, certainly, but those too were the colour of sand. Roads the colour of sand. Trees the colour of sand. Sand the colour of jimmy-to-goodness sand. Of course Cairo is slap-bang in the centre of the Sahara, but I’d always expected a nilotic oasis of greenery in the heart of the desert. Not a jungle but at least a couple of trees here and there to detract from the baron desert wasteland. No. Sand.
Oh well, I thought, maybe the people will be nice. Maybe the food will be exciting! Thirty minutes I sat, staring glumly out of the window staring at my $7 burger and wishing there wasn’t a six hour wait for my next flight.
“How much for a burger?” I’d asked.
“$7” came the earnest reply.
“$7?!”
“$7.”
“No thanks.” I winced.
“Here you go, you buy now.” He smiled.
After finishing my burger, the most exciting thing on offer in Cairo Airport’s “food village”, I struck up a conversation with a boisterous Egyptian teacher who told me she worked in Libya, though her parents were middle easter. She seemed pleased that I was going to Uganda to research chimps and proudly chirruped: “The closest relative to mankind!”.
I nodded, a budding anthropologist, and was about to continue when one of the burger king staff wandered up and whispered something serious sounding in her ear. Apparently he’d taken offense to the fact that a nice Arabic-looking lady was colluding with the enemy. The non-believer. One of those blond fellows who Allah certainly wasn’t going to let into his fountain of eternity and who should be punished for even laying eyes on anyone from middle-eastern extraction. Human nature lends itself splendidly to Xenophobia.
Deciding to take my sad, forsaken, European self away from the temptations of the cheery middle aged mother of three, I put my hat over my face, strapped my laptop to my arm and tried to get some shut-eye. No such luck. As soon as I began drifting towards dreamland, the Germany vs Venezuela quarter-final that had been going on quietly in the background started to kick-off. The departures lounge roared with impassioned football fans. I cursed their eyes. Egypt sounded better in the good old days: Amen-re was more imaginative than either contemporary religious or sporting fanaticism.
Am practically parched, but cannot decide whether or not to spend another $5 on a Fruit juice. At times like this, it seems god is anything but akbar.
$7 for a muggywuggling burger? Who’d credit it. After a solid 20 minutes of good hard sleep, I set off on my voyage to Africa this morning. Bid goodbye to my dad at the Heathrow after a macchiato and a conversation about weed and wandered through the departure gate at 7:45. First leg of the journey: Egypt.
Egypt: Disappointment. Big disappointment. Looking out of the plane window, straining to see past the demure Egyptian woman seated next to me, I was greeted by miles of sand. There were buildings, certainly, but those too were the colour of sand. Roads the colour of sand. Trees the colour of sand. Sand the colour of jimmy-to-goodness sand. Of course Cairo is slap-bang in the centre of the Sahara, but I’d always expected a nilotic oasis of greenery in the heart of the desert. Not a jungle but at least a couple of trees here and there to detract from the baron desert wasteland. No. Sand.
Oh well, I thought, maybe the people will be nice. Maybe the food will be exciting! Thirty minutes I sat, staring glumly out of the window staring at my $7 burger and wishing there wasn’t a six hour wait for my next flight.
“How much for a burger?” I’d asked.
“$7” came the earnest reply.
“$7?!”
“$7.”
“No thanks.” I winced.
“Here you go, you buy now.” He smiled.
After finishing my burger, the most exciting thing on offer in Cairo Airport’s “food village”, I struck up a conversation with a boisterous Egyptian teacher who told me she worked in Libya, though her parents were middle easter. She seemed pleased that I was going to Uganda to research chimps and proudly chirruped: “The closest relative to mankind!”.
I nodded, a budding anthropologist, and was about to continue when one of the burger king staff wandered up and whispered something serious sounding in her ear. Apparently he’d taken offense to the fact that a nice Arabic-looking lady was colluding with the enemy. The non-believer. One of those blond fellows who Allah certainly wasn’t going to let into his fountain of eternity and who should be punished for even laying eyes on anyone from middle-eastern extraction. Human nature lends itself splendidly to Xenophobia.
Deciding to take my sad, forsaken, European self away from the temptations of the cheery middle aged mother of three, I put my hat over my face, strapped my laptop to my arm and tried to get some shut-eye. No such luck. As soon as I began drifting towards dreamland, the Germany vs Venezuela quarter-final that had been going on quietly in the background started to kick-off. The departures lounge roared with impassioned football fans. I cursed their eyes. Egypt sounded better in the good old days: Amen-re was more imaginative than either contemporary religious or sporting fanaticism.
Am practically parched, but cannot decide whether or not to spend another $5 on a Fruit juice. At times like this, it seems god is anything but akbar.
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