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?
Perhaps Mongolia was a figment of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's opium-fuelled imagination.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of Mongols, our family friend, Denise Kraus, in Canberra writes:
ReplyDeletePlease assure him they are still alive. I don't think their economy is doing very well, and they are facing increasing poverty and agricultural failure. They have had a couple of droughts and severe winter storms, which have decimated their traditional sheep herds and led to mass migration to the city in desperation. There has been an attendant rise in alcoholism, HIV, drug use and despair.
Two wonderful feature films were released in the last few years, both Mongolian-German co-productions. One was called, "The Story of the Weeping Camel" and the other "The Cave of the Yellow Dog". They showed traditional Mongol herder life and were two of the most beautiful and lyrical films I have every seen. The Mongolian film maker studied film in Munich.
They have given us the yurt, which is super vital for my new job selling luxury camping holidays. So for that I thank them.
ReplyDeleteBex