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.

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?