Tuesday, 7th August, Semliki Time: 7:57pm
Once more unto the blog dear friends, once more. Tragically, this morning our solar battery, which has been on its last legs pretty much since Alex and I got here, finally gave up the ghost, joined the choir in heaven and started pushing up the daisies. This has wrought various tragedies and calamities on the camp. We no longer have the luxury of taking mobile phones into the jungle, our GPS rechargables can no longer be recharged and, horror upon horror, I only have enough juice on my iPod to listen to another 2 hours of the BBCs ‘From our Own Correspondent’. 2 hours to last me a whole week. Jesus wept. The crowning tragedy, dear readers, is that I will no longer be able to charge my laptop. Among other things, this means no more blogs for Semliki as I will be using the remaining power for e-mails only. Here, then, unless some kind of resurrection occurs, is my last blog entry from the Semliki national park. It occurs to me that, even if there is a resurrection, I’ll be gone before the 12th day. We leave on Wednesday week.
Something that’s been noticed by geographers, sociologists and anthropologists alike is that families who live in poorer areas of the world or inhabit less affluent ‘socioeconomic strata’ tend to have a greater number of children than those with more resources. This seems to be the case across humanity and regardless of access to birth control. The extent of the differences in regional fecundity was hammered home hard yesterday during a cheery conversation with Muhindu, the deputy manager of the Semliki safari lodge. I mentioned that my father, over the course of his somewhat dazzling span, had sired five children. Muhindu smiled, winked and said “Aha, a real man!”. I was inclined to agree. From a Darwinian perspective, my dad has done pretty well for himself. Provided, at least, that he can convince his children to breed. Curious, I asked Muhindu how many children he had himself – only four, Dad was still winning. Muhindu said that his brothers, however, had managed more than ten. I was impressed – any more than that, I said, and one would have to be a monster of a man. He then went on to tell me that he had 17 siblings. I almost spluttered on my tea. “Sure, one or two died”, joshed Muhindu, “but we’ve still got a whole lot left”. My father’s own contribution to the gene pool seemed rather pathetic in comparison. Muhindu’s dad’s motto, apparently, is “family planning is family killing”. Truly a man.
Another eye opening curve ball that Muhindu span my way was that he often joked with his wife about polygamy. If they had an argument, he would threaten to marry another wife. This wasn’t what shocked me though. No. It’s a well known fact that bigamy happens frequently in Africa. What did give me pause was the revelation that, in this part of Uganda at least, it is customary for the husband not to tell his first (or second, or third) wife of his plans to marry again. If a man gets bored, he is entirely at his liberty to swan off and marry another woman. The first (or second, or third) wife will only get news of the partnership through her friends. With only one girlfriend and few children to speak of, I felt really rather emasculated. It all sounds rather too much like hard work, but I’ve promised myself one thing. If I do chose to marry two women at once, I’ll make sure to at least tell wifey number one before saying my vows. Till death do us part. All of us.
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