Buses, Boats, Bicycles and Babies (and Gorillas!)

Gorillas on a Shoestring

There’s only one place in the world where you can go and see mountain gorillas in the wild, which is a small area in the south of Uganda that intersects the borders of Rwanda and DR Congo. Because of this, gorilla trekking is often the highlight or sometimes even the sole purpose of a person’s trip to East Africa. It was something I thought I’d never do, not that I didn’t want to see them, but the price of a trek is $500 US (soon to go to $1000) for a walk up a hill and an hour with the animals. Why is it so expensive? Let me just say its run by the government and leave it at that.

Anyhow, knowing a few people now in the industry, I managed to pick up a “spare” pass for a more palatable price. The trekking on the Uganda side is done in Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest, right down the bottom of the country. In a different hemisphere even! As I was doing it on the cheap (or “Being a Jase” – to use the parlance of our times) I decided to get public transport down there.

Bwindi Forest in the background

I got up at 4: something AM to get a Mutatu (public taxi van thing) from our office in Entebbe to the bus station in Kampala. This in itself was quite amusing as it was Sunday morning, so we picked up a rather drunk individual, who from what I could make out was being rather rude to the conductor and his fellow passengers. Anyway, halfway to Kampala he did a Dan Nicholson, forcing the taxi to stop so he could throw up out the door. Clearly having had enough of him at this point, the conductor leaned back, put his foot into the backside of the puking man and left him in his own mess as he slammed the door and we drove off.

To summarise the next 15 hours, I sat in a dusty, crowded bus with less than ample leg-room that broke down twice (which was actually fortunate as they don’t do toilet stops!). About 9:30pm that night after catching a lift on a motorbike the last 17kms into the park, I met my friend who was sorting me out with the pass. To further my cost savings I slept on the roof of his overland truck, which was nice but a little chilly and didn’t do much for my already sore behind!

Bright and early the next day, after the usual formalities and safety rules we headed up a rather steep hill to find the gorillas. Nearly at the top, our guide informed us that we now had to go off the path into the bush. It was real, proper thick jungle, the guides at the front hacking a path with machetes, I think it took us an hour to cover less than a kilometer. Alas, it was all worth it, as they brought us out right next to a group of gorillas.

Even though I live right next to chimpanzees, the gorillas really were something special. The group we visited was small, only 7 individuals, yet they had a huge silver-back, a black-back (younger than a silver back), a large female with baby and some youngsters. Up close gorillas are fricken huge, especially the large male silver-back!

Perhaps a distant relation Saunders?

However they appear incredibly gentle, and these ones were very used to people which meant they weren’t too shy. You’re supposed to keep a distance of 7 metres, which we did, yet at one point the black-back walked right past us, close enough that I could have touched it! They really don’t do a lot apart from sit, eat, fart and occasionally climb a tree (to eat more), but still twas an awesome experience, one I would really recommend if you can see past the dollar signs.

This is some pretty shoddy photography, but to give you an idea how close they got - this is how I saw it (focal length of 70mm for you camera buffs)

Seeing as we finished our walk around 1pm, I decided to walk the 17kms back to town that I had hitched on the bike the night before. Sometimes I have these ideas, which even at the time I know in the back of my mind are not so good, but I seem to go ahead with them anyway. For lack of a scientific term for this condition I’ll call it “Stupid Kev Syndrome”. The reason I decided to walk was that it is so unbelievably beautiful down there. With tea and banana plantations stretching literally as far as the eye can see, it was probably the greenest place I have ever been in!

The walk started out well, I turned down a number of lifts and was the main attraction for the countless hordes of children, whom I imagine have only ever seen white people staring out the windows of a moving vehicle. At one stage I had an entourage of about 12 kids and a couple of rouge dogs. However, a lack of fore-sight meant I only had half a bottle of water and no food. After a couple of hours in the mid-day sun the novelty had well worn off and I was happy to take a ride if it came by. As fate would have it, there was not a vehicle to be seen. Fortunately I met a nice local guy on his bike who walked the last 45 minutes with me into town, the conversation keeping my mind off thirst and heat-induced Dr Seuss hallucinations. Did he like green eggs and ham? Would he like them from a pan? He did not like green eggs and ham, they’re not Ugandan, Sam I am.

However… I made it in the end, checking into the only available accommodation with a luxurious cold bucket bath, some beautiful bunker-style concrete décor and gourmet rice with boiled goat for dinner. The ride home; see above. It was pretty much a replica trip, just in the other direction. So a bit of an effort, yet considering I saved around $900 had I gone through the usual channels, I’m very satisfied.

Local people hand make bricks from mud, stack them, cover them in more mud and set a fire in the middle. Hard work but cost effective!

This was pretty much all of the town I stayed in!

A segue to all this. The craze amongst kids in the local town was to show off their “Commando Moves”. It started with a couple of them flaunting their style, yet once the camera appeared I was inundated by a horde of miniature African Jackie Chan’s. One can only question why…

Baby Kev

I have learnt by now, that if I’m at work and the phone rings around 7-8am, it usually means some-one’s sick or in trouble and requiring assistance in some way. Not to disappoint a few weeks ago, one of the guides on his day off called to say his wife was in labour and if it wasn’t too much trouble would it be OK if I took her to the hospital in town? So polite, I couldn’t say no. So I whizzed out to the village to find she was indeed very much in labour, so much so I was scared she might actually drop it in the truck!

If I don’t say so myself, it was a pretty nifty piece of driving, getting to town in record time whilst avoiding most of the contraction-inducing pot-holes. We got to hospital with-out any water breaking in the back-seat and Im happy to report that the baby popped out just fine.

So, in recognition of setting the land-speed record between Kingaragara Village and Masindi Town Hospital, I have a child named after me. Behold… Kevin Kibwota!!!

Me and K-Dogg Junior with Mum (Irene) and Dad (John)

Delta Camping

Last weekend some friends and I went for a game drive further up in the park, about an hour from where I live. I’d done this before yet this time we decided to go camping on the Delta, on the side of the lake overlooking the DR Congo. If anyone is wondering why I keep saying DR Congo it’s because there is a country in West Africa called Congo, the one bordering Uganda is called the Democratic Republic of Congo (formally Zaire).

As camping in the park isn’t that popular, we got the ferry across the Nile around 4pm and had the whole park to ourselves. The viewing was excellent, last time I came I only saw about 3 elephants, this time it was more like 300!

After setting up the tents we tried to do a dusk game-drive but without a flood-light it was rather average. Getting back to the camp at last light we had a good view of the hippos coming out of the water for the night and a whole lot of giraffes walking past.

The night was uneventful, yet there were some rather large sounding beings walking past the tent! In the morning, another advantage of camping was that we got going at 6am, an hour and a half before anyone else would be across on the ferry. So we got to see things like this…

Ahhh maneepiaaaaa ommewaaaaaaa

We also saw a pair of leopards running on the ground, which is incredibly rare, however you’ll need to take my word for it as low light and a sloppy lens change while trying to drive meant I didn’t get any good photos.

After the drive I met up with my mate Andy who runs the boat trips and went for a wee cruise to the bottom of Murchison Falls. This was nice as I got to see crocodiles and fish eagles for the first time as well as the falls from the most impressive angle…

The Hero

I’ve been thinking lately about buying a bicycle. Not that I really need one, but I miss riding and the roads here look kinda fun. Your options though, for procuring such a machine are rather limited. A “nice” bike is what would pass for a “hack” back home (or a classic, depending how you look at it). Yet these are rather impractical as many gears and cables mean higher maintenance costs, and their load bearing capabilities are somewhat limited, which we shall see below is rather important.

That is why Africa has… The Hero, the African super bike!

Where I come from, a bicycle is usually for getting yourself from A to B. Whether that be from home to work, from the top of a hill to the bottom, or to show the world your choice of lycra on the way to Coffee Culture in Cashmere.

Anyway, here you not only need to move yourself, but quite often your possessions too. Common loads that I have witnessed with my very eyes include: Couches, beds, 2 x 50kg bags of sugar, 5 x crates of beer, friends, wives and children, 3-4 metre lengths of timber or steel tubing, sheet metal, a pig, a goat, once a freshly killed cow… the list goes on.

In fact from this I feel it would be entirely plausible to move house using only a Hero. There’s nothing you cant do on this thing, (apart from go uphill, do skids or get sweet air without breaking your shins!) But what kind of machine, you may ask, could possibly do all this day-in and day-out without breaking down?

Some of the more "pimpin" models that will take you round town for a fare

For the bike geeks reading this, let me give you some technical specifications…

Frame Construction: Steel
Rims: Steel
Carrier: Steel
Tyres: Industrial Rubber
Weight: Approximately 33kgs (72.6lbs if you live in a backwards country)
Gears: Single Speed
Brakes: 2 x Horseshoe (with a solid steel brake cable!)
Suspension: Under-seat steel coil
Colour Options: Black
Optional Extras: Pedals, Arsenal FC Sticker, Handlebar Grips, Bell
Price: $60US (give-or-take depending on your bargaining ability)

Is anyone from Fisher Outdoor reading this? I’m feeling a new product category here!

I’ve tried to find out who makes the Hero. Religious scholars believe the Hero was created by God on the 7^th day of creation for Adam to cruise round Eden. Archeologists believe the Hero was forged in the fires of Mt Kilamanjaro around the end of the Cretaceous Period. Others say it was a gift to the Bantu King by early Portuguese spice traders. However it came to be, the original design of the Hero has remained unchanged through-out the eons and looks set to stay for millennia to come.

OK. So it’s called a haka. You start with “Komate Komate”…