GORILLAS IN THE MIDST By Nicole Kallmeyer
Unconventional work and getting girls to go there. This piece is by a young journalist who placed herself amid the gorillas of Africa.
I am the only white passenger. I sit stiffly on a stationary bus in the center of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. It is 6:20 in the morning. Through the open window I hear the boisterous voices of vendors as they unpack their boxes of goods, their livelihoods. Bright headlights of passing cars are dimmed by dust, which rolls off tires that have braved the villages’ unpaved roads. The sky is a pale navy blue, ready to be broken through by the warm colors of morning. Speckles of light are sparsely sprinkled in the distance; the ratio of lights to houses is low.
I sit with my backpack neatly stored below my feet. For the past three weeks, I have carried my backpack into the dusty classrooms of Makindye Citizens’ School. When I’m not standing before dark, curious faces with white chalk in hand, pretending I know how to teach, I reside in Ndejje village in the home of a local woman named Joyce. Joyce has opened her humble abode to volunteers hoping to come to Africa and "make a difference." She shares a mattress with her two daughters, and offers me a queen size bed all to myself in the room next door. The first morning I arrived at Joyce’s house, she fed me white bread and bananas and a nutty paste in a jar that somewhat resembled peanut butter. I could barely swallow the banana as the reality of my decision to come to Uganda began to seep into my system and shut down my appetite. Joyce observed my reluctant chewing and questioned my fondness for her food. I assured her it was tasty as I nibbled bread sparingly smeared with nut paste. She wasn’t fooled.
Once in a while a hand slaps against the side of the bus, some passers-by giving it an encouraging pat before its long journey. The bus looks like it needs a lot more than a pat to endure nine hours on the road. Throughout my stay I have traveled between Ndejje and Kampala by mutatu, a white mini-van-like vehicle with blue stripes on its shell. The central mutatu park in Kampala could be the eighth wonder of the world. Hundreds of vehicles line up door to door, bumper to bumper while Ugandans navigate the narrows spaces between. Mutatus do not leave at scheduled times, they leave when they are full – not all-seats-taken full, but children-on-laps, strangers-seeing-each-other’s-pores full. Somehow, the mutatus in the center of the huddle manage to steer out of the park just as effectively as those on the outskirts – although several side-view mirrors are attached with duct tape and string.
The woman sitting next to me has a face like the folding African earth; the veins on her hands rivers; her short, hard fingernails sun-dried rock. I focus my attention back outside. Daylight now illuminates the country’s full color palette and texture range. A sheet of dawn mist skims the rolling green hills, dotted with brick, cement and tin. Bunches and bunches of green bananas lie on the roadside, fill the backs of trucks, drape over rickety bicycles. A man steps on the bus and begins pacing the aisle while rhythmically reciting in Ugandan tongue. His suitcase is full of pills and ointments, which he displays one-by-one while delivering his pitch. A traveling pharmacist? Must be strictly over-the-counter supplies. After making a sale or two, he leaves and so does the bus.
For my final weekend in Uganda, I decided to venture 340 miles across the country on my own to see gorillas. One of the few remaining areas on earth that wild gorillas inhabit lies in southwest Uganda near the borders of Rwanda and Congo. Before I left North America for East Africa I was told about Uganda’s gorillas by the few people who had any idea where Uganda was: "You’re going to Uganda? You must see the gorillas!" I didn’t come to the country to play tourist, but gorilla tracking was hard to pass up. My journey to see the gorillas marked the first time I was completely alone in a foreign place. Up to this point, I always had someone else’s sense of direction to rely on, someone else to panic if things went wrong, someone else to tell me to stop pulling out an entire wad of Ugandan bills when paying for a mutatu. Now there was no one else; my mission depended on me and my underdeveloped, African street smarts.
One hour passes on the road when I hear an unmistakable bang. I look out the window to my left and see an obscure black shape rolling away from the vehicle. The bus continues moving for a few short seconds that feel like several long minutes, and then to my relief it slows down and pulls over. People on board casually get up and move out. I stay in my seat, hoping that if I don’t move the problem will go away. Once most of the passengers evacuate the reality of the broken bus sets in. I swing my backpack over my shoulders, wishing that Greyhound had offices in Africa. As I step outside I hear the sound of air escaping a back tire. I feel a few organs in my body deflate as I come to the full realization that I am eight hours away from my intended destination with no means of communication. I don’t have a cell phone and I don’t speak Luganda, or any of the other forty plus languages spoken throughout the country. While I am silently panicking, women with babies strapped to their backs venture into the road-side shrubbery to relieve their bladders. I start to worry that a punctured tire isn’t the bus’s only problem. What if the exhaust is clogged, or the radiator is cracked, or the carburetor is broken, or the breaks are loose, or the engine is over-heated, or more than one of the above? I then decide to put some distance between me and the bus.
After a few minutes, a Ugandan man in a suit starts walking towards me. He politely greets me in English, and relief begins to overtake my anxiety. I ask him what is going on, and he tells me that a replacement bus has been called. When will it arrive? He doesn’t know; it will probably take a while. He asks me about my home in Canada, about the snow. He says he would find it difficult to live in such cold weather. Right now, I’d be glad to trade Uganda’s weather for Canada’s transit system. He tells me that Uganda is lucky because it can provide food for its people. Ugandan land yields much produce, he says. I recall the market I visited in Kampala a few days ago with Joyce. Stalls were piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables: shiny red tomatoes, purple-skinned sweet potatoes, earthy orange carrots. There was also a foul-smelling area with live chickens clucking in cages. I thought about a Canadian supermarket that has adopted the slogan, "We’re fresh obsessed." Their marketers obviously haven’t been to Uganda.
While immersed in cross-cultural chit-chat with Sol, my new acquaintance, a car drives by and honks. Sol gets a good enough look at the driver to recognize his face and wave as the car continues down the road. The car then stops about a hundred meters away from us. Sol starts jogging towards the car and signals to me to follow. A few minutes of logical thought might stop me from following him, but I don’t have time to think; I need to keep moving, the gorillas are expecting me. Besides, the prospect of traveling by bus now scared me far more than traveling by car with a Ugandan man I have just met. Behind the wheel is a younger Ugandan man. He tells me he’s been to Montreal. He says he was sponsored by the World Bank to complete his PhD in economic rural development at McGill University. At least, I think this is what he says; his accented English is muffled by wind blowing through the windows.
After about an hour, we pass a stalled car and stop to help its passengers. I reflect on North America’s staunch individualism while our driver spends about an hour tending to someone else’s mechanical problem. When we’re back on the road, I pull out my Panasonic Discman. Sol wants to know how it works. I hand him the headphones and he listens to the music of a pop songstress from Staten Island. As the music enters his ears, he looks more interested than entertained. Two hours later, we arrive in Mbarara, where Sol works. He tells me that he is the programs manager of a local radio station called Radio West and he wants to show me around his workplace. An exclusive tour around an East African radio station, just because I was naïve enough to accept a ride from a stranger. Maybe it’s time to reevaluate what we teach kiddies on Sesame Street. Despite some chipped paint on the walls and computers that were likely manufactured in the 80s, the premises of Radio West closely approximate what I imagined a radio station to look like. Men and women with giant headphones over their ears sit in glass-walled booths. In front of the disc jockeys are broad switchboards with flashing lights, and a room in the back is filled with people on phones. Sol marches me around with a smile on his face, proud to showcase the operation he runs.
Sol accompanies me to the open circle of dirt that is the nearby bus park. He talks to some loitering characters to be sure that the bus I need to catch will stop here. It will, he assures me. He gives me his card and a hug, and takes down Joyce’s phone number. He will try to call me, he says. If only the world had more people like Sol.
The bus arrives. As I take a step towards the vehicle, so do about thirty other people. I am squashed in a mob forcing themselves towards the bus’s narrow doors. Someone in the crowd takes pity on my dumbfounded foreign face and helps propel me forwards and upwards onto the bus. I could have easily been shoved to the back of the bunch, but the muzungu (white girl) got noticed and got lucky. The moment I sit down the man next to me asks me why I ran away from the bus. What? It takes a few seconds for me to vaguely recognize his face and realize that he was referring to the bus that broke down three hours and one radio station ago. I am now sitting on the replacement bus.
The pushiest people (excluding myself) board the bus. People stand sandwiched together along the entire aisle. Isn’t it dangerous for so many people to be on a bus possibly made of tin? Yes, it is, says the man sitting next to me in a matter-of-fact tone. I converse with him to control my rising apprehension. His name is Sam, but in his village he is called Junior. He is a scuba diver for the hydro plant in Kampala. Scuba Sam. A few meters past the bus park, our bus is stopped by policemen. The extra passengers are evacuated and the driver is fined. Doesn’t the bus driver know that the bus park and the police station are neighbors? Yes, Scuba Sam says, the driver takes his chances. When the police are in a good mood, they turn a blind eye to illegal over-load. I am thankful to whomever or whatever put the police in a bad mood today. An hour later the bus pulls away from the police station. Discman introduces Scuba Sam’s ears to a white rapper from Detroit. I share my granola with Scuba Sam and the gentleman on my other side. I chew through the crunchy sweetness while my eyes digest the Ugandan countryside. The land looks like a patched quilt; farmed and wild squares sown side by side for miles.
We are now an hour away from our destination, Kisoro, which sits below the mountain we are traversing. On one side of the bus there is a steep, upward incline, on the other is the possibility of death. I am unsure if the dirt path winding around the mountain is wide enough to accommodate the bus. I am sure I hear rattling in the back of the bus. I am convinced by this troubling sound and prior experience that a wheel is about to pop off. My eyes are affixed outside the window. As I closely monitor the proximity of the tires to the edge of the mountain, I become acutely aware of my quickening pulse and its vulnerability. I try to focus inside the bus on my sweaty hands clasped in my lap, but I can’t keep my eyes off the tires.
My heart rate finally slows down as the bus approaches Kisoro. Never before have I been so thankful to see a flat surface. I am dropped off at the Sky Blue Motel and shown to a clean room with a bed and a chair. The more upscale Kisoro Tourist Hotel is down the road, but its $40-a-night rooms are too pricey for my gorilla-tracking budget. All the motel’s rooms are named after planets. I go to the Jupiter Room for dinner and hesitantly order chicken curry. The chicken is served with chapate, a flatbread made of flour and water commonly prepared in Uganda. It is warm and chewy and not as good as the chapate Joyce makes. After dinner I meet Joseph, the man who will be taking me tomorrow to Mgahinga, my final destination. Joseph’s hobbley walk and awkward alignment make me think he has at least one prosthetic leg. He looks at me with his bulging eyes and tells me that it is safest for us to order a taxi to Mgahinga. The trip will take an hour and the taxi will cost 60,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $36). I don’t like that I am suspicious of Joseph’s enthusiasm and sincerity, but trusting strangers has worked well for me thus far.
Before bed I have my first running shower in three weeks. Back in Ndejje, I stand in an outhouse with a bucket of water and a small cup. I scoop water from the bucket into the cup and pour it over my body. The raw concrete walls around me are covered in tiny fly-like specimens. I watch their movement when I am not checking the corners of the ceiling for roaches and lizards. At first, I was ashamed of missing my shower head and shiny bathroom tiles. But I got used to the trusty bucket and cup duo faster than I expected. I even started to make peace with the insects that were centimeters away from my bare flesh. I became comforted by the fact that I was comfortable without first-world frills. But now my hand extends towards a faucet, a gadget I have learned to live without. Water emerges from the shower head and all memories of my privileged life start running down my body. I can’t deny the pleasure, which lasts as long as the warm water, a few short minutes.
I have trouble sleeping. Maybe it’s my over-active mind, replaying my journey thus far and wondering what unexpected twists tomorrow will bring. Maybe it’s the spider that is crawling around the ceiling and getting closer and closer to the spot above my head.
Joseph arrives on time, at 6:15 a.m. A taxi is waiting for us outside Sky Blue. The road to Mgahinga seems to be constructed of loosely-packed rocks. I am amazed that all tires remain unpunctured. In between bumps, Joseph and I chat. He likes Western music, novels, mountain climbing and making friends.
We enter Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. In the distance, pale pinks and reds glow behind clouds gathering around three extinct volcanoes. I watch the horizon change as the sun rises. Now only a small section of the sky is bathed in ruby light; lilac, baby blue and cream color the remainder. The clouds are the mountain’s first graceful hikers – some sweeping upwards, others crawling down. For the first time in my trip, I put on a sweater to block a cool breeze. The sun emerges from behind the clouds, emitting dark orange radiance. It momentarily hovers in the sky, a giant crystal ball, and then leisurely ascends back into the clouds.
I meet the six others joining me on the hike. They are feisty British girls, about my age, who have also been volunteering at a school in Uganda. They discuss their previous white water rafting adventure with particular emphasis on the cute guide that led them down the rapids. I order tea and pull out my half-empty bag of granola. The Britettes extract boxes of biscuits from their backpacks while waiting for their eggs and chapate to arrive. After breakfast, we meet our hike leaders: trackers dressed in dark khaki with rifles slung around their narrow bodies. We start moving into the mountains.
The terrain has a significant upwards slope. The occasional waft of aniseed passes my nose as dense bushes brush my legs. My leg muscles are grateful to be back in action after a long sabbatical. We trek through the terrain for about two hours until the trackers begin to identify signs of animal life: ripped vegetation, stray hairs and droppings. We take a few more steps and we’re told to keep quiet as we approach the mountain’s resident primates. And then they appear; smooth black silhouettes nestled in the murky shades of green and brown. Females lazily chewing on leafy branches; babies using their mothers’ long limbs as jungle gyms; and two majestic silverbacks, Bingingo and Mark, the protectors of the troop. I crouch low and stare. We all squirm around trying to take flash-free photos of the animals. I wonder what the gorillas think of us multicolored voyeurs. The young’uns are most intrigued by us, their curious brown eyes meeting our amazed gazes. The mothers are calm, but alert. The two patriarchs are perched in the distance, chewing leaves between their strong jaws; their deep-set eyes above giant nostrils. They are so real that they seem unreal. My turbulent journey to this place dissolves and all that is left is the present, their presence.
We are only allowed to spend an hour with the gorillas. It feels like we have to leave as soon as we arrive. We hike back down the mountain in post-ape bliss. The Britettes spend the night with me at Sky Blue. We are taking a bus back to Kampala together. We purchase bus tickets the day before our departure and we are told that the bus will pick us up outside Sky Blue at 6:00 a.m.
I wake up the morning of our departure at 5:30 a.m. to relieve my bladder before the long ride home. As I leave my room, the bus driver enters Sky Blue’s courtyard and tells me we must board the bus immediately. I remind him that he told us to be ready at 6:00, but he is uninterested in past promises. I dash back to my room, stuff all my stray possessions into my bag and board the bus. I have not peed. I have not brushed my teeth. I am still in my pajama bottoms. The bus beings moving, but instead of heading away from Kisoro, it proceeds to drive up and down the town’s main street, picking up passengers at random spots on the roadside.
It is now 6:00 a.m. We are back outside the entrance of Sky Blue. The bus finally moves towards the mountain. It is still dark. I hear rattling in the back. I close my eyes to envision sitting at Joyce’s table and eating her warm chapate. I’m ready to go back home to Ndejje.
01.10.2007
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Nicole Kallmeyer completed her honours degree in the Arts and Science Program at McMaster University. In her final year, she directed and produced The Vagina Monologues at McMaster to great acclaim. This sparked her passion for empowering women through art and communication. Nicole has also written and directed a play on mother-daughter relationships. A dynamic education and extensive travel opened Nicole’s mind to international development issues, which in turn sparked her desire to visit developing countries. She has volunteered at a school in Uganda , and traveled to India to learn about NGO involvement in Himalayan villages. Nicole brings to Girlphyte a keen love of writing and a sharp eye for editing. She also possesses a rare combination of creative juices and organizational skills. She is currently acting as our roaming correspondent and will undoubtedly bring fresh insight to Girlphyte from women across the globe. Nicole is completing her Masters degree at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. She has been published numerous times in the Chicago Herald and will be based out of Australia in the near future.
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