After a terrible night of very little sleep at ‘Red Chilli Campground’ in Kampala, the capital of Uganda highlighted by only my vegetable lasagne which was a hit again, (one bloke ate it and didn’t realise it was vegetarian!) we packed up camp and left at 6am making as much noise as possible in an attempt to wake the bastards off the Oasis overland truck who had kept us awake all night with singing and talking rubbish at the top of their lungs!
A couple of hours later we arrived at the equator (this time crossing back into the southern hemisphere) we were amazed that water does actually flow clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on if you are in the northern or southern hemisphere. We were also very amazed to see that the water will do this only meters to the north or south of the equator. On the equator, the water will just suck down the plughole without swirling either way.The following day we left lake Bunyoni at 1pm for the 3 ½ hour trip to the Nkuringo Gorilla Campsite, this trip was made in a clapped out old Toyota Hiace van with 11 people, tents, mattresses’ and gear for three days packed inside! Initially we were pleased with the quality of the roads, however they deteriorated very soon after someone voiced this!
By time we reached the campsite the road was little more than a goat track with a couple of people in the van feeling a little apprehensive about the lack of guard rails and the huge drop offs the rocky washed-away roads. We came quite close to the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and some peoples phone started reading service from the DRC phone towers, there were a couple of people who thought that we must have inadvertently crossed into the DRC because our phones were on the DRC towers! That night we had dinner and roasted marshmallows on the fire while talking to people who had tracked the gorillas that day
We were woken up in the middle of the night by a huge roll of thunder, got up to put the rain sheet on the tent thinking that a huge storm was immanent, however it passed around and under us (we were camped at about 1900m) Woke up the next morning very excited, but nervous about NOT seeing any gorillas! After breakfast we were off to the National Park office for our gorilla briefing where our head guide told us that when we see men with guns they are ‘our people’, I was very glad he had told us this as I would have had heart failure when half an hour of driving within spitting distance of the DRC border we pull up on the road and there is two men in dark green uniforms with AK-47 machine guns and gumboots standing there! These were our guards for the tracking…not to protect us from the gorillas, but from poachers who are well armed and pretty dangerous ord from anyone who had wandered across the border from Congo…we found out later that night that a group of 8 acacia trackers had been kidnapped and killed in the same area in 1999 (Although I knew a few stories of happenings around the area I was glad I didn’t know that earlier!). Other people on our tour tracked the Nshongi family of gorillas and only had one armed guard. We walked through villages and past houses waving at all the kids shouting ‘ello’ and ‘mzungu’ to us, still amazes me at just how excited the kids get to see tourists!
Half an hour later the head guide listens to a message on his radio and tells us ‘good news, the early trackers have found the gorillas’. Trackers go out at 7am and trek straight to where they viewed the gorillas the day before, then follow their tracks to their nests from that night and hope to find them munching on foliage for breakfast not too far away! Our gorillas were still very close to their nests, meaning that we only had an hours trek down into the valley and two hours back, which was a little disappointing as we wanted to see a little more of the Bwindi Impenetrable forest. We sighted 13 of the 17 gorillas in the Nkuringu Gorilla Family, considering there are only 700 mountain gorillas left in the world we were very pleased to see so many. Only certain groups of gorillas have been habituated to be visited by people and only 8 people can visit each family for an hour a day, for the privelidge they currently pay $500US however there is talk that it will increase to $1000US.
The guidelines say that people have to stay 7 meters from the gorillas, however someone forgot to tell the gorillas this! they came closer and closer to us. Because the family which we visited has been habituated for 12 years they were very comfortable with us. At the start of our hour with the gorillas a huge black back called ‘Kirungi’ (black back is a gorilla that is ready to turn silverback ie; become sexually mature) decided that after posing for photos for five minutes that it wanted a snack, so just reached up grabbed the trunk of a tree close by, pulled the tree over and started breakfasting! Not long after this he decided that he wanted to be the other side of us, walking between myself and another bloke who were moving as fast as we could over steep and loose vegetation without disturbing the other gorillas, in the end he passed about 50cm from where I was clinging to the hillside and was every bit as tall as me, only about 8 times the diameter! I was fair crapping myself!
So many of the gorillas were actually too close to photograph by the end of hour with them, my minimum focusing distance is 1.8m and there was a lot of time I couldn’t focus they were so close. At one stage I was taking photos of a gorilla that was up the hill a little bit when I felt something tap on my hand, it was the guide pointing out the juvenile gorilla which had moved right in front of me! I ended up taking less photos than anyone else, but I guess it’s about quality not quantity! I was actually that awed by the mountain gorillas that I spent a lot of time just watching instead of taking photos…with my lens I was just too close to actually see a whole gorilla through the viewfinder!
Near the end of our hour the guide asked who wanted to see the silverback called ‘Safari’ to walk up the hill a couple of meters as he had been sitting mostly out of sight behind vegetation, almost on que he wandered down the hill tord us, stopping about 2-3m in front of us and settled down for some photos. I think that quite a few people stopped breathing at this stage, I certainly did! Our guide almost had to drag us away at the end of the hour, we just wanted to stay there forever! He was saying that we had ‘perfect viewing’ as the gorillas are often not that active, we had witnessed the juveniles playfighting and tumbling and evenually big momma gorilla swatting a couple of the younger ones over the head to sort it out! We started back up the hill, through the terraced villages stopping to have lunch and reached our clapped out old minivan after two hours, two hours spent talking non-stop about gorillas and photography….great topics!
Spencer and I return to camp to find our tent moved and decorated with lots of red balloons and flowers and containing a bottle of sparkling red wine, box of chocolates and card signed by everyone as it was our first wedding anniversary that day….and what a way to spend it!Back at camp we wait for the other group who had to leave earlier as they were tracking farther away, we had all compared photos, downed 500ml Nile special beers and talked non stop about just how amazing the gorillas are, when the other group came back in several hours after us and looking dusty and tired (we had all had hot showers by this time too!) They had all enjoyed their day, but had not been as lucky to get so close, as the Nshongi family has not had contact with humans for as long as the gorillas that we tracked.
After dinner we roasted some more marshmallows by the fire with the gorilla stories still running thick and fast!
The following day we took advantage of lying on our mattresses on the green grass watching the clouds pass over, Spencer and I took a stroll around the village, however I was pretty nervous of walking around by ourselves close to the border of one of the most unstable countries in the world at the moment. That night we sat in our thatched dining room and watched a great electrical storm brew and pass us over, dumping a lot of rain on the campsite.
The following morning we were back in the mini van, this time with 8 passengers, the driver, 16 sleeping mats, 8 tents, 8 rain covers and all of our gear, not the most comfortable trip in the world! We arrived back at Lake Bunyoni, had lunch then prepared for more rain…decided that the best course of action was to get to the bar, download our photos, watch the commonwealth games, talk about gorillas and drink some beer.
That night Spencer had to take a shovel to the toilet with him to ward off the camp dogs! They were crazy mutts! As he got out of the tent they rushed at him, he had to kick one to keep it from biting him, I looked out of the tent to see three eyeing him off, they had dragged our bin bag away and spread in everywhere and then tipped another bin over. Now I understood why the security guard had told me the night before that the dog as a ‘wolf’ as I was patting it thinking it was a nice dog, although close to a dingo!
We are still waiting to receive the magical email informing us that we have tenants in our house…loosing $600 a week when you are not working and haven’t worked for over five months is not a great feeling!
Our ‘jigger’ (still haven’t been able to find someone who knows how it’s actually spelt!) worm holes in our feet have cleared up, after seeing them everyone else is wearing shoes more often! I am keeping a close eye on my skin for any more parasites…
To truly experience Africa they say you need to be robbed….
I think to truly experience Africa you need to-
1. Be robbed
2. Get food poisoning
3. Have a parasite living somewhere within your body
4. Take local transport (once)
5. Listen to the wheels of your Kenyan ambulance squeal as you roar through the streets of Nairobi hospital bound
Kenyan Medical Adventures
(this one is rated P for Poo)
So we re-enter Kenya at a quick border crossing (1 hour) and head for Eldoret (previously known as Eldorado he he he) and the much awaited open fire in the bar. Eldoret is about 2200m above sea level, so things were cooling down pretty quickly as we pitched our tents and headed for the bar. We settle in under a thatched roof outside to drink some beer and are quickly surprised by a strange substance falling from the sky…..hail…in Kenya! We wait for a lull in the hail and drag ourselves and beers back up to the bar hoping that the fire is lit…some people adopt the ‘jandals off’ (the Kiwis) technique of moving through the path that is flowing like a river, others adopt ‘thongs on’ (the Aussies) or ‘flip-flops’ (Northern hemisphere) on, dependant upon nationality….then there are the Territorians, who like to throw around the term of ‘pluggers’. I went for ‘pluggers off’ and just about froze my tootsies off!
A few beers later and dinner is ready, we drag ourselves away from the bar and the open fire that has been stoked up nicely by this stage to eat our stuffed pancakes. We find out that we are camped beside the very same African Trails truck that we will be on from Nairobi to Istanbul (called Ruby), some of the people on the truck will be our travelling companions for the next three months. When they roll into the bar, it doesn’t take me long to work out that the African Trails trucks attract a very different clientele than the Acacia trucks. The power goes out and five of the crew start walking to the toilets off the light of one mans head torch, I hear him say “look, a couple of other people are going to have to get head torches of you are going to have to chip in for money for batteries, this is going to cost me a fortune!” ha ha ha. They had a dress up night as it was someone’s birthday, one of the girls who named herself only as ‘Kimberly Clark’ was obviously out for the cheapest dress up outfit available and stole every roll of toilet paper in the campground (except the bar) to dress herself in. I for one thought this was a great joke, until about 1am the next morning when I would have sold my sole for a roll! So after a couple of beers, feeling sober and 100% well, I prepare myself for bed with a 500ml bottle of the best ginger beer ever and head off to tent 649. I wake up in the middle of the night realizing that something was very, very wrong with me, I make my way as quickly as one can, out of tent 649 when you have four zippers to open in the rain and get my ‘pluggers’ on for a quick jog to the camp toilets…once there I realize exactly where ‘Kimberly Clark’ got her party dress from! Not in a position to be choosy, I head for the men’s bathrooms, to find that every roll of toilet paper has been stolen from there too! I make my way down a tunnel (yeah, bars in Eldoret come complete with 20m tunnel entrances!) and find that there is some toilet paper left, sort myself out, steal half of the remaining toilet paper and make my way to the bar and nicely ask the man to ‘sort the shitters out’. So I arrive back at the tent and tell Spencer the grizzly details when I realize that I am indeed sick and have to head back to the toilet again, with both ends well out of control. This continues all night, and I am freezing with the chills. Unfortunately for our travelling companions all of our tents were well packed that night, so when I don’t make it to the toilet and start vomiting near the tent at about 3am, I wake most of them up. By the morning I feel absolutely ordinary and not looking forward to an 8 hour truck trip into Nairobi, after three trips to the toilets in the hour before departure, a hug and cuddle from Maritjie, who arrived at the toilets with a fresh roll on my second trip and strict instructions to Patrick our driver that I would not care where he pulled the truck up, just so long as it was immediately after he saw arms waving out of the window we were off. I lasted in the seat about ½ an hour before crawling onto a mat on the floor at the back of the truck in my sleeping bag and enduring the several hundred speed bumps that Kenyan roads have put in to make sick people suffer! I do honestly believe that the person who decides to put five speed bumps in 5 meters must be a relative of any stupid bitch who would steal all the toilet paper in an African campground!
Somewhere along the way other sleeping mats fall on me, I am oblivious to this, only to the extra layer of comfort once we stop and I add these to my bedding! Eight hours, six million speed bumps, about 200ml of coke and two glucogel sachets later we arrive in Nairobi, I am certain that I need to vomit and get off the truck immediately with quick instructions on the location of the toilets and head in that direction. I manage to get around the first corner before realizing that I am going to faint, get off the concrete path and onto the grass, but continue my way towards the toilet (I still don’t understand how after 30 years of fainting, why I haven’t learnt to just sit down!) only to see the world spin and have a vague recollection of my shoulder smashing onto the hardest grass in the world. I re-enter the world looking at the washing line and about five Kenyan workers hanging over me asking if I’m OK… I manage to croak out a ‘please get my husband off the Acacia truck’ out and before I know it I am in the back of a Kenyan ambulance with the sirens blaring, swerving at top speed towards Nairobi hospital. I got so scared by this stage, I felt so sick and my back and legs were aching and my hands were tingling and I was certain that I had crapped myself as I fell, that I start crying. The driver wouldn’t let Spencer of Maritjie sit in the front, he said they would be driving fast and they may get scared. Apparently the trip to the hospital took 20 minutes, but without the siren would have taken 2 hours, traffic in Nairobi is hell! The ambulance was more of a meat wagon, very little equipment in there; they just take the vitals and get you to a hospital as quick as they can. I remember that the sheet on the stretcher was less clean than the one in our tent! The stretcher didn’t lock into place properly so it was moving from side to side when the ambulance attendant wasn’t holding it, they put a seatbelt around my knees, not sure what that was going to do had the anchors needed engaging quickly. Rounding the corner to the hospital I hear the wheels squealing and start thinking “shit am I dying? Why are they driving so fast?” We arrive at the hospital, much to my amazement; I thought the ambulance was going to kill me quicker than any illness. I get rolled into a room and Spencer gets dragged off to pay in advance, they wouldn’t do anything except ask my name, take my temperature and attempt to undress me until they saw the colour of our Kenya shillings! I had two men trying to get my red zebra t-shirt off me and I am asking for Spencer to help and them to go away and then start stressing about them taking my shorts off me as I had a heap of US dollars and our last remaining cash cards in the pocket, so I manage to remain in my thermals and shorts with my thongs and t-shirt confiscated! My clothing still bore the remains of a passionfruit malfunction from the day before and shit and spew from the previos night, had it not been my favourite item they would have been welcome to it! Spencer was using my credit card to pay, which he then had to bring in for me to sign (his got stolen), I told him to shield me from seeing the price, lest I have a heart attack at that! After payment was made they start punching holes in me to draw blood and pump three bottles of fluid into my arm, by this stage I am certain that I am dying, Spencer is still sorting the insurance and I am flaking it with the thought of needles (yup, still a sook). At some stage Spencer returns and assures me that all the needles are new and were in their wrappers. After the saline starts running into my veins I start to feel marginally better, Spencer gets out the camera and takes a couple of photos, I look like crap.
After a couple of litres of fluid, they walk me to the toilet, no dignity left by this stage, for a urine and stool sample. Urine no problems, they have been pumping fluid into my arm for over an hour, the stool is an issue, no food, lots of immodium and a whole night doing water poos (yup, no colour at all, just water….worst ever) meant that there was no stool to be had. So I get to then wander back, in my wonderful Nairobi Hospital gown gaping to show my thermal underwear (I had had the chills the night before and had not changed that morning) and shorts and bare feet back (still holding drip, gown and my urine sample…and man…they use the smallest bottles over here for such things!) back to another bed for yet another bottle of liquid. It was smaller than the other bottles, Spencer looked at the bottle and at the receipt and told me that the bottle was worth 500 shillings, then told me that we had paid for the stool sample so I would be ‘shitting in the bottle!’
With the fluids still pumping in, I start to feel better, and can even feel by skin plumping up again, the doctor arrives to tell me that I don’t have malaria (which everyone was certain that I did) and my blood was fine and that the results of the other tests would be ready the following day, upon which I could bring in a poo for them to test! Spencer goes off to the dispensary and comes back with drugs and less shillings than he left with and then we are right to leave. Maritjie is still certain that it is malaria, and knows three people that have been misdiagnosed, so we arrive back at the campsite ready to perform a self malaria test from the first aid kit on the truck. So at about 10pm the three of us are in the truck trying to puncture my finger to get a drop of blood big enough for the test, only problem is that I am so bloody (pardon the pun) traumatized by the events of the day, and probably still dehydrated that I don’t seem to be able to bleed. Spencer did the first hole, with a safety pin, I think he hit bone, after that I had to lie down or faint. Maritjie made the next hole, after massaging my finger, and kept exclaiming ‘f&*k’, ‘bleed Allison’ in a strong Afrikaans accent, she does not usually swear, I remember finding this funny at the time. Eventually I was laid on the table, with my feet on the headrests of the seat in front, with my hand lowered into warm water before my arm lowered and the third puncture was made and enough blood was gained for the test to come back negative. There was talk of more malaria tests the next morning…..no thanks, I feel enough like a pin cushion! By this stage I was feeling absolutely crap and just couldn’t stay upright for longer than a minute without feeling the world spin so I was put to bed. Maritjie gave us her room in the campground as she was worried about me sleeping in a tent so far away from the toilet; I declined so many times and then almost died of guilt the next morning when I found out that she had slept on the couch that night!
The next morning I was feeling much better, still far from 100% but have colour back in my cheeks (according to all our travelling companions, to whom I had to tell and re-tell the hospital and ambulance story), and managed to eat a bit of breakfast. I am just hoping that whatever made me so violently ill, managed to pass out in the initial hours and that now I am re-hydrated I will be fine…also very thankful that I was close to the best hospital in East Africa (or any hospital for that matter), as I can only imagine what some of the rural hospitals in Uganda would have been like…
Spencer tells me that we are on day 86 with a little under a hundred days to go….I figure we have had our fair share of luck!
And just for those of us who are superstitious; I was wearing the same t-shirt, bra, undies and shorts as I was the day we were robbed, only difference is that I was wearing my $1 zambian ‘pluggers’ instead of my red crocs….hmmm…is my lucky red t-shirt really so lucky? Or on a pure statistical point of view, is it just because I wear it so often that bad things are starting to happen when I wear it?....
