by Thor Hanson
Noah aside, the namesakes of Bwindi’s trail crew all played significant roles in the quest for Nile. Burton paved the way, traveling by foot from the coast to Lake Tanganyika with his partner, John Hanning Speke, in 1858. Their two-year journey together was inconclusive, with Burton touting Lake Tanganyika and Speke claiming Lake Victoria, his own discovery, as the river’s true source. The argument dissolved their partnership, and Speke later returned alone to successfully follow the Nile from Lake Victoria north to Cairo. He spent several months in what is now Uganda along the way, and eventually met the Bakers, Samuel and his indomitable wife, Florence, who had traveled up the river as far as a Turkish trading post in Sudan.
The Bakers proceeded southward to support Speke’s findings and navigate the length of Lake Albert, a secondary source for the river. Still, controversy raged for over twenty years, with Burton, David Livingstone, and other scholars doubting Speke’s geography and putting forward their own headwater theories.
Only the journeys of H. M. Stanley finally put the matter to rest. Called Bula Matari, “the Rock Breaker,” by his native guides, Stanley’s legendary stamina led him across the continent twice between 1874 and 1889. While best remembered for locating David Livingstone deep in the interior with the immortal line “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley also settled the Nile issue. Setting out from the East African coast near Zanzibar, his 1874 expedition brought a sturdy wooden boat carried in sections. He used it to circumnavigate both lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, proving once and for all that Speke’s discovery, Victoria, did indeed run north to the Nile. Tanganyika, he learned, flowed westward, and he followed its muddy drainage all the way to the Congo River and on to the Atlantic.
None of these explorers ever reached Bwindi forest itself, but Baker and Stanley both crossed into Uganda, and Speke passed within sight of the “bold sky-scraping cones” of the nearby Virunga Volcanoes. Geographical notes and the trials of the trail filled up much of their journals, but all the explorers found time to wax lyrical about the landscapes and people they encountered. Of trudging through uncharted rain forest several hundred miles west and north of Bwindi, Stanley wrote the following:
Imagine the whole of France and the Iberian Peninsula closely packed with trees…whose crowns of foliage interlace and prevent any view of sky and sun…. Then, from tree to tree run cables from two inches to fifteen inches thick, up and down, in loops and festoons, and W’s and badly formed M’s; fold them round the trees in great tight coils…like endless anacondas; let them flower and leaf luxuriantly and mix up above with the foliage of the trees to hide the sun…and at every fork and at every horizontal branch bend cabbage-like lichens of the largest kind and broad spear-leafed plants…and orchids and clusters of vegetable marvels, and a drapery of delicate ferns which abound. Now cover tree, branch, twig and creeper with a thick moss like a green fur.
Passing now under the green eaves of Bwindi’s great canopy, the temperature dropped a welcome ten degrees and the world dimmed to a realm of shadow and sunflecks. In spite of dry weather, the air felt moist and smelled of rich, damp earth. Cricket song and the hammer notes of a tinkerbird punctuated the creek’s white rushing, and for a moment the scene seemed pristine, like a page from Stanley’s journal or sometime before.
In Africa, one can easily succumb to landscape nostalgia, a deep longing for the past. The vast wilderness mapped by early explorers represented more than just an unspoiled ecosystem. To naturalists it was a glimpse into distant history, an almost Pleistocene world where humanity still played a minor role, living in small communities – hunting, but also hunted. The population explosion in this century has shrunk such areas to pockets like Bwindi, surrounded by cultivation and threatened with human pressures. The constant struggle to preserve these remnants makes historical wilderness an all the more appealing fantasy.
Certainly, the passage of time distills complex events and simplifies our perceptions of history. The visceral threats of just being alive give each generation its own sense of critical imperative, and we live convinced that problems were far simpler in “the olden days.” That view may be distorted, but the rapid environmental decline of recent decades is truly an unparalleled event in human history. Wild places are disappearing around the world, taking thousands of unique plants and animals with them each year. Wilderness itself may become a historical concept in the next century, and the long-term prospects of rare species like mountain gorillas will always be in question.
Working in the shadow of such thoughts, I often took comfort in picturing a Bwindi primeval, and today, accompanied in name by four great naturalist-explorers, I imagined the rain forest stretching uninterrupted around me, north along the rift escarpment, south to the Virunga Volcanoes, and west across the Congo basin to the sea.
“Noah,” I called out, “how do you choose these muzungu names?”
He looked at me questioningly, somehow managing to raise his eyebrows under the heavy eucalyptus pole.
“The Christian names,” I said, searching for a clearer Ugandan phrasing, “how do you pick them?”
“Ah,” he said, and dropped the pole to the ground with an elaborate shrug. We had arrived at the first stream crossing. “Me? From the Bible.”
“Right.” I nodded in return. This was no surprise. Protestant and Catholic missionaries had traveled far and wide in Uganda, and still operated numerous schools, hospitals, and orphanages. Over 85 percent of the population follows Christian beliefs, and a burgeoning evangelical movement adds more converts to the flock every year.
The others had arrived, and Noah pointed to each of them in turn as they dropped their burdens.
“Burton, Stanley, Baker,” he identified in rapid succession.
I was floored. “You know these explorers,” I asked, “these Europeans?”
“Yes, yes.” He smiled enthusiastically. “Big African whites. We learn them in grade three. And Emin Pasha, Mr. John Hanning Speke…”
He went on to name several explorers I’d never even heard of, men who, by the vagaries of a colonially designed education system, are still remembered, even revered, in the remote areas they traversed over a century ago. Their honored legacy seems all the more unlikely in light of the pages they devoted to disparaging Africa’s varied “savages.” Consider Baker’s summary of the Sudanese: “…the most lying, perfidious, mean, dirty scoundrels on God’s earth. They are all alike, therefore it is no use kicking the posterior of an individual.” Or Burton’s high opinion of the Wafanya: “They were pertinacious as flies; to drive them away was only to invite return, while—worst of all—the women were plain, and their grotesque salutations resembled the ‘encounter of two dog-apes.’ ”
The locals, in turn, weren’t always impressed by their European visitors. Early explorers should be glad to be known for something in addition to inspiring the name muzungu, a lingering title applied to all light-skinned people in East Africa. The word comes from a Swahili verb meaning “to move around in circles,” referring both to the Westerners’ frantic pace in life and their propensity for getting incredibly lost.
I unloaded hardware from my backpack, and we started to work on the bridge. The Peace Corps and other international development agencies stress the need for “appropriate technology,” using designs easily replicated and maintained with local materials. Too many projects have failed due to a lack of tractor parts in New Guinea or the high price of unleaded gas in rural Mozambique.
In this regard I considered myself particularly well suited to development work. After a cursory lesson, any trail crew member could replicate and probably improve upon my simple footbridge designs. The machinery involved—nails, hammer, panga—was necessarily appropriate for one simple reason: I was incapable of operating anything more complicated.
Two large timbers already spanned the stream from our work the previous day, and we spent an hour gathering stones from the creekbed to help support the muddy bank. Then Richard and Samuel started cutting and splitt
ing poles, while Noah and I hammered them onto the emerging bridge. Stanley continued gathering rocks, using his uncanny strength to wedge torso-size boulders under the supports.
It was at this point, suspended above a rushing rain forest stream, hammer in hand, that it hit me: I’m in the Peace Corps, building bridges in Africa. I could be the poster child for this outfit.
Tom Hanks and John Candy once starred in a Peace Corps parody called Volunteers. Hanks played Lawrence Bourne III, a cynical socialite who joined the Peace Corps to escape his gambling debts. He summarized his feelings for the experience in three words: “This is Hell.”
The characters’ task was, of course, to build a bridge across a river in some steamy equatorial jungle. I remember at the time identifying strongly with the Bourne character, thinking that, yes indeed, life couldn’t get much worse than that. Ten years later I found myself on the Muzabajiro River, hammering away with the Bwindi forest trail crew and thinking that life couldn’t be much better. I don’t know, maybe the heat was getting to me.
After several hours I left the trail crew hard at work, confident in their knowledge of bridge design and their ability to bend far fewer nails than myself. I hiked ahead into the forest to scout a new section of the loop trail. Most of the route had already been chosen and cut, a patchwork of new paths and old poacher trails winding up the slopes of Rukubira Hill. The forest was still and somnolent in the heat of midday, and my steps rasped through a layer of dry leaves. The noise startled a tambourine dove into wing-snapping flight, and I watched its pale feathers wheel and vanish quickly into the dense shade.
The harsh sound of my passage startled me as well. A typical footstep in Bwindi landed softly in mud and a sodden compost of dead vegetation, but weeks without heavy rain had left the ground cover as crisp as autumn leaves. Hundreds of forested acres burned during just such a dry spell in 1992, when farmers lost control of a blazing field bordering the park. The fire devastated vital habitat for most rain forest creatures, but luckily created an excellent feeding ground for gorillas. Purple-flowered Ipomoea vines soon dominated the clearing, creeping over shrubs and twining up the silvery dead tree trunks. Both Mubare and Katendegyere groups frequented the area to feast on the lush green leaves.
My path came suddenly into the open, a hilltop arm of that same burn scar, and the forest stretched away southeast before me: deep green ridges hunching against one another into the distance. The farthest hill lay outside the park, I knew, and was cleared long ago for agriculture. But through the haze its cultivated greens were indistinguishable from rain forest, and for a moment I could almost believe my fantasy of the Bwindi primeval.
Clouds gathered in high pillars above the hills, and the afternoon’s first thunder rumbled through the air like a summons. Even in the dry season, lightning storms were common in Bwindi, and people regarded them with seeming indifference. But I learned that their nonchalance was tinged with respect and a well-deserved touch of fear.
I once returned from a trip to Kenya with several dozen hammered copper bracelets, thinking they’d make good Christmas gifts for the park staff. The trackers and guides received them with great enthusiasm, thanking me profusely as they clasped the thin strands around their wrists and held them up in the sunlight.
Soon after, I noticed a dramatic increase in visitors to my house. Suddenly everyone in Buhoma was very interested in my return, stopping by to welcome me back and wondering if, by the way, maybe I’d brought them something from Kenya? Unfortunately, I hadn’t been shopping with the whole county in mind and had to turn people away empty-handed. I knew my popularity was plummeting in the village polls.
Dominico, in particular, was adamant. He stayed for over an hour, berating me with high-speed Rukiga exclamations. He would stare meaningfully up at the sky, then rub his barren wrist and frown, the downward furrows of his old face writing their own volumes of reproach. He was not mollified by a cup of milk tea. He did not want a notepad. I was relieved, finally, to see Alfred Twinomujuni, one of the guides and a former schoolteacher, coming up the path.
He listened to Dominico for a moment, then turned away and began flipping idly through a magazine on my desk.
“This one is only superstition,” he told me with some disdain. “They say the bracelets will protect against lightning.”
“Lightning?” I stared at him blankly. That explained Dominico’s wrist and sky gestures, but I wanted more. I wanted it to make sense. “How can a bracelet repel electricity?”
“I don’t know.” Alfred shrugged. “It’s a tradition.”
Ephraim arrived at that point, laughing under his hand as the old man launched into another long, beseeching rant.
“He says you want him to be killed.”
“What?!?” I tried not to sound too exasperated.
“By not giving the bracelet. He is now sure to be hit by the lightning,” Ephraim translated. Dominico nodded significantly, imploring me with another frown.
To those of us raised in temperate climes, being struck by lightning is hardly a pressing concern. People worry about street crime. They worry about cholesterol. When pieces of the Skylab space station started raining down from the stratosphere in the late 1970s, people worried. But lightning strikes rank in the league of alien abduction or spontaneous combustion as a truly unusual way to go.
In Bwindi, I learned, this is not the case. Thunderstorms are a daily occurrence, like the sky breathing, and lightning strikes really do take lives. John Dubois witnessed the aftermath of one such strike while walking to Butagota. A crowd had gathered around the bodies of a man and child under the still-smoking tree where they’d taken shelter from the rain. For months afterward John ran for cover at any sign of a storm, and we had lively debates on the relative safety of banana thatch or metal-roofed houses. Local people are haunted by such events, and any precaution, even an obscure bracelet story, was worth the effort.
I had only one bracelet remaining, and as I hooked it around Dominico’s wrist, his face lit up. “My son! You!” he cried, and walked out into the sunlight, thrusting his copper band up at the sky like an aegis. “Good!”
When he was gone I turned to Alfred. “So now the rest of the village thinks I want them dead?”
“You just don’t mind,” he told me. “These are superstitions.”
We chatted about other things for a while, and he borrowed a magazine, but before leaving he paused by the door and wondered aloud: “Maybe you have another one of the wire bracelets?” I glared at him and he smiled sheepishly, adding, “For my wife.”
Late afternoon sunlight angled in rich golden beams through the forest when I completed the loop and returned to check on the trail crew. I found Noah and Richard hammering the last struts onto a fine-looking bridge.
“Mwakora!” I said in greeting, a Rukiga phrase to thank someone for working.
We walked across the span together, and it was sturdy under our combined weight.
“Very nice,” I told them. “This one is strong.”
On the opposite shore, the trail curved out of sight through a thick stand of Mimsops, a tangling, neck-high bracken. I heard the others laughing and talking somewhere ahead, and then, oddly, the sound of a hammer. I walked quickly onward and stopped in disbelief ten yards up the trail at another new bridge, nearly finished, leading directly back across the river.
Stanley and Samuel were standing knee deep in the rushing stream, hammering and talking loudly, but they paused, suddenly wary when they saw the look of shock on my face.
“Noah,” I began, but faded off in frustration. I was torn between amazement at how much they had accomplished and dismay at wasting so much effort on a bridge to nowhere.
“Yes,” he replied with a broad smile.
“Noah, this is a very fine bridge,” I lied, frowning but trying to be positive.
“Yes,” he said again, more hesitantly as my agitation became apparent. The others gathered around us with expressions of helpful concern.
/> “A very good bridge,” I began again, “but where is it going?”
“What?” Noah looked genuinely worried now.
“Noah, there’s no trail here,” I finally snapped. “Where is this bridge going?”
He paused and looked thoughtfully at the bridge in question before turning back to me and replying gravely, “I don’t know. I am a very strange man.”
“Ah.” I smiled inanely, waiting to understand his comment. Noah smiled too, and the others nodded their general assent. Slowly, as Noah’s words continued to make no sense to me whatsoever, I realized that our conversation was probably over. Strange man. Where do you go from there?
“Great work!” I finally said. “Yes!” and gave them all a big thumbs-up.
What else could I do? We rerouted the trail to include the superfluous bridge, and I notched another communication triumph into my cross-cultural belt. Lawrence Bourne III was laughing cynically in my head. Building bridges to nowhere; now I was a true Peace Corps poster child.
11
Baumgärtel’s Car
I thought of the lamp as a friendly genie, particularly when stepping outside the tent into a bitterly cold, ink-black night. It was awesome to think of this as the only speck of light, other than perhaps occasional poacher fires, within the entire Virunga mountain range. When contemplating the vast expanse of uninhabited, rugged, mountainous land surrounding me and such a wealth of wilderness for my backyard, I considered myself one of the world’s most fortunate people.
—Dian Fossey
from Gorillas in the Mist, 1983
Translated loosely, the word gorilla means “scratcher” in a long-dead language spoken by the people of ancient Carthage. When their greatest explorer, Hanno, led a fleet of ships down the West African coast in the fifth century BC, one of his shore parties encountered a troop of strange, manlike beasts in the forest. He described a battle where several of his soldiers were attacked, and badly “scratched” trying to capture the unknown animals. They succeeded in bringing two skins back to Carthage, and although the apes were probably chimpanzees or even some type of monkey, the name has been associated with gorillas ever since.
