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Burkina Fasso Part II: Royalty and what you do-do in Ouagadougou

10 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by Anita in Africa, Burkina Fasso

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Biking, Indigenous People, Transport, Travel Days, Villages

Riding a bicycle around Tiabele

Sleeping out on the roof was quite the experience and the stars were absolutely brilliant and shone magically, aided by the lack of streetlights. It will be something I will always remember, especially listening to the village noises in the night. We had heard drumming at around 1 in the morning (apparently there had been a funeral) and a rather upset donkey who brayed at regular intervals through the night, matched only in force by several roosters who I’d gladly see shot. Upon rising to take breakfast and returning – we even found little goats prancing around our mattress, having jumped onto the roof in curiosity.

Our bed for the night was a mattress on the roof of the traditional style home. In the morning, goats were frolicking about.

Arnaud’s cousin, Herman, would take us on the tour that day since he did speak some (broken) English, and with my broken French – we made a passable attempt at understanding one another. The royal court housed approximately 300 people and was marked at its entrance by a seating area surrounding an altar-like building and a mound behind that, rather disturbingly, we were informed contained the buried placentas of all the descendants of the King of Tiabele.

Ok, then.

And so began the running theme of the day: what men can do and what women can/can’t do in this tribe. To start, this seating area was reserved only for men – it was forbidden for women to sit here. Then we were shown the various structures for dwelling – the rectangular houses for grandparents and the children/unmarried women – the round houses for single men over the age of sixteen (who get to live alone while women have to do as grandma says till she finds a man) and the hexagonal units for couples.

The homes in the Royal Court

Built out of clay, these homes all have very low door entrances, presumably to keep the interiors cool. Once inside the initial room, they can extend another two to three rooms further back, with each room requiring a dexterous crawl to enter. Though super impressive in terms of the organization and how there was a place for every conceivably needed tool, I started getting super claustrophobic at the thought of needing to crawl 3 times before getting to daylight again.

Each March, after the harvest, the women of the village use local plants/reeds to make inks that they use to paint the homes with symbols like turtles, trees, birds and all kinds of patterns. Just the women. (Me, rolling my eyes.)

After the royal court, we got on scooters and had Herman and his cousin Charles take us to another village where we had a woman show us how she made pottery, and another village called Tangassouko. For me, the most memorable time during this very hot afternoon, was stopping in the shade at this brightly green painted bar in the middle of nowhere for cold beer and donuts. Somehow, Africans always forget to include plans for refreshment and peeing in their trips.

They’d get more tips if they did.

Could this dude, in Tiabele, be any cooler if he tried?? Check out those shades!!

After a much needed nap, we then rented bicycles and after a slight delay getting new SIM cards cut to nano size, and a foray to the market in search of paw paw, and an improvised way to eat it, we set off on the very dusty road out of town in search of the nearby lake.

This was my first time on a bike in West Africa and incredibly, this rickety old cruiser fit me perfectly. We were quite a sight to the locals and quickly stirred up lots of kissy noises (sound Africans make to get someone’s attention) waves, and invitations to come over to where they were socializing.

Woman making pottery

We stuck to our bikes as the sun was already starting to set and we didn’t want to have to return in pitch darkness.   As it turned out, we did, because we decided to make one more stop for a drink at a roadside café that was playing too good of a reggae beat to pass up.

We used our iPhones as bike lights for the return to our Auberge and dinner.

Arnaud was a musician and he had planned a musical performance and dance for a group of Belgians that had arrived that day, and us, that evening at the Auberge. It was actually rather good, it felt genuine and was especially entertaining when about 20 children poured into the courtyard and took turns showing us their mad skills at the traditional form of Tiabele dance, which involved a lot of stamping and rhythmic arm movements. We westerners often got pulled into the circle, but alas, our skills were quite lacking.

Mike was very thankful when the festivities ended around 10 o’clock and like the true grandma and grandpa that we had become, we exhaustedly hobbled up the steps to our rooftop mattress for the night.

Arnaud and his band entertain us with song and dance

We had learned that there was a minibus going directly from Tiabele to Ouagadougou that Tuesday morning at 7am, and that would save us from needing to rent the car for another day. Since the bus was leaving from the center of town, a dusty ½ mile away, Arnaud had offered to pick us up on his moto (or at least our luggage) at 6:30 to drop us there.

Unfortunately, he didn’t show up and we started walking ourselves in the dawn light, armed with packed coffee for the minibus. Herman walked up and said goodbye and that Arnaud was still asleep. That riled me up and I called him. He lied and said that he was working with the Belgians. He didn’t know that Herman had just told me he was still sleeping, and moreso, that the Belgians were staying at the same Auberge as us and we had seen a handful of them up brushing their teeth or sleeping – so it was a rather obvious lie.

When I pointed out that he’d offered us a lift to the bus the day before, he paused, remembered, and said he was “coming”.

About 100 meters from the bus, he pulled up on his motorbike and started telling me how my French is bad and that I had misunderstood him yesterday. I thought: Is it really necessary to drive all this way just to insult your paying guests who are about to leave? Even IF I had misunderstood his offer to give us a ride to the bus, was it necessary to come over just to tell us that? And not, instead, just apologize for the confusion and wish us a good onward journey? Thank us for visiting?

Burkina might be suffering from a lack of tourists, but Arnaud was not helping himself out in any way by treating the rare guests he did get badly.

Luckily, we made the Tro Tro and got the front seats again. The tro tro left five minutes early and we were on the way to Paga. The coffee I had mixed with milk from yesterday and I think it had gone a little bad because I had explosive diarrhea on arrival in Ouaga and fortunately found a bathroom in a hotel in the nick of time while a taxi waited for us.

The journey had taken five hours in total from Tiabele and there hadn’t been much to see other than a group of elephants that were on the side of the highway just north of Paga! The driver seemed very happy about that. Our seats were relatively comfortable except for the fact that the gear shift was literally against my left leg and the driver had to touch and move my leg away every time he wanted to shift.

Entering Ouagadougou

Burkina and all the northern latitude locales in West Africa are so full of dust, red dirt and pollution this time of year that my cough was back in full force, and Mike’s throat would swell up each night and he was suffering with nose bleeds. This has made traveling here that much more arduous and I haven’t really felt well since we left Amedzofe. I am almost recovered now, writing this from the beach in Benin.

Taking the oldest and most unreliable vehicle you’ve ever seen – we made our way through the capital to our reserved hotel for the night – Hotel de la Liberte. Mike has converted me to Maps.me – and it is super fun to be able to direct a taxi driver how/where to get somewhere, offline, in his city – better than he knows it himself. This cab was so old there was a thick film of dust all across the dash, the roof was sagging, and the windows were permanently rolled down.

Our hotel could not have been more of a welcome oasis. Quiet, clean, simple, with a lovely back courtyard bar/restaurant and just enough creature comforts in our second floor room to offer us some needed rest after our journey.

We later ventured out on foot, with caution, to Kwame Nkrumah street. We had decided to get coffee and cake at Cappuccino, figuring that with the armed guards and body scanner at its entrance, this was probably the safest place for us to hang out, despite its awful history. We ordered cappuccinos, a strawberry cream cake and a chocolate mousse cake.

Divine.

Coffee and cakes at Cappuccino!

Walking back through the city, we debated whether to get a cab as the light was fading, and decided together that we both felt quite safe and this was a chance to get some exercise and take in the city’s vibe.

There are a lot of motorbikes in Ouaga…far more than in other cities. People often carry a scar on their cheek, which is intentionally cut into the face of babies to signify their tribe. The practice is very common in Benin too. Streets were wide and buildings spread out and designed in such a way that Ouaga reminded me very much of Harare. It was, of course, dirty and littered trash was visible everywhere alongside the roads. We passed businesses of a large variety and tried to avoid the darkest of streets. On arrival at our hotel, we found there was a power outage, so we waited for the lights to come back on before ordering a simple dinner.

We were, as yet, undecided as to whether we would stay another day in the city or not – and fell asleep committed to making plans in the morning.

As it turned out, our goal was to meet back up with the truck in Ganvie on the 28th of January. If we still wanted to see Pendjari National Park in northern Benin, we would have to leave the next day and get as close to the border as we could.

So we opted to get a taxi to take us to a number of the more tourist “sites” in the city for some photo opportunities, and then to take us to the Autogare for the bus that headed east to Fada N’Gourma at either 12 or 2pm– information obtained with great effort in over an hour of conversation and calls with the front desk lady at our hotel.

Ouaga Sculpture

God how we take getting information as simple as bus departure times via the internet at home for granted!!!!

Our taxi driver, being a little overzealous in his estimation of speed, got us to the station after the 12pm bus had already left. Luckily, there was a waiting area with a TV playing the move Alien: Resurrection, in French to keep us entertained.

The signs said the next bus to Fada was at 1500. The guy who sold me tickets confirmed that there was a bus at 1400. Then another guy asked to check my tickets and told me I had tickets for the 0600 bus and that I should go back to the window. More questions, and the ticket guy just crossed the 0600 time out in colored marker and wrote 1400 in, which seemed to appease the other guy.

Seriously, NOTHING is simple here. Fucking NOTHING.

In need of a beer, Mike agreed to let me walk down the dusty main street in search of one for him and I. I finally came across a street side bar that was full of men, four across sitting at the bar directly opposite me, staring in disbelief. One asked “who are you? Who do you think you are, as a woman buying beer in the middle of the day?’ – or, at least, something to this effect. I replied “Une femme qui a soif “ or a woman who is thirsty. All four of them raised their glass to me at that, and it was quite a funny moment.

After our beer, we boarded our old, falling apart, large, but comfortable bus that was heading to Fada. We got a row of seats each and despite it being very hot and dusty – it was actually a rather comfortable journey of five hours.

Me getting dust off our nasty mattress

Our crack den for the night in Fada

We arrived in Fada just after 7 and I immediately thought I’d landed in post-war zone Iraq. At least what I imagined that would look like. It was desolate, dark and covered in red dirt streets. We walked to a hotel that we’d found in the Bradt guide and found an abandoned building.

Not a good sign.

Taking two motorbikes across the river to a second guesthouse – we found what appeared to be the same thing (we later found out that the lights were just turned off and that we could have stayed there…I guess if we’d yelled loud enough?) and then found a guesthouse that was open, but no one had stayed there in over a year – or so it seemed by the layer of dust on the crappy mattress and the cobwebs in the ceiling.

Mike told me to take a breath and deal – it was, after all only $10 for the night.

Strangely enough, we managed to have one of our best meals of the trip that night which came to $4 including a beer each.

Tomorrow, we’d be heading to the Benin border!

Burkina Fasso Part I: Swine by Candlelight

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by Anita in Africa, Burkina Fasso

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Culture, Indigenous People, Transport, Travel Days, Villages, Women

Entering a traditional home in Tiabele

We ordered a private taxi to take us back to Domango where we would pick up a minibus heading back to Tamale and then north from there to the Burkina Fasso border. We asked that he make a stop along the way to a famed mud and stick mosque that’s over 700 years old in Larabanga – and it’s still in use today!

Here are the photos. These types of structures are most famous for being located in Mali, but they do occur in other places across this latitude.

At the Mud and Stick Mosque

Once we arrived in Domango we found a minibus that was slowly filling up to take people to Tamale, but it was progressing rather slowly and something just didn’t feel right to me when I was told that this was the “only” form of public transport going to Tamale. In looking for a bathroom, I stumbled across the public bus station and lo and behold but a large bus was about to leave for Tamale for the same price!! I was so mad and told them to wait before having to run back down the road, scream at Mike to come and demand our money back from the lying minibus driver before just making it and finding seats.

Though the bus was slow going and rough going over those famous Ghanaian speed bumps, we were glad to at least be moving, and we might have been waiting over two hours for the first form of transport to depart.

Once arriving in Tamale, rather strangely in the middle of a food market (what the actual fuck) we took a cab to the Tro Tro station that served northern routes to Bolgatanga. Since the Tro Tro was full, we were offered a private car for 25 cd’s each, but we had to wait for it to fill. So, we decided to pay for 3 seats so we wouldn’t be squashed in the back and we could leave sooner.

The driver of this taxi turned out to be a total douchebag and tried to charge us mid-journey another 5 cd’s each for our luggage in the trunk. We argued that since we’d bought the middle seat in the back, we would happily move our luggage to occupy the empty space between us – and he started arguing “what IF a third person was sitting back there – THEN where would you put your luggage?” I really lost my temper at that point and told him that the time to inform a passenger of ALL applicable costs was BEFORE the journey commenced and that he could take his illogical hypothetical nonsense and shove it because he was being an idiot. If he didn’t like it – we would get out of the car there and then.

I could feel Mike cringing next to me, but I’d had enough and was unwilling to let patience and politeness rule the day with this man. Fortunately, my abrasiveness paid off – he didn’t know what to do or say to me and kept quiet the rest of the way, even showing a willingness to take us further on to the Burkina border for a reasonable fare.

I guess he wasn’t used to having a woman stand up to him.

I was initially nervous about the border crossing and traveling there as Burkina Fasso had recently experienced an enormous drop in tourism since the two terrorist attacks by the Northern African branch of ISIS in 2016 and 2017. Over 30 people had been shot at the popular coffee spot “Cappuccino” on Kwame Nkrumah avenue and the Splendid hotel across the street in Ougadougou in January of 2016, then in August of 2017, 18 people were killed just down the street at Aziz Istanbul restaurant. Both attacks had targeted westerners/ex-pats and Burkina has seen a sharp drop in tourism since then.

At the Burkina Fasso Border Crossing

As it turned out, the border crossing was simple, and the customs guy on the Burkina side was overjoyed that two Americans were coming to his country. Plus, it was nice to speak some French again.

We had arranged to visit a unique set of villages in a place called Tiabele, which was only about 60kms or so from the border. A guide named Arnaud had been recommended to us to arrange accommodation and a tour of his home, made famous for both its culture and for how they are made out of mud clay and then painted in a variety of symbolic artwork and color.

We took a very very old and rickety taxi to Po, where we would be meeting with Arnaud. Burkina turned out to have the oldest ramshackled vehicles on the trip thus far, with drivers using brute force to change gears, or even open a window (with a wrench kept in the glovebox for this purpose.) Since we didn’t have a sim and we were running about an hour behind schedule, I borrowed the driver’s phone to let Arnaud know that we were on our way.

I was hot, dusty, exhausted and thirsty when we arrived and the very last thing I wanted to do was have a long conversation in French. However, when Arnaud suggested we start with a cold large beer for refreshment, that certainly perked me up somewhat.

Arnaud seemed very genial – he explained that his village system had a royal court/family and that he was a prince (ooh la la) and we would be staying at an Auberge only 100m from his residence in a traditional style hut with rooftops where one could take a mattress on hot nights to sleep outside. He suggested we get showers and a good meal tonight and then tomorrow he would plan a full day’s activities for us.

Once acquainted, imbibed, and a guinea fowl purchased (alive and presumably for Arnaud’s family dinner) we hopped in his rented vehicle and drove to Tiabele, arriving as it was getting dark.

Arnaud driving with the shortly doomed Guinea Fowl

We showered and walked over to the restaurant that Arnaud had arranged for us. It was a couple’s home, with a few tables and chairs laid out in their garden. The host was super gracious and friendly, and fixed a candle to the table itself by pouring hot wax first to hold the candle firmly in place.

Our bed for the night was a mattress on the roof of the traditional style home. In the morning, goats were frolicking about.

Our meal could only be described as maize based white sticky paste and a side dish of brown mush that may have contained some nuts and meat. It was edible and another beer helped wash it down.   It was the ambiance that was so indelible, and I joked with Mike (who is like a brother to me) that we were really missing out on this opportunity to gaze at each other, and drink some wine by candlelight in this romantic spot.

He laughed and looking around and seeing the family’s chickens, goats, cats and pigs all meandering around us, he replied, “Well, we do have SWINE by candlelight, for sure!”

Ghana Part II: Slave Castles and Photogenic Elmina Harbor

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Anita in Africa, Ghana

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Archaeological Sites, History, Indigenous People

Elmina had not really been touted as a destination in and of itself by the Dragoman Itinerary or trip description. In fact, almost nothing was mentioned of its stunning harbor that dramatically juxtaposed alongside its famed Slave Castle that I had read about when I was a teenager in high school.

It turned out to be the highlight of the trip so far.

That morning, all that had been organized for the group was a visit to 3 schools that had been built by a charity that Dragoman supports. The visit left me with very mixed feelings – in the first school, the conditions were ideal and the school’s facilities were superior to what I was lucky enough to experience in primary school in the UK. The kids were all clean, healthy, well-dressed with new shoes and new backpacks. When asked what the criteria was for kids to be able to come to this school, we were told that it was purely based on geography and whether parents could bring their kids to school. To me, just looking at the children told me that this wasn’t the case and that this was a group of kids from the elite upper-class persons of Elmina – who obviously deserved a good education – but why was a western supported charity helping kids who came from families that could already afford to support themselves?

The next school was far more moderate and struggled with class sizes of over 70 or 80 kids. It felt like we were diverting the children’s attention from their classwork, and so the visit didn’t sit well with me at all. In addition, these kids were some of the most aggressively “friendly” of any crowds of kids I’ve come across on this continent. When trying to leave, they practically clawed, scratched and grabbed at me to get physical hold of me, along with pulling off my hat and grabbing my hair. I didn’t appreciate that at all.

One highlight of the visit, however, was that this school itself sat on Elmina beach where a local team of fishermen just happened to be pulling in the day’s catch when we were there. It was a spectacle to witness as the men sang songs and clapped in time to create the unity and coordination necessary to pull in the thousands of tiny fish in their nets ashore. I managed to get a good video of the event which I will include here.

https://youtu.be/gFqBfDRylis

Once the visits were over (and they’d gone way overtime) we were hungry for some food and were dropped off downtown to get lunch and take a walk around Elmina.

Once we’d eaten, it became quickly obvious that there was so much here to see and do and the photographic opportunities in Elmina’s gloriously colorful harbor full of life, locals, and fishing boats coming in and out of the harbor demanded that the rest of the day be spent here.

I was also very keen to visit Elmina castle despite the fact that we were visiting the Slave Castle at Cape Coast the next day. Elmina castle is additionally historic because it wasn’t built specifically for the slave trade, but rather as a trading post for other goods’/commodities by the Portuguese in 1482 – 10 years before Columbus supposedly “found” Hispaniola.

I managed to convince Mike and “Precise” Peter (aka Pipi Lou Lou) to come along with me for the $9 tour of the castle and we further planned to make our own way walking all the way back to the beach that housed Stumble Inn and our accommodation for the night.

I could write a book about what visiting Elmina castle was like, but I will attempt to summarize my feelings/thoughts for you here in a more concise manner.   Much like visiting Aushwitz/Birkenau, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, or the Genocide Museum in Kigali – you cannot quite prepare yourself for the horror you feel when you can actually see a place that housed such a shocking testament to the cruelty, sadism and torture of living humans that other humans are capable of inflicting upon another group of people. And doing so without a sense of remorse or conscience. For me, it stirred up a lot of very heavy emotions and made me look at the history of my own nation with a new set of eyes.

Our guide was incredible, thorough and managed to infuse just the right amount of humor when it was needed so as to not detract from the serious nature of our visit. He did a wonderful job of giving us the preliminary world history that set the stage for the slave trade to begin in the first place – namely the decimation of Native Populations in the Americas due to European-introduced diseases, the noteworthy observation of the physical strength and working characteristics of the African people and a backdrop of inter-tribal warfare that set the stage for the creation of the slave trade, which was, in large part started by Africans enslaving other Africans in exchange for weapons to fight.

The Americas needed to build infrastructure and gather resources from their newly acquired lands. The Africans were warring with one another over land and resources in West Africa. The Europeans saw the opportunity for obtaining vast quantities of cheap, and subsequently “free” labor, by rewarding tribal leaders with weapons, and goods in exchange for their “enslaving” their enemy tribal members and bringing them, in chains, to Elmina and other slave castles along the West African coast to be shipped by the thousands to Brazil, South America, the Caribbean and only about 1/3 going to the continental United States.

For almost 400 years – men, women, and children were brought here against their will, separated, thrown in dungeons where a process of elimination would begin and only those “surviving” these harshest of environments would then be subjected to the grueling and inconceivably inhumane Atlantic crossing to their eternal servitude.

We visited both the male and the female dungeons at Elmina where up to a 1000 persons would be crammed, chained to another person at the wrist, feet, or neck for up to 3 months with little to no food, water, or chance to toilet/menstruate or wash. The ventilation was next to nothing with only tiny windows built into the rock, and these people were forced to live like this in almost total darkness.

What really hit me the most is when our guide showed us a section of the “floor” in the male dungeon that had actually been “cleaned/excavated” to show the original brick flooring. It was a good ½ foot lower than the rest of the floor, and he explained that we were literally standing on compressed faeces, urine, and human flesh.

A drainage system had been built into the floor but it was obviously not adequate to eliminate all waste. The stench must have been beyond imagining. In addition, the guide explained that if you wanted to sit or lie down, you would have to get the agreement of whomever you were chained to – and often this person didn’t speak the same language as you and moreover – he might have been from an enemy tribe. Sometimes, your chained partner would die and they would have to wait for a guard to find that person dead before removing him and throwing him into the ocean.

Once a ship was in the harbor ready to set sail for the “New World” – the slaves would be marched through dark tunnels to the “Door of No Return” where they would be stockpiled and chained like sardines end to end until the ship was full, totally unaware of the horrors that awaited them, and still separated from their families.

Our guide explained that it was sometimes during the rush and panic of getting the men and women onto the ships from these passages that families might be reunited for mere moments before being separated again on female or male only decks.

Even more chilling, if you didn’t see or meet up with your loved ones in the tunnels leading to the beach, then you would know that he/she didn’t make it out alive.

The Portuguese were replaced by the Dutch who were then replaced by the British who did the heavy lifting during the slave trade at Elmina. It made me sick to my stomach when after visiting the dungeons we visited the floor directly above the dungeons where the British soldiers had built a church directly over the heads of the persons they were enslaving and torturing. How a person could sing a hymn in praise of Christ with that misery below is beyond my comprehension and it filled me with rage.

If not more upsetting, above the church was the stunning floor that was the Governor’s quarters – palatial and airy with an incredible 365 degree view over Elmina harbor, the beach and the blue ocean – the color of which most of the slaves marched here never even set eyes upon.

The visit left me somber, but as I always feel when visiting important historical sites such as this – it is our duty as human beings on this planet to be informed of our bloody and barbaric history if only in order that it not be repeated. Unfortunately, given what is going on in Libya and in the global sex trade at this moment in time, it appears that slavery has not had its end, making such a site an even bigger duty to visit and ponder.

Once we left the castle – we were literally blown away by further exploration of the bustling life that was to be observed and photographed in the harbor and along the busy main street that marked our path back to the Inn.

Re-caffeinated albeit with slightly warm soft drinks, we three happily walked along smiling and chatting with the locals, high-fiving with the countless little children, and photographing the busy markets overflowing with fish and produce.

As the sun started to glow a little lower on the horizon, we took a daring early turn to the beach hoping against hope that we might be able to take advantage of the beach “wall” that had been created that year to help prevent shore erosion, but that also happened to provide a rather unique way to walk along the beach back to our accommodation.

The bet paid off and I had what turned out to be an incredibly memorable walk back along the beach as the sun turned a golden red and we got back to camp just as it set below the horizon.

I felt especially full and joyous from the day’s learning, and experiences. I would highly recommend Elmina to anyone visiting Ghana – just make sure you have longer than the one day we had!

Into the Ugandan Highlands – Gorillas, Pygmies, and a Tragedy

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by Anita in Africa, Uganda

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Animals, Culture, Indigenous People, Opinion Pieces, Trekking, Villages

The indomitable Silverback

The indomitable Silverback

After my emotional day in Kampala we had a long drive to the town of Kabale located near the Rwandan border and the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park where we were going to trek deep into the jungle in search of the mountain gorillas.

I have been slightly obsessed with gorillas ever since childhood when I first saw “Gorillas in the Mist” with one of my hero actresses Sigourney Weaver, as the passionate conservationist Dian Fossey. She spent the majority of her life in this part of the world documenting the Gorilla’s behavior and was instrumental in creating the national parks and the facilities therein that would give them at least some chance of survival.

One of the unfortunate ramifications of the creation of these national parks was that the Batwa Pygmies, an ethnic tribe who had resided in these forests for hundreds of years, were forced to leave their homes and their lifestyles with nowhere else to go. I need to do some further reading on this topic as I’m unsure to what degree these people could be blamed for the poaching and subsequent diminishing numbers of gorillas in these mountains. Having said that, fewer than 800 are now recorded to be living in these thankfully protected areas (the gorillas that is, not the Pygmies!)

Heading into Bwindi

Heading into Bwindi

That isn’t to say that visiting the gorillas is absent of any ethical considerations. It’s more of a catch-22 situation. We visited the Ugandan park in May when the permits are discounted by 40%, but typically it costs about $700 USD for a day permit to visit these creatures. Without this revenue, the parks wouldn’t be able to hire the kind of manpower that it takes to protect these magnificent animals from poachers. On the other hand, selling these permits means that each of the family groups’ of gorillas gets visited by eight people + guides per day – which has lead to the gorillas being completely habituated. On top of that, I do believe that my visit to the group of gorillas we saw absolutely did cause them stress. Not that it was just our presence – but the guides were extremely aggressive in pursuing the members of the group, often hacking at vegetation with machetes to allow our group better viewing and photo opportunities.
So, as I recall this amazing experience, it is with mixed feelings of both awe at having seen them in the wild, together with regret that they can’t be kept safe from both poachers and from being hassled by daily visits.

Still coughing from my cold, I was a little worried about the arduous day of hiking in the heat and humidity that was before me. I kept my inhaler with me and managed to keep the cough under control most of the day. We were picked up around 5am from our campsite in Kabale and driven into Bwindi where we had an initial orientation and were then split up into two groups of 8 (together with some non-Oasis travelers.) We headed out up a rather steep trail and I felt myself echoing the steps of Dian Fossey as we began to penetrate the impentetrable forests of Bwindi.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park

The views were extraordinary with thick blankets of fog covering the lush green slopes. The sweat was already pouring off of us by 10am and the temperature beginning to soar. It was a little over 3 hours into the trek when we were informed that a group of approximately 11 adults and a few babies had been spotted.

Me and a Gorilla in the background

Me and a Gorilla in the background

Our group in the early morning mist

Our group in the early morning mist

The next hour was filled with incredible moments. From the very first glimpse of the silverback sitting and chewing grass not more than 15 feet from where I stood, to then being charged, twice, when he sensed our group had overstepped his privacy threshold. At one point, a mother gorilla with a few months’ old baby clinging to her back rushed out of the bush and practically ran into the middle of where we were standing. I couldn’t believe how close these creatures were to us.

The highlight for me, however, was observing the group as they ascended and later descended from the high treetops. I managed to capture a lot of the action on a video sequence that I will happily share with you here.

Baby Gorilla

Baby Gorilla

On our return to the jeep, the heavens opened and we experienced a downpour which was accompanied by thunder and lightning. It really added to the memorable nature of the day for me, such an atmospheric element to our descent. When we got back to Kabale, the other group hadn’t returned yet, so we set about making dinner as they were obviously going to be very hungry and tired by the time they got back. A little before they arrived, however, our drive, Pete, informed us that one of our group members, Greg, had tragically died of a suspected heart attack only an hour into their trek.

That evening and the next few days were very hard for us, and there was a lot of emotion shared – the group grew closer together for support. It was such an unexpected and shocking turn of events. Later in the trip, I was very moved when we learned that his family had requested that half of Greg’s ashes be taken to Cape Town and released in the ocean so that he could “finish the journey he had started”.

I will never forget him.

Lake Bunyoni

Lake Bunyoni

The day after our emotional sojourn to see the Gorillas, we traveled as a group to Lake Bunyoni to spend a day with a Pygmy village. This village was funded and created by a group of Ugandans who wanted to help a select group of displaced individuals who’d lost their home and their land when they were ousted from the national park system in 1994.

It was a rather strange day for me. While I really enjoyed the scenery of the lake and the surrounding countryside, and watching the amazing performances put on by the people and their children, it all felt a little bit like a “Human Safari” to me. I kept asking the group leader about what the community’s long-term plans were? Were they going to be able to secure land that they could farm for their sustenance? How were they going to survive?

Well, it turns out that they were entirely dependent upon charity and the proceeds from tours such as the one we were on. That made me slightly uncomfortable. Our leader explained that the schools that they had built would serve to provide the offspring of the people an education, so that hopefully, the kids would be able to graduate and go off and get work and then help support their families in turn. I found that to be a little optimistic, but I didn’t want to judge at the same time.

Pygmy father and his baby

Pygmy father and his baby

Th entire time I was there, I couldn’t help but think one thought – how BAD do things have to really get before people stop reproducing so much?!!! I know, I know: in Africa, one’s “success” in life is very often measured by the size of one’s family…and yet – I couldn’t help but wonder – WHY? when you have little food, and your family is hungry, and the babies you already have are malnourised, AND your women are so malnourished that they can’t produce enough milk for those babies, AND you have no means of supporting yourselves….WHY not practice birth control? At least…the withdrawal method? (if there are no condoms available) These were the reactions that I couldn’t help having.

I wanted to provide condoms for these people, not food.

Does that make me a bad, judgmental person?  What do you think?

I hope you enjoy the video I took of the children dancing for us. There is one fact that cannot be denied: these people have the most incredible innate rhythm and sense of music. It warms my heart!

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Last Days of Overlanding – Onward to Cape Town

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by Anita in Africa, Namibia

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Archaeological Sites, Desert, Indigenous People, Tours

Spitzkoppe

Spitzkoppe

It was hard to believe but the 56 day coast to coast overland adventure I’d embarked on in Nairobi was coming to a close.  We had three more days on the road after Swakopmund before we’d arrive in Cape Town and I’d start my independent travel in South Africa.

I can’t say I was sad that the trip was coming to an end.  While there were numerous advantages to being on a truck with a planned route, and tour operators arranged for you  in each destination; it was very challenging for me to not have the freedom that independent travel affords.  I was so looking forward to being able to go where I wanted, when I wanted, to stay for as long as I wanted, and most importantly, to spend time with whom I wanted.

Despite my extroversion, I was really looking forward to some alone time as well.

Leaving Swakopmund, our first stop was a beautiful spot in the desert called Spitzkoppe – an area of stunning red rock formations that recalled to mind similar vistas in Arizona/Utah, Australia, and Jordan’s Wadi Rum.  Our group was greeted by two very cute running meerkats who continued to follow us as we embarked on our two hour guided hike through the area.

Meerkats following us!

Meerkats following us!

Our guide took us to see some cave paintings and told us a little bit about the history of the San people, whom it is believed created the art.  He also talked about the San language and how it related to his native Tamara – which only contains five clicks as opposed to the Bush people’s seven.

We then hiked to a watering hole, though none of us had our swimsuits, which was unfortunate since it was already swelteringly hot.  It was still a very beautiful place and I thought it one of the most scenic spots we’d stopped at on the trip so far.

The following day we visited a farm in the middle of nowhere – desert all around as far as the eye could see.  We were scheduled to have an afternoon/evening desert tour with a man known locally as “Boesmann” or “Bushman”.  He is a white 4th generation Namibian who bought this dilapidated farm, and renovated it in the hopes that he would be able to make a living offering tours of the desert to tourists passing through the area.

At the watering hole in the hot sun

At the watering hole in the hot sun

The tour itself was very informative and interesting (despite the fact that I found his extremely thick accent somewhat hard to concentrate to) and we learned lots of stuff about desert survival.  A few of the tips I remember:

  • If you’re lost in the desert, never go to a tree.  There might be wild animals there.
  • If you get lost in the desert, split up into small groups.  You have a higher chance of survival apparently
  • The San didn’t drink water.  They would suck on the eyeballs of any hunted Oryx and then wring out their stomachs for liquid that would be provided to the women and children. Sounds thirst quenching.
  • You can eat lizards to stay hydrated.
  • You can never kill a beetle by standing on it in the sand.  It will just go deeper into the sand.
  • Never ever help an oryx out of a fence if he’s stuck in it.  He will gore you to death.  Better call the farmer who’s land the Oryx is on so he can shoot and eat it.

Boesmann also gave us some additional interesting information on the Bushmen.  His grandfather, apparently, had one as a pet. Yes, you read that right – people in Namibia  used to have Bushmen that they kept as pets along with their chickens and dogs.   It was legal to hunt and kill bushmen until 1920.  Isn’t that shocking?

"Bushman" giving us his tour of the desert

“Bushman” giving us his tour of the desert

He talked a little about how nomadic they were and their incredible capacities for gorging themselves on meat if they were lucky enough to make a kill.  He said they could eat 20kg of meat in one go and then they would sleep in order to digest it properly.  He also talked about the realities of their nomadic existence and how if they had gone for some days without finding food, it might have been necessary to leave behind the youngest children who might slow the group down.  It was said that it was best to simply walk away and not look back at the abandoned child, left to die alone in the hot desert.  Since they believe that one should never speak of the dead, the mother would sit by the smoky fire that evening, so that if she cried, she could attribute her tears to the smoke.

Rather heartbreaking, isn’t it?

IMG_0018-001

Heading up Soussvlei

Heading up Soussvlei

The following day was a day of fun in the hot sand of Soussvlei, Deadvlei, and Dune 46 – the largest free standing sand dune in the world.  At Soussvlei, we arrived, much to our chagrin, at 12pm – the hottest part of the day when the sun was at its strongest point.  Doing our best to stay hydrated and not get fried to a crisp, we set out on what we thought was a guided tour of the dunes, but we were simply dropped off in a jeep and given no additional information.  Not really sure what we were expected to do – we hiked up the main ridge of the dune and then had a whale of a time running back down (this is by far the most enjoyable part of climbing sand dunes)  Upon our return, we found out that we weren’t actually supposed to climb the dune because we were climbing Dune 45.  What the hell?!

Personally, I was fine with climbing both and welcomed the exercise very much indeed.

That night we enjoyed a beautiful setting for our final bush camp experience.  The setting was lakefront and the only thing that spoilt the location was the amount of trash that had been left behind by previous groups.  Since we’d gotten in before sunset, I suggested that we play the game of charades that the group had so enjoyed together at Okavango Delta.  It was a fun evening until another fight broke out within the group.  Apparently someone thought it funny to put trash in someone else’s locker.  Group dynamics had been somewhat dramatic on this journey, though I suppose that can be expected when you spend this amount of time on a truck.

Quatchi likes the dunes too

Quatchi likes the dunes too

Our final day of the tour itself was initially not even going to happen when Pete discovered the following morning that the truck wouldn’t start.  Panic was soon subsided by the fact that our driver is a mechanical genius, and within an hour he’d replaced whatever vital part wasn’t functioning before and we were on our way.

Our only stop this day was the second largest canyon in the world – Fish River Canyon in the very south of Namibia.  We only had two hours there but it was enough to get a good long walk in to the various lookouts over the edge of the canyon.  I had read about the five day trek that one can do through the canyon, skirting the river along the canyon floor, but the only way to do it non-independently was with a tour operator that was charging well over a $1000 for it.  I would have loved to climb down and see how the views changed based on where you were inside its vertical walls.

Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn

Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn

Our last night was at a lovely campsite ran by the same coach company – Felix Unite –  that was going to be transporting us in the very early morning to Cape Town.  I had cooking duties this last night, and we made Spanish omelettes, Potato wedges and guacamole.  It was delicious, and I’m finally unafraid of making omelettes!

I re-packed all of my bags, as Tabitha and Pete were kind enough to take a bag from me and transport it back with them to Nairobi where I would be re-joining them in a few weeks.  At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to do the Gorilla Loop tour that lasts 18 days, but since it was going to cost me $375 just to change my international plane tickets, and I did have the time at the moment (if not the funds) I had decided that I was going to go to Uganda and Rwanda after my nearly 3 weeks in South Africa.

At Fish River Canyon

At Fish River Canyon

This trip has really challenged me in many ways that I was not expecting.  At first, it was all too much and I very much regretted coming, and yearned to go home where things were known to me and predictable.  I missed my friends.  I missed having someone to talk to.  And I still do – travel can be a very lonely experience if you haven’t anyone to share it with.  However, I have fallen for the spirit of Africa and made a decision to stick with my original plans and take each day as it comes.  This is what will make me a stronger person – I hope.

I was so looking forward to returning to South Africa, almost 14 years after I had first visited on Semester at Sea.

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Matopo National Park – Rhinos, Bushmen, and Cave Art

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by Anita in Africa, Zimbabwe

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Animals, Indigenous People, Mountains, Safari

Checking out Dung Beetles on our Rhino Safari

Checking out Dung Beetles on our Rhino Safari

Matopo National Park is home to 56 black and 43 white rhino, both species highly endangered due to the value of their horns reaching a value of $100,000 per kilo.  The difference in the species is primarily that the black rhino has a double horn, making it even more vulnerable to ugly poaching.  We spent an entire day in the Matopo bush with our Zimbabwe tour guide, Norman, who himself had a very interesting story to share with us of his life as a white Zimbabwean who had elected to stay in the country despite the civil war and subsequent land grab that made life here so dangerous and difficult these past thirty years.

Taking in the view in Matopo National Park

Taking in the view in Matopo National Park

We set off from our hostel in the early morning hours, the many layers that I had put on still not offering much in the way of warmth in the freezing open safari vehicle we were in that blew the wind and rain on us on and off all day.   It was not a warm day, and I was beginning to miss the unbearable heat…if that was possible!

Norman gave us some history of the English explorer, entrepreneur, diamond miner, and politician Cecil Rhodes who first came to Zim and found his home and a wealth of natural resources that he could exploit and profit from.  Of course, the land was eventually named after him – Rhodesia – before the Mugabe government changed the name after the medieval ruins we’d visited several days prior.  We saw his first homestead and ended the day visiting his grave.  His story is rather impressive, and he accomplished much for someone who died right before achieving his 50th birthday.

Matopo National Park

Matopo National Park

The park itself has really cool rock formations that are basically layers of sedimentary deposits that have been weathered and subsequently formed really unique shapes, caverns and round, ball-like structures that were inhabited by the original indigenous of Africa – the San Bush men…who sadly, have dwindled in numbers as has their traditional way of life and culture subsequent to the migration of the Bantu and the white people into their homeland.

Norman was quite the expert, and knew a lot about rhino, the Matopos, and the anthropology and ways of the bushmen, making for a very entertaining and educational day.

One of the White Rhino we observed at very close range

One of the White Rhino we observed at very close range

Of course, the highlight was trekking into the sparse trees and bushes and discovering a family of about 7 white rhino and getting to observe them from a very close distance.  Norman informed us of how to behave to avoid any provocation of these sensitive massive animals.  We gave them our scent by approaching with the wind, and then stood quietly at a distance while they checked us out and indicated their comfort with having humans so close by deciding to lay back down in the undergrowth and mud.

What was most surprising and humbling about getting so close to the rhinos, was the sounds that they made!  Especially the little one that was very vocal in communicating with its mother.  The only way I can describe the noise they make is that it sounds rather like recordings I’ve heard of whales in the ocean.  A rather sweet, high pitched little squeal.

The rest of the day Norman took us on bush walks and taught us how we could survive out here with no water, food, or shelter – something of a specialty knowledge he possessed .  He also took us to some cave paintings that are estimated as being over 20,000 years old, but not containing any trace of carbon (the San people used bile from an animal’s gall bladder, mixed with it’s uric acid to create the paint they used) it is impossible to accurately estimate the age of the artwork.

Our Safari Vehicle

Our Safari Vehicle

Norman also gave us a fascinating history of the San people’s way of life, together with a demonstration of their remarkable language which is basically a series of clicks.  Less than five feet in height, with a light brown skin,  and slightly angled eyes…they do not resemble any other people in this part of the world, which I found very interesting indeed.  Anthropologically, Norman said that they could easily have co-existed with today’s Australian Aborignies when the two continents were connected.  There are certainly lots of elements of both people’s culture that is similar – the concept of ownership of things is very foreign to the San, only take from the earth what is needed at this very moment, live in harmony with nature, live in large family-based groups that share all resources…to name but a few.

I managed to capture on video Norman giving his best impression of their incredible language and I will, hopefully, be able to share it with you on YouTube once I’m back in the land of functioning wifi.

Ancient San Art

Ancient San Art

Norman himself also gave us an account of life during the war of 1975-81 which we asked about with trepidation, after having been giving some very severe warnings about refraining from any political conversations while in Zim.  Together with an account given to us by another white national whom we met in Victoria Falls, I have now formed at least a semblance of an idea of what happened during this period in history, and more importantly, what it was like to live through it for someone who elected to stay in the country (Norman) vs. flee to South Africa as David had.

Roughly half of the 30,000 white army that formed to fight for land rights and for homes during the war perished.  Both men recounted the names of friends and family members that they had lost.  They talked about how their country used to be an economic stronghold, and major exporter of foodstuffs such as maize and beef, feeding much of Southern Africa, only to now be reliant on incoming aid and import to feed their citizens.  They talked about the land grab of 1998, where thousands of white farmers had their land and homes taken from them by force, many of them losing their lives in the process.  David, whom we’d met in Vic Falls, talked about how a friend of his watched in horror as her husband was beaten to death, only to escape into the rocky hills behind her farm and walk 40 miles through the night to the Mozambique border, and then re-settling into South Africa with nothing but the clothes on her back.  The situation is far from simple, and there are improvements being made…but hearing their firsthand accounts was very compelling and makes me want to do more of my own research and reading on the subject.

The one thread or element in both men’s stories that united them was this – a palpable love for their home country.  Nowhere else on earth would ever enter their hearts the way Rhodesia, and now Zimbabwe has.  

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anitagotravel

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