Flying in to Uganda, one looks down on verdant land heaving upward into great bumps and hills. Farmland rolls into jungle. The great Lake Victoria sprawls across the horizon; gray blue water pools across the greenery into shimmering goblets, neat ovals, & gem-like puddles. Uganda is a fecund land where life rapidly begets life.
The human population in Uganda is growing. Over half the population is under age 15; the infant mortality rate is declining; women everywhere carry babies swaddled in their arms or strapped across their backs; polygamy is common. USAID runs a campaign urging people to keep their families small enough to fit into a matatu (14 passengers).
We learned last week in southwestern Uganda that it's not only the humans who are prolific. Soon after we set up our tent on the edge of the Kibale Forest, the sun dropped like a fiery red bowling ball below the horizon, bringing down the curtain of day. Here at the equator, the setting sun does not meander. With the close of day come the voices of night.
We thought an alarm was exploding in our tent. Our dream thoughts fancied a jackhammer tearing up asphalt. But our frame of reference misled us - these noises came from insects, not human machines. We moved our tent to a quieter spot.
As we settled into night, the black sky, its shining stars, and a beaming bright Venus hung silently overhead. The sounds of life remained as loud in the night as the city at mid-day. Frogs croaked, deep-throated and rhythmic, like a giant heartbeat. Monkeys in the distance hooted and screeched. Thunder boomed. We slept easily amidst this racket with a warm bree
ze cutting through our tent.
Morning arrived with a cacophony of bird song: simple, complex, polyrhythmic, some eerily like human whistles. Hundreds of weaver birds screeched in mad competition weaving tight, neat little nests dangling from tree limbs. Lone African fish eagles perched in tree tops. Kite hawks flapped with broad brown wings across the sky.
Through Bigodi Wetlands, a community run reserve, we ambled spotting six types of monkeys: vervet, L'Hoist, colubus, mangaby, redtail, and baboon. All were acrobats jumping, dangling, often with babies clinging to their bellies, in groups, chomping red fruits and bark, greedily eyeing farmers' fields, resting, grooming, hooting, pissing through foliage dripping to earth. We stepped
around a black African cobra snake and over an African giant millipede. We rested in a treehouse, eyelevel with the forest canopy, and continued to watch the life, especially the birds, shining like Christmas tree ornaments, moving through the forest.
From Bigodi, we walked through Kibale National Park, hitched a ride in a truck, and watched the forest with its roadside baboons recede behind us. We passed ou
t of the forest, through rolling tea plantations, and got dropped off on a small road that rose up through hilly farming villages. A long walk in the hot sun, alongside chickens, cattle, goats and kids, led us to Lake Nkuruba Community Campsite.
In the morning, we biked through the market in the village of Rwaihamba, alongside bicycles overloaded with baskets stuffed with live chickens and bananas. We wound our way through the hills past the crater lakes, into a farmer's field, and peered down at Mahatma Falls before turning around and getting caught in a giant gray rain storm. Red dust turned to mud and when we returned to our campsite, we learned of new life that comes with the rain: red fire ants.
Highways of red fire ants born of the rains swarmed our tent and up our legs. The euphe
mism "ants in your pants" became a hard reality, as we danced about disrobing, slapping the biting ants. Our Ugandan hosts, alas, swooped in, whisked away our tent, led us to an effete concrete slab, and de-anted our belongings.
Following our stay in Nkuruba, we headed north to Murchison National Park. Here we camped on a site shared with warthogs - thick-skinned, bristle-haired hogs with hair resembling mullet wigs. The warthogs walk on their toes as if wearing high heels, hideous transvestites wanting lipstick.
In the park, we witnessed elephants overshadowing egret sidekicks; teenage giraffes intertwining longs
necks; antelopes bouncing muscular hindquarters high above heads; oxpeckers grooming buffalo; redthroated bee eaters battling a monitor lizard; male hippo vacating feces and urine in the face of the dominant male; pied
kingfisher diving perpendicular into the Nile hunting tiny fish; crocodiles lazy resting still with open mouths; baboons swaggering high from the fruit of sausage trees. It was here that Greg delivered a small wiggling worm, plump, healthy, and intact, from Cindy's shoulder.
Now we are back in Bugembe with Joe, ever aware that we are but one of the diverse life forms in our house. For around any corner may lurk a bat, rat, roach, stork as large as a child....the varieties are endless. From the lilliputian to the giant, life reigns here in Uganda.
Due to the traffic and the poor and narrow roads, this is a country of motorcycle taxis, boda-bodas, which we avoid for obvious reasons. On every corner from Bugembe to Bigodi there are 5 to 15 young men on their bikes, ready to give the next person a ride. The market is so saturated with boda drivers that they are often lined up asleep on their bikes. However, from some sixth sense, they know exactly when we are coming, they immediately wake up, throw one arm in the air and shout, "you come, and we go!" trying the beat out the other 14 guys. "No, thank you," we say, and the boda drivers immediately go back to dozing.
Of course, the best way to get around is on foot, and the best place to carry things is on the head. A mom and daughters at the local well, each one has an age appropriate sized water jug balanced on the head (jerry-can) : 20 liters for the mom, 10 liters for the school girl, 5 liters for the pre-schooler. Toddlers get off. We've seen barefoot boys with 40 kg sticks of lumber of their heads, using a flip-flop as a head-pad.
