The Impenetrable Forest Read online

  “This man is not serious,” Tom said in disgust. “The petrol was paid for by the Ministry. If it’s not there, then he has sold it to his friends.” As a landlocked nation, Uganda imports all its petroleum on tanker trucks from Mombasa, a Kenyan port on the Indian Ocean. Prices often exceeded four dollars per gallon, and the temptation to pilfer from government agencies fueled a small but lucrative black market.

  The usual throngs of pedestrian traffic increased to a solid mass of people as we approached the hilltop coronation site. The crowd parted slowly, and the bus inched up the dusty track, passing under a series of bamboo archways decorated with bunches of banana leaves, red hibiscus flowers, and brilliant weavings of bougainvillea. The driver parked in a field near the crest of the hill, and we emerged into a mad sea of color and noise.

  Thousands of goma-clad women rainbowed through the multitude, and the air resounded with singing, cheers, and the staccato pulse of drumbeats. Tom led Dave and me directly to a line of hawkers and purchased three cloth Mborogoma badges.

  “Every clan has a job here,” he told us, pinning the labels to our shirts. “We will work with the lions.”

  Dave and I caused an immediate stir as we followed Tom through the crowd. Living in Kajansi was one thing, but muzungus attending a significant Bagandan cultural event produced a whole new level of amazement. People gaped and laughed, or rushed forward to shake our hands. Greeting them in their native tongue only exacerbated the situation, and our forward progress slowed to a near standstill. Tom introduced us as his American sons, and everyone thanked us profusely for coming to help them welcome their new kabaka.

  When they spied the roaring lions fixed on our chests, they would laugh anew, shouting, “These are not muzungus, they are Mborogoma!” All day long, smiling people stopped me to ask, “What is your name? What is your clan?”

  “Jjuko,” I would reply, and tell them my clan: “Ndi Mborogoma.”

  This response always produced howls of amusement, and someone would invariably buy a round of the closest beverage to hand. I began to wonder if Tom hadn’t given me a clan name solely as a mechanism to obtain free drinks.

  Dave and I worked our way slowly through the masses like a pair of comic celebrities, laughing along with the crowd and exchanging dazed looks. Finally, Tom led us into a large open space where construction was under way. At one end of the clearing stood a raised dais where the kabaka would sit during the ceremony. Workers were erecting the poles of a thatched pavilion that would cover the platform and shade row upon row of chairs and benches for the government officials, clan leaders, and foreign dignitaries expected to attend next week’s coronation. An elaborate series of bamboo and grass fences, half finished, surrounded and partitioned the entire site. Every structure was being built with traditional materials and designs, preserved in the tribe’s collective memory for more than fifty years since the last kabaka, Edward Mutesa II, received the trappings of office in 1939. The site already bore a strong resemblance to an early Bagandan court described in 1862 by John Hanning Speke, the first European to visit Uganda:

  The whole brow and sides of the hill on which we stood were covered with gigantic grass huts, thatched as neatly as so many heads dressed by a London barber, and fenced all around with the tall yellow reeds of the common Uganda tiger-grass; while within the inclosure the lines of huts were joined together, or partitioned off into courts with walls of the same grass.

  Famed for its elaborate hospitality and highly organized government, the Bagandan kingdom became a destination for early Europeans as the most “civilized” kingdom in East and Central Africa, and eventually served as a center of British colonial influence. Explorers like Speke and Henry Morton Stanley counted Uganda as among the most hospitable places in the region, and spent weeks or even months as the kabaka’s favored guests (sometimes longer than they wanted, as the king was often loath to let them go). After his first stay in 1875, Stanley wrote: “There is a singular fascination about this country. The land would be loved…even though it were a howling wilderness; but it owes a great deal of the power which it exercises over the imagination…that in it dwells a people peculiarly fascinating also.”

  The Baganda are a proud, even haughty race, and make up nearly half of Uganda’s population. Their homeland is the richest district in the country, and influential members of the tribe have often argued for an independent Bagandan state. President Musevini, a member of the neighboring Banyankole tribe, hoped that reinstating the kabaka would appease Bagandan secessionists, but critics feared he was only adding fuel to the fire. Since colonial times, Ugandan leaders have struggled to balance the interests of the country against the demands of its largest tribe. Even Idi Amin took steps to win Bagandan support. One of his first actions after toppling Milton Obote was to arrange proper burial for the remains of Mutesa II, who had died penniless in exile after Obote abolished his kingdom.

  Although raised and educated in England, Mutesa’s son, Ronald Mutebi, retained the devoted loyalty of his father’s subjects. Excitement over his return had already reached a fevered pitch, and hawkers on the streets of Kampala did a brisk business in kabaka posters, T-shirts, and buttons. Mutebi, or “King Ronnie,” as the press had already dubbed him, would be barred from political activity but would surely exert considerable influence from his ceremonial throne.

  “We are still Ugandans,” Tom told me later, “but the kabaka is our king.”

  Under the scorch and swelter of midday Ugandan sun, I began wishing the king had chosen a nice air-conditioned palace for his coronation party. Tom scanned the grounds and led us over to where members of the Mborogoma clan were working on a long perimeter fence. Like many construction projects I witnessed in Uganda, building the kabaka’s fence involved seemingly countless numbers of people and an incomprehensible amount of standing around. We joined a knot of the more active-looking workers and helped bind bundles of bamboo and thick elephant grass to the support poles with strips of dried bark. But each flurry of activity led to an even longer period of loitering. With a few hard hats, orange vests, and a thermos of coffee, we could have passed for any city road crew in America. During one lull I peered down the rows of unfinished fencing that encircled the entire site and realized that the Mborogoma clan would never finish their task in time for the ceremony.

  It’s not that there weren’t plenty of workers available. More than two hundred thousand people milled through the coronation site that weekend, several thousand of whom were surely proud lion clan members. But most people had come only for the party—to dance, drink, and socialize in celebration of their tribe’s most important cultural event in decades. They crowded around their long-neglected artifacts and holy sites: the huge, spreading canopy tree under whose branches the early kabakas had first held court; a throne of living tree roots that recently reemerged from the earth in anticipation of the new king; and the gravelly hollow of a dry well that would spring back to life only after King Ronnie received his crown.

  “People will stay all week,” Tom told me, but when I asked him if we would return for the ceremony, he said no. “From here you would see nothing. So many people. We will use the television.” But television wasn’t an option for most Baganda, and attendance at the coronation was expected at well over a million.

  We made several trips across the compound, fetching bundles of dried elephant grass from the back of a large truck. But mostly we stood with the others, watching as our section of the fence slowly took shape. The sun beat down mercilessly, and I began envying the clans assigned to a job in the shade.

  After some time, Tom made a show of wiping his hands and gestured expansively around the hilltop. “Well, how do you see it?” he asked.

  Following his gaze over the milling crowds and idle workers, Dave found the perfect summary: “There is very much work to do, I think.” His command of Ugandan English and understatement was already approaching a masterful level.

  “Mmm.” Tom nodded in agreement. “Are yo
u hungry? Let us find some lunch.”

  He set off and we followed him to the shady understory of a large jackfruit tree, where dozens of women crouched beside simmering cook pots of matoke, cabbage, beans, and groundnut sauce. The women used pot lids and scraps of cardboard to fan the ruddy coals of their fires, transferring embers from one blaze to another with bare fingers, impervious to the heat. We crowded onto narrow benches with hundreds of other diners, who looked on, startled and amused to see muzungus eating with their hands. Someone passed around a banana leaf heaped with salt, and we dug into our bowls of the hot, smoky stew.

  After lunch and a cool soda, Tom led us back out into the crowds. We stood in line to catch a glimpse of the kabaka’s dry well and the throne of roots. We visited the ceremonial tree of justice, and everywhere we went people crowded around to thank us and make us welcome. Tom seemed to truly enjoy showing off Bagandan culture, and he reveled in the attention that Dave and I drew. We met bishops and politicians, and countless members of his clan and family as we meandered through the heat and crowds.

  Later, Dave and I would remember that day as one of the most overwhelming of our time in Uganda, and one of the most revealing. The exuberant pride of the Baganda clans hinted at something fundamental in the fabric of their culture, a system of relationships woven like extended family throughout the populace. It lent a sense of intimacy to the masses of people, and I could think of nothing similar in America, where we describe a crowd as faceless.

  “You should see the traditional dancing,” Tom said, ushering us toward a throng of people singing and drumming in a tight group. Unseen hands pushed us to the front of the circle, where people took turns moving into the open, arms raised, shimmying their hips to the frantic drumbeat and chanting chorus. Several women wore fringed skirts over their gomas that rattled and waved with the rhythm, like sheaves of dry grass in a strong breeze. They danced with their heads thrown back or looked down in concentration, but everyone was smiling, and the air felt charged and intimate. I watched, mesmerized by the sound and delirious pulse of the dance, until Tom pulled us away.

  “You will learn that one at home,” he assured me, and we moved back toward the slowly emerging Mborogoma fence.

  All day long a steady flow of people ascended and descended the hillside as if in pilgrimage, and the numbers at the top seemed undiminished late that afternoon when we returned to the roadside to find our homeward bus. There was, of course, no sign of vehicle or driver, so we moved into the shade of a nearby hedgerow. Someone produced benches, and we settled in for our second transportation wait of the day. (This happens everywhere in Uganda. Rickety wooden benches always seem to be available at arm’s reach, ready to appear whenever you feel the urge to sit down). Tom brought out a deck of playing cards, and a lively game ensued as more of our fellow passengers appeared to wait for the missing bus.

  To the northeast, windshields glinted with sunlight like a stream of tiny silver fish racing along the Entebbe highway, and Kampala spread its urban fingers across seven distant hilltops. People pointed toward the city, calling out their neighborhoods and arguing about the identity of various buildings. Which was Uganda Commercial Bank? Where was the Sheraton? Mulago Hospital? Mengo Palace? The stadium?

  Dave and I sat to one side, numb from the day’s attention and relieved to be momentarily out of the limelight. On the slope below us I watched a flock of great blue turacos feeding raucously in the crown of a broad-limbed fruit tree. They looked unreal, like huge cerulean roosters, with drooping black cockscombs and crimson-tipped beaks. I watched them hop and jostle among the green branches, and tried to let time slip by unnoticed, to let sitting and watching birds be an active part of catching our transport back to Kajansi.

  Maybe it worked or maybe I dozed, but suddenly the sunset was hanging its lazy red banner over a distant hillside, and long shadows stretched across the coronation grounds. The bus had finally arrived, and as we drove slowly away, people were lighting huge bonfires to keep the festivities moving through the night. I saw the skeleton of our fence silhouetted in the firelight. No one was working, but the project was obviously well under way, and in that sense, right on schedule. The Mborogoma might not finish their task that weekend, but eventually, the kabaka would get his fence, just as surely as his rocky well would fill again with clear spring water and his people would touch their foreheads to the ground at his passing. I had no doubt that these things would come to pass, all in good time. In African time.

  4

  Free Shoes for Dominico

  Within seconds, the gorillas had breached the perimeter and trampled the mesh fence into the mud. Unchecked, they rushed into the compound, grunting and roaring. The driving rain matted their hair, giving them a sleek, menacing appearance in the red night lights. Elliot saw ten or fifteen animals inside the compound, trampling the tents and attacking the people….

  —Michael Crichton

  from Congo, 1980

  The Peace Corps Uganda library contained only one book about gorillas, a battered paperback copy of Michael Crichton’s Congo. The story took place in a remote rain forest north of the Virunga Volcanoes, where killer albino gorillas stalked people through the jungle and smashed their heads in with stone Ping-Pong paddles. Realistic or not, this wasn’t the most encouraging narrative for someone about to spend two years in a remote rain forest north of the Virunga Volcanoes, working on a gorilla project. But I read it anyway, hanging on every word.

  For eight straight weeks, thoughts and visions of the Impenetrable Forest had repeated themselves in my mind like a crazed mantra. Whether sitting through language lessons, building mud stoves, or haggling over the next round of munanasi, some part of my mind wandered through a forested hillside, chasing apes. All of the volunteers began chafing at the restraints of life in Kajansi, where the Peace Corps tended to coddle us like an overbearing parent. The last weeks of training grew fevered with anticipation and speculation until we finally reached our five-day future-site visit, a chance to experience firsthand the various villages, schools, forest reserves, and national parks that we would call home for the next two years.

  For some volunteers, the visit did little to bolster their confidence: “Go to Iganga. Look for a forest officer named Joseph. He knows where your site is, but you don’t have a house yet.” But most people glimpsed a life after training that made us all the more eager to move up-country.

  Bwindi Impenetrable Forest lay in the far southwest corner of the country, a long and unreliable journey on public transportation. I had only a few days to make the trip and was lucky to catch a ride with Liz Macfie, my future supervisor from the International Gorilla Conservation Program. She picked me up as early morning sun cast pale light over the training center, and we set out west and south for the forest.

  A British citizen raised in the United States and trained as a veterinarian, Liz was a self-assured, attractive woman in her mid-thirties. Before coming to Uganda in 1992, she had spent three years tending to injured mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Virunga volcanoes, staying on the job through periods of unrest and outright civil war. Liz carried herself with the determination of someone used to fighting for what she believed in. Ugandan wardens and national parks administrators secretly called her “the Iron Lady” for her staunch defense of ecological and community conservation principles, but she was respected and well liked in most circles, with an easy style and quick sense of humor.

  “There’s no dress code in Bwindi,” Liz told me as I climbed into the car, glancing sidelong at my Peace Corps regulation slacks and dress shirt. “If you try to wear a tie, we’ll cut it off.” She then plugged the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers album into the stereo, and I knew from that moment that we were going to work together just fine.

  Traffic thinned as we sped away from Kampala through a green landscape of small shambas, swamps, and tangled woodlands. Papyrus reeds sprang up from the lowlands in dense, tawny fields, their tufted heads rippling in the breeze like plants fro
m a Dr. Seuss story. Everywhere, brightly clad people walked along the roadside, leading livestock and carrying bundles of goods from one town to the next.

  The occasional vehicles that sped past us were heading for the city, heavily laden: semitrailers, matatu vans, rusty tanker trucks, and private cars, all overloaded with people and baggage. In Uganda, the multitudes on the move greatly outnumber the vehicles available, and no space is wasted. Passengers crowded every seat and clung to the rails of pickups, lorries, and flatbed trucks that were literally festooned with cargo—bunches of green matoke dangled from the fenders, crates and mattresses were stacked high on roof racks, and lake fish waved from side mirrors like huge air fresheners. Every passing car looked like a compact gypsy caravan returning from the flea market.

  “You really have to watch this spot,” Liz said as we descended into another valley. “There’s no sign to mark it, but the road is sinking into the swamp.”

  She slowed to thirty miles an hour and drove carefully down the middle of the road, but the whole car still rocked and shuddered as we crossed sections of pavement tilting sharply toward the muddy shoulder.

  “How long’s it been like this?” I asked.

  “About a year, but it’s getting worse.”

  We passed an overturned tanker truck, and a large area of blackened papyrus where something had gone over the edge and burned. I thought of Tom tallying paychecks down at the Ministry of Works and Transport and wondered how many lawyers were on the payroll. Probably none. Uganda has Coca-Cola, Rambo, Federal Express, and a Sheraton, but the American passion for lawsuits is a long way from catching on. People don’t expect things to be fair, and unmarked road hazards are simply a fact of life.