Animal Viewing in Uganda and Rwanda

There are few pleasures as satisfying as seeing animals you’ve only watched pacing in a zoo, as they pace around you- you a child of the Lion King generation. When I sat atop the combi van, legs swinging freely, binoculars serving only to tug at my neck, as a herd of elephants pranced about just meters from me, I became envious that in Uganda, the wild animals are way more impressive than the ones I see in New England. This past summer I went on a tour of East Africa, and although the animals offered my best dinner party stories (besides making eyes at a certain British movie actor) and moments of elation, the tangible opportunity that has founded myriad NPOs and NGOs, which now fill city streets, both imbued by the cultural residue of active underdevelopment and a genocide, formed the soul of the trip. But in the colonial-named ‘impenetrable forest’ these two halves of my reflection merge: on the edge of old battlegrounds where conflicts are continuously erupting, the desperate and undiscerning are ignoring poaching bans.

Recently I’ve had a lot of experiences with animals. When I road tripped alone, my isolation in nature, and related silence, presented unprecedented closeness to shy but very wild animals. A deer and fawn watched me calmly on the mid-California coast, the definition of complacent. Like that morning, when I realized to my displeasure that that mother deer could probably take me on like a bad Fox special, so were my great moments with African nature. Accepting the likelihood, or at least the possibility, of death and dismemberment, is a good first step when greedily filming a bull elephant charging another combi van full of tourists. Luckily many travel insurance plans have such protection.

When I write about wild animals, I mean very wild, not like Busch Gardens lots of open space wild, but wild like they eat each other, they are not fed on schedule, wild. However, I was not joy-riding in the Serengeti, either. I was in protected reserves, with knowledgeable guides, and in some cases, armed guards. Consolation isn't the feeling that came to mind, however, when they informed us that the Uzis would be used on the poachers, not the silverbacks who can hit a man so hard his eye pops out and projectiles through foliage to hit Bruce Campbell in the back.

I’m sorry, on to the animals. If I had to narrow this to a top ten list of animals, the mountain gorilla is by far at the top. But, the qualifier here is that neither lions nor giraffes appeared, so the list I work from is not ideal. Awesome, yes, but not ideal. When alluring and graceful predators hunt in your vicinity, naturally you want to see a kill go down.

The mountain gorilla is a species that is beyond endangered. The population wavers around 800, with about twelve deaths in the last year or so. Development approaches the region where the remaining families reside, and the population dwindles. My theory is that the meat is mighty tasty, because regardless of guards they are eaten. Dian Fossey worked on the volcano we hiked to see our family, and she was killed in her home at the base of the surrounding range, by poachers.

And so a group of eight tourists, two guards armed with automatic weapons, one zoologist guide, and two porters climbed for only thirty minutes straight up the volcano. We did not reach the crater, or follow much of a trail, because the area is kept as ‘impenetrable’ as possible. There were seven gorillas. Because we reached the family after their first meal, the silverback father and the mature female were resting. The female wore her one-year-old like a necklace; oh that teeny thing was strong! It had these big baby eyes, the ones that see everything for the first time, every second, and a teeny face, with fantastic hair that shot out from its face like a lion’s mane gone punk. The baby just held onto its mother. There were two two-year-olds, and they played around us for the entirety of the hour we were permitted to watch. We also saw a young female and young male who were pretty boring.

The two-year-olds roughhoused, climbing saplings, pulling the other off a sapling, wrestling, rolling around like the rolly-polly furballs they are. The silverback gazed indifferently at us from time to time. After about thirty minutes he grunted, trying to signal the end of a neverending playtime, and stalked away.

At the beginning of the trek, our guide told us never to make eye contact with the gorillas. Our only other warning was the very serious, very official rule that we must maintain a five meter distance from the gorillas at all times. Our guide actively enforced this rule, otherwise the little buggers would run right up to our noses. Although we at least maintained a single meter distance, which rivaled the best petting zoo (no I didn’t touch one!), it must serve an important protective cause, so that I can continue to celebrate the perpetuity of the wild species. Mountain gorillas do not mate in captivity. If that doesn’t one-up the species over us in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 model of captive behavior, I don’t know what would.

A couple days before the gorillas I saw bats. Seeing one or two fly by, lit briefly by firelight, is one thing, seeing thousands of stinking, shrieking sonarmachines is another. I visited a bat cave in Queen Elizabeth National Park in southern Uganda, and spent an afternoon gazing wild-eyed at the lot of them. Them and their sonar, their exemplary sense. I wonder if they could perceive rhythms inside my body that I’m not even aware of. And yeah, they stay in the cave and their excrement builds rocks. Beautifully shimmering gray rocks. They reminded me of ugly kittens with wings. Inside the young and open maramagambo forest (“the end of words”), this cave seemed like an anomaly for its dense population.

On a hill, where a waterfall feeds the lake below, was the cave. It was beautiful, shrouded in thick, dripping moss. The growth around the cave glowed in healthy greens, matching the slippery skin of a massive python that slid across the forest floor beneath the rocks I perched on. I suppose the possible thrill of watching a hunt on the open plain delectates the spectator in me, but the distinct isolation of this special cave, a nook inside a beautiful forest in an area where environmentalism can feel futile or secondary, I felt a renewed love for my planet. And that, as you know, has never made me lovesick.

My first wild animal experience in Uganda was on the road to my chimpanzee trek at a Jane Goodall Institute. It was a baboon. I knew the baboon only as the tumor-butted primate, not as the terrorizing pests the locals know them to be. Like incredibly intelligent raccoons, baboons will steal, maim, kill, whatever necessary to get by. Although we only saw them begging like wild dogs, running after tour buses, and in the wild behaving like large monkeys, I was informed that given the circumstances, baboons have sought revenge. This vengeance is on par with the shark in Jaws 4: The Revenge. For serious. In two separate cases, groups of baboons entered villages to settle some score. In one case, a grown male baboon was killed to keep the rest from bothering a village. Soon after, baboons entered the village and killed a grown man. The other case involved a baby baboon, and you can guess what transpired after.

When we yearn after the thrill of seeing a wild animal, there’s a whole list of qualifiers that are becoming null in this world. I didn’t even feel like my hippopotamus viewings were all that wild, out there on an unprotected channel. We need a certain quota of wilderness, yet won’t go anywhere too ‘dangerous.’ So baboons are a pest, yes, but have also proved themselves resourceful enough to survive, feral, around industry. I never researched how dependent they have become. When I toured a wetland along the border of the park, a few male baboons approached us on long reaching branches, and smacked the branch to beseech our departure from their territory. I resisted a giggle, because they can’t speak, and thus will forever be dominated by man.

One day we went on a boat ride, over a five kilometer span of the Kilanga Channel. Probably the most touristy experience during my time, whilst distracting my attention from the repetitive bird-watching guy on loudspeaker ( “kingfisher, on your right”), and the missionaries discussing their greatness to my left, I imagined a crazed hippopotamus herd overturning the boat I sailed upon, and with great hippo jaws and flat, herbivorous teeth, making mincemeat of discarded tourist prey. But this, alas, is not Michael Crichton’s Congo. So I turned my gaze on the hippos, and the water buffalo, herd animals which are known to exile members for unknown (to me) delinquency. We passed exiled members, who would wallow alone for their lives, vulnerable to predators and denied the mating season’s ceremony. These outcasts literally waded about forty feet from the group that rejected them.

There is a surreal element to seeing the species of near legend laying about with their mouths open in perfect patience. On that boat I watched hippos wading near sunning crocodiles, and elephants leisurely feeding in murky shallows. There is either a keen and beautiful acceptance of the vicinity of death that weaves into daily consistencies, or the animals are stupid and don’t know any better. Either way, as soon as the crocodile makes that light little splash into the water, endgame has begun. Hippopotami are so dangerous, they kill the most tourists and don’t even eat them! So as we puttered by the plump brown backs of the hippos, I wondered how many were currently underwater, scheming our demise.

So far I have subtly introduced the argument that the wild animals we see in preserves aren’t actually wild. And complementary to this assertion is the notion that the (unpretty) animals that are designed or adapted to live on trash are the true wild creatures. I don’t want to make that argument. But you can think about it. So, in this light, I’m going to share my experiences looking at monkeys. Another pest, the black and white colobus monkey, lived all over one of the cabins I stayed at near the Jane Goodall Institute in the middle of nowhere southern Uganda. Maybe it’s their childlike playfulness (and possible inability to betray an expression of their plight) that made me peg them feral, but many species of monkeys I happened upon affected me to see them as, well, resilient. With bushy tails, scruffy faces, and the enviable ability to leap from branch to branch, the colobus, the blue-cheeked monkey, even the red-nosed hawk monkey, they nobly play all day and resist the label of endangered. Okay, I made the last name up, but a tourist does not worry for these species, once they jump around buoyant, rhapsodic on the roof and fence of your domicile.

Elephants certainly seem vulnerable, with their massive bodies and gentle beastliness. However, these are the most civilized of species, their polite rituals and family-friendly cultural rules nail the point. Traveling in packs, the elephants rumble about, demonstrative of the gentle giant. I loved watching them, gazing upon a solitary rambler from a distance, or guaging the sensitive plans of the protective herd, who move to contain their young. And they are enormous. Watching a hulk like that charge a combi van to warn tourists of their dangerous vicinity can be a thrilling close call. Knowing the bull probably doesn’t want to charge adds another dimension to their watchability. They definitely rank number two.

And finally, the coveted predator, the venomous snake. I saw a black mamba. Departing the JG Institute, a gigantic Black Mamba snake "ran" across the road into the forest. I can't say that it slithered because the force, power, and elevation of this creature wouldn't be communicated. The whole snake was about a meter long, black with an 8-centimeter white section along the abdomen, and the first quarter of it was elevated, neck up, head straight, with the rest of the body contorting back and forth gracefully but quickly! to flee from our approaching van. It made the Kill Bill II stand-in look like a garter snake, and certainly raised the hairs on my arms, my physiology recognizing the threat of the awesome snake.

My second and most special introduction into the world of animal viewing in Africa began one cold and cloudy morning at the Jane Goodall Institute. Given my druthers, a chimpanzee would fancy me so that I could teach it sign language and we could bond, but more importantly I hoped I could invisibly observe this astonishing, intelligent species. I was way off. The family we found were of such a highly intelligent disposition that pride, I can only presume, prevented one from doing anything but watch us (as soon as we walked away, he defecated). They were, in fact, so bored by our view, that they remained in the tall trees, eating, grooming, lounging, watching us. I wonder which witnesses learned more.

On safari, I wanted to see a kill. As a vegetarian, I surprised myself, because although I embrace the concept of meat-eating, I in no way miss bacon. The furthering of the foodchain is necessary, of course. And on the Discovery Channel I always rooted for the little, maimed, old, future carrion. In the preserve, whenever I saw an old, or young, or possibly injured, waterbuck or Uganda colt, I pleaded to see the golden tail of a lion emerge from the grasses. Maybe this was for nature to prove she was alive and well, I don’t know, but it prevents me from nostalgia on these “future carrion” species. I often focused on the lethargic water buffalo making a home in mud, relishing that no young endangered them, the single leopard stalking possible prey without committing to anything, the hyenas guarding somewhat fresh kill. They watched us drive by, but didn’t care about us. We didn’t stop the chain, we didn’t bring food or offer ourselves or remove the hunted. And thus, we were a pesky distraction, the pests in the equation. And how satisfying is that? I tell you what, it’s a beautiful thing.