Friday, November 13th 2009

Today Mad Max picked me up at 6:30 and drove me to the Makerere University (the “Harvard of Africa) where I was supposed to meet the Yale doctors who were going with me on my trip to Murchison Falls. Its funny how things work here – expatriates really bond together here. Two weeks before I’d gone on a rafting expedition with a person I’d known for four days. While on that expedition I met a team of Yale doctors and became friendly with them. Then all but one of the Yale doctors went back to the US (they are sent over here in staggered time frames). I stayed friendly with the doctor who stayed in Uganda and he invited me to go to Murchison with a new set of doctors that had just arrived in Uganda. So without really knowing anyone I was all the sudden travelling 7 hours north and spending a three-day weekend with people I didn’t know. Sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and hope for the best.
I got to Makerere University early so I hung out on the steps, read a local newspaper and sipped on my bag of yogurt.
The Yale students walked up.
Dave looked at me. “Dude, are you drinking a bag of pink milk?”
I laughed. “Nope, its drinkable yogurt.”
They couldn’t believe it. Sometimes I forget that drinkable yogurt in a bag is normal to me but really weird to people that just got to Uganda!
I read them the contents of the article I was reading in the local newspaper. Sometimes you really have to pinch yourself because the articles are so ridiculous. I read them a story about a supposed witch doctor in Jinja that people were trying to kill because he could “kill you by pointing at you.” The people also claimed he was the only one that could see “invisible snakes.” The mobs tried to beat the man to death and even beat some of his family members.
Reminds me of Monty Python’s Holy Grail
“How do you know she’s a witch!”
“She turned me into a newt!”
Crowd goes silent. The judge looks at the man who just claimed the “witch” turned him into a newt.
The man looks around sheepishly. “I got better?”
Hahaha. If you don’t know the scene that wasn’t funny. If you do its hysterical.
Our driver, Sam, picked us up at 7:45 and away we went. I thought we were going in a 4-wheel drive SUV with an elevated intake valve and V8 engine but Sam picked us up in a matatu van with a “4 wheel drive” sticker on the door. Sweet.
We drove into town (the opposite of the way we should have been driving) and stopped at a car wash. Sam parked the car and spoke in an aggravated manner to the owner of the car wash.
When he got back he told us he’d taken the car to get cleaned the day before and one of the workers stole his spare tire. But the proprietor said he didn’t know what Sam was talking about. Long story short we had a notoriously difficult 7-hour ride to northern Uganda in a rickety van with no spare tire. Sweet. Again, you just laugh.
The ride was pretty uneventful we basically slept the first three hours – UNTIL – we got near Gulu and the EIGHT HUNDRED recently installed speed bumps on the only road between Kampala and Masindi.
OH. MY. GOD.
The speed bumps had been installed recently but no one seemed to know why. I got varying stories from people.
“The stones on the road are sharp and if people go to fast the stones will hurt people on the side of the road.”
“The road is new and the government doesn’t want it to get ruined so they put the speed bumps in.”
Whatever it was, it was ridiculous. Sam told us that local villagers were conspiring to break the speed bumps with a pick and an axe at night.
Oh, Sam also explained the origination of the term “boda boda.”
I assumed it was a derivative of a KiSwahili term (for example matatu is a derivative of a KiSwahili word). BUT that’s not the case with boda boda’s. So here’s the deal – when you cross country borders in Africa the bus stops in the departing country and everyone has to literally WALK across the border into the new country with all their goods. I don’t know why this is. Anyways, depending on the road into the new country there is sometimes a sizable walk for the travelers. Local people realized they could make money shuttling people from one border to the next border. Hence, border to border → border border → boda boda! Pretty cool, eh?
We finally made it to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. We were given a quick safety recap before going into the field to look for Rhino’s:
- Be aware of snakes (black momba’s and cobra’s) (The Yale students told me they’d recently treated a child in Mulago that died of a cobra bite.)
- Should the rhino’s show signs of charging move near a tree and get ready to climb. What?!
They also told us:
- Uganda’s rhino’s went extinct in the 1980’s
- Rhino horns fetch a high price on the market because they can be made into sword and dagger handles, medicines and aphrodesiacs.
- Rhinos have a very slow reproductive rate breeding once every two to three years and bearing only one calf, further diminishing chances for the survival of the species.
- The Obama rhino was the latest addition to the sanctuary. He is named Obama because his mother is an American rhino and his father is a Kenyan rhino!
- Armed rangers monitor each individual rhino 24/7 365 days a year. They walk around with AK 47’s.
The guide led us into the bush. I wore hiking boots, pants, a shirt and a hat. You basically want to expose yourself to as little as possible when travelling in the thick African bush. There are a bevy of insects and diseases you can get. I remember thinking to myself, “wow, these American tourists are walking around with open toe sandals, shorts and tank-tops. That’s just inviting trouble.”
Oh how right I was. More on that tomorrow.
The rhinos were really incredible. They were really majestic animals. Very cool stuff.
Afterwards we drove to a restaurant and had lunch. Our driver Sam drank beer (only one Mom, don’t worry). Drinking and driving isn’t really seen as taboo here. I don’t think an American guide would sit in front of his customers at lunch and have a beer or two, but here its normal.
The drive from Masindi to Murchison Falls was ridiculous…over the worst, choppiest roads I’d ever driven on and Sam was driving like this was the qualification rounds of a rally car championship. The undercarriage of the van slammed into the dirt, the tires sounded like they were going to peel off and the car flew all over this dirt road in the middle of nowhere. All this, mind you, without a spare tire.
I knew things would be REALLY interesting when I saw, what looked like, a recent accident on the side of the road. As we got closer I discovered it was the TOW TRUCK that serviced the area between Masindi and Murchison falls. It had fallen into a gully on the side of the road and had apparently been abandoned. Yay and YAY!
Okay, so we are driving along and all the sudden Sam slams his window shut.
“Everyone shut your windows!”
We shut them and no sooner had we done it than the van was consumed with tsi tsi flies. For those of you who don’t know what tsi tsi flies are – they are basically large African flies that BITE. They are very painful BUT the worst part is that tsi tsi flies are the insect that carries sleeping sickness, a very deadly African disease.
“You don’t want to get bit by these flies.” Dave told me.
“Why? I thought sleeping sickness had basically been eradicated.”
“We see people with sleeping sickeness in Mulago all the time.” Terri responded.
“Is it really that bad?”
They all nodded.
“It’s a very deadly disease and the problem is the medication used to treat it has a mortality rate of 50%.” Dave said.
Gulp. It’s scary travelling with people in the medical profession sometimes.
I looked out my window. There were tsi tsi flies covering it.
“Sam, why are they attacking the vehicle?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they think we are a buffalo.” He said.
The Yale doctors and I looked at each other nervously.
“Will they be at the camp site?” I asked.
“No no.” Sam said. “They are only on this portion of the road.
We kept going along. It started pouring and then the tsi tsi flies REALLY started coming out.
“Ahh! Its raining and the sun is out!” Sam yelled. “That means a leopard is giving birth.”
We laughed nervously. Still concerned about the swarm of insects carefully following our van.
“Watch this.” Sam said.
He stopped the van completely. We were swarmed by tsi tsi flies.
“When you stop they catch up to you. If we could see out the back window (we couldn’t because all our stuff was covering the windows) you’d see the swarm.”
Double gulp.
At this point we drove on. But problem. Since it had been raining and it was damp the windows started fogging up. The defroster didn’t work in the van so we needed to open the windows so Sam could see where the hell he was going. If we popped a tire on this road we would be in really bad shape - We’d be consumed by tsi tsi flies.
We all looked at each other in disbelief for how we could be in a rickety van with no spare, flying through a deserted road in northeastern Uganda, after having just passed the tow truck in a ditch on the side of the road and being chased by a swarm of tsi tsi flies capable of carrying sleeping sickness.
I promise you – I can’t make this stuff up. Truth is stranger than fiction.
The way we resolved this issue was this – when we went faster than 20 MPH the tsi tsi flies couldn’t keep up with the van. Once we’d lost them Sam would open his window and we’d all follow suit and open our respective windows. The front window and side windows would partially defog and we’d continue along.
When Sam had to slow down to veer around a pothole we’d see the tsi tsi swarm advacing on our van. Sam would roll up his window and we’d all follow suit. If we didn’t move fast enough a few tsi tsi flies would invade the cabin and Dave and I attacked them with rolled up newspapers. This cycle of rolling / unrolling, speeding / slowing down, losing the tsi tsi flies and having them catch us continued for two hours. We finally made it to our campground with a lot of dead tsi tsi flies on the floor of the vam, but nobody having been bitten.
PHEW! It was crazy. Oddly enough there were basically no tsi tsi flies at the campsite. They only hunted near the road. Weird.
The campsite WAS indundated with warthogs which are harmless unless provoked and then they can be super aggressive. They didn’t give us any trouble.
After our ordeal travelling from Kampala the crew was pretty tired. We pitched our tents, ate and went back to our tents. I packed a sleeping bag but it was too hot so I just lay on the floor of my tent listening to the sounds of the warthogs outside eating grass.