I’m sorry that I was silenced. That when things became difficult – no,
difficult is not the right word – when things became dark, heavy, insurmountable
– I gave up the one thing that has always lifted me to the other side of my
fear and sadness, my writing. Now,
months later, for many reasons that I will not yet describe, I will return to
the therapeutic power of written word.
The story that I am choosing to begin with was not really the beginning
the downward spiral of my third field stint in Africa. In fact, things were growing tense and
dangerous in ways that I had not yet even noticed before the infamous day of
the buffalo. This day, however, was the
one that opened my eyes. It changed the
way that I saw everything around me and forced me to the reality that the
reserve that I was trying work in was changing.
I believe that it is still changing, but this is not the place for me to
discuss those theories. This is the
place where I simply record my memories, my stories. Because they are just that, mine to keep,
mine to hide, or mine to share. I’ve
decided that it is time to share.
Before you read this story, you should know a bit of
background about the dangerous wildlife that we were working around. I knew these dangers when I signed up for my
dissertation. I knew that freak
accidents could occur, and I believed that patterns of dangerous incidents
would warrant a reassessment of my plans.
I was aware that while lions and leopards were the beasts of novels and
movies, the animals that people in far away continents thought Africans feared
most, they were not what I should be most concerned with. I was concerned about the large mammals – the
elephants, the hippos, and the buffalos.
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| Hippo in foreground with buffalo herd in background - Murchison Falls National Park (c) Alicia Rich-Stout |
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| Buffalo - Murchison Falls National Park (c) Alicia Rich-Stout |
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| Elephant - Murchison Falls National Park (c) Alicia Rich-Stout |
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| Lion - Murchison Falls National Park (c) Alicia Rich-Stout |
Hippos supposedly kill more people in sub-Saharan Africa
each year than any other animal. These
death rates, however, are skewed by the fact that hippos often attack by tipping
boats, leaving scores of people to drown (many people in inland African
countries never learn how to swim). We
found hippo tracks in our forest twice, so while we were wary, they were not
the dangerous animals that typically kept me vigilant on my daily hikes through
the forest. In our forest, we spent most
of our time avoiding elephants and buffalos.
Buffalos are apparently just behind hippos in animal deaths in Africa
each year. Buffalos are not as large as
elephants, and they are not as easily spooked.
I ran from elephants dozens of times during my time at Semliki. Because elephants are so protective and so
fearful of humans (especially elephants in poaching-heavy regions), we avoided
them at all costs. Still, most of the
time when an elephant charges it is with the intent to scare someone away, not
to trample them. Most of the time, if you flee, the elephant will do the same. I’d been within just a few meters of
elephants and experienced just that, both of us fleeing in opposite directions.
Buffalo charges are not like this. Buffalos are famous for being one of the most
aggressive animals in the world.
Buffalos attack to kill, not to scare.
In fact, just a few weeks before my story begins a buffalo in our
reserve killed a poacher. In a matter of
seconds a single buffalo disemboweled the man and left him for dead. When we found elephant tracks in the forest
we stood around to debate how fresh they were, how safe it might be to continue
forward. When we found fresh buffalo
tracks we turned and left without a word.
And so begins my buffalo story.
It was a week before Christmas. Adam and Moses were in town gathering
supplies and running errands. My ranger and I had been hiking for two long,
arduous hours. Sunday and I were slowly ascending the escarpment. I hadn’t found chimps for weeks, and I was
frustrated. All we were finding were
angry elephants and poacher tracks all over the forest that left us winding the
trails in circles without so much as a single dung sample. With sweat stinging my eyes and deep, labored
breaths I marched my heavy gumboots higher and higher up that mountain. Sunday stomped along behind me, annoyed that
I was forcing him on yet another searching expedition to the highest point in
the reserve, with little hope of finding so much as one chimpanzee at the top.
The chill of the escarpment air finally reached my face, and
I began to let down my guard against most of the forest dangers. Elephants and buffalo were often encountered
in the lowland areas near the river and the swamp, but never at the top of the
mountains. Now my eyes were glued to the
trees. I folded up the brim of my hat so
that I could better scan the flashes of green for that glimpse of a dark, hairy
figure. Back and forth, up and down, my
eyes glided over the canopy, still hopeful after months of failed search
attempts.
When we stepped into the shallow river crossing I must have
felt Sunday’s body stiffen. Maybe I
heard a hoof, or I finally caught the bitter scent. I really don’t know what made my head snap
down into the riverbed at my feet like that, but I will never forget the
flashes of images that followed. Those
scenes that wake me at night, that steal my gaze in conversation, the brief
memories that make me shudder in the grocery store or at the bank. From that moment everything seemed to move in
short bursts punctuated by unforgettable snapshots. They were hoof marks at my feet. Buffalo tracks. So many tracks. Hundreds of them, all around my feet. In front of me, beside me. They were fresh. The water from the river had not even had a
moment to soften the sand around the imprints.
They impressions of these beasts just stared up at me in that place
where I’d least expected them.
I looked back to speak to Sunday. The words formed in my head, but I’m not sure
they ever left my lips, “Buffalo – this high up?” Before my voice could catch up with my
thoughts I saw them. Maybe I heard
them. Suddenly they were there. It was not one, or even two buffalo. I would not even call them a herd. It was a wall. A wall of pure power, strength, and
aggression was looming before me, motionless, like a coiled spring waiting to
bounce. They were no more than 10 meters
from my face. I could smell them. That putrid, unmistakable odor froze my every
muscle, stopped my breath, made my fingers turn to ice in an instant.
Suddenly my body was no longer my own. My thoughts were not inside my own head. My actions were not under my own
control. I ceased to exist as
myself. I felt a hand, my hand, reach
out for Sunday’s arm. I felt my icy
fingers pinch his sleeve, my tiny heart beating out of my chest so loud I
thought every buffalo in that wall must be hearing it, focusing in on it. Before I could understand what was happening,
Sunday’s AK-47 was swung over that arm that my icy fingers had been brushed
from. He screamed at me with a voice I
didn’t know he had, a voice of terror, “A-LEES-SEEAH! RUN! RUN ALEESEAH!” He kept screaming while he fired. It was so loud, the gunfire. It filled every space in my head, vibrated my
lungs, my ribs, my limbs. The smoke
awoke my lungs. In a snap, the sound
made the wall charge forward. It made the
dust and water fly as the wall rushed right toward my motionless face. The smoke from his gun filled the air. I’d never known guns smoked like that. The mix of buffalo stench and gunpowder makes
my stomach turn to this day. It can
reach my nose any time, any place, and make my stomach turn and my legs turn to
jelly. At that moment it did not
though. At that moment those legs were
not mine. Those legs turned to fire.
I think the buffalo may have pulled him to the ground the
second I turned my back. All that the
strange mind outside of my body could think was, “Higher ground. Reach higher ground!” And those legs of fire began to carry
me. I can’t remember scaling that
cliff. I can’t remember jumping over the
fallen trees, crawling through the thick brush, winding around the rocks and
trees. I just remember Sunday’s
cries. Those unforgettable, pain-stricken
sounds that I did not know a human being could make. The gunshots that just kept firing all around
me, filling the air and my ears. I just
remember my legs burning, the bullets whizzing.
There was no time to unclip my pack, to slip off my giant gumboots. I carried all of that weight straight up and
over the top of that escarpment and into a grassy, shrubby clearing.
Just as my burning legs carried me to the top I could hear
him right behind me. The grunting and the
snorting made my racing heart stop like a frozen frame. My head snapped back so that I could see what
I did not want to know was behind me. A
bull was catching up to me. He was
nearly on top of me. There was a stream
of blood dripping down his right horn. I
was not sure whether it was the buffalo’s or Sunday’s. I did not have time to guess, time to analyze. I did not want to shout, but I felt a voice
that could not have been my own cry out.
The wobbly, terrified voice that I’d never heard cried, “Please, please don’t kill me. DON’T KILL ME!” And with one last, terrified yelp, those legs
of fire underneath me turned to water.
They melted away, and my face hit the grass and dirt at the top of that
escarpment.
As he approached me more slowly, as his stench overwhelmed
me and my lungs seemed to close themselves up, I saw so many more things than I
should have been able to in those brief moments. I saw my oldest nephew – his sweet, gentle
face. I wondered how anyone was going to
explain to him that I had died. I
wondered how my husband would go on, how he would even face the light of day
after this, how my parents could lose their youngest daughter or my siblings
could live with this dark cloud of my sudden death. I realized that my life was so much more than
my own, and I felt so sorry for them that I was about to die with no
warning. My body went limp, and I gave
in to the idea that this was my last breath, and I wished them the very best.
Then I heard the buffalo walk away. I heard him turn, snort, and move away from
me. By the time that I could look up he
was gone. I regained use of my icy
fingers and unclipped my pack. The
nearest tree was a shrubby little thing hanging over a deep ravine where Sunday
laid with a herd of buffalo tearing him apart.
I crawled into it and waited.
I sat in that shrubby little tree, listening to it crack and
creak, feeling the needle-like tingling in my face and my lips, trying to keep
my hands from shaking me right out of it and into the ravine. I listened to Sunday. I listened to him cry and shout and mutter in
deep pain and fear, powerless to stop the slow death that was unfolding beneath
me. I heard the stomping of the hooves,
the deep, alarm-calling roar of the colobus, and the constant firing of his
gun. Then, just like that, everything
became silent. The trees rustled with
the last few fleeing monkeys, and there was no screaming, no crying, and no
gunfire. Stillness, and silence. “This
is what death sounds like,” I thought.
For what seemed like an eternal five minutes I wondered what
I should do next. Do I climb back down
and search for his body? How can I carry
his corpse all of 5+ miles back down the escarpment and to camp on my own? What if that buffalo is still right
here? What if the herd is still down
there? What if I can never move these
frozen legs and arms to get out of this tree and get myself out of here? How do I tell my staff that Sunday is dead
when I survived unscathed?
Then there were three more gunshots. BAM...BAM……BAM,
rustling, silence. Then Sunday’s
voice, “Ah-lee-seeha? Ahleseah, are you
there?” I could not use my voice. I could not find my words, not activate my
lungs to shout. I wanted to shout to
him, to teleport him to the tree with me, but my voice was not my own. He called out again, this time more panicked,
“Ahleseah!” Lukonzo words followed. Then I found just enough power to form the
words, “Here…I’m here.” I called out
louder then, “SUNDAY I AM UP HERE! AT THE
TOP!” I heard more rustling, and a
dark, swaying figure began to stagger out of the bushes. It was Sunday, alive, badly injured, covered
in blood.
Most of his clothes had been shredded from his body. His pack was gone. His gun was slung over one shoulder. A piece of cloth was tied around his head and
dripping with fresh blood. The deep red
blood that covered the dark skin of his torso suddenly shone in the
sunlight. He staggered forward, one hand
pressing against his sternum, the other hanging limp at his side, his head
slightly cocked, and his left foot dragging sideways. He grunted in pain as he moved toward me.
“Here, here! Come
quickly,” I said, “The bull might
still be here!” He climbed into the
tree next to me, eyes staring at me in disbelief. “You
are… we are… alive. We lived. We’re alive!
Where are you hurt?! Where are your wounds?!” He began grabbing my arms, pulling at my
sleeves and my pant leg, checking me for bloodstains. He found none. He stared at me in again in even more
disbelief. “I’m not hurt,” I whispered.
“He just walked away… he just
turned and left.” Sunday whispered
to the sky in Lukonzo. “We must get help,” he said. “Here,
can you check my wound?” He began to
peel away the blood soaked cloth from his head.
I panicked at the inch-wide wound that the blood was seeping from. It was white.
Why was it white? Then I realized, I was looking at his
skull. He needed help. “Tie
the cloth tightly,” I said, wishing my husband and his first aid expertise
were here to help. “It needs pressure. Stop the
bleeding.” “I can’t,” he said, “I cannot
breathe if I tie it more.” He placed
his hand over his sternum again, trying to breath in, but barely coughing
before lowering his head and grimacing in deep pain. Chest wounds, head wounds, what looked to be
a dislocated left shoulder… He needed to get to a hospital immediately.
The two-way radio that the rangers had started carrying must
have been smashed to pieces and lost with the pack that it was in, but somehow
Sunday’s little burner phone had survived in his pocket. He pulled it out and made a call. As he started shouting into the phone my
whole body began to tremble. My breath caught
in my throat. “Stop shouting! Stop! The bull may still be near!” I kept trying to
whisper to him. The conversation was mostly in Lukonzo, but I quickly gathered
that Sunday did not know how to explain where we were, and the rangers on the
other line did not know the area well enough to even comprehend if he’d given
them better directions. He kept
repeating that it was “the place where we
found those poachers.” There were poachers caught here? This was news to me.
Sunday hung up the phone, stuffed it into his tattered
pocket, gave a weak little cough as he grasped his chest again, then looked up
at me, “We must go. We must leave before they return to finish,”
he said. The trembles in my body rushed
out in an instant, and my muscles turned to ice. “I
can’t,” I stammered, “I can’t
move. I can’t leave this tree.” The shaking began to return to my hands just
before he grabbed them and squeezed tightly, “We cannot stay. We must. We must go NOW.” I nodded.
I bit my burning, trembling lip and took control over my muscles
again. He painstakingly descended from
the tree as I followed. He reached for
my pack on the ground nearby, and dragged it toward me with his working
arm. Unzipping the top pocket, I grabbed
the GPS and my phone. Somehow both of
them were completely unharmed, so I stuffed each into a cargo pocket on my
pants. I felt my muscles loosen a little
as I lifted the pack to my back. I took
a couple of deep, labored breaths and caught a glimpse of the fear in Sunday’s
eyes. “Where? Which way?” he asked me.
I thought for a few seconds and realized that we could not return to the
trail from which we’d fled. There may
still be buffalos there. And even if we
take the nearest connecting trail back to the lowland area of the forest, we
would find ourselves in the heart of buffalo territory – the most likely place
for the herd to flee to after a dangerous encounter. It seemed the safest way to travel was the
most mountainous. We’d have to travel
off-trail, along the side of the escarpment for a while, moving up and down
each peak before descending as close as possible to camp. I knew that this would be a difficult task
for Sunday. He could barely breathe, and
he’d clearly suffered a severe concussion and lost far too much blood. Still, we had no better option. “This
way,” I told him, as I began to move across the savanna, feigning as much
confidence as I could muster. I knew I
wasn’t fooling him though.
My legs were still trembling from fear and weak from my
escape. As we moved along the side of
the escarpment I stumbled and slid like a drunkard, scrambling to my feet as
quickly as I could each time. Sunday
staggered and swayed along slowly. I
tried to help him, offered a shoulder, a hand, but he refused each time. “I can
make it,” he kept repeating between strained gasps for air. We stopped again at the top of a hill so that
he could try to text a ranger and tell them where we were planning to emerge
from the forest. All I could think about
right then was my husband and every silly, stupid argument we’d ever had, every
ridiculous thing I’d ever believed mattered.
I grabbed my phone and sent him a single text message, “I love
you.” Sunday put his phone away again,
touched the bloody cloth on his head, and nodded at me. We moved forward.
We hiked for 6 miles.
I kept repeating to him, in as calm a voice as I could find within me, “You will be fine. We will get you to a hospital soon. You will get to a hospital, and you will be
fine.” I think he knew that I was
saying these things for myself, not for him.
The closer that we got to camp, the more slowly we had to
move. In the last mile we found fresh
buffalo dung and tracks all around us.
We were in the middle of the savanna, and so close, but it sent a surge
of panic through every part of my body.
I tried to control it, but my steps got faster and faster right
then. Sunday was coughing more, leaning
forward more, staggering to the left and right with every step. He began to fall behind me and mumbled, “Not so fast, Aleeseeah, I cannot breathe.
Not so fast.” “Sorry,” I replied, trying to control and steady each of my steps. I tried to move my mind to calmer, happier
places. I thought of my friends. I pictured us sitting at a picnic table just
before I left, sipping beers and laughing with my dog at my feet. It was then that I saw them. The rangers.
First I saw Nicholas’s bright green cap and his kind, concerned face. I’d never thought I could be so happy to see
that silly hat. Tall Felix was at his
side, and all of the other rangers followed behind them. They all rushed toward us. A lump formed in my throat. Feeling returned to my fingertips and my
toes. I exhaled deeper than I knew that
I could. “HELP HIM! HELP HIM, HE NEEDS A DOCTOR!” I shouted. They all rushed to Sunday’s side, grabbed his
gun, hoisted his arms, and mumbled to him in Lukonzo and Luganda and
English. I let them move ahead of me
while exhaled three more times. The
oldest ranger, Silver, stayed behind with me.
He was the only one that saw it in my eyes. He saw the panic, the fear. I believe he saw the whole experience in my
eyes, because I saw it reflected back in his.
“You made it,” he whispered to
me. He spoke more, but I can’t even
remember his other words. I just
remember seeing the safari lodge truck that came speeding toward us. They carefully loaded Sunday into the middle
of it, laid him down on the seat, patted the driver’s seat, and we were off. The
nausea came over me in one large wave just like the breeze in my face as we
sped back into camp. They dropped me off
before rushing Sunday to the hospital in Fort Portal. It would take them two more hours to get there.
Our staff stared in confusion as I stumbled out of the
truck. I said nothing. I did not even glance at them or at the sky
or at anything but the dirt in front of me.
I slowly staggered to the kitchen, pack dragging behind me, feet barely
leaving the ground, and slumped into the bench at the table. Right then I felt my whole presence return to
my body at once. My awareness, my fear,
my consciousness all rushed into me, and the weight of it was so heavy that my
face hit the table and my shoulders crumbled into my deep sobs. The guys had never seen me cry. Sure, I’d concealed some frustration-induced
field-tears in my tent before, but I’d never let them see me in pieces like
that. I’m not sure I’d ever been in
pieces like that. I just shook and cried
and cowered like that while they stood around me with great concern and
sympathy in their eyes.
On his way to the hospital, Sunday told the other rangers
that he was certain he’d put at least six bullets into the buffalo that was on
top of him. The rangers were concerned
that an injured buffalo may be wandering around our trail system, or make its
way to the nearest village at the top of the escarpment. Healthy buffalos are a force to fear, but a
wounded or sick buffalo is even worse. A
chance encounter would likely leave someone dead.
As I wandered around camp with a glazed stare, trying to
think of anything but the awful sounds and images in my head, I heard a truck
approaching camp. I walked down the road
enough to see who this could be, and managed to make out a large military truck
spilling over with soldiers. Ranger Ben
jumped down from the truck and came over to talk to me. Before he reached me one of our trail
slashers, Wisely, was standing at my side.
They’d already spoken on the phone, and they already had an agreement. They knew I was not going to be happy about
it. The rangers wanted to go back to
kill the wounded buffalo, but the only people that knew the trail system well
enough to understand my directions were our own staff. Ben and the other rangers stopped in the
nearest military camp to pick up as many armed men as they could find, and they
promised that my dear Wisely would be protected. Still, I felt the trembling return to my
hands, then to my knees. I gave Wisely a
panicked glance. He tried to return my
gaze with confidence, but I saw through it.
“I’m not okay with this,” I
said. “Wisely isn’t a ranger. He’s not
a soldier. He’s not armed. Sunday and I were nearly killed. Now you want to take my Wisely back out there to that hell and risk
his life as well?!” I knew that I
would never win this battle, and maybe Ben was right. The buffalo needed to be shot. Who else would show them the way? Wisely was adamant about going. This was his moment to demonstrate his
bravery. Just like that, I watched one
of my friends, little 4’6”-85-pound-Wisely get hoisted onto the military truck
and disappear in the distance while I shouted, “Please be careful! Please
protect him!”
Wisely returned less than an hour later, though it felt like
years had passed. They dropped him just
down the road, and he came marching forward with a proud grin, arms waving at his
side. When he approached me, however,
his expression changed. I saw pity in
his eyes. He reached in his pocket and
held out my bandana. “So much blood,” he mumbled in his broken
English, “Blood was everywhere.”
In his other hand was the tattered remains of a pack – Sunday’s
pack. It was splattered and soaked in
blood, and barely even resembled the pack that I’d watched Sunday sling over
his back just that morning. When I spoke
to Ben later, he would tell me that there were pools of blood covering the
ground, soaking the earth, splattered over the leaves. They found no buffalo, not even a trail of
blood to signal the departure of a wounded animal. Perhaps, they told me, Sunday was
mistaken. Sunday was not mistaken
though. Two weeks later a nearly dead
buffalo would wander to the edge of a village on top of the escarpment,
collapse to the ground, and die there.
When the villagers butchered the animal they removed six bullets from
its chest cavity. Six bullets from an
AK-47 at point blank, and the buffalo did not stop grinding its hooves into
Sunday’s chest. Was there anything that
would stop a buffalo on a killing spree?
Later that day, once I regained enough composure to reduce
my sobbing fits to 3-5 minute bursts every 30 or so minutes I began to wander
listlessly around camp, once again feeling detached from my body. Every time I tried to stop moving and sit
down I felt like I was back in that forest again, back in that tree, shaking,
listening to the gunfire and the screeching, blood-curdling cries of agony
below me. Then the sobbing would
return. I called Adam and told him very
briefly that this bad thing had happened.
He said that between the strange text message from me with no responses
to follow and the flurry of activity around a Uganda Wildlife Authority truck
parked at the hospital across the street in Fort Portal, he thought something
may have happened, but did not really want to think about it at the time. “I
can’t go back into the forest tomorrow,” I told him, “I just can’t do it.” “I know, I know,” he said, “I’m coming back now, and we’ll discuss
whether we will go back in at all after this.” As I hung up the phone that last comment rang
in my ears. Whether I will go back in at all?
Never return to the forest? Tears returned to my eyes and ran down
my cheeks. I couldn’t imagine leaving
after what I thought was one isolated incident.
I couldn’t live with myself if I gave up on this project because of my
fear after one freak encounter with a herd of buffalo. In the days and weeks that followed, others
would suggest that I return to the U.S., if only for a brief period of mental
recovery before returning to the field refreshed and strengthened. Each time, I would shut that person down. I swore up and down that this one chance
encounter was not going to stop me. Even
though the flashbacks left me wide awake, sweating, shaking, crying, night
after night… Even though the terror at
the thought of returning to the forest, the images of the things that could
happen to me, or worse, to my husband left my stomach in such knots that I’d
stopped eating or drinking… I would force myself to go on.
And I did. A week
later it was Christmas, and the next day I entered the forest. The day after that I went in again, and then
I did it again, each time for a little longer.
I will revisit the stories of those days of my attempts at rebuilding,
my refusal to quit in my future stories, but I wanted to conclude this story
with the recognition that I did not quit right then. And neither did my brave, selfless
husband. Rangers Nicholas and Ben took
turns staying in camp to help me through my fear and protect me in the forest
in the very dark, difficult days that followed.
I thought things could only get better from there. Sadly, those days were not yet the darkest
that I would experience at Semliki. This
was not an isolated incident as I’d deemed it at the time; it was only the
beginning of a once sleeping volcano that had been building power for months
before, outside of my awareness. And
poor, unsuspecting Nicholas would be caught in its path just seven short weeks
later.
