The Arrival

The grass thatch roofs arose from the savanna out of nowhere.  We’d been riding in the damp, worn out taxi for well over three hours, and I was withered and dazed fro ma week of travel.  For the duration of my six hour bus ride that morning I’d been afraid to leave my seat to use the toilet or eat, incase the bus would leave me behind as it had others.  I’d seen men come running behind us while sympathetic passengers shouted to the stubborn driver.  When we reached the town of Fort Portal rain was falling from the deep gray sky in buckets the way I’ve only seen it flood streets into raging rivers in tropical countries.  Climate controls culture in these places like nowhere else.  The young man next to me on the bus stunk like sweat and grain liquor.  Like most Africans, he’d never learned anything about personal space concepts of westerners and leaned his sweaty head over me to gaze out my window for most of the ride.  Once he woke me from my deep, Dramamine-sleep, and I shoved him back to his own seat.  His face showed no sign of offense or surprise at my African-learned pushiness and frankness.

As I hopped off the bus, frantically fumbling for my umbrella, a taxi driver immediately jumped for my bags, both of us instantly soaked to the bone and running back and forth to flee from the downpour.  I started shouting out prices over the deafening sound of rain pelting the muddy river-streets.  He laughed and shouted back, “Just get in the car!  We will talk prices there!”  After a few minutes of haggling in the front seat, we settled on an agreeable price, and I was thrilled to discover that he knew the location of the Semliki Chimpanzee Research Site.

We drove around windy mountain roads, stopping frequently to wait for crews to clear rockslides.  I am always amazed at times like these that children from rural African villages seem to appear out of nowhere.  Their eyes dig into my fair skin and blonde hair instantly while they grow braver, moving in closer to this strange being.  One girl’s mouth was stretched so thin with a nervous smile that she clenched her little hands over it in a futile attempt to conceal her reaction to my glances.  “Cookies! Money!” they mumbled in awkward, forced English.  I don’t want to consider how these are the only English words they seem to know.  My kind taxi driver scolded their manners and threw an embarrassed glance in my direction.  After several minutes of silence he turned to me with a curious smile.  “Where did you learn to bargain like that?”  I smiled and thought for a few seconds, “I guess a little of my own nature and more from my Kenyan friends. Why do you ask?”  “You are very skilled for a Mzungu,” he told me with a smile, seemingly pleased for a skilled opponent in the game of African price haggling.  Bargaining prices here is usually done with coy smiles and careful body language, rather than aggression or frustration.  It is a game.

The winding roads turned to red dirt, surrounded by savanna woodland as we passed into the mountains and through the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve gates.  We slowed each time a cob or troop of baboons crossed the dirt road in front of us.  The even road unfolded into muddy paths as we neared our camp.  I held my breath each time the old Toyota Corolla slowed to cross pits of deep, red clay or cut through patches of savanna reserved for the thick tread of a Land Rover.  My country-girl-respect for this driver was strengthened.

Then I saw grass thatched roofs arise out of nowhere and felt a week’s worth of tension exhale from my lungs.  The three other researchers emerged from their tents, rushing out to greet me.  The small local staff scuttled to the trunks, grabbing my luggage as I shook hands and fumbled for the driver’s payment.  No place has ever made me sense a home the way a forest does, and I had made it.  I stared at my new home: a tent surrounded by savanna and forest with a majestic escarpment in the distance.  What a destination I had reached.