Penetrating the Impenetrable Forest

It is no coincidence that my last blog post aligns with the last day before Asha came to visit me in Uganda. In addition to spending my time celebrating her presence, we were not within earshot of any computers, let alone the internet. Unfortunately, my camera has fallen victim to the slogan “Africa, where electronics go to die,” and I don’t have any pictures to share. However, I will do my best to illustrate the story with words.

After spending the first few weeks gallivanting around East Africa without an itinerary or camera, I decided that she couldn’t come to Africa without observing one of Uganda’s renowned national parks. A decision based solely on our then current geographical location, ignoring things like availability of transportation, food or water, we elected to visit the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Contrary to the suggestion of the title, it was easily penetrated. Getting out was the difficult part.

Beginning from Kisoro, a small boarder town near both Rwanda and DRC, we were told there was no public transport to the park. It took our taxi almost two hours to travel 35km up the most treacherous mountain pass imaginable with landslides that would have slowed down a rhinocerous but which our driver skillfully, even artistically maneuvered his 1981 Toyota Corona around. Once there, we hiked from the southern part of the forest to the northern part, ignoring the guerilla trekkers who had flown into the park in their helicopters wearing $2300 worth of Gucci Safari gear sporting carbon fiber walking sticks. Guerilla permits are $500 per person, the guerillas have all been domesticated (in fact they even have different classes of guerillas: “wild guerillas,” “humanized guerillas,” and “other guerillas”), and if you see a guerilla by chance without a permit, the safari guide is imprisoned for 5 years, which sounds more like the San Francisco Zoo than a Ugandan national park. We saw some guerilla poop, so I’m satisfied.

Once on the northern side, we opted out of staying at the recommended lodging at $500/night/person and picked out a nice bungalow a few km down the road. Exhausted and filthy, we were pleasantly surprised by the availability of hot showers, a commodity I am no longer familiar with. The emphasis here is on HOT shower. There was no cold water. I’ve decided that if I ever write a real piece of literature on my experiences here it’s going to be called “Out of Cold Water,” revolving around the topic of sidestepping basic needs to please the guerilla trekkers. So I stood next to the dripping, scalding hot water and tried to cleanse myself, escaping with burns limited to the first degree. The next day, we tried to leave.

We met a South African, Gordon, who kindly invited us to join us in his taxi to split petrol. Intended to depart at 11:00AM, we hurriedly packed our things and hustled to the meeting point. There was nobody there, and we feared that we had missed our golden opportunity. Our fears subsided when we spotted Gordon, who assured us that the taxi was coming but just a few minutes late. At 4:00PM, we departed for Kabale, slicing through the sticks in our Astro van because a truck had overturned on the main road, blocking traffic both ways. Merely 2 hours from the park, 5 hours had passed and Kabale was nowhere to be seen, nor were there any other cars or a road. We were stuck in some mud when thunder started ripping the sky apart like shotgun blasts and for the first time in as long as I could remember I muttered, “Ohhhh shit.” Before I forget, we already had a flat tire, which the driver replaced with NASCAR-like efficiency but which took over an hour to find a new inner tube.

We made it to Kabale at 9:56PM, and the only bus in Uganda that I’ve seen leave on time had a 10:00PM departure scheduled. We were hustled in through the door as the bus was pulling away, only to find that this 6 hour ride was already full, meaning the seats were occupied as well as the standing room in the aisle. One man in the back saw a distressed, female mzungu and immediately offered his seat. A very, very generous gesture. After standing for some time, the man now sitting next to Asha offered me his seat. I accepted. Props to these most charitable acts of kindness. Except for the unknown wet substance I was sitting on (by my sophisticated deduction and experience, probably vomit), I was content. The woman sitting next to Asha promptly handed Asha her baby and meandered to the front of the bus without uttering a word. I couldn’t help laughing, until I saw the unspoken discourse converging in her eyes, which probably went something like this:

Internal Monologue Step #1) Ummmm, what?

Step 2) OMG this woman just gave me her baby

Step 3) Oh you’re sooooo adorable! [Looks at me] Can I keep it?! Please!!!!!!

My verbal response to this developing scenario was, “It’s cute right now, but it’s going to spit up on your jacket,” which it did a little bit, but she dodged a bullet without the full projectile. Being in the back row, every speed bump catapulted us about 8 inches off our seats, and we were lucky to land in our original arrangement. If unlucky, we landed on the metal bars segregating the seats, bruising our tailbones. The baby slept through this carnival ride while I tried not to bite my tongue.

We entered Kampala at 3:00AM, waiting for the 5:00AM bus to take us to Jinja. We made it to Jinja at 6:30, and waited for the reception at the hostel to open at 8:00AM. We waited in silence because I know myself well enough to realize that the only possible thing that could come from my vocal cords were songs of contempt and disgust. Then, we slept.

Named the Impenetrable Forest for deceiving reasons, it should have been named the Singularity for its disproportionate difficulty to gravitate from this dense rainforest.