Tomorrow’s presidential election in Uganda will either be the most unread news story in Africa, or the start of Twevolution in East Africa.
The current autocrat is expected to win handily, despite election fraud, unfair international support and his highly undemocratic style of overlording that is often brutal. But if he doesn’t … win handily … CNN might have another place for Anderson Cooper to visit.
The election battle is down to Uganda’s two most famous politicians and arch rivals, Dr. Kizza Besigye, otherwise known as the perpetual loser, against the incumbent, Yoweri Museveni, otherwise known as dictator.
If Museveni wins he will be starting his fifth term and heading towards his 26th year of ruling Uganda. If he wins it’s in part because of long-term support of the American Right. (Get this: his campaign slogan right out of the dimwits of CStreet is, “No Change!”)
Here’s the problem. Kids don’t like grownups telling them what they can and can’t do when they reach their mid twenties.
This is essentially the reason for the Twevolution that’s sweeping the continent. African youth today are sharp, educated and infinitely more connected with the world than the old folks overlording them. That’s particularly true of Uganda.
I’m not saying that youth inherently believe in term limits, but they viscerally know how not changing political rule impedes and inhibits development.
Uganda is rapidly becoming the most backwards country in all of East Africa, when once upon a time, shortly after independence, it was the star. As if slapping this truth into its neighbor’s cheek last week, next-door Rwanda hosted an all-African conference that named Uganda the worst of the five regional East African nations in its capacity to develop.
In fact of all Africa’s 58 countries, Uganda was ranked 21st. That’s pretty awful when you consider that half of Africa’s countries are unstable or at war. (Tanzania, by the way, was 20th. Rwanda was 5th and Kenya was 4th. What was most startling of all, troubled little Burundi was ranked 13th!)
The report was chaired by one of the most respected Africans alive, Grace Machel, the widow of the former president of Mozambique.
Uganda’s youth knows this. And it seems that up to 85% of them are likely to vote tomorrow. In fact international observers on the ground expect a 75% turnout according to a leading newspaper in Uganda, although as many as 140,000 of those registered names may be dead, and 400,000 of them foreigners technically ineligible to vote.
So if the election is close … there is plenty of fodder for fire. The ironic thing is that it’s not expected to be close.
I’ve written before how Museveni is the darling of the American political right. They have been supporting his draconian efforts to do things America can’t, like ban abortions and make homosexuality a capital offense.
I haven’t been able to track it down carefully enough, so it simply remains a hunch right now that American Rightists along with their UK counterparts are stonewalling the World Bank from blocking aid funds that Museveni has been using to beef up his campaign.
The report that’s drawn my attention was published by a fiery, independent on-line publication in Uganda last month.
There’s no doubt that Museveni has used donor funds (including ours) for his campaign, which is one of the reasons he’ll probably win tomorrow. There has never been such a modern, expensive election in Africa before. And it’s been almost all one-sided: for Museveni. TV, ads, billboards, flyers, robocalls — you name it, right out of American campaigning.
It’s also been public that America and the UK are blocking efforts by NGOS like the World Bank from stopping this. The question is, who specifically in the U.S. is doing this?
Anyone out there that would like to prove me right, please go to work!
So with such huge funding support, with an economy that isn’t doing so badly, with enormous pride in the recent discoveries of oil and the relatively recent successful ending of the wars in the north, Museveni has the odds, even with a half million illegal voters.
But if his margin is less than the number of dead and foreign (half million) out of 7.5 million expected to vote, then watch out for Twevolution.
Not just Gabby shot, but now David murdered in certain part because of the hatred created by the American Right. There are two things I just don’t understand: (1) how can anyone deny this obvious link, and (2) how could we possibly have let these happen? Who will be next?
Wednesday afternoon one of the finest, gentlest and most articulate Ugandans to have lived was beaten to death in his Kampala home with a hammer. Kato was Uganda’s most prominent gay rights activist.
Kato’s death, like Gabriel Gifford’s attempted assassination, was not random. They were both likely done by crazed individuals, but individuals directed if not wholly inspired by hate speech from the American Right.
The incredible attempts by Americans including President Obama to deny this represents a dangerously irresponsible lack of common sense, if not a terrible act of cowardice.
We all know the connection of the American Right to Gabby’s shooting. And hold on! “American Right” is not a person, it is not Sarah Palin. But Sarah Palin is a part of the “American Right,” thousands of individuals and countless organizations who have irresponsibly implied violence (if not called for it outright) against individuals opposing their views.
Val Kalende, the head of a major Ugandan gay rights organization told South Africa’s Pambazuka News shortly after the murder, “The Ugandan Government and the so-called U.S Evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood!”
Reporter Leigh Phillips of the European Union on-line publication EUObserver reported today that some EU States have now “threatened to cut aid funding to [Uganda] as a result of the [anti-gay] legislation, which was introduced after a group of American right-wing Christians travelled to the country in March 2009 to hold anti-gay rallies.”
You can read my own accounts of this terribly developing story, including lots of links and videos at “Trail of Hate Rounds the World”.
I am especially saddened and angered by President Obama. Both in his State of the Union address last week, and in a message deploring Kato’s death he refused to link the heated American Right rhetoric to the acts.
I can understand the special importance that a leader of such power has in reducing tensions – especially deadly ones – but in the State of the Union Obama specifically stated “There is no connection” between heated rhetoric and Representative Gabriel Gifford’s attempted assassination. Not to affirm a connection was wrong of Obama. But to affirm the lie that there is no connection is despicable.
His message about Kato was more circumspect. Denial comes only as inference in what was not said. Better, but no cigar.
With no cap on the lunacy from our leaders, denial of the causal relationship between the American Right’s rhetoric and violence has gone viral in America. We are once again burying our heads in the sand of deceit and fantasy.
This senseless violence will end only when the American Right changes the tone of public debate. And that tone is not – as often suggested – equally created by “both sides.” It is an American Right phenomenon. Only they can end it.
East Africa is booming, so many of the stories of 2010 were terrifically good news. But there were the tragedies as well like the Kampala bombings. Below I try to put the year in perspective with my top ten stories for East Africa for 2010.
1. Populace democracy grows.
2. Terrorism grows, as does the battle against it.
3. Huge stop in the mercenary purchases of Coltan.
4. Momentum for peace in the runup to establishing a new South Sudan.
5. Tourism clashes with development, especially with the proposed Serengeti Highway.
6. New discoveries of fossil fuels produces new wealth and a new relationship with China.
7. Gay Rights grow public but loses ground.
8. Rhino poaching becomes corporate.
9. Hot air ballooning’s safety newly questioned in game parks.
10. Newest early man discoveries reconfirm sub-Saharan Africa as the birthplace of man.
#1: POPULACE DEMOCRACY GROWS
Theoretically, all the East African countries have operated as “democracies” except for the torrential years of Idi Amin in Uganda. But the quality of this democracy was never very good.
Tanzania was a one-party state for its first 20 years, and that same party continues to rule although more democratically today. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi experienced one dictator after another, even while democratic elections at regional levels challenged the executive.
But the end of the Cold War destroyed the alliances these developing countries had with super powers. Purse strings were cut, and political cow-towing ended. All of them moved towards a truly more democratic culture.
And in 2010 huge leaps were made in all the countries towards more truly representative government. The most important example by far was the overwhelming passing of the new constitution in Kenya in a national referendum where more than 75% of registered voters participated.
And like the U.S. election which followed shortly thereafter, and like support for national health care in the U.S. and so many other issues (like no tax cuts for the rich), Kenyan politicians dragged their feet right up to the critical moment. They tried and tried, and ultimately failed, to dissuade Kenyans from their fundamental desire to eliminate tribalism in government and more fairly distribute the huge wealth being newly created.
I see this as People vs. Politicians, and in this wonderful case, the People won!
And there was some progress as well in Tanzania’s December election, with the opposition growing and its influence today moving that country towards a more democratic constitution.
(It was not so good in Rwanda or Uganda, where stiff-arm techniques and government manipulation of the electoral process undermined any attempt at real democracy.) But the huge leap forward in Kenya, and the little hop in Tanzania, made this the absolute top story of the year.
#2: TERRORISM GROWS
Four smaller bombings in Nairobi’s central business district over the year were eclipsed by two horrible simultaneous bombings in Kampala bars on July 11 while patrons were watching the world cup. Police display an unexploded suicide vest.
Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in Somali, claimed responsibility. And throughout the year Shabaab grew increasingly visible along the Kenyan border as its power in Somali increased.
I’ve written for a long time about how the west has had its collective head in the sand as regards terrorism and Al-Qaeda in particular. Long ago I pointed out that the locus of Al-Qaeda terrorism had moved to the horn from Afghanistan, and this year proved it in spades.
The country with the most to lose and most to gain in this war on terror is Kenya, because of its long shared border with Somalia. And the year also marked a striking increase in the Kenyan government’s war on terror, and with considerable success.
With much more deftness and delicacy than us Kenya has stepped up the battle against Al-Shabaab while pursuing policies aimed at pacifying any overt threats to its security, by such brilliant moves as allowing Omar Bashir into the country and not arresting him (on an international U.N. warrant). As I said in a blog, Kenya Gets It, and the story is therefore a hopeful one.
The Dodd-Frank Act is our victory!The Congo Wars continue but are abating, and in large part because of a little known provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act which now makes it almost impossible for major corporations in the U.S. to buy the precious metal Coltan on the black market.
A black market which has funded perhaps Africa’s most horrible war for more than a generation. Hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – have been killed and raped, and more than 20,000 children conscripted into brutal wars, funded by purchases of Coltan and other precious metals by Intel, Sony and Apple.
It certainly wasn’t just this little legislative move. The U.N. peace-keeping force, fabulous diplomatic initiatives by Uganda and a real diplomatic vigilance by the U.S. all were instrumental. But the year ended with the least violence in the region in more than two decades.
#4: SOUTH SUDAN
I may be jumping the gun on this one, because the referendum to create a new country, the South Sudan, is not scheduled to occur before next month. But the runup to the referendum, including the registration process, while labored looks like it’s working.
Allied loosely with the Congo Wars, the civil war between the North and South Sudan had gone on for generations until a brokered peace deal five years ago included the ultimate end to the story: succession of the South into a new country.
The concept is rife with problems, most notably that the division line straddles important oil-producing areas. But in spite of all of this, and many other ups and downs along the way, it looks to me like there will be a South Sudan, and soon. And this year’s new U.N. presence in Juba, donor-construction of roads and airports, all points to the main global players in the controversy also thinking the same.
The creation of a new state out of a near failed one is not the be-all or end-all of the many problems of this massive and powerfully oil-rich area. But it is a giant leap forward.
#5: THE SERENGETI HIGHWAY & TOURISM
Last night NBC news aired a segment on the Serengeti Highway controversy, elevating an East African story into American prime time. Good.
But like so many reports of this controversy, the simplification ran amok. NBC’s reporter Engels claimed the motivation for the road was to facilitate rare earth metals like Coltan (see above) getting into Chinese hands more quickly.
While there may be something to this, it’s definitely not the main reason, which is much more general and harder therefore to fight. As I’ve often written, the highway as planned will be a real boon to the Maasai currently living to the east of the Serengeti, as much if not more than to the Chinese.
And as far as I know, Maasai don’t use Coltan.
Roads bring commerce and may be the single quickest way to develop a region. This region is sorely in need of development and recent Tanzania politics has aligned to the need for this regional development.
The highway is just one of many such issues which came to the fore throughout 2010 in Kenya and Tanzania. Concern that the west is just interested in East Africa as a vacation destination with no regards for the struggle for development, has governed quite a few local elections this year.
The whole concept of tourism may be changing as the debate progresses. I believe very deeply that the Serengeti highway as proposed would hinder rather than help development. But as I’ve pointed out, alternatives are in the works.
And the real story of which the highway story is only a part, is how dramatically different East Africans have begun to view tourists in 2010.
#6: NEW RESOURCE DISCOVERIES ALTER GEOPOLITICS
For years I and other African experts have referred to East Africa as “resource-poor.” Kenya, in particular, had nothing but potash. Boy, did that change this year!
Although only one proven reserve has been announced in Kenya, several have begun production in Uganda and we know many more are to come.
China has announced plans for a pipeline and oil port in northern Kenya at a cost of nearly $16 billion dollars, that’s more than twice the entire annual budget for the Kenya government! Deep earth techniques have matured, and China knows how to use them.
More gold has been found in Tanzania, new coal deposits in Uganda, more precious metals in Rwanda… East Africa is turning into the world’s rare earth commodities market.
A lot of these new discoveries are a result of technology improving: going deeper into the earth. But 2010 freed East Africa from the shackle of being “resource-poor” and that’s a very big deal.
#7: GAY RIGHTS ON THE HOOK
African societies have never embraced gay rights but as they rapidly develop, until now there was none of the gay bashing of the sort the rightest backlash produces in the U.S. U.S. Righties manipulating East Africa.
That changed this year, and in large part because of the meddling of U.S. rightest groups.
In what appears to now have been a concerted many year effort, support from U.S. righties is leading to a vote in Uganda’s parliament that would make homosexuality a capital offense, and would jail for long terms those who failed to out known gays.
This extreme is not African, it is American. Mostly an insidious attempt by those unable to evince such insanity in their own society to go to some more manipulative place. The story isn’t over as the vote has yet to occur, but it emerged and reached a crescendo this year.
#8: RHINO POACHING EXPLODES
Poaching is a constant problem in wildlife reserves worldwide and Africa in particular. Rhino are particularly vulnerable, and efforts to ensure safe, wild habitats have been decades in the making. Dagger from rhino horn.
This year, they seemed to come apart. It’s not clear if the economic downturn has something to do with this, but the poaching seems to have morphed this year from individual crimes to corporate business plans.
This leap in criminal sophistication must be explained by wealth opportunities that haven’t existed previously. And whether that was the depressing of financial goals caused by the economic downturn, increased wealth in the Horn of Africa where so much of the rhino horn is destined, or reduced law enforcement, we don’t yet know. But 2010 was the sad year that this poaching exploded.
#9: IS HOT AIR BALLOONING SAFE?
Hot air ballooning in Africa’s two great wildernesses of the Maasai Mara (Kenya) and the Serengeti (Tanzania) has been a staple of exciting options to visiting tourists for nearly 30 years. That might be changing. Is it Safe?
A terrible accident in the Serengeti in early October that killed two passengers and injured others opened a hornet’s nest of new questions.
After working on this story for some time I’ve personally concluded 2010 was the year I learned I should not step into a hot air balloon in East Africa, at least for the time being!
#10: EARLY MAN WONDERS
There were not quite as many spectacular discoveries or announcements about early man this year as in years previously, but one really did stand out as outstanding and you might wonder what it has to do with East Africa! Representation by Tomislan Maricic.
DNA testing of Neanderthal proved that early man from Africa didn’t wipe them out after all, but absorbed them into the ever-evolving homin species.
And that absorption, and not massacre, happened outside Africa to be sure. But it finally helps smooth out the story that began in Africa: It’s likely that Neanderthal were earlier migrants from Africa, and absorption was therefore easier, physiologically and biologically.
It’s a wonderful story, and fresh and exciting, unlike the only other major African early man announcement about Ardi which was really a much older story, anyway.
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HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my loyal readers, with a giant thank you from me for your attention but especially your wonderful comments throughout the year. See you next year!
Unable to do it at home, U.S. Righties do it in Africa.The gay bashing which became gay beating two weeks ago in Uganda was widely reported worldwide. But not enough has been said about the U.S. Christian right which fomented the violence in the first place.
In September I wrote that the “C Street Players” – a list of prominent leaders and politicians on the U.S. far right – were implicated in rigging the re-election of the Ugandan MP who introduced draconian legislation to punish gays and people who knew people were gay.
Fortunately that bill was tabled by Uganda’s president after substantial pressure from the west.
But the evil continues. A rogue newspaper, not registered (and were it anything but a gay basher tabloid would have been viciously suppressed by the Ugandan regime), incited incredible violence earlier this month by naming the country’s “Top 100 Homos.”
It’s really impossible to know if American money is behind this new tabloid, and in a sense, it doesn’t really matter. Hate on the level C Street brought to Uganda in the first place, which promulgated legislation that couldn’t possibly get even rightest attention in the U.S. (execution for certain gays), was intense enough to start these brush fires.
Fewer than 2000 copies of the Ugandan Rolling Stone issue were circulated, but that seemed enough to cause something of a cultural rampage in the capitol. Shortly thereafter, the real violence began. Four gays were seriously beaten, others injured, scores intimated.
This is a terrible story, but I actually believe the more terrible story is how effective the American Christian right is now in East Africa.
Much of this current violence can likely be traced to Lou Engel, an American evangelical, who received permission to hold a kill-gays rally on the campus of Uganda’s most prestigious university, Makerere. More than 1300 people attended that rally in May.
As reported then in the Huffington Post Engel was a picture perfect conservative rabble rouser. To the American press he disavowed any animus towards gays and even any knowledge of the bill before the Ugandan legislature.
But once at the rally his tuned changed significantly and he was dispensing hate with incredible efficiency. He seemed to know that the five-year long fight for an anti-gay bill in Uganda so beautiful maneuvered and heavily funded by the U.S. Christian right was in trouble.
So his response was to say incredibly vicious things. “…he whipped up bizarre fears of evil gays lurking in schools in Uganda” according to Wayne Hudson in that Huffington article, along with screaming that Uganda was “ground zero” in the fight against gays.
This is what the American right does: lie, then use that lie to engage the deep-set anger of those foolish enough to consider it. Once engaged, the anger is finally corrupted to any use they wish.
Senators De Mint and Coburn will never succeed in punishing people in the U.S. for being gay, and not even Lou Engel could preach such nonsense here. So…
…they go to Africa, where the angers are greater and deeper, and they shift their lunacy for power there.
Mark Jordhal, a blogger friend in Kampala wrote me recently:
“The proposed bill found fertile ground here and, frankly, if you asked out on the streets at least 90% of Ugandans are fully in favor of the bill. The only thing that kept it from coming to be was the fierce international response and the fact that a third of Uganda’s national budget comes from foreign donors. Five years from now when that money is replaced by oil revenues, the story might be much different.”
Here at home there’s a glimmer of light that the ton of negative lying campaign ads are actually having a backlash effect.
I hope in the end Ugandans themselves will realize how they’re being manipulated, and manipulated not by some foreign power preaching an ideology, but by demons preaching hate, who have little concern for Ugandans themselves.
Sabyino volcano behind Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge.After a gala farewell dinner preceded by raucous limericks about the trip, the group began the journey home.
Sarah Taylor summarized the trip during dinner, and I was impressed! From the surprise backstage visit to the Entebbe Zoo, through chimps and lions and gorillas, we covered much of Uganda and a bit of Rwanda.
Of our 13 travelers, only one had not been to Africa before. This is not usually a first-timer’s trip, unless the first-timer is specifically interested in primates or birds. The big game normally associated with an African safari is actually quite limited.
And the primates did not disappoint. Everyone enjoyed two treks for chimps and two treks for mountain gorillas. And the list continued. We saw two species of black-and-white colobus, a subspecies of sykes, red-tailed, grey-cheeked mangabey, red colobus and of course, vervet and baboon.
The exotic bird list is too large to enumerate, but I’ll summarize it this way: the Great Blue Turaco is one of the most sought-after sightings by birders worldwide. It’s as large as a wild turkey, as funky as Groucho Marx, and looks like it just dipped itself in neon-colored paint.
We saw them in several places, but my great joy was when I stepped out of my tent in Ishasha to open the backside flaps and flushed five of them from the tree above me.
We had the chance to compare – as so many potential travelers wish they could – the differences between mountain gorilla trekking in Rwanda and Uganda. I’ll be blogging more about this in the future, but suffice it to say, now, that I think most on this safari would choose Rwanda over Uganda, if both countries in a single trip as we did were not practical.
And everywhere we were impressed with the local guides: from the enthusiasts at Semliki to the guide on the boat on the Kazinga Channel, to the chimp and mountain gorilla guides. Striking a bond with foreigners on short trips is very difficult, but when a deep interest – like conservation – is so dearly shared, the bond forms quickly.
Although we did start with a charter flight, flying from place to place in Uganda and Rwanda is quite difficult and usually impractical. So we drove. And we drove. And we drove. There are certainly rewards to overland travel: you see things locally that fliers miss completely.
But for the most part these roads are pretty bad compared to what today is available in Kenya and Tanzania. So everyone earned boot camp stripes they had never intended to get!
We left outstanding Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge just after 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. By Saturday night everyone was on their way home: to Cleveland, to New York, to Chicago and to Philadelphia.
The destruction of Bwindi is much more severe than Parcs de volcans.A new road was supposed to be completed from Bwindi into Rwanda by now, and so a year ago that’s how we planned the trip. Oops.
When the new road is completed, it will be hardly a 4-hour journey from Bwindi to Parcs de volcans in Rwanda. In fact, it will be easier for people who want to trek Bwindi to fly in and out of Kigali (Rwanda) rather than Entebbe (Uganda) which is 7 hours minimum away.
But as luck wouldn’t have it, the road isn’t completed. The drive is fabulous for scenery and local culture, but it is one of the most twisting and turning mountainous roads in the world.
We left our lodge at 8 a.m. and didn’t reach the Rwandan border post until 1 p.m. In a sense that doesn’t seem so taxing, but the dust, the twists, and as Alex calculated, the 18k/hour speed did make it tedious.
From the Rwandan border to our Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge was hardly 35 minutes. Rwanda’s roads are much better than those slowly being replaced in southern Uganda.
Once in this most beautiful of all Parcs de volcans lodges, I think everyone was pretty happy. And for me, the most striking part of the whole trip was to see how much of the Bwindi Forest has been logged and clear cut.
I’ve come to Bwindi ever since my first trip with my wife, Kathleen Morgan, in 1974. There has been a slow erosion of the forest, but today, it’s unbelievable.
The park roads themselves are usually lined by hillsides that have been cleared for tea and other agriculture.
Far be it for we Americans – the most consumptive of the world’s resources – to criticize Uganda for trying to develop. I won’t, and I’m not. But the twangs of nostalgia and the undeniable regrets of melancholy struck me deeply.
Alex Banzhaf photographing Bwindi's Bitakura silverback.This safari has two scheduled gorilla treks, one in Bwindi (Uganda) and one in Parcs de volcans (Rwanda). Today’s was in Bwindi.
Our group of 13 was divided into three sub-groups. Four people visited the Habinyanja group, and the other two groups visited the Bitakura group (one in the morning and one in the afternoon).
Unlike Rwanda where permits are not group specific, because Bwindi is so spread out (the distance from one gorilla station to another can be 6 hours of tedious driving) permits are issued group-specific.
Habinyanja was closest to where we were staying at Buhoma. So Dave, Hope, Margo and Stephen, left the lodge at 7:30a and drove about 1½ hour to the starting point. Sometimes, Habinyanja can be within ten minutes of Buhoma.
Steve, Sarah, Doreen and Roger were headed to Bitakura. This was presumed to be a 3-hour drive from our lodge, so they started out at 6 a.m. But in fact it took them only about 1¾ hours.
The rest of us didn’t leave the lodge until 9:30a. We had lunch after a three-hour drive, and then started trekking about 1:30p.
Everyone saw gorillas! The trek I was with was the hardest one: it took us nearly two hours before we found the Bitakura family, but what a prize! We saw all three silverbacks, the one-year old, and number of other family members.
The Habinyanja group proved the easiest trek. They descended from their start point and were with the 18-member family within a half hour. Daniel Pomerantz & silverback.
And in between was the morning excursion to Bitakura. So actually, no trek was excessively long – not even mine. But the Bwindi terrain is often more difficult than the Parcs de volcans terrain, and so in that regards it did seem taxing on some members of the group. But with attentive porters and great guides, it was a super experience for all!
One of the greatest moments of a gorilla safari is when everyone gets back, cleans up, shares some digital photos and endless stories. See my earlier blogs about mountain gorilla trekking: it’s not just a personally rewarding and dramatic experience, but a real part of successful conservation.
Tomorrow, our long trek into Rwanda!
Personal Note: This was my 50th gorilla trek! Somewhat ironic, since I’ve had only 6 of those in Uganda, most of the rest in Rwanda (and 5 in The Congo). I quietly celebrated by sitting on my deck at the lodge and listening to the sounds of Bwindi until I fell asleep.
Sarah Taylor at the Bakorwe Community Group.Particularly in Uganda where charter flying remains in its infancy, a comprehensive safari has to include long drives. Today we traveled from Ishasha to Bwindi.
Forget about asking me how many kilometers we had to travel; that’s useless. Consider that Alex calculated that for much of our safari from today on we were averaging 18k per hour.
So we left Ishasha in two different groups: Steve led four people who wanted still another game drive, and boy what a wonderful decision that was. They saw 8 lion, and together with the three we saw the day before, this has to be a record for Ishasha.
The rest of us left before Steve and crew returned from the game drive. Sarah had discovered a community cooperative that would give a tour of the contemporary village. It took us about an hour to weave through the last of the park to the village.
Bakorwe is located right on the border with Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP). In fact, a part of the tour is the inspection of the “elephant trench.” This 10k trench, dug 2 meters deep and 3 meters wide, was intended to keep elephant and other wild beasts out of the village.
In the past I’ve written about a number of other attempts in East Africa to protect farms and villages from the growing elephant population, but I actually think based on Bakorwe’s record, this might be the best.
Of course it takes enormous man power, but it seems that once dug, it was remain in tact through terrible rainy seasons for at least three years without too much maintenance.
Our guide, Barnard, was a self-taught man who enjoyed the title of Community Liaison Officer and earned every bit of it. His English was impeccable. He grew up in the village, had to leave school when both his mother and father died so that he could care for his siblings, and was now the spokesman for the village.
In addition to the elephant trench, we visited a craft center and watched traditional dancing. But the highlight for me was visiting a local healer, who was also a beekeeper. It was absolutely fascinating to see how he created bee-hives from large baskets.
We left the village around 11 a.m. and proceeded towards the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, making a stop at the Kayonza Tea Factory to buy local Bwindi tea (more about that in subsequent blogs).
And we pulled into our Gorilla Resort Lodge around 1 p.m. after a pretty harrowing but spectacular drive in, around, back and forth through the “Impenetrable Forest.”
In the afternoon, people enjoyed the cute little town of Bwindi, with its internet cafes, coffee shops and local hospital.
Tomorrow, it’s off into the forest! We watched traditional dancing from the Bakorwe Community.
Sunrise in Ishasha.Lions, hyaena, topi, waterbuck, warthog, and of course lots of kob, filled our two days of game viewing in the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP).
This is the closest it came to rivaling game viewing in Kenya and Tanzania. This group – like the vast majority of travelers – come to Uganda for just a few days to see primates, not for big game. But we wanted a more complete experience, and wanted to see the big game wildernesses.
And Ishasha is the best. The terrain remains unusual, with more non-acacia, deciduous trees more akin to the great rain forests just nearby. There are many more Euphorbia candelabra, and the grasses aren’t as diverse, coarser and fast growing.
But in the little Ishasha area of the southern part of QENP, converging rivers and an active plateau that is sinking, plus the fact that it is adjacent the large Virunga National Park in The Congo, create the conditions for the best big game viewing in the country.
This was Doreen Yashen’s first safari. Everyone else had been multiple times, mostly to Kenya and Tanzania, and expectations were not high. But when we saw our first real herds of non-kob ungulates, topi, it was a real treat for Doreen.
We had seen large families of buffalo further north, but at quite a distance. Uganda is not managing tourism for big game well. All parks exclude off-road driving, which really isn’t necessary given the visitor loads, and has cut very few tracks through the parks, leaving massive distances that can’t be traversed in the park.
Main highways cut parks like QENP in two, with a traffic pattern that certainly discourages movement back and forth in the park. And on the smaller park roads routinely you see workers on bicycles or motorcycles.
These are not conditions conducive for increasing wild animal populations and habituating them to tourists.
But more tracks have been cut in Ishasha and it’s a much smaller place. So we got much closer to the buffalo families.
The highlight was the early morning game drive that started out only a few hundred meters from camp with a hyaena kill of a baby kob. We just saw that at a distance, but then we stayed with the hyaena as they began eating and tearing apart the prey.
And at the end of the morning we watched a mother lion with two cubs skulking about – but never actually hunting – a variety of animals that walked by them. We got our fix on their location by watching a male kob pronking and snorting at them.
And the icing on the cake for Doreen especially came the next morning when a pride of 8 lion including two magnificent black-maned males was found.
Colobus swing in the branches just across the river from our camp, and Great Blue Turaco seem to have held a convention right behind my own tent! I watched five of them at once.
With the improved (mostly Chinese) roads being built all over the country, Ishasha is now less than a half-day drive from Bwindi. This makes it an ideal safari extension to a primate only safari.
Stephen Chaitoff, Daniel & Roger Pomerantz, Cathy Colt and Hope Koncal in Kyambora.Like Alice walking through the Looking Glass, we stepped down into the magical Kyambora Gorge for our second chimp trek.
Only 40k from Mweya, Kyambora is a world onto itself. It stretches 21 km into the Kazinga Channel and is at no point more than about 200m wide and often much less, but about 150-200m deep. A stream runs through the bottom into the channel.
The surrounding plateau is typical QENP bush: grasslands with acacia and other trees. But once inside the gorge, the world changes completely. There are rain forest trees like podacoporus which tower above the plateau ceiling, many giant ferns and several types of palms.
It is like suddenly stepping out of one world into a completely different one.
Thirty chimps live in this rather confined area, and there are problems with the gene pool getting too inbred. Recently this has been exacerbated by an unusually high frequency of male babies.
Without too much trouble we all saw Brutus and Hatari, and some of us saw the indiscreet female who had broken the normal rule of not mating until your child is off your back, and who as a result carried a 4-year old on her back and an infant at her breast!
We found the small group of chimps after hardly a ten minute walk once at the gorge bottom. So we decided to continue on the elephant trail just to see more of this beautiful forest. We passed one cycad, the dinosaur of the rain forest, and a multitude of other palms and giant figs. The tinker birds and greenbuls never stopped calling, and every once in a while a huge black-and-white casked hornbill would fly through an opening in the forest looking like a 747. Kyambora Gorge
We ended at a beautiful forest pool that our guide said was frequented by hippo in the rains.
We then ascended the gorge and our guide switched the 7 of us for the other 6 in our group. We learned that as soon as they had descended to the pool, Brutus and Hatari were there waiting to greet them!
The two sneaks had followed us on our walk, absolutely quieter than they usually are! So it wasn’t just we humans walking through the looking glass curious to see the magical creatures on the other side, it was so the magical creatures could observe us!
The experience is not as intense with the chimps as at Kibale, and it’s not intended to be. This is an unusual group in an unusual space, and it was beautiful just to see!
Zoo Director, Steve Taylor, (sitting: Cathy Colt & Daniel Pomerantz), on the Kazinga Channel cruise.Beautiful scenery, weird and abundant localized wildlife, and great fun on the Kazinga Channel headlined our day in Queen Elizabeth National Park.
QENP wraps itself around the Ugandan side of Lake George, and all of Lake Edward, and includes the famous Kazinga Channel which connects the two. Because of the on-again, off-again disturbances in Uganda’s north near the larger Murchison Falls National Park, it has become the most visited non-gorilla national park in Uganda.
When I first visited it with my wife during the Idi Amin years, we found one old and dying buffalo. There wasn’t a single other animal to be found. They had been hunted out by Amin’s soldiers.
Today the wildlife is coming back. On our early morning game drive and boat cruise in the afternoon on the channel, we saw about 25 elephant, tons of kob, lots of buffalo and hippo, and some waterbuck and warthog.
Along, of course, with many birds. The birdlife was not disturbed during the troubles Uganda has suffered and it remains now, as it was then and before, the richest avifauna area in Africa. The park has more than 650 species during the European winter when more than 100 migrants arrive.
Perched on a peninsula raised nearly 300 feet above the channel, Mweya Lodge where we stayed has become the poster lodge for Uganda. Comfortable, spacious, air-conditioned and totally modern, the staff is as good as most places in Kenya and Tanzania, something unusual for Uganda.
The view from our rooms was gorgeous: we looked northeast along the channel to Lake Edward and with binoculars could watch elephant and buffalo and hippo on the banks.
The early morning game drive would disappoint veteran travelers to Kenya or Tanzania, but it was great fun watching the “kob kourts” – the nickname for the circular territories that male kob create to lure in females for breeding.
Unlike most antelope, there’s no aggression between the males. They simply design their little areas often within 25m of each other, then sit in the middle of them, and wait. We would see groups of 4 or 5 females, like little teenage girls at a concert, flitting about the edges of a territory deciding whether to go in!
But the afternoon channel cruise was the highlight, as it always has been. The northeastern bank of the channel which faces The Congo is a geographically protected area, difficult for even the soldiers during Amin’s years to get to. It became something of a sanctuary that continues, today.
So its biomass is considerable, but unusual. Buffalo, elephant and hippo practically lay on one another, unperturbed. You’d never see that in a more natural situation.
While it was true as our boat guide pointed out that most of these were older individuals, not all of them were. We saw many very tiny hippo babies, and the tolerance that the different species shown one another was a sorry reminder of how horrible most of the wilderness was for Uganda’s wild creatures not too long ago.
And to extend theme even further, a fishing village which had been grandfathered into the park existed smack dab in the middle of the wildlife, towards the end of the channel. We watched boys swimming not 40m from buffalo and hippo. Alex and Bill Banzhaf.
The guide explained that there were confrontations between people and animals that had led to some notable deaths in the past, but nowhere near as I would normally expect. I imagine that the fishermen, like the animals, learned to live together peacefully as an alternative to the troubles on the other side of the channel.
So a very interesting and wildlife filled day! Tomorrow we’re off to more chimps and a more natural part of this large QENP.
Cleveland Zoo Director, Steve Taylor, with wife, Sarah, watching chimps in Kibale.Kibale National Park is the best place in the world to view chimps, and today our expectations were met and exceeded.
The majority of us trekked today, waiting for longer than we expected at park headquarters, for the trek which began around 11 a.m. Aston was our guide, one of the better; he’s been there since 1991.
My first trek in Kibale was in 1995. I’ve trekked three times since and to see the difference is incredible.
It’s quite easy, today. We walked out of the back of the park headquarters down a gorgeous trail filled with magical plants and wondrous butterflies and amazing trees. Less than 20 minutes later we could hear the chimps screaming and a few minutes after that, we were amongst them.
An ordinary trek takes a total of several hours, of which the majority of that time is actually with the chimps. Our family of 30 stayed with us for nearly 70 minutes.
Aston identified many of the individuals, including an old “retired” male, the second and third males in command, and we watched several mothers with babies. In fact we watched one of the mothers making herself a day nest, with the little kid pulling giant leaves around in an obvious and hillarious mimic.
The crazy vocalization of chimps that most everyone would recognize is accentuated in the forest. This is IMA sound and was truly exciting.
Aston would locate a good viewing spot and position us, and then after a while or when the chimps moved, we would, too. But we never moved very much except the one time that Aston screamed, “Run! Run!”
I looked about me to see if some aberrant chimp was descending on us, but in fact it was that we had wondered into a collection of safari ants. Most of us got out with only a few bites, but Hope Koncal spent a long time picking them off.
Aston explained that there are currently 1,140 chimps identified in the park, of which 120 are fully habituated. The habituation process takes a full 5 years, much longer than with mountain gorillas, although they do start bringing in visitors after three years.
You’d never know they once may have run from us, or thrown things at us, or charged us! I really felt it was only the younger ones who had any interest in us at all.
And we encountered many beautiful birds that seemed to sing constantly: the yellow-rumped and spectacled tinkerbirds, several greenbuls and the loud and piercing croaks of the black-and-white casqued hornbill.
Together with the forest setting, those absolutely magnificent trees that seemed to tower into the stratosphere, it was absolutely a day to remember!
We left Semliki very impressed, but I put the chances of it ever recovering to the outstanding game reserve it once was as very low.
Monday night we were dumped on big time by a Ruwenzori thunderstorm when we were still 3k from the lodge and it was getting dark. Our second sundowner in the Semliki forest had been fabulous, and the orange-red sun setting like a perfect orb through the heavy mist of the Ruwenzori was unforgettable.
But even 3k in a thunderstorm in an open vehicle is not nice. Personally, I prefer the closed, top-goes-up vehicles of the sort we mostly have in Kenya and Tanzania. But I have to admit until a rain storm appears, I’m usually in the minority.
So we got to the lodge soaked through and through, but in less than a half hour everyone was back in the lounge, dry and ready for dinner. Steve Taylor, director of the zoo, was in his Sunday pants, and Steven Chaitoff, at 22 yet to be director of anything, was in a towel. But it became one of those memorable times on safari that we’ll never forget, carrying our memories well beyond the wet and rain to the amazing sundowner sunsets and great time in the forests.
If one is to believe the literature of the lodge, Semliki was once the greatest game reserve in East Africa. Quoting an old hunter, there were standard reports of the biggest most beautiful lion in the world. I heard a lion in the night, but I think the chances slim of ever seeing one here.
Semliki’s outstanding characteristic is its virgin forest which supports an avifauna which is really amazing. The lodge says there are 450 species, but our incredibly good guides said it was really closer to 800 if you include the actual Ruwenzori and sliver of Uganda that exists on the west side of some mountains in the Congolese jungles.
Steve counted 88 species in the two days, which is remarkable, and there were undoubtedly as many more again that we didn’t notice or record seen by our guides. And the forests themselves, mixtures of hardwoods, cactus, ferns, palms and hundreds of epiphytes, is a dream world.
But there’s a main road, heavily used, that cuts the reserve in two, the road from Ft. Portal to Lake Albert, and villages or quasi semi-permanent villages all along the way. There are fuming motorcycles and oil-leaking tankers. It is not the formula for reintroducing big game; it’s just not large enough given that road.
Wednesday morning some of the group went out again, and so more birds, while others went for a walk in the forest with the ranger. Doreen said it was “magical” and Roger was excited about having found chimp nests in an area that isn’t supposed to have habituated chimps. All testimony to the vibrancy of the forest.
After lunch we headed southwest through the city of Ft. Portal to our wonderful Ndali Lodge, where we’ll now be for two nights. It was an easy 2½ hour drive with a short stop in Ft. Portal, a busy, somewhat haphazard town with a deep history that it can’t seem to emerge from.
On the way we encountered – once again, it seems like everywhere – the Chinese building a new highway. And this will be no ordinary road. Everyone always challenges me when I say it will take more than two hours to go from Semliki through Ft. Portal to Ndali. Now they understand.
The roads serpentine on the edge of little mountains like curly hair, sometimes coming back on themselves. It provides spectacular scenery, but every mile the crow flies must be at least two or more on this road!
Tomorrow we begin our chimp trekking in the Kibale Forest.
As I leave for Africa to guide the Cleveland Zoo to see mountain gorillas, it’s worth repeating what a wonderful success story this is.
When EWT sent its first tourist into Rwanda’s Parcs de volcans in 1979, there were less than 320 mountain gorillas, a dangerously low number. At the time scientists had determined that if the population dipped below 280, it was likely the genetic diversity would not be great enough to sustain a long-term population.
There had been a lot of good science already completed back then, by such people as George Schaller and a bevy of Japanese researchers.
Dian Fossey was not a good researcher. Neither was she a good person. She was a media creation who in the end completed no good science and probably set the science of primates on a reverse track.
There’s no question that her media celebrity, though, helped the cause. Maybe even jump-started it.
But for the truth about early mountain gorilla science and the mountain gorilla program that began in earnest in the 1980s and which saved these great beasts, read In the Kingdom of Gorillas: The Quest to Save Rwanda’s Mountain Gorillas by husband/wife researchers Bill Weber and Amy Vedder. Bill and Amy were technically Dian’s first assistants, but as you will learn from reading their popular book, Dian needed almost more medical attention than the gorillas.
The gorilla project essentially begun by Bill and Amy is what saved these grand beasts. Today there are more than 750, despite a series of wars and natural disasters. It is a healthy, robust albeit still endangered population.
What happened?
Basically the business of tourism saved the gorillas. Today every visitor (and there are 56 daily in Rwanda and up to 42 daily in Uganda) pays $500 for an hour with habituated mountain gorilla families.
The enormous revenue this generated was transparently used first to help the gorillas and their habitat, and then, to help the human populations surrounding the habitats which for centuries had been understandably hostile to the animals.
This seed mountain generated more money. Money from research institutes, tangential organizations and even direct from governments.
The model of the mountain gorilla project is one of the most successful in the tourism/conservation arena…
Next week I’ll be blogging from Uganda and then Rwanda as a group of 12 others joins Cleveland Zoo Director, Steve Taylor, and myself as we explore the jungles for these grand beasts and some of their equally interesting cousins.
Tomorrow’s presidential election in Uganda will either be the most unread news story in Africa, or the start of Twevolution in East Africa.
