The Impenetrable Forest

by Thor Hanson

  The Impenetrable

  Forest

  Gorilla Years in

  Uganda

  THOR HANSON

  Words in local languages are italicized throughout the text and defined in the glossary. The English dialogue often reflects Ugandan vernacular.

  Copyright © 2001, 2008, 2014 by Thor Hanson.

  All rights reserved.

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  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 13:

  ISBN 10:

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to print previously published material:

  Houghton Mifflin Company: From In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall. Copyright © 1971 by Hugo and Jane van Lawick-Goodall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. All rights reserved. From Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey. Copyright © 1983 by Dian Fossey. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Co. All rights reserved.

  Random House, Inc.: From Congo by Michael Crichton. Copyright © 1980 by Michael Crichton. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. All rights reserved.

  HarperCollins: From The Essential Haiku, edited by Robert Hass. Copyright © 1994. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

  Lonely Planet Publications: 1997 Guide to East Africa. Copyright © 1997 by Lonely Planet. Reprinted by permission of Lonely Planet Publications. All rights reserved.

  The University of Chicago Press: From The Mountain Gorilla by George Schaller. Copyright © 1963, 1976 by The University of Chicago. Reproduced by permission of The University of Chicago Press.

  East African Educational Publishers, Ltd.: From “An Elegy” by Laban Erapu in Poems from East Africa. Copyright © 1971. Reproduced by permission of East African Educational Publishers, Limited.

  Pollinger Limited: From No Room in the Ark by Alan Moorehead. Copyright © 1959. Reproduced by permission of Pollinger Limited and the Estate of Alan Moorehead.

  For my parents–

  the fisherman who taught me to persevere

  and the artist who gave me words

  Praise for The Impentrable Forest

  "Thor Hanson's memoir is a fascinating and enjoyable read. Particularly timely, it gives us great insight into conservation and ecotourism in a world that is often harsh and cruel. More so, though, Impenetrable Forest transforms the mountain gorillas of Uganda and the people who care for them into deep, complex, loving characters. "

  —Garth Stein, NYT Bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

  "...a downright wonderful book. A fine writer and a superb naturalist, he brings the true observer's eye and the artist's sensibility to one of the most compelling subjects in all natural history....an unforgettable book—funny, tragic and brilliant."

  —Robert Michael Pyle, author of Sky Time in Gray's River

  "Thor Hanson’s Impenetrable Forest is a fascinating account of African reality that explores vital issues for the survival of mountain gorillas. It is an engaging personal story of change and challenge, an articulate natural and cultural history, and a clear call to conscience to preserve habitat and species."

  —Phil Condon, author of Montana Surround & Clay Center

  Praise for Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

  “A fascinating book about the most remarkable—and beautiful—of all avian evolutionary adaptations, with wonderful accounts of ornithological investigations and the solving of biological quandaries and questions, all of it unusually well-written. Highly recommended.”

  —Peter Matthiessen, National Book Award-winning author of The Snow Leopard

  “A winning book about the extraordinary place of feathers in animal and human history…The unifying element in his writing is a contagious curiosity about the explainable world…. Feathers is an earthbound book, but this does not keep the author—or the reader—from looking up in wonder.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Thor Hanson’s new book takes on the intriguing subject of feathers. With infectious enthusiasm, he describes them, from their earliest known incarnations to their place in the modern world…. Hanson’s unpretentious style makes what is essentially an excellent scientific work into an enjoyable read for the ignorant and uninitiated….an illuminating study of an evolutionary marvel.”

  —The Economist

  Also by Thor Hanson:

  Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1. Waragi Dreams

  2. The Gold Dust Twins

  3. The Kabaka’s Fence

  4. Free Shoes for Dominico

  5. Dances like a Chicken

  6. Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

  7. America’s Game

  8. They’re Everywhere

  9. Arming Makale

  10. A Strange Man

  11. Baumgärtel’s Car

  12. Royal Backwash

  13. Friends

  14. Last Rites

  15. Changes

  16. Lessons

  17. The Toughest Job

  18. Some Grains Will Perish

  19. Visitors

  20. The South Side

  21. The Impenetrable Forest

  22. Bye, Phenny, Bye

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Suggested Reading

  How You Can Help

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply indebted to the government and people of Uganda, and to the U.S. Peace Corps for providing me with the platform for this experience. I would also like to thank my long-suffering family and friends for putting up with me—both while I was away and while I was writing this book.

  I think the author of any personal narrative owes everything to the people and places that make up his story. While I can never thank every person (or gorilla), let me acknowledge the friendship and support of these key characters: Liz Macfie, Kelleni Archabald, John Dubois, Rob Rothe, Dave Snedecker, Kathleen Henderson, Ted Hazard, Eunice Kang, Ed, Steve, Monica, Erwin, Alice, Jenny, Erin, Scott, Kelly, J, Rose Ssebatindira, the Ntale family, Commander JJ, Ignatius Achoka, Blasio Bbyekwaso, Phenny Gongo, Hope Nsiime, Tibesigwa Gongo, Enos Komunda, Betunga William, Alfred Twinomujuni, Medad Tumugabirwe, Caleb Tusiime, Levi Rwahamuhanda, Ephraim Akampurira, Agaba Philman, Abel Muhwezi, Magezi Richard, Stephen Mugisha, Prunari Rukundema, Charles Kyomukama, James Tibamanya, Mishana James, Yosamu Baleberaho, George Gachero, Benjamin Bayende, Gaston Kanyamanza, Benon, Daudi, Christopher, Stanley, Bafaki, Dominico, Eliphaz, and all the good folks from Bizenga to Kanyashande.

  Richard Nelson provided valuable editorial comments on the manuscript, and I’m also grateful to Gavin Caruthers and Eileen Bertelli for their enthusiasm and support. Betunga William provided essential help and companionship on recent travels to Uganda, and special thanks go out to Laura Blake Peterson and Steve Kasdin at Curtis Brown for arranging this edition. Finally, I am ever grateful to my wife, Eliza, and to my son, Noah, for everything.

  Prologue

  I speak of Africa and golden joys.

  —William Shakespeare

  from Henry IV, Part II, ca. 1597

  From my back window the forest rose in a wall of green, every possible shade, as if the whole spectrum were made from one color. Pale branches and tree trunks tangled through the foliage in an incomprehensible lattice, like veins of wood in a vast emerald sea. The stillness seemed ancient, a heavy, tropical pall broken only by the water-drop cries of a coucal or the soft chatter of waxbills. At dusk, the heat and birdsong gave way to cricket rasp, a deafening metallic backdrop to nights of mist and moonlight. I slept with the shutters ajar, half alert, listening for another kind of sound, haunting
and unmistakable: the staccato chest beats and deep coughing barks of a mountain gorilla family, my closest rain forest neighbors and the subject of my work in Africa.

  I joined the Peace Corps in the summer of 1993, committed to the idea of two years abroad with only the vaguest of job descriptions: “Natural resource management in Uganda.” I’d turned down a similar post in the Gambia after a trip to the library yielded only four articles about that tiny riverbank country—all from medical journals about malaria. The literature on Uganda seemed comparatively vast, and while many stories focused on the despotic reign of Idi Amin, they also mentioned the Mountains of the Moon, the Great Rift Valley, and Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, romantic features of a landscape that Winston Churchill once dubbed “the pearl of Africa.” The nature of my assignment, however, remained a mystery until I reached the country and sat for my last preservice interview. While the other volunteers answered questions about tree planting, teaching, and agricultural skills, my interrogation had a different focus:

  “Do you work well in isolation?”

  “How would you feel about living seventeen kilometers from the nearest market?”

  “What can you tell us about your experience with field studies and large animals?”

  “Can you picture yourself living in a remote tropical rain forest?”

  I answered every query with feigned confidence, and it paid off when our supervisor, Rose Ssebatindira, called everyone together to announce the final site placements. We gathered around a large map, and she read out loud from a list, matching volunteers to the cities and towns where they would spend the next two years. “Thor,” she said finally, pointing vaguely at a roadless area in the far southwest corner of the country, “we’re sending you to the middle of nowhere.”

  If the Peace Corps had held a job lottery, then I surely hit the Powerball jackpot. Rose’s “middle of nowhere” turned out to be an isolated patch of jungle called Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home to elephants, chimpanzees, monkeys, pythons, antelope, and nearly half the world’s population of mountain gorillas. For two years I worked with Uganda National Parks and the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP), helping develop tourism in the newly formed Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. As supervisor of in-forest activities, I spent my days habituating wild gorillas, training local guides, constructing a network of trails, and struggling to find a sense of place in the tiny village where I made my home.

  The project in Bwindi introduced gorilla tourism as an economic incentive for conservation, an integral piece of the ongoing effort to save the species. As a self-admitted eco-nerd, this assignment was a dream job, and I fully expected mountain gorillas to be the focus of my life in Uganda, and the subject of any writing that might come of it. But as early as our training period, when I lived with a local family near Kampala, I found myself equally captivated by the warmth and generosity of the Ugandan people, and by the country’s complex culture and history. I came to realize that one cannot discuss the future of gorillas meaningfully without placing them in the social and political context of modern Africa. Successful conservation efforts depend upon reliable human frameworks; parks and wildlife populations are only as stable as the systems that support them. Uganda’s mountain gorillas exist as part of the inseparable weave of people and landscape, and there will not be hope for either until there is hope for both.

  So while a good portion of this narrative deals with mountain gorillas, the book shouldn’t be mistaken for an in-depth analysis of the species. My observations were made over long periods of daily contact, but our program was designed for tourism, not research. For a detailed scientific examination of gorillas, I refer the reader to the pioneering works of George Schaller and Dian Fossey, and to the many primatologists who have followed in their footsteps. Additionally, I’ve included a select list of references for people interested in learning more about Uganda’s rich history and cultural heritage, and there is a glossary to explain any words or phrases in dialect.

  The following events fall roughly in chronological order. I begin by establishing cultural context the same way it was established for me, through total immersion in the life of a Ugandan family. For those eager to reach the gorillas, know that they will arrive in Chapter Four, their story all the richer after learning something of the country in which they live. The book then continues through two years in the Impenetrable Forest and ends, as any African journey should end, on the palm-shaded beaches of Zanzibar. The characters encountered along the way are real people, and I’m deeply grateful to all of them for allowing me to tell their stories, as well as my own.

  1

  Waragi Dreams

  Waganda, as I found subsequently, are not in the habit of remaining incurious before a stranger. Hosts of questions were fired off at me about my health, my journey, its aim, Zanzibar, Europe and its people, the seas and the heavens, sun, moon and stars, angels and devils, doctors, priests, craftsmen….

  —Henry Morton Stanley reaches Uganda

  from Through the Dark Continent, 1878

  “Do you drink?”

  The question caught me off guard and I hesitated, searching his somber eyes for a hint of expectation. I hardly knew the man. Did he drink? A yes answer might offend him, but a no might sound sanctimonious.

  “Uh…sometimes?” I answered cautiously.

  Jackpot. His eyes lit up and a broad smile creased his bearded face. For the first time in our several hours together, Tom Ntale looked excited, even eager.

  “Wait here,” he said, and rushed out of the room, a curtain of tiny yellow fly beads rattling and swaying across the doorway in his wake.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and found myself momentarily alone in the house. Susan had disappeared next door with Aunt Florence, and Sam was at the spring, fetching water. My back ached from sitting stiffly all afternoon, and my face felt bent and sore from smiling. I took the opportunity to stand and stretch and examine the Ntale family sitting room in detail.

  If Elvis and my grandmother had ever conspired to decorate a tree fort, this would have been it. Two overstuffed red velour chairs matched my own crimson seat, crowded around a narrow coffee table and facing a large velvety sofa. Crocheted pink and lime antimacassars lay draped across each piece of furniture, and the panes of a small glass-fronted credenza were pinned across with beaded lace. Canary yellow walls peeked out from behind a kaleidoscopic clutter of photos and advertisements cut from old magazines: Lux brand facial soap, Pepsi-Cola, House of Manji Tea Biscuits, and a bug spray called Doom, guaranteed to “kill all dudus.” There was a framed photograph of a yawning lion, a collection of grainy black-and-white family portraits, and a large poster of the pope. Brightly patterned sisal mats covered the concrete floor, a final touch in this haphazard collision of African and colonial English design. Behind me, I noticed two shelves in a high corner filled with rows of empty bottles—Scotch, bourbon, gin—displayed like a trophy case. Uh-oh.

  Beads rattled suddenly, and Tom was back, gripping two glasses and a tall, ominous-looking bottle of clear liquid.

  “Local whiskey,” he told me, sitting down to pour. “We make it from bananas.”

  Tom handed me a full glass, and we made toasts to America and Africa before taking hearty gulps of what appeared to be jet fuel. A hot fire poker burned down the inside of my throat and into my stomach. I looked away, eyes watering, trying not to cough or choke out loud.

  “Ahh,” Tom said, staring at his half-empty glass with satisfaction. “How do you see it?”

  “Good,” I croaked as the flames spread into my limbs and my face flushed red. “Tastes…bananas,” I managed to add, with what I hoped was a winning smile.

  “Yes”—he seemed genuinely pleased—“we ferment banana juice, then distill it. Sometimes twice. This one is called waragi.”

  When the fire began to fade, I did finally taste a hint of banana, as if someone may have dipped an old peel briefly into the vat of spirits. Only then was I sure that my
host hadn’t mistakenly served me a glass of kerosene. I’ve heard that good moonshine burns with a blue flame, the sign of healthy, intoxicating ethyl alcohol. Booze that burns yellow is a methyl-based solvent, where the hangover symptoms sometimes include blindness or raving insanity. I took another sip of the waragi. Definitely yellow flame.

  Tom clapped his hands suddenly. “Photographs!” he exclaimed, and began rummaging through a pile of scrapbooks and old newspapers beneath the coffee table. “You must see our snaps!” He pulled out an armful of albums and loose pictures, smiled, and topped up our glasses.

  Yellow flame or no, the waragi brought with it a welcome release from the day’s awkward formality. Tom and I had exhausted our supply of polite greetings back at the training center, sitting uncomfortably silent while twenty other cross-cultural pairs slowly formed up around us. It was the first full day of Peace Corps training for Uganda’s 1993 volunteer group, and families from all around the small town of Kajansi had come to collect us for a ten-week stay in their homes. When every wide-eyed American was paired with his or her respective hosts, we gathered for a short speech from the training director—thanks to the Ugandans and “go, team” encouragement for the dazed volunteers.

  I listened numbly, watching a flock of Ross’s turacos hop from branch to branch in the tree above us like huge emerald ravens. They called out in hoarse croaks, pecking at clusters of tiny blue fruit with their broad, clownish bills. The warm air smelled faintly of earth and blossoms, with the acrid tinge of burning grass and wood smoke from a thousand cook fires. Drums and singing drifted up from the valley below, and in the distance, over the farms and rooftops, Lake Victoria stretched away south to the horizon, a deep blue sea capping white in the breeze.

  It was beautiful, exotic, and definitely a long way from Kansas. Simple jet lag told me I’d traveled far, let alone moving into the village home of an African family. The speeches continued, and I glanced sideways at Tom Ntale, my new “father,” a proud, serious-looking man of middle years, with thick gray hair, a high forehead, and wide-spaced, solemn eyes. He seemed more stern than the other parents, and I wondered briefly if he thought he’d gotten a lousy volunteer. I was short, sunburned, and young enough to be his son, and I was sweating like a boxer.