by Tahir Shah
For some reason, Rick had decided that Oswaldo, Zak and I were indigenous to Rwanda. He was passionate about his task, and thrilled with the material he had collected so far: describing Oswaldo’s incomprehensible monologues as “pure gold dust!”
I hadn’t been to California for nothing. “Right on: I hear you — are you going to transcribe the tapes, Rick?” I asked.
“Yuh, you got it, you got it!” he yelled, working himself into a frenzy. “We”re gonna geta real African linguist back at UCLA to translate the little fella’s words.”
I glanced at Oswaldo, who was ecstatic at finding himself the centre of a major anthropological study.
But something was obviously troubling Rick.
“There’s one thing I have to know...” he blurted out all of a sudden. “I can take the truth, I’m prepared!”
“Rick, what do you want to know?”
“Give it to me straight... I can take it straight!”
“Sure, I’ll tell it to you straight,” I said.
“Is your friend there...” he said pointing to the Patagonian, “really a pygmy?”
Confused at what to answer, I closed my eyes and nodded slowly.
Zak, who had noticed that I was at a loss for words, came to my rescue.
“Vertically challenged genetically,” he corrected. “What”re you going to call the work, Rick?”
Rick and Gracie stiffened. They turned to each other with raised cheeks, each seeking approval from the other to divulge the secret name. Rick funnelled his hands round his mouth, and whispered:
“We”re gonna call it... “WIDE”!”
* * *
We checked into a hostel at Ruhengeri which had six beds in one room. A large spider was embalming its prey above our heads. Rick took pictures with a powerful flash that he had attached to the body of his camera. I empathized with the spider for this intrusion of privacy; for wherever I went Rick and Gracie followed, taking copious notes on all I said and did. To my annoyance, they had found one last spool of recording tape. Marcus liked to watch the sprockets of the recorder turn round and round. He kept on signaling to Rick to turn the machine on, again and again. Rick was worried that the batteries would soon be exhausted; he fumbled in his shoulder bag and pulled out a round disc. It was a luminescent red yo-yo. He handed it to Marcus.
Plates of heavy black beans and carrots, served in a bright green sauce, were brought to the room by the proprietor’s wife. Rick, who had made her stand against a white wall, blinded her, using his high-powered flash unit. She ran away blinking, making wailing noises, to her husband.
There was a fierce knocking at the door of the room. I opened it and the owner of the hostel barged in and grabbed Rick by the throat. Then he yelled in French that the Schmetmans were to leave immediately, and they were to hand over the film they had taken of his wife. Rick dropped the canister of film onto the paw-like palm, and he and Gracie gathered up their belongings. Euphoria replaced by despondency, they walked out into the night to find a new place to stay.
The spider, which had finished digesting all four legs of its dinner, seemed to peer down to see what had happened below. Silence surrounded us. In one corner Oswaldo was scratching away with a blunt pencil. He looked up.
“What are you writing, man?” asked Zak.
“Meng, dis mee traveling boooks.”
“Do you have a title?” I asked. Oswaldo covered the twisted pencil lines with his fingers and nodded.
“I calling eet “LOONG”!”
We walked out of Ruhengeri towards Africa’s first national park, accompanied by the buzzing sound of Marcus’ yo-yo running up and down its string.
Women were working in the fields, bending down and scything grass. One would sing, a scarf tied tightly about her head, as the others joined in with the chorus. A track led through meadows filled with chalky-white and yellow flowers.
The seven volcanoes of the national park suddenly came into view, protruding from the jungle like a line of camels’ humps. Each was covered in a forest of trees and banana plants, which shrouded luxuriant vegetation of all kinds. One plant blended into the next. Many were bowed down under the weight of gigantic green and red fruit. We pressed on, high up into the groves of tall bamboo where the canopy was thick and became denser with each step.
A barefoot child appeared with a machete competently gripped in his hand. The machete was his stock-in-trade: he hacked through the stems, having offered to take us to where the gorillas were.
It began to rain. Some plants collected the water and stored it in their bowl-like leaves. Troops of monkeys swung from branch to branch, and birds called out warning of our arrival across the jungle.
Mountain gorillas are known for moving about one area in small groups, usually guarded by the dominant male, the Silverback, who is said to have strength enough to tear a grown man limb from limb. As no one is ever quite sure where the gorillas are on any one day, it can take hours to locate them.
The boy with the machete cleaved a path just wide enough for us to ease our way through. A rhythm guided his blows, as he wielded the blade skilfully, chopping only what was necessary. We followed in single file; and behind the party the jungle closed in again, healing its wound.
The vegetation was denser than any I had seen before. One plant overlapped with another, creating an abundance of nature that seemed all but impossible for man to dominate.
Everything but ourselves was hidden as if in camouflage and blended perfectly into the green mixture. Dressed in the colors of bright synthetic dyes, we moved with great clumsiness through the habitat: totally intrusive outsiders. We had come from the complexity of the West: where one has to study for fifteen years merely to understand something of the society that it has created. Now back in the very belly of nature, from which our forebears emerged, we were uneasy as if all around us was an alien land.
After some time we reached a small opening where the bamboo stems had been broken away. Zak and Oswaldo sat down, as the boy with the machete pointed to the end of the clearing. A family of wooly black — almost human — forms were moving about. At first they looked to me like humans dressed in gorilla suits with hidden seams.
A female clutched her baby and rocked it up and down, another picked fleas from her behind with neat precision, using the very tips of her black nails. She radiated absolute satisfaction at ridding herself of the insects.
The male Silverback stamped around restlessly, as if he were waiting for the ladies to get ready to go out. Some other gorillas strolled about like a family on a spring afternoon at Brighton.
Then the male jumped to within six feet of where we stood. He peered: with a stare that seemed to pass right through us.
A glare ran across his face and his eyes were filled with tight round drops. Could these primates have been the original people of Gondwanaland? Perhaps to them the Gond tribe was related. As I stared and wondered many things it felt as if I was being reunited with a long-lost companion whom I had never really known.
Dian Fossey had befriended these creatures. One morning in December 1985 she was found with her skull split open: supposedly the work of poachers. My travels had begun to teach me of the irresponsibility of mankind. I had seen sights of destruction created as a by-product of one form of civilization.
Ashtrays fashioned from gorillas’ hands continue to be made: educated people pay for them. They will pay the price in the future. Man must realize that what he does today shapes the world that he will have to inhabit tomorrow.
The child with the machete led us back towards the edge of the forest. As he hopped through the tall bamboo, guiding us back to the main road, I wondered what would become of that place in his lifetime.
ELEVEN
In Search of the Source
“Eyes that look into the darkness,
Tell me where my Sixteen Scores are.”
But the cold stars, twinkling ever,
Said, “Your Gonds we have not seen them.”
/> Four men with straight backs passed us and smiled. Each was holding a corpse’s limb at shoulder height. The body was concealed under a blanket, except for the feet which poked out from under the covering, pointing downwards.
We continued back towards Ruhengeri which disclosed an assortment of characters in a circus-like procession. Boys with hoops played amongst the long stems of grass which engulfed the edges of the track. Towering trees, with wide green leaves and sprawling branches, gave some cover from the warm drops of rain. Then three more corpses with rigid toes were borne away towards the humpbacked range of volcanoes.
Rwanda, especially before the butchery of 1994’s civil conflict, was an unusual country. It felt, somehow, more like an old-fashioned European principality than a remote Central African nation, struggling for development. It seemed inconceivable that such harmony should ever change, as it did so violently in the civil war of 1994. An enchanted place of hills and rolling meadows, it was the sort of domain one might dream of owning, ruling over as one’s own kingdom. I began to understand an idea which had once been expounded to me: that presidents-for-life step into their fantasies, actually believing that the nation is their own property.
Marcus was very happy. He spent much of the time re-enacting movements of the gorillas with Zak. At night he would tie the shiny red yo-yo around his waist, lest it be stolen while he slept. It had taken the place of the chicken.
I had decided to go around Lake Victoria, through Uganda, towards Kenya. There were various reasons; not the least being that I yearned to complete my crossing of Gondwanaland’s greatest central segment.
Oswaldo burbled that he wanted to track the source of the Nile, which runs from near Jinja right up to Egypt: one of the few rivers in the world to flow northwards. He had read his Bible. Since I had made him participate in a ju-ju rite, he insisted, he should be allowed to see where the Nile starts. The Nile after all, held the reeds where Moses was discovered hidden as a baby. In the knowledge that Oswaldo was from a religious family, I thought that accompanying him to the Nile’s source might help him to get over the painful memory of the Babalawo and his Borfima.
A friend in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, had asked me to pay him a visit. So Oswaldo would be my companion once again. He repeated twice:
“Vee go gooing veesiting, we go eest all the way.”
Zak and Marcus wanted to lurk a little longer in Rwanda’s dense foliage. They escorted Oswaldo and me to the main road. We would hitch a ride to Kigali, the capital, situated just west of Rwanda’s centre.
When a tractor pulled up, I threw my saddle-bags and Oswaldo’s luggage aboard. Then the Patagonian and I turned to wish our companions farewell. But they had already gone.
* * *
When Oswaldo and I crossed the no-man’s land into Uganda, I felt the same fear that I had experienced in Zaire.
The immigration men entered our names into a large leather-bound volume and asked politely if we were carrying pornography or explosives. Oswaldo shook his head and collected his kit together. The sky was black as if an artist had painted lines across it with a thick-tipped Chinese brush. Soldiers, no more than fourteen years of age, strutted up and down. Their camouflaged uniforms were belted with straps of hide. The pants and tunic-cuffs were turned up several times whilst the boys waited to grow bigger.
A character who had a calculator and pencil stowed in his tangled mop of hair took my last Rwandese francs. He pulled out instruments and began to calculate with a wild enthusiasm. Having handed him only a few notes, I was given in return five wads of currency — as thick as bricks. The black-marketeer apologized that only the lowest denomination banknotes were available.
Oswaldo and I were stuffing the near-worthless piles of local currency into our pockets when we heard shouts from the checkpoint. An English-looking man climbed off an antique motorcycle with a sidecar attached. He stood six foot five and was exceptionally thin. His face was clean-shaven and covered in freckles. The functionary took the man’s British Passport and asked if he had either explosives or pornography. He had not. The aging black motorcycle was admired by a line of the teenage conscripts. Then, for the first time, the man turned to where Oswaldo and I were standing. I stopped in my tracks. He, too, looked startled. I walked over and greeted him. Oswaldo had no idea what was going on.
“His name is Denzil Fairfax,” I explained to the Argentine. “We were at boarding school together in a remote part of England called Dorset. Denzil was my stripe.”
“Stripps?” said Oswaldo, “Vat dese stripps?” Denzil answered in his low and patient voice, which seemed to hypnotize Oswaldo.
“A Stripe is a prefect, a person who is in charge of another.”
Memories of Denzil sitting on my head and throwing punches at my rib cage would always be vivid. The pain had been incidental, for the very fact that the Head of Rowing was reducing me to a pulp would do much for my image. Public schools are like that.
Denzil was on his way to Kampala. He had bought the old Triumph motorbike in Zaire for fifteen dollars and a pair of jeans. Before we had a moment to protest, Oswaldo and I were bundled aboard, and we were tearing around the potholes towards the Ugandan capital.
Oswaldo sat in the sidecar; he took my saddle-bags and held them on his lap. A peculiar exhilaration arose from moving so fast into a place so unknown.
Uganda’s lush beauty surpassed any other I had seen on the African continent. Innumerable flowers of uncounted species filled one landscape after the next.
We stopped to look for petrol twice on the way to Kampala. It seemed as rare as gold. People had little use for cars, they just walked from one place to another. They had reverted to an almost feudal existence, having been continually beaten down by their presidents-for-life.
But at last the tyranny had ended and a just political regime reigned. It had replaced the same negative type of development as I had seen in Zaire. Only now was the country rebuilding itself, and people were trying to forget their sordid history. Roads had become overgrown, houses lay derelict. But the greatest tragedy was that a warm, hospitable people had become frightened.
The black machine arrived at Kampala as the sun was setting. We took one large room in a rambling hotel near the railway station. The manager showed us to the chamber with some pride. Mildew had until recently covered all four walls, but an industrious soul had systematically scraped it away — leaving only thin vertical lines of greenness which had been missed.
Oswaldo drew the curtains apart to inspect the view. A burst of high-velocity machine-gun fire had left a line of holes, the size of bottle tops, at eye level across the windowpane.
Rolled-up sheets of paper plugged the holes. The manager winced, and Oswaldo closed the curtains gingerly, saying nothing.
Kampala had been a battle zone during the fight for supremacy in Uganda. Damage to the capital had been so extensive that years would pass before the scars of war could be erased. Many shop-fronts were still intact, but the shops themselves had been gutted and vandalized. Windows and walls were lavishly sprayed with bullet holes. Spent casings and shells lay about, serving as a reminder of what had passed. This debris surprised me, as the hostilities had in fact ceased some time before.
Amidst the turbulent years of destruction, sporadic periods of rebuilding had occurred. International organizations had left Kampala alone to solve its problems, with the street skirmishes and car bombs, withdrawing their wealth as they went.
Uganda’s string of dictators was unequalled by any other African nation. The terror of Milton Obote, Idi Amin and others even became headline news in the West, as one after the other pursued his barbarous reign over the lush East African state.
Amin’s coup in 1971 deposed Obote and began one of the most violent periods in all Africa’s history. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were dead. The country was left economically destitute, and the people terrified of their master.
Amin forced the Indians to leave, seizing the billion dollars of inv
estment they left behind. Nationalising all that Obote had left in private hands, he squandered the money. While the executions and torture continued, he foolishly invaded Tanzania, his East African neighbor.
Tanzania’s unexpected counter-attack delivered a serious blow to Uganda, despite its Libyan military aid. Eventually Idi Amin fled into exile to Libya, before settling in Saudi Arabia. Then Obote returned and a new stage of the terror began.
Brigadier Basilio Okello ousted Obote in 1985, before handing over the presidency to Yoweri Museveni, who began working tirelessly to achieve reform. Museveni, throwing off western beliefs about multiparty states as more applicable to Europe, recognized the primacy of tribal affinities in his planning. He had candidates for parliament stand as independents, and brought members of various ethnic groups into his administration.
Denzil offered to take us to dinner at the Speke Hotel — named after the man famous for discovering the source of the Nile at Jinja. It amused me to hear that an Englishman could be credited with finding the origin of the river. As early as 150 AD the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy wrote that the Nile’s origin was amongst the Mountains of the Moon, in the Ruwenzori mountains, not so far to the west. Centuries before Speke’s arrival in Africa, the Arabs had charted the entire length of the Nile. Not only that, but countless generations of Africans had inhabited the “unknown” region for centuries.
We ordered lavish dishes from the menu, all of which promptly came. No other guests were patronising the hotel, and so the manager came over and spoke to us.
“It is wonderful that tourists have started to come to our country again,” he said. “So many bad men fought for this city. So much blood was spilt, we just want to forget all those men and their time. We don’t want any more war and killing: you are very welcome in our country.”
There was a charming naivety about him and many other Ugandans that I met. It was more than the desire to please which I had become accustomed to in India or even Zaire. Something about it was almost as if everyone bore the burden of each individual misdeed which caused the past tragedy. I felt safer in Uganda than at any other time. It is an interesting paradox, that the people of this nation are so passive and honest, but they should have been ruled over by a series of such violent and despotic men.