It is Tuesday, May 8, and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) calls to invite me to be part of a two-day visit to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest national park, a Unesco World Heritage site famous for being the home of Uganda’s mountain gorillas.
I remember I studied about Bwindi in school but that was a long time ago and I had never been there. On Wednesday I arrived at UWA’s Kamwokya head office and I was treated to a spectacle; my co-trackers were armed to the teeth with rain jackets, gumboots, jungle boots, heavy clothes, name it.
My mind runs to Karamoja where I was at the end of 2016 visiting Kidepo national park. Karamoja is very hot during the day but chilly at night. I shudder to imagine the same coldness that would eat away at me without much effort.
I have only a thin sweater and hot-weather clothes. I decide to google about Bwindi. Google tells me the park is in Kanungu district. I have not been to Kigezi sub-region before, which excites me, but thinking about the distance sends chills down my spine. I have a phobia for long distances, being city-born.
Google also tells me that Bwindi is a rain forest! There, it needs no sign to start raining cats and dogs. I realise why these journalists and UWA staffers are dressed this way.
We set off at 8am and make a ten-minute stop at the Lukaya roadside market to buy some gonja and roast meat, and again in Mbarara to pick up another journalist.
The next stop is three hours later at 3pm in Rukungiri for lunch. Restaurants in this part of the country, home to FDC strongman Dr Kizza Besigye, are a rarity. When we chance on one, whose name I can’t recall, the food is really horrible. The matoke is matoke only for technical purposes. The rice looks and tastes more like posho. We leave grumbling.
In fact, save for the men, the women decline to eat. At around 3:30pm, we leave for Kanungu and after the turn from Rukungiri town after Makobere High School, the road is impassable.
It has been graded recently and a heavy downpour coupled with weak sandy soils cannot allow small cars through, but four-wheel drives navigate through. We get out to push our now stuck minibus.
The task is insurmountable; after resignation, boda boda riders tell us of a bypass. A small village path that can allow only one-way traffic.
After this point thankfully, there is no any other incident save for the extremely sharp bends known by Bakiga as enengo on a murram road caved out of the edges of the mountain ranges that make the better part of Kigezi sub- region.
Soon, we are in Kihiihi, the town once represented by former NRM yellow boy Amama Mbabazi. It is way past 5pm; we decide to sleep here and set off at 6:30am, early enough to join the other trackers at 8am.
Gorilla census
Unlike Kidepo, a savannah grassland, where your eyes can see as far as 10 kilometers, here it is the opposite. A few metres from the UWA offices begins the thicket which you have to snake through like river Munyaga that flows from the mountain and is now being tapped for hydro power.
Christopher Masaba, the acting chief warden, takes us through what gorilla census means. I imagined that a gorilla census meant an actual head count. But here they depend on science and DNA.
Masaba tells us this is the third census of the gorillas. The last count was in October 2011; then, Uganda had 480 mountain gorillas with 402 in Bwindi and 78 in Mugahinga national park in Kisoro district bordering Rwanda.
That census also revealed that out of the 880 mountain gorillas in the world, Uganda has the largest share with the remaining 400 in Virunga national park in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ismail Bakeebwa, the lead tracker, tells us that when they are counting gorillas, they go to the nests they slept in for the three previous nights and take samples of their dung which is analyzed and then stored in electronic gadgets.
Apparently, before gorillas leave a nest, each gorilla first defecates and the size and number of dung mounds tell how many slept in that nest. These results are then sent to Germany for DNA analysis to know the actual number.
These gorillas live in families and currently Bwindi has 16 families, each with a name. We are lucky to visit on the day when the Rushegura family of 16 decided to sleep just a 30 minutes’ walk from the UWA offices.
Rita Namatovu, a ranger/guide, tells us there are days tourists trek for five hours without locating them. Thirty minutes of climbing a mountain is certainly no walk in the park. The forest is thick with thorns and other climbing creepers with very wet soils. You have to be attentive.
Going up is hard but climbing down is even harder. The trackers show us how it is done. The coldness that first greeted us when we arrived at the park is replaced by heat and sweat as a result of the climb to see the ebigaji, as the Bakiga call the gorillas.
The Rushegura family is easily located and the silverback, Kabukozho who has been in charge since 2014, leads his family away from the piercing eyes and cameras.
Earlier we had been told about the dos and don’ts. One of them is not to run when a gorilla charges, not to carry any drink or food that the gorillas may want to share with you, not to touch the young gorillas when they touch your shoes or admire your clothes.
But this does not stop many from running away when Kalemeberezi attempts to grab, or was it slap, one of us filming him with a phone.
Simplicious Gesa, a communications officer with UWA, tells me that gorillas fetch the most revenue for Uganda. Foreign tourists are charged $600 each to visit the park.
“We must do everything to protect these animals because of their great contribution to our economy,” Gesa says.
Bashir Hangi, the UWA spokesman, agrees, adding Ugandans must realise that protecting wildlife is everyone’s responsibility.
“In the past people hunted and killed these animals oblivious of their contribution but what UWA has done is to give them a new lease of life to protect them against poachers. They [poachers] are still a problem but if all stakeholders come together, we will protect these animals,” he said.
Are gorillas as magnificent as people say? Oh yes! Was it worth the uphill trek? Definitely. It was the long trip back to Kampala that I was weary of.
Some of the gorilla families in Uganda
Mubare Gorilla Group (11 gorillas)
The first habituated gorilla group, Mubare has been visited by tourists since 1991.
Habinyanja Gorilla Group (17 gorillas)
The group was opened for visitation by trekkers in 1996.
The Rushegura Gorilla Group (16 gorillas)
This group once ventured out of the park and a group on safari had the gorillas outside their tent during the night until the next morning, to the tourists’ delight.
The Oruzogo Gorilla Group (17 gorillas)
The Oruzogo group has become popular with tourists because of the playful energy exhibited by the juveniles and toddlers.
Bitukura Gorilla Group (13 gorillas)
Unlike some other groups, there has been peace and harmony in the Bitukura Gorilla Group, and no usual infighting.
Kyaguliro Gorilla Group (20 gorillas)
Originally habituated in 1995, Kyaguliro was set aside as a research group studied by the German Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology.
Nshongi Gorilla Group (seven gorillas)
The Nshongi gorilla family group is named after the Nshongi River where they were first found.
Mishaya Gorilla Group (12 gorillas)
This is a breakaway group that was originally a part of Nshongi.
Kahungye Gorilla Group (17 gorillas)
The group was opened for visitors and gorilla tracking in 2011 after being habituated, a process that takes over two years.
Busingye Gorilla Group (nine gorillas)
This is a splinter group from Kahungye – an event that happened in August of 2012.
Bweza Gorilla Group (12 gorillas)
This group broke away from the Nshongi because of too many feuds within the group at the end of 2013.
Nkuringo Gorilla Group (12 gorillas)
A 94-year-old woman in 2013 visited Nkuringo family and fulfilled her lifelong dream of seeing gorillas in the wild. She was, however, carried on a stretcher by porters into the forest.
Nyakagezi Gorilla Group (10 gorillas)
The Nyakagezi family is the only habituated gorilla group in Mgahinga Gorilla national park. There are over 80 mountain gorillas found in Mgahinga.
Edited from Kabiza.com
bakerbatte@observer.ug
