Roger Diski in Sierra Leone - Part I

Photo by Roger Diski

It was a bouncy one-hour boat ride to Bunce Island this morning, but the island itself was fascinating. It was a slave processing factory. In one end, out the other, having been checked for health (unfit ones despatched), sorted, sold, branded and packed for transportation. All done in one compact island site, the furthest upstream that the slaver boats could go. The ruins are very atmospheric - giant baobabs, huge buttress trees, strangler figs. The slave dungeons are now inhabited by bats. Our guide is excellent - nice guy and knowledgeable on history.

The tour took an hour. Bunce Island was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 2008 and now there is an American engineer and team about to embark on stabilizing the most crumbly bits. We met him.

Then a 45-minute boat ride to Aberdeen jetty for a reduced tour of Freetown, taking in the Cotton Tree and the new war memorial, which opened two days ago. We were told we were the first tourists to visit - they hadn't printed tickets yet! Then a few more sights - big market, quayside market, crafts market, book market, then off to the hotel.

At  Country Lodge now, sitting in the veranda bar having the local beer and it's about 30ºC. Very nice.

Roger Diski Tears His Trousers - Adventures in Rwanda

Chimp Tracking in Nyungwe Forest

 It’s not easy. You have to work hard to find the chimps, and the first part of working hard is getting an early morning call at 3.30.  After muffins, croissants and a strong cup of coffee, we were on the road at 4.15 to pick up our guide from the forest HQ. Then it’s about an hour’s drive to the part of the forest where the chimp tracking takes place. Here, those who wished could hire a porter to carry their backpacks, and then we were off into the forest at about 6am, as dawn broke. This is the time when the chimps are active, feeding up in the fig trees and moving through the forest canopy searching for food.

You start off on a forest trail and it all seems fairly easy, if a bit steep; but then, when the chimps are located, it’s a machete job, cutting a trail through the rainforest - and suddenly we are following paths through undergrowth where no human foot has trodden before. It’s steep and we are walking over a carpet of vines that can be a couple of feet thick; anything I grab onto is rotten, has no substance, comes away in my hand - and we are trying to be quiet so that the chimps do not clear off before we get there. My lightweight trekking trousers were ripped apart by a thorn, and I will take a pair of gardening gloves next time.

We encountered our group of chimps at about 10am. There were three of them, eating in different trees. We had a few minutes looking at them, took some pictures and then they moved on. I think we were making too much noise. Was our brief encounter worth four hours’ tracking? Well, we all felt it was, that we’d witnessed something special, and that the tracking/ trekking had been a wonderful       adventure.

We spent another hour or so trying to locate a second group, but failed and came out of the forest lower down the slopes. As we came out of the forest, the cultivation began. There is no intermediate zone: where the forest ends, banana trees begin. Every inch of land that can be, is cultivated in Rwanda. It has the densest population in Africa.

Soon we came across a Twa (pygmy) village. Everyone seemed pleased to see us, and we took some pictures, bought some pots and masses of children gathered around. A 4x4 came down to collect us so we didn’t have to climb back up the forest slopes and we were back at our starting point by midday. An hour’s drive took us back to Nyungwe Forest Lodge where lunch awaited.

Roger Diski catches a glimpse of twin gorillas born 3 February 2011

Gorilla gives birth to twins in Volcanoes National Park
 

It’s extremely rare for mountain gorillas to give birth to living twins – the last time was in 2004 - so when I heard last week that this had just happened within the Hirwa group of gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, I decided to try to get a look at them.

 We’d been climbing steadily through bamboo forest on Mt Sabyinyo for about an hour when the gorillas came tumbling down the hill to greet us. This is the only way I can describe our meeting. They were curious and playful. The Hirwa group comprises fifteen individuals, with several playful young ones and a few adorable babies among them. We had an hour with them and I can only describe it as an interaction, rather than a viewing. We were moving the whole time, mainly down the slopes, as they cavorted in front of us, behind us, above us.

But where were the twins? Suddenly, we caught the swiftest glimpse of a mother holding two tiny babies to her breast, one in each arm. They had gorgeous twinkly eyes.  And then she was gone. Our guide told us that the mothers are extremely protective and hide away during the first few days after giving birth.

It was a brief encounter, too fast to take a photo, but the image remains in my memory. In fact, it’s not easy taking gorilla photos. They are jet black in a dark forest and flash is not permitted. All too often the pictures look like black lumps – more like bears than gorillas. But these are a couple of my better shots.

Laugh till your sides ache in Rwanda

From ROGER DISKI

Visited Iby' Iwacu, the ex-poachers village near PNV, today. What a welcome! The star attraction is the 67-year-old pygmy who dances, sings and raps welcoming songs with great gusto throughout the entire visit.

The village land was given to the poachers so that they could make a living by alternative means. There are 1000 inhabitants, and their main occupation is agriculture –planting food crops such as potatoes and tree tomatoes in the rich volcanic earth - and shaping lava blocks into valuable building stone. But they also have a fantastic hour-long cultural show for visitors, brilliantly hosted by Emmanuel.

There is a medicine man who, without any mumbo-jumbo, shows you the plants and preparations used to heal a variety of ailments – camphor for chest infections, aloe vera and honey for skin complaints, a blend of five herbs as a muscle relaxant, something to help you get pregnant, and of course herbal Viagra.

 They’ve built a replica of the old royal palace, and their skill is in persuading you to participate. They managed to dress me up as the king and took me through the various rituals – explaining the true significance of the ‘king-size’ bed, which, on occasion, had to accommodate many maidens.

They got the men to learn to shoot arrows, the women to grind sorghum, all our achievements punctuated by cries of guma guma guma (means ‘bravo’ evidently) to celebrate our success at these endeavours.  The visit culminated with an impressive display of traditional ‘intore’ dancing. Amazingly, they even persuaded the guests to join them.

I’ve been to a few cultural villages, and they can be excruciatingly embarrassing or feel phoney. This was a pure delight, and felt ‘authentic’ in the sense that they made us feel they loved doing it, were pleased to see us and were having fun. It was done with a sense of humour – my companion, Kath, said she laughed so much her sides ached - and we were made to feel part of that wonderful Rwandan community.