Kings and chimpanzees
on Thea's Blog (Uganda), 06/May/2010 17:23, 34 days ago
Busy busy. Three weeks ago the Tooro King, officially the youngest king the world, turned 18. There were massive celebrations spanning 2 days with fireworks, favourite Ugandan pop stars, lots of alcohol and - judging from the carpet of condoms in the palace grounds the next morning - quite a bit of nookie. Duncan came down with a gang of journalist friends. Somehow, despite not having a proper press pass, he managed to get himself in to the main arena with me clinging to his coat tails. We had prime viewing of young King Oyo, who looked completely, miserably bored throughout, and President Museveni, who seemed to be asleep for most of it. The ceremonies went on for hours but were visually transfixing. There were hypnotic spear-dancers from the king’s clan, brightly-dressed ululating aunties and 50 virginal beauties tottering about on impossible heels. About half way through, Museveni woke up, put on some kind of lion’s beard over his pin-striped suit and joined in the rituals. There were two tents full of kings and queens from across Africa, many of them naked beyond a spattering of gold jewellery and an animal skin. We were all hoping Col Gadaffi would show – he is rumoured to have a special place in his heart for the queen mum – but he sent some dull-looking envoys instead.The following weekend I was treated to a trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park by my friend Bill Bruty who– fortuitously for me – was stranded in Uganda by the dust cloud. All the animals seemed to be having it off. We saw humping elephants, humping monitoring lizards and probably humping hippo, although it was hard to tell because they were mostly underwater. We also came across a pride of 7 lion,hidden in the grass on a plain full of Uganda Cob. They looked too lazy to hump. Perhaps the highlight of the trip for me was a trek through the chimpanzee gorge. For about an hour and a half we scrambled up and down through the undergrowth, falling on our arses, getting slashed by thorns and completely dripping with sweat. We saw lots of chimp signs – eaten fruits, nests, droppings – but not so much as a whisker of a real, live chimp. We were just resigning ourselves to having wasted 50usd for nothing but a bruised bum, when the tracker spotted a chimp rapidly clambering out of a tree. This initiated a surreal scene in which we found ourselves running headlong back in to the gorge in pursuit of a hairy primate not that much smaller than us. I was first in the queue – my excitement having got the better of me – and so it was me who got the full brunt of the chimp’s shriek as itspun round to ward off its pesky human pursuers. A split second later the air was full of shrieking (my own in the mix) as the rest of the group of 30 responded to their friend’s distress. A minute later two big males wandered out of the bushes, gave us a once over, itched their balls, then wandered off again. The experience was kind of magical, if a little alarming, and definitely worth the cuts and bruises.