Before I’ve had a chance to soak up the “Pearl of Africa”, as Winston Churchill once dubbed Uganda, I took a quick detour into Joseph Conrad’s heart of darkness. Sitting in a bar last night keeping myself hydrated with African ales, a local man wearing a butterscotch suit with sneakers and a quarterslot gap in his front choppers asked me if I planned to go see the gorillas while here in Uganda. I nodded and he went on to sell me his pitch for joining the group he was leading into the Congo. That is, the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, formerly Belgian Congo.
His sales job seemed solid, not too aggressive, thoroughly answered my sceptical questions, and was able to convince me that, despite persistent reports of armed tribal clashes and political instability from a protracted civil war, the mountain range we would be trekking over to find these great apes is completely safe and devoid of conflict. I did some quick research on the internet to discover that, despite the U.S. State Department’s dire travel advisory warning “not to enter the DRC under any circumstances”, the Congo did indeed recently open up for travel after a long closure following the abduction and murder of a group of tourists.
The only other places to view gorillas are in Uganda and Rwanda but there are waiting lists to acquire permits, some of which are six months long. I had two hours to make the decision since the group was leaving in the morning. After meeting a few of the others suckered into going on this trip, I caved. I’d much rather die on a mountain slope in the company of gorillas than get meat racked on an urban highway. I just privately hoped that machetes wouldn’t be involved. I packed a small bag of gear and sent off one email to my friend Frank. It was a bit melodramatic but the jist of it was: “Im going to the Congo. If you don’t receive an email from me in 72 hours, call my parents and tell them to send in the Marines, or Mike Tyson, or Jackie Chan, or Stormin’ Normin Schwartzkopf or Dick Cheney, or anyone capable of getting my white ass out of there alive”.
At 6:30am the next morning, I boarded a bus with two Frenchmen, three Swedes, and the Butterscotch Bandit. By 6:45am, the bus stopped and everyone offloaded. There were no brakes. We waited by the roadside for 90 minutes while a mechanic worked on it. After fixing it, I pulled him aside and asked him if I was going to die on this piece of shit bus. I told him all hell would be unleashed since it would prevent me from informing Frank that I made it back safely from the Congo which would set off a string of unnecessary paranoid phone calls, faxes, emails, and clandestine coded satellite messages. (Although I admit it would have been amusing to listen to my dad retell the story of how he convinced Donnie Rumsfeld to deploy the 101st Airborne division to rescue me). The mechanic, who looked qualified only to repair rickshaws, smiled and told me to just make sure to sit towards the back of the bus for minimal impact.
We snaked up beautifully terraced landscapes cultivated with coffee and tea, navigating the final few hours on a dirt road just a few inches wider than the bus. We eventually arrived at a small border town called Kisoro at the extreme southwestern corner where Uganda meets the Congo just as dusk was settling in. We collected our bags from the undercarriage of the bus, which was filled with dust from the road. It took us ten minutes of wiping down the bags to determine whose belong to whom. Butterscotch Boy lead us to a house with a crooked dangling sign posted out front which read “Good Times Hotel”. Candles were lit, not for ambience but in lieu of electricity. I crashed while praying to the gorilla gods.
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