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nine or six?
Thursday, August 3 2017
location: Chobe Safari Lodge, Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda
It was another morning at Chobe, with its great coffee and omelette station that only grandma took advantage of. She got her omelette, ate a quarter of it, and had the rest taken away, same as always. Somehow we began discussing the matter of which animals chew cuds and which do not. I have a pretty clear idea of how all this works due to my deep knowledge of evolutionary biology. I know all the antelopes chew cuds, and that odd-toed ungulates like rhinos and zebras do not, though I was less certain about camels. Since everyone there but me was Jewish with a firm understanding of what was and was not kosher, I referred them to their dietary laws, which place great importance on the chewing of cuds (though, as I recall, the cud-cum-hoof understanding of the Biblical sages was wildly inaccurate). I segued into a discussion fish, which have their parameters with regard to edibility under Jewish dietary laws. I mentioned that some fish don't just lack fins and scales (required to be kosher), they also lack eyes and lower jaws. I said that the hagfish and lamprey come from a part of the vertebrate family tree that preceded the evolution of the lower jaw, which, I said, had evolved from bones that had acted as gill supports. This pithy factoid seemed to have the intended effect of being both entertaining and educational, at least for the kids (and, truth be known, everyone but grandma). "Aren't you glad your uncle majored in evolutionary biology in college?" my mother-in-law rhetorically asked. "Actually, I think I knew all this before I went to college," I said. "But you were probably did well in your classes..." my mother-in-law elaborated. "Not really," I said truthfully. It seemed my mother-in-law had either forgotten or gone into denial about the fact that I am a college drop-out (something I know that came up in the Galapagos) and she expressed surprise when Gretchen casually reminded her of this fact. "But I thought you have a master's degree," my mother-in-law pleaded (this was evidently what she'd thought I'd been pursuing when I lived in Charlottesville, and it's possible that early in our relationship, when I was less of a known quantity, this was the story that Gretchen had told her). What could I say, nearly everything I know is stuff I've taught myself. I'm completely uncredentialed. It's the way I learn, and, though it might be a disappointment to my in-laws, so far it's worked out for me. "So you married someone who's uneducated..." my mother-in-law said half in jest. "Oh, he's educated, just not..." Gretchen said, but she was cut off by my little niece. "So, you can't get a job?" she asked, confused. The whole fabric of her existence had been built around a number of axioms, one of which was the necessity of graduating from college. Evidently she'd been told that without a college diploma, she'd never be able to get a job. "So it sounds like you've been told that you have to graduate from college in order to get a job. But that's not true. I have a job, and they even pay me a not-terrible salary." I then added an important note about college, "College was still important for me, because it helped me build my social network. If it weren't for college, my social network would be terrible. It's where I met Gretchen, after all." "What's a social network?" my niece asked. I explained that a social network is the collection of all your friends, and, to some extent, the friends of those friends. "You know people that I don't know, and I know people like Ray and Nancy that you don't know."
After breakfast, it was time for Gretchen and me to go on our own adventure, separate from the others. We said our goodbyes under Chobe's front awning near the vans. Gretchen half-jokingly asked the kids for their takeaways from the previous part of the Uganda trip, but mostly all they had was the mind-blowing truths they'd just learned. "Social network," said my niece. "You don't have to go to college," said my nephew.
Robert would be our driver for the rest of our Uganda adventure. As we were leaving Chobe, he asked if we could pick up a passenger, a single woman waiting patiently at the inner checkpoint. "No problem," we said. Gretchen recognized the woman as working in the place where she'd had her massage.
There were a great many giraffes and a few antelopes along the road as we headed out towards the paved road.
There was a bridge across a narrow part of the Nile and from there we headed south towards Kampala. Periodically there would be open-air markets along the road, and if one drove into one with a van such as ours, it would quickly be mobbed by people trying to sell things: ice-cold Coca Colas, goat meat on a stick, Indian-style naan, and freshly-roasted kasava root. We waved off all the animal products, but Robert bought us a kasava so we could have that experience. It was starchy and a bit mealy, but it had a subtle-but-pleasant flavor. I ended up eating most of the banana-sized portion.
Eventually we passed the turn-off to the rhino sanctuary and then stopped at a restaurant/craft store run for the benefit of people with disabilities. Security there was unexpectedly tight; we had to go through a metal detector in order to enter. The crafts were of generally high quality and inexpensive, so we stocked up on gifts to give to friends. These consisted of flamboyantly patterned stuffed giraffes and rhinos, as well as stack of shallow flexible beaded bowls (which nested nicely, making them easy to pack). There was also a wooden fork and large spork that Gretchen wanted and shallow ceramic bowl that seemed likely to survive the trip. Gretchen also bought three vegetable samosas: one each for us and one for Robert.
It was a long drive to Kampala, and along the way, Gretchen engaged Robert in a couple conversations to get a sense of Ugandan culture. In the United States, most of the news our of Uganda of late has been about harsh anti-gay laws being pushed by its president, Yoweri Museveni (reportedly after considerable lobbying from fundamentlist Christians from America). Gretchen wanted to know what it was like for gays these days in Uganda. Had I asked the question, I wouldn't've been as forthright in my opinion on the matter, but Gretchen made it clear up front where we stood on the issue, so Robert's opinion was suitably tolerant, at least to the extent someone steeped in Ugandan culture can be. Since gays in Uganda are much more restricted in terms of how out they can be, Robert probably doesn't know many, or perhaps any. So it would be harder for him to empathize with them. Given the engine noise and language difficulties, it was hard to make out exactly what Robert was saying. All I really got out of the conversation was the exhaustion of trying to follow it.
I'd been noticing that all along the paved roads through Uganda would be paved concrete piers with the letters UNRA engraved on them. I asked Robert what these were for, and he said this had something to do with development restrictions. Basically, all land is open for settlement in Uganda unless specified otherwise. The UNRA piers were to specify otherwise, or so I gathered through the communications difficulties. [According to Wikipedia, Robert might've been completely wrong.]
As we drew closer in to Kampala, the topic turned to contraception. Robert has seven children, though only four of them are his own. He said that his wife wants to have more, but he does not. To keep any more from arriving, Robert said, he has secretly gotten vasectomy. I didn't say anything, but that sounded like playing with fire to me. Robert spends a lot of time away from his wife driving rich white people all over Uganda, so what happens if she does get pregnant? It will be pretty obvious what has happened! From Robert's telling, vasectomies are the only sort of birth control that really work. He claimed that women had all sorts of problems when they go on the pill (heavy bleeding and massive weight gain particularly) and he's heard nothing but horror stories from IUDs. But it sounded to us like he was getting all his information about these things from his wife, who clearly wants to have more children.
Robert also told us a little something about how he met his wife. He'd first met her when she was only fourteen or sixteen years old and she was helping her sister take measurements for a tiling job. Some years passed and they finally got together (though she was still only about 16 and he was 26). When they got married, he said, there were 800 people at the wedding, which is fairly typical. It occurred to me that if it's normal for so many people to attend a wedding, then it must be normal in Uganda for the average person to attend weddings just about every weekend.
After entering Kampala and creeping for at least a half hour through its traffic congestion, we made it to the place we'd be doing lunch, Little Ritz in Africa Restaurant and Bar, that place we'd first gone early in the trip. The buffet wasn't quite as good as it had been that day, but perhaps our expectations had been inflated by our recent experience at Chobe. Though the restaurant had "bar" in its name, when I tried to order a beer, the woman fetching drinks indicated that they didn't have any. Confusing!
Our destination today was the Rain Forest Lodge in the Mabira rain forest east of Kampala. Most of the drive time there was spent in congestion trying to leave the greater Kampala area. Looking out the window for most of that congested stretch, I witnessed an endless stream of microbusinesses. They were all the same ones I'd seen in other places, all little concrete block storefronts set on the bare red earth adjoining the highway. In amongst all the people carrying out their open-air worklife were a great many chickens and goats.
I nodded off at some point on the drive, and when I awoke we were driving through a massive sugar cane field. Then there was a stretch of jungle, a place the giraffe and elephant hadn't been able to manage in a way beneficial to grazers. Then, in yet another close-packed red-dirt village, we busted a right and headed up a extremely bumpy road into the forest. It took us to the lodge, which seemed empty when we arrived. We checked in and were shown the place by one of the employees, who dragged us all through the up and down ramps of the massively-built dining structure without first suggesting we set our packs down in some place we could return to. Then it was off to our room, a cabin somewhere down the steeply-sloped stone path in the jungle. But due to the problem with 6 looking like 9 when it is upside-down, we ended up at the wrong cabin. When we finally got to our cabin (#9), I stayed behind while the employee showed Gretchen where the pool was. I had some business to take care. The steady diet of Indian buffet and perhaps tap water inadvertently consumed while tooth brushing had profoundly loosened my stools.
Our cabin was tasteful and very nice, featuring lamp shades made of crudely weld-cut steel disks cut full of crescents and pluses and hammered into bowls. Unfortunately, though, there was no WiFi at this lodge whatsoever. That was probably for the best; it's better to have none than to have marginal internet and to waste time trying to get something out of it.
Gretchen and I eventually wandered down to the pool, where we found two African couples hanging out, drinking beers, and giggling among themselves. Gretchen immediately jumped into the water, reporting that it was bracingly cold. That was all I needed to know; I would not be going in. Unlike Chobe and even Paraa, there was a decidedly downscale vibe to the pool area here. The poolside furniture was comfortable, but it felt like the time-loosened vinyl of a salvaged seat from a 1960s-era Chevy. There was also something uninviting about the pool in addition to its frigid temperature, and it wasn't just the cloudiness of the water in the adjacent kiddy pool.
Back in our cabin, I soon determined that we had no hot water, which was a bit of problem because Gretchen was cold after being in that pool. Eventually I found a switch on the outside of the cabin that seemed to turn the hot water on, but it switched off on its own before Gretchen could get much of a shower.
Meanwhile, judging from the amount of personal attention we were getting from the staff, we were pretty much the only people at the lodge. The cook sent a guy down to our cabin with a hand-written list of vegan items for us to pick between for our meal. It also sounded like we had the option of having our meal delivered directly to our cabin. But no, we went to the grand glorious dining area, where the only other people were a group of loud-mouthed South Africans looking through a telescope at the moons of Jupiter.Despite a nascent cold, Gretchen ordered a glass of wine, and of course I had another big Nile beer (a reliably good alcohol experience in Uganda). The food was surprisingly good, starting with a slightly weird (but delicious) spring roll and ending with (for me) somewhat overcooked penne pasta. Afterward dinner, Gretchen and I sat at the fire pit, where a raging fire flung sparks at the moon (a waxing gibbous). On our way back to the cabin, we passed the main office, and one of the many employees insisted on escorting us back to our room.
Giraffe skull (photographed by Gretchen on the walk I did not go on).
Hippopotamus jaw (photographed by Gretchen on the walk I did not go on).
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