South Sudan 2011: May 2011

The story continues, but in a different vein; a break from Juba. The town can become quite suffocating and claustrophobic. As we have no doubt described it is not straight forward to leave the confines of the city by road given their dreadful condition and the relentless police blocks that are guaranteed to find issues with your papers. And even when you get out of town you can’t cruise around in the bush in case a rogue landmine creeps underneath ones feet as sadly does still happen and we see the results at JTH. The town itself is heaving with NGO’s, UN and contractors and especially where we live there is a fascinating array of people from all over the world and Sudan itself doing some amazing things but it is always nice to have a break. After all, we spend three meals a day eating with everyone in the camp and you can sometimes run out of conversation.

So, Mum flew out and met us in Arusha, Tanzania and the adventure in Western Tanzania commenced. The roads are basically non-existent and given our limited time, and the fact that the Juba roads have rattled our skeletons enough we proceeded by plane to Mwanza to hunt out the site that Speke first saw Lake Victoria in 1858 and announced her, rather assumingly, the source of the Nile (much to his travelling companion Richard Burton’s annoyance as he didn’t fancy the trip up there and so missed the action). He was right, but he didn’t live long enough to hear the proof himself due to his rather untimely death resulting from accidently shooting himself on a hunting trip near Bath in 1864. The view of the Lake excited me, but rather less than enthused my two travelling companions who were hot and tired and it took a large slice of chocolate cake and two cups of tea to calm them down.

Next stop Kigoma where we hopped a boat to Gombe Stream National Park tucked up by the Burundi border. This little place is famous for wild chimpanzees and arriving at a sunken jetty after dark following a few hours on Lake Tanganyika with a storm brewing over the Congo hills behind us made it feel like the end of the earth. To save me finding a thesaurus for the appropriately imaginative descriptive language just picture that scene in Peter Jackson’s King Kong movie when they arrive at the cursed island. Exciting no?

The chimps were amazing and the bush experience, complete with eating termites pulled from their house in the ground, awesome. However, we did not account for one added team of locals- the baboons. These guys were big, rowdy and fearless and a stroll past their troop with anything resembling food in ones hand is rather like ambling down the main strip in Portsmouth at turn-out time, while referring to oneself as oneself. Pretentious, I know. Anyway, one of the alpha males decided to bust open the front door of the hostel in the bush (this thing is encased in a serious amount of iron to keep these guys out) and charge in. I was on the stairwell and Heidi and Mum were outside the dorm room. They stood paralysed with fear and I did what any true man of iron and honour would do and charged into the marauding monkey to rescue my family. The fight was tough and bloody. He was strong, but I was stronger. He was mean but I was meaner. The animal rage boiled over and as the sound of breaking bones and shattered teeth filled the concrete corridor I prized his canines from my throat and tossed him without mercy onto the dusty ground outside. He lay still and the silence seemed to last for an eternity, broken finally by the howls and cries of the rest of the troop, at least 40 strong, who were now proclaiming me, a human man, their new alpha male and leader of them all. History was made: A legend born.

Gombe was followed by a trip to Ujiji, famous for Stanley’s legendary words to Livingstone when they met under a mango tree there in 1871, and infamous for being a major slaving route from the ‘interior’. It was here, at the mouth of the slave road that we met these two boys playing Pool by striking marbles with bamboo cues on a T-shirt pulled taught on a wooden stand. The lads, no older than 10, were playing for money so I put down my cash and started to hustle, only to be unceremoniously whooped, but only after a decent crowd had formed around the table. The locals smelt that they were on to a winner- they had found a man with money and the unwavering belief that he is in some way good at the game (something for which I have been punished before in various public houses in England). Heidi dragged me from the throes of arms clutching wads of cash that was proffered in return for a game.

Kigoma to Katavi National Park was a long and joint jarring bus ride but the tea (cooked up on the Trangia we had with us- Duke of Edinburgh Award anyone?) sitting out by the river watching the hippos chilling their boots was a rewarding end, as was the walking safari the following day: the three of us and our guide stumbled across a pack of lions under a tree by the lake. They mistakenly thought we looked tougher than we are and ran away from us, preferring the ‘easier’ task of hunting a buffalo or similarly massive beast later on rather than sink their teeth into our buttery hides.

We cruised on to Kipili on the shores of the Lake and enjoyed some days paddling the waters, swimming and biking, the ominous shadows of the DRC ever looming in the distance. This then led us to Utengule coffee plantation in Mbeya, southern Tanzania, and a chillax there while we waited for the Tazara (Tanzania-Zambia Railway) to whisk us off to Dar es Salaam. The resulting journey, that took us through the depths of the Selous Game Reserve, stretched from an already not insignificant 19 hours to a mammoth 35 hours. I think we all wished the lion had had a little more sense at least at one point in the trip- or maybe even the baboon. But no, the whole thing was amazing, and as I have said, a welcome break from the office.

That is where that piece would have ended had Heidi not spotted the baboon section over my shoulder. It’s come clean time I’m afraid. To recap, a large angry baboon has broken open the door of the hostel and charged inside. Heidi and Mum are frantically fingering the small key into the dorm lock and I am on the stairwell. As I said, I did what any right thinking man would do. I pegged it upstairs into the empty dining hall, tried every door to find them all locked, bar one. And that discovery ushered in a solid hour seated on the floor of a bathroom with a leaking tap and a used toilet that wouldn’t flush with my back pressed firmly against the locked door. I was finally released by an American woman living there to study the baboon behaviour and informed that the fellow was long gone and all I needed to do was avoid eye contact. I pointed out that I rather fancied some time cooling myself on a moist toilet floor and had only been in there so long as I had found the lock troublesome to undo.

Anyway, back to Juba and back to work.