Chambura
Where the grass is tall it would be possible to pass within 50 feet of Chambura Gorge and miss it entirely. Long ago a trickle of water began carving the path of least resistance through a flat, featureless savanna; and today, where you expect only more of the same amber thicket, is a gouge in the earth some three miles long and, you would swear, nearly as deep. At the bottom is a river, an elixir for life that falters elsewhere, and the gorge is filled almost to the brim with the most magnificent trees - iconic, flawless forms, like images borrowed back from a painting, a little more perfect than the real thing. A moment at the edge affords an uncommon view of dense forest from above; here, staring down at the mottled-green canopies, the columns of wood holding them aloft seem instead to dangle from them like thick roots reaching down into the void.
We are here to track chimpanzees. Although overshadowed by East Africa's most celebrated primate, the endangered Mountain Gorilla, with a total population of about 700 confined to a small region straddling Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC, chimps are a perennial delight for visitors and researchers alike, with their complex social behaviors, remarkable intelligence (learning sign language, inventing tools), and similarities to humans, both behaviorally and biologically - these are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Chambura Gorge, which is just a tiny sliver of the 760-square-mile Queen Elizabeth National Park, in southwest Uganda, is home to one of the country's “habituated” chimp populations. The process of habituation involves a team of researchers working in shifts to create a perpetual human presence, arriving at the chimpanzee's nests each day before dawn and leaving only after darkness falls. In time, the chimps stop viewing humans as a threat, which facilitates tracking and prolonged observation, both for tourism and for scientific study. Under the best circumstances, the process is complete in three to four years; in other situations, it has taken more than a decade. In any case, I'm hoping the job was done right with this group. While their diet is mostly leaves and fruit, chimps do routinely indulge their cravings for meat, forming hunting parties to stalk monkeys, young baboons, and even small antelope. And they disable their quarry with a bite to the neck, or by tearing it to pieces with their bare hands. Chimps might look like charming house pets, but these are powerful, fierce, sometimes savage creatures. And I'm not as fast as a monkey.
Our safety on this day rests in the hands of our guide, Tom, a ranger with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Organized and trained in the military tradition, UWA rangers are easily identified by their comically large, one-size-fits-none green fatigues, the sleeves rolled into thick cuffs at the elbows, baggy pants stuffed into a pair of black rubber gum boots - practical footwear for traipsing through landscapes full of mud, dung, and pesky safari ants (the kind you surely don't want in your pants), but contributing nothing to the dignity of the ensemble. Slight in stature, with a gentle manner and easy smile, Tom is not what you expect from a man in uniform anyway. He greets us with a handshake and an endearing, heartfelt “you are welcome!”
After a brief geology lesson and some do's and don'ts from Tom, we drop into the gorge on a narrow, well-worn footpath. As it steepens, we see evidence of something large - something very, very large - slipping and sliding in the mud, scars as deep and wide as 4x4 tracks and several feet in length. One of these tracks is punctuated by a print the size of a dinner plate, with four tea cups for toes. Various birds, primates, and other reasonably-scaled creatures are resident here, but Chambura Gorge also hosts a menagerie of what Tom calls “non-paying visitors” - lions, buffalo, hippos, and even elephants - who travel and forage on these same trails.
The enormity of this print's owner is still very much in mind when a croaky growl reverberates through the trees from below. Frozen, silent, we exchange nervous glances and strain to hear the sound again, secretly hoping we won't. “The hippos have smelled us,” says Tom, after a long moment, “but don't worry, they have no concern for us.” While I'm pleased as punch by Tom's assessment, it doesn't allay my concern for them - despite being strict vegetarians, hippos are widely regarded as the most dangerous animal in these parts, especially when encountered on land, where a panicked, 2-ton behemoth sprinting for the security of the water can have dire consequences.
The forest floor is warm and still but not quiet. There are birds, jostling hippos - grunting, splashing - and the sound of the river running beside us. Soon we reach a low, open footbridge of logs and hand-cut timber. Although the banks are gray like elephant hide, the rain-swollen current below our feet is the same ubiquitous red-brown inextricably tied to my thoughts and memories of this country - upriver, the gorge is still growing. Halfway across the bridge I pause, having in mind to take a picture; but instead I start to wonder what would happen if I fell in, and I move on.
We've scaled the far bank when we hear something moving toward us on the path. I reach for my camera. People! We have rendezvoused with another group of visitors in pursuit of some chimps searching for food nearby. Three males have just crossed the river behind us, they say. Back across the bridge we go - no stopping this time - and down a path onto a spit of soggy land, water on all sides. Dead end. No chimps. (Plenty of hippos, but never mind now!) Tom was hoping to cut them off, but they've already slipped by us. Backtracking again. A little faster, Tom urges. Discovering a group of chimps feeding in the treetops can be a sedate experience, more akin to a zoo without the fence, but on the ground they tend to keep moving, sometimes with astonishing speed - it's called tracking for a reason.
Wired with anticipation, I'm ready to break into a jog by now, but Tom has stopped. “There,” someone whispers, “right there! Chimp! On the ground, right there!” That first glimpse is magic. Moving away through the low brush, quickly but not hurriedly, he turns his head and shoulders in a fluid motion, and, never breaking stride, gives us the most casual of looks: marginally curious, unperplexed, fearless. For a moment I feel like we could be making the next famous Bigfoot video, like we're seeing a thing no one really expects to ever see. But there it is.
We haven't spotted the other two, but soon enough we're sure they have spotted us. While chimps communicate mainly through vocalizations, they also take advantage of their strong arms and the resonant properties of aptly-name buttress roots, which spread just above ground like tentacles from certain species of trees here, to produce a range of remarkably loud, drum-beat signals. It is impossible to fully convey the experience of standing in a primeval forest at the bottom of a canyon when a group of chimps unleashes its cacophony of screeching and hollering, hooting and tree-thumping, but I'll give you a few words. Enchanting. Awesome. And scary - when the clamor reaches its crescendo, a part of you wants to be somewhere else. Tom, who, it's clear by now, has a gift for euphemism, smiles his smile and explains, “they are greeting us.” But the effect is more like an alarm call or a battle cry than a friendly “hey y'all, how ya' doing?” and, instinctively, I pull my arms a little closer to my body. At least I won't make it easy for them.
Chimp #1 is in clear view now, some fifty feet ahead on the path. We pursue, but it seems the game of chase is growing old; soon he slows, stops, sits for a moment or two, and finally sprawls across the path in lazy repose. Time for a nap - apparently we are boring. Or, maybe we just don't matter here. Chambura is one of those rare, wonderful places where the presence of human beings barely registers - all the more, paradoxically, because the chimps no longer fear us. These few square miles of wilderness belong to them, and the hippos, the elephants, the birds and the buffalo. We are not the kings of this jungle, and they know it.
We snap a few pictures and wait, hoping for some action, but our subject barely stirs. He seems to be somewhere else now, dreaming, perhaps, of whatever chimps dream of: a dense forest canopy, vines to climb, fig trees laden with ripe fruit, warm sun, cool water. Someplace sheltered, removed, a sanctuary, a haven.
A place, happily, not so different from this one.
We are here to track chimpanzees. Although overshadowed by East Africa's most celebrated primate, the endangered Mountain Gorilla, with a total population of about 700 confined to a small region straddling Uganda, Rwanda, and DRC, chimps are a perennial delight for visitors and researchers alike, with their complex social behaviors, remarkable intelligence (learning sign language, inventing tools), and similarities to humans, both behaviorally and biologically - these are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. Chambura Gorge, which is just a tiny sliver of the 760-square-mile Queen Elizabeth National Park, in southwest Uganda, is home to one of the country's “habituated” chimp populations. The process of habituation involves a team of researchers working in shifts to create a perpetual human presence, arriving at the chimpanzee's nests each day before dawn and leaving only after darkness falls. In time, the chimps stop viewing humans as a threat, which facilitates tracking and prolonged observation, both for tourism and for scientific study. Under the best circumstances, the process is complete in three to four years; in other situations, it has taken more than a decade. In any case, I'm hoping the job was done right with this group. While their diet is mostly leaves and fruit, chimps do routinely indulge their cravings for meat, forming hunting parties to stalk monkeys, young baboons, and even small antelope. And they disable their quarry with a bite to the neck, or by tearing it to pieces with their bare hands. Chimps might look like charming house pets, but these are powerful, fierce, sometimes savage creatures. And I'm not as fast as a monkey.
Our safety on this day rests in the hands of our guide, Tom, a ranger with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Organized and trained in the military tradition, UWA rangers are easily identified by their comically large, one-size-fits-none green fatigues, the sleeves rolled into thick cuffs at the elbows, baggy pants stuffed into a pair of black rubber gum boots - practical footwear for traipsing through landscapes full of mud, dung, and pesky safari ants (the kind you surely don't want in your pants), but contributing nothing to the dignity of the ensemble. Slight in stature, with a gentle manner and easy smile, Tom is not what you expect from a man in uniform anyway. He greets us with a handshake and an endearing, heartfelt “you are welcome!”
After a brief geology lesson and some do's and don'ts from Tom, we drop into the gorge on a narrow, well-worn footpath. As it steepens, we see evidence of something large - something very, very large - slipping and sliding in the mud, scars as deep and wide as 4x4 tracks and several feet in length. One of these tracks is punctuated by a print the size of a dinner plate, with four tea cups for toes. Various birds, primates, and other reasonably-scaled creatures are resident here, but Chambura Gorge also hosts a menagerie of what Tom calls “non-paying visitors” - lions, buffalo, hippos, and even elephants - who travel and forage on these same trails.
The enormity of this print's owner is still very much in mind when a croaky growl reverberates through the trees from below. Frozen, silent, we exchange nervous glances and strain to hear the sound again, secretly hoping we won't. “The hippos have smelled us,” says Tom, after a long moment, “but don't worry, they have no concern for us.” While I'm pleased as punch by Tom's assessment, it doesn't allay my concern for them - despite being strict vegetarians, hippos are widely regarded as the most dangerous animal in these parts, especially when encountered on land, where a panicked, 2-ton behemoth sprinting for the security of the water can have dire consequences.
The forest floor is warm and still but not quiet. There are birds, jostling hippos - grunting, splashing - and the sound of the river running beside us. Soon we reach a low, open footbridge of logs and hand-cut timber. Although the banks are gray like elephant hide, the rain-swollen current below our feet is the same ubiquitous red-brown inextricably tied to my thoughts and memories of this country - upriver, the gorge is still growing. Halfway across the bridge I pause, having in mind to take a picture; but instead I start to wonder what would happen if I fell in, and I move on.
We've scaled the far bank when we hear something moving toward us on the path. I reach for my camera. People! We have rendezvoused with another group of visitors in pursuit of some chimps searching for food nearby. Three males have just crossed the river behind us, they say. Back across the bridge we go - no stopping this time - and down a path onto a spit of soggy land, water on all sides. Dead end. No chimps. (Plenty of hippos, but never mind now!) Tom was hoping to cut them off, but they've already slipped by us. Backtracking again. A little faster, Tom urges. Discovering a group of chimps feeding in the treetops can be a sedate experience, more akin to a zoo without the fence, but on the ground they tend to keep moving, sometimes with astonishing speed - it's called tracking for a reason.
Wired with anticipation, I'm ready to break into a jog by now, but Tom has stopped. “There,” someone whispers, “right there! Chimp! On the ground, right there!” That first glimpse is magic. Moving away through the low brush, quickly but not hurriedly, he turns his head and shoulders in a fluid motion, and, never breaking stride, gives us the most casual of looks: marginally curious, unperplexed, fearless. For a moment I feel like we could be making the next famous Bigfoot video, like we're seeing a thing no one really expects to ever see. But there it is.
We haven't spotted the other two, but soon enough we're sure they have spotted us. While chimps communicate mainly through vocalizations, they also take advantage of their strong arms and the resonant properties of aptly-name buttress roots, which spread just above ground like tentacles from certain species of trees here, to produce a range of remarkably loud, drum-beat signals. It is impossible to fully convey the experience of standing in a primeval forest at the bottom of a canyon when a group of chimps unleashes its cacophony of screeching and hollering, hooting and tree-thumping, but I'll give you a few words. Enchanting. Awesome. And scary - when the clamor reaches its crescendo, a part of you wants to be somewhere else. Tom, who, it's clear by now, has a gift for euphemism, smiles his smile and explains, “they are greeting us.” But the effect is more like an alarm call or a battle cry than a friendly “hey y'all, how ya' doing?” and, instinctively, I pull my arms a little closer to my body. At least I won't make it easy for them.
Chimp #1 is in clear view now, some fifty feet ahead on the path. We pursue, but it seems the game of chase is growing old; soon he slows, stops, sits for a moment or two, and finally sprawls across the path in lazy repose. Time for a nap - apparently we are boring. Or, maybe we just don't matter here. Chambura is one of those rare, wonderful places where the presence of human beings barely registers - all the more, paradoxically, because the chimps no longer fear us. These few square miles of wilderness belong to them, and the hippos, the elephants, the birds and the buffalo. We are not the kings of this jungle, and they know it.
We snap a few pictures and wait, hoping for some action, but our subject barely stirs. He seems to be somewhere else now, dreaming, perhaps, of whatever chimps dream of: a dense forest canopy, vines to climb, fig trees laden with ripe fruit, warm sun, cool water. Someplace sheltered, removed, a sanctuary, a haven.
A place, happily, not so different from this one.
Comments