MY CONTINUING WILDLIFE ADVENTURES IN CAMEROON AND BENIN

Tags

Africa, African Widlife, Benin, Cameroon, Gameparks, Humor, Nonfiction, USAID

Waza National Park is located between Maroua and N’Djamena on the main road. It is a large gamepark and has a wide variety of wildlife. During my time in northern Cameroon I found the hotel at Waza a pleasant place to stay. It is nestled in a group of rock buttes just across the road from and facing the park. Since it was in Joel’s territory, sometimes I helped him out by providing transportation. However because Waza was usually a convenient stopover after I had driven someone to or from N’Djamena or Maroua. More often than not I was there by myself.

While staying at the hotel for a couple of days enjoying the park and the hotel, I perused some park literature that mentioned a colony of hyrax living on top of the big butte behind the hotel. I had never seen hyrax. They looked cute from pictures, a bit like guinea pigs. I went out to take a look at the butte. I wasn’t a pick and rope climber, but I was in good shape. A shallow fissure ran almost all the way up, petering out maybe four feet from the top. It looked to be a tough scramble but doable. Other than taking a lot of energy the climb wasn’t bad. The only tricky part was at the very top where the edge bulged out more than I’d anticipated. I had to dangle my feet in the air a few seconds before I pulled myself up and over. However even if I had fallen at that point I would have dropped back into the shallow crevice, maybe spraining an ankle but not risking death.

The butte was rather flat on top until it began a gentle decline to my right, perhaps offering an easier descent than straight down the face. In the middle of my end of the plateau in a jumble of boulders a hyrax stood guard at a small entrance. Seeing me he made a half barking half piping sound and ruffled his fur causing a strange little off color tuft of fur to rise up in the middle of his back. Make no mistake rock hyrax are cute critters. I suppose tree hyrax are too but I never saw one of those. Don’t ask me but the experts say that the animal most closely related to hyrax is the elephant. They also say that any rabbits mentioned in the Bible were actually hyrax. European translators weren’t familiar with hyrax, and the descriptions more or less fit rabbits. Makes you wonder what else could have been mistranslated. At first there was a mad scramble of hyrax seeking shelter from the intruder. I settled myself on a boulder at some distance and waited patiently. I needed the rest. Eventually a few brave souls ventured out again so I could observe them, but they didn’t stray far from safety.

While sitting there a troop of baboons wandered by, including a mommy with a baby on her back. They headed down the decline to my right. For inexplicable reasons, perhaps a suppressed death wish, I decided to follow them at a distance. Baboons are incredibly strong animals and can be very aggressive. Jurassic Park dinosaur petting nonsense aside, any strong wild animal is dangerous regardless of whether they are interested in eating you or not. More people in Africa are killed by buffalos than lions. Suddenly the baboons stopped and huddled. Then while the main troop continued on, two young males turned and faced me, not advancing, just holding their ground. Message received five by five. I decided to go back and observe the hyrax.

I was thirsty. It was time to leave, my dreams of finding an easier path down thwarted lest I risk running into the baboons, wisely concluding that further interaction should be avoided. It was about here that I realized I had made a rookie climbing mistake by not making note of precisely where I came up. I couldn’t see the beginning of the fissure from up top because of the edge’s outward bulge. I mean I knew the general area, but that wasn’t good enough to risk dangling myself out over a cliff. An intelligent person would have brought some rope. I didn’t qualify. I looked around. A bit further down a thin rocky outcrop jutted out precariously, resembling a diving platform. Carefully I worked my way out to the very end of it where I could see my crevice. I wished I had skipped breakfast. I marked the exact spot I needed to descend from and presently dropped a couple of feet into the crevice without twisting an ankle. The rest was perfunctory.

During that same period in Cameroon I briefly visited Benoue National Park, a giant gamepark just south of Garoua. Garoua was a bit south of my usual purview, but due to the Chad disturbances there was a temporary logistical office there manned by embassy personnel. The next large city south, NGoundare, was the northern terminus of the railway. I had to make a few trips to Garoua. The park ran along the Benoue River, a major tributary of the Niger River. The park area was so huge that it encompassed some villages, whereas in more manageable Waza they had moved villages to just outside the park. As one might assume, poaching was a problem. Nevertheless I remember large herds of waterbuck, western hartebeest, and buffalo.

That was my first encounter with tsetse flies. Damn they hurt. A single bite hurts about like a horsefly bite, but more needle like. Of course horseflies don’t swarm or leave big itchy red welts, and tsetse fly bites can penetrate normal clothing. Sleeping sickness aside, no wonder the presence of tsetse flies inhibits animal husbandry. In Chad we had bot flies. They lay eggs on moist clothing. If you wear the tainted clothing without killing the eggs first, an ugly boil with a worm inside forms on your skin. Very few people had clothes dryers in Chad. Ironing everything including underwear and socks solved the problem. The common people used irons filled with coals.

Speaking of dastardly insects, I was stung by scorpions a couple times — no big deal, a kind of take a benadryl thing. Perhaps Chad’s scorpions were less poisonous than some others. My great adventure with African bees and termites was covered in another story. Perhaps my worst personal experience with African insects was getting bitten or stung (not sure) on the knee by a spider one night when I was out in the great beyond drilling wells. The wound developed an odd transparent skin window with something dark deep down there. It hurt like hell. After two days I could barely walk. The nearest doctor worthy of the name was two days away mostly on pistes (tire tracks in the sand). Therefore I thrust a big needle into a fire and pushed it inches down into my knee until I managed to get everything out. Goliath beetles are worthy of mention. They are huge winged beetles attracted to light. En brousse we could hear one heading for our flashlights and lanterns from a distance. The sound they made flying reminded me of a helicopter, stopping and starting, getting closer and closer. When it neared we would douse the lights until it headed off elsewhere. We called them flying turtles. It was no fun to run into one on a mobylette.

I have one other tsetse fly story. Honestly my memory on this one is rather vague except for the core story which I remember pretty well. It might have occurred in either Benin or Togo, as the three of us were together in both countries one soon after the other. Logically I’m going with Benin, since we all worked on the same project there. I was the USAID contract project manager in Benin for a multi-donor potable water/health project. Sarah was my colleague on the health side, and Agma was a health consultant. The three of us went up to northern Benin on project related business. I have a fleeting memory of staying at the house of some vols in the town of Nikki. As always when the work was done I wanted to visit the nearest gamepark, or in this case I believe it was a lesser category of protected area, a forest reserve or nature preserve, something in that ballpark. Agma passed on the reserve. She had grown somewhat fatigued with my habit of stopping vehicles to look at birds, thus lengthening the journey. Somehow I managed to drag Sarah along. It didn’t take long for me to get the truck stuck. I had a talent for that. We were both gathering sticks when tsetse flies attacked. I received a bite or two, but they loved Sarah. By the time we made it out, she had a fine collection of itchy red welts, some in interesting places. Being a southern gentleman, when we got back to where we were staying I offered to powder her backside. She demurred. Actually in colorful language she told me to take a hike, or something roughly equivalent. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

My memory is clearer about this next story. Agma and I and a visiting young lady acquaintance of Agma’s drove up to Natitingou in northwestern Benin and stayed at the Tata Somba Hotel. That region is famous for the fairyland like Tata Somba houses, and the hotel was designed with that architecture in mind. It also had a great pool. Agma did her health stuff. I met my Benin project director and the UN project manager, M. Bouton, along with local officials, and we set out to visit some spring sites for possible inclusion in the project. I insisted on driving my little project pickup. They had a sedan and a chauffeur. I liked to control my own transportation whenever possible. I’d had some close calls in Africa, most often at night where a big truck had broken down and parked in one lane of a two lane road. West African roads rarely had decent shoulders. Without street lights, and maybe with an oncoming vehicle’s lights in your eyes, you would see the dark looming shape of the truck too late to do anything but swerve off the road or into the other lane. Off the road was a near certain crash with no medical help nearby. So you usually tried the oncoming lane. If you were lucky, it would be clear long enough for you to pass the truck. If not you died. I’d been lucky twice. I made it a rule never to drive at night on rural African roads. We spent a long day climbing hills and looking at springs. We were about an hour from Natitingou as sunset neared. Men in groups get macho disease. They wanted to drive to one more site. I refused. I told them my reasons and drove back to the hotel. I still arrived after dark. I ruffled a few feathers, but they got over it.

When the work was over I wanted to visit the not too distant Pendjari National Park, often touted as one of the best in West Africa. Our hotel had glossy brochures on the front desk trumpeting a nice hotel right in the middle of the park. Agma passed on the park, but she asked me to take her companion along. Fine. The young lady was over from England to visit her intended. I got the impression that everything wasn’t all orange blossoms with that. She was young, but I had no idea how young. I thought mid-twenties. She was on plump side, polite but aloof, wore makeup even out in the African bush, and dressed in a style I would describe as British matron. Later I found out that she was much younger than I’d thought, eighteen or nineteen I think. I’ve never been good at guessing the ages of European women. Had I known, I would have had to think long and hard about taking her with me.

It took an hour and a half to get to the park entrance, and, with stops along the way to watch animals, another two hours to reach the hotel. We arrived just at dusk to find that the hotel had burned down years before. I should have verified things, but it never occurred to me that my hotel in Natitingou would be passing out brochures to a burned out hotel. Maybe they had boxes of them leftover and just thought they were pretty. Sometimes Africa wins. Fortunately I usually pack some camping equipment when I go upcountry. As I wasn’t about to drive three and a half hours at night, most of it through a gamepark on a dirt road, I found a room mostly intact, no roof or door but it had four sturdy walls. I cleaned it up some and set up mats, sleeping bags, and tall tent-like mosquito nets for both of us. It was hot, so I put her by the door to catch the breeze and myself in the far corner. The young lady later told people that she had been half convinced that I had planned all this just so I could ravish her in the night, and she had been certain that I’d placed her by the door so that a lion would take her first. I’d camped out in gameparks with far less shelter than four solid walls. I did park the pickup close to the door, but I wanted to leave some space for air. As for the ravishing, she was somebody’s fiance, and I wasn’t the least bit attracted to her. Even if I had been, at most I would have tossed her a few compliments to see if she was interested. Uninvited pouncing was not in my repertoire.

I slept soundly. I suppose I’m bragging here, but my ability to sleep in odd places and strange conditions was legendary. I once slept curled up inside a large truck tire hanging off the back of the truck on a rough road. We all have our little talents. I wish I still had that one. She didn’t sleep at all, listening to animal sounds all night long. I wanted to get a very early start. Before dawn the next morning when I offered her some sardines and crackers for breakfast, she told me she’d thought that I had set her up as lion bait. She said it half humorously, so I wouldn’t take offense. She didn’t mention the ravishing part. I laughed. I asked her why she didn’t ask to switch places with me or sleep in the truck. Then I explained how rare it was to see lions in West African gameparks. I told her to get in the truck and try to nap while I loaded everything. Dawn was just touching the eastern sky when I got in the truck, started the motor, and turned on the headlights. A lioness passed right in front of us, just a few yards from where we’d slept. You know, all my life I’d heard the phrase if looks could kill. Up to that moment I had never really experienced it.