By the time this article hits the mailboxes it will be February 20th. It already feels like spring is here, although I’ve been fooled before. I’ve been looking at that 10-day forecast, and I just don’t see anything that says otherwise so far, but as we all know here in Mississippi we could be dancing in ice by next week. I know this is supposed to be a gardening article, but I’m just not finished with my Uganda trip yet. I am trying to at least incorporate some about the flora and fauna and the agricultural practices that my mom and I experienced while on this life-changing journey.
I left off last week at a place that we had seen the gorillas and were now headed farther north, where it seemed a little more arid, and the landscape was changing to show that. We made it to our next lodge after an afternoon safari, where we were able to see lots of elephants, impalas, zebras, and water buffalo. We had a long journey down some dirt roads, probably six hours of travel, so by the time we made it to the lodge, we were ready to get a little rest because we had an early start the next morning. The grounds at this lodge were spectacular with what look like 40-year-old agaves, aloe vera that were blooming like crazy, and the biggest monstera plant I’ve ever seen.
As we were having dinner that night at the lodge, we were looking out over the sunset when Mom mentioned that this looked just like the sunset from the movie Out of Africa. We had both been humming the same song, thinking it was the same theme song to that movie when we realized that that was the theme song from Chariots of the Gods. Since we had just gotten our Internet capabilities back, I was able to google that, and I made a video of the sunset with the Out of Africa theme song in it. All we needed was a bi- plane with Robert Redford zooming across the sky with Meryl Streep, and we would’ve had it made.
I spent that night, like the night before, on a platform over the Rift Valley in a bed covered in mosquito netting, listening to the hunting hyenas. It was a wild experience. The next morning, we had a wonderful breakfast and some wonderful coffee and were in the Jeep by 6:30 in the morning. I could tell our driver had something on his mind as we were driving through the dry Rift Valley. At one point he came to a screeching halt and turned the Jeep around as fast as he could and started hauling towards something. About 30 minutes later I could see where some other safari Jeeps had gathered.
We had pulled up just in time to catch a huge male lion with his two females. He was obviously not happy about something because right about when we pulled up, he was whipping one of the females into shape. There was dust flying, and there was some roaring going on. I was lucky enough to catch that on video. We stayed in that spot for about an hour trying to get some great pictures of this scene. The male lion had apparently been caught in a snare by some poachers recently. His back leg was tender, and he wasn’t putting it down on the ground. That is not a good thing because the next opposing male lion will come in and probably run him off from his harem. Like I said, conservation in Uganda is extremely important, and this lion had a collar on with a tracker. That is how they keep up with the movements and learn more about the ways of these giant cats.
As I was taking hundreds of pictures of these lions, I looked all around me and could see the four-legged animals around wouldn’t come anywhere close to that area. They were just out of range, snorting and stomping their hooves. It was a real ruckus as the baboons were having their share of fun making sure all the animals around knew that they were in danger. At this point, I could see in some of the other safari Jeeps that there were some serious photographers down there with lenses that were a mile long. I can’t imagine some of the pictures they must’ve gotten.
When we had had enough, we started down a gravel road where we bumped into a huge family of elephants that we viewed for a while until Emmanuel got another call. I couldn’t speak their language, but somewhere in the sentence I heard the words ‘toilet paper.’ When he hung up, I asked him if he needed some toilet paper and he looked at me and he said, “Are you listening in on my conversations?” I said “no, but I heard the word toilet paper, so it made me wonder.” I guess there’s not a word for that in their language. He laughed and said that the phone call was from a friend who had left some toilet paper dangling from some thorns on the side of the road and when we got to the toilet paper to look directly at the 12 o’clock position on the other side of the road there would be three giant euphoria trees. In one of those trees, apparently there was a leopard, so we were moving quite quickly towards that area.
Right in the middle of nowhere, we spotted a little piece of paper blowing in the wind hooked on a thorny bush, so the Jeep stopped and we began viewing those three trees to our right, trying to find a leopard. The camouflage these cats were gifted with is unbelievable. We each had binoculars and we were looking in all three trees, high and low and could not believe there would be a leopard there hiding that well as we were searching that hard. Finally, Emmanuel said, “I got it. I see a spot.” He said, “Look in the farthest left tree towards the bottom and focus on that area until your eyes begin to clear.” Sure enough, there was a full-grown leopard who had just picked up his head to look over one of the branches to see us to make sure we were staying a good distance. Once I could see the outline it became more obvious, but it was unbelievable how the cat’s body had contoured to the shape of the branches. I got some unbelievable pictures of that leopard and Mom got to watch it through her binoculars.
It was right then that I looked up at Emmanuel and saw he was looking through some binoculars that must’ve been from 1842. One of the lenses was dangling out and his eyes were about to pop out of his head. I remembered when he allowed that phone call home, and he used these words: “After all, a brother wouldn’t charge a brother for a phone call home, now would he?” I handed my binoculars to Emmanuel and said, “Look through these and tell me what you see.”
I heard a sigh of relief as mine aren’t the highest-dollar binoculars you can get but they were definitely better than the ones a Danish couple had left with him back in the early 2000s. I said, “Consider those yours, after all, a brother wouldn’t charge a brother for a good set of eyeballs, now would he?” He was so happy to have that new set of binoculars. He never handed them back to us to look through them again. I get it. There was no way he was going to find a pair down there anywhere close to that quality, and it’s important for his job to be able to spot things when he needs to.
Later on that day, when it was time to stop for some lunch, we pulled into some kind of hell hole where we sat down to eat a box lunch that had been fixed for us before we left the lodge that morning. I say it was a hell hole because the only thing in the distance was a large crater lake created by a volcano. That was now where people collect salt. Other than the uranium mines I hear about in the Congo, I think mining for salt must be one of the worst jobs a human could be forced into, yet I saw hundreds of people, men, women, and children, collecting salt and hauling it out of this muddy pit.
A little over to my right, where the water got deeper, there were thousands of flamingos that apparently eat on some kind of crawfish that turns their feathers pink. We finished our lunch, bought a few salty souvenirs, and moved on towards a huge hotel that was apparently built for the queen when she came over to visit the country that they had “colonized.”
Continue the trip with Allen and his Mom in next week’s edition
Mom and I had a couple of coffees and then got on a boat that took us down the Nile River from the source. Mom and I both have now been on the end of the Nile River and the beginning. Back in the 80’s Mom and Dad came to Egypt to visit me, and we took a boat down the Nile. The boat that we were on this time had other travelers on it, so we were able to meet some people and take some really great pictures of all the animals that congregate anywhere that there is plenty of water. They congregate together; it makes it really interesting to see how they allow each other to take turns at the water. There were hundreds of elephants, hippopotamuses everywhere on the ground, and in the water, there were crocodiles, all kinds of birds, water buffalo, and more. The first people that we talked to were the first Americans that we found on our entire trip. The husband happened to be a landscaper from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and his wife was an English lady who now lived with him in Jackson Hole. I asked him what he was thinking about the season to come in the landscaping world and the economy and how he was going to handle this new world that we’re living in. He said, “I no longer care about any of that. I just sold my business to someone in town, so I am now going to become a professional traveler.” That man is living my dream. We stayed in touch and emailed each other, and I warned him when he told me that next time you’re in Jackson Hole to give him a call that I would. He said, “Please do” so we have a friend there that I’m sure our next trip out to Jackson Hole we will have some dinner with. One thing he told me as we were talking about the ways of the world in the landscaping business is that the coolest thing he’s seen that’s come out lately is something called a smart hat. The landscape worker can wear this hat and when a customer comes out to ask a question such as something about the plant material or how to fertilize and take care of the plants with fungicides and whatnot, the smart hat will give the worker the answers that he needs so the bossman doesn’t have to get called or have to come in and answer those questions. I don’t see us reaching that level of technology at Garden Works but I’m glad to know that somebody is.
When the boat ride was over everybody had enough pictures, Mom and I joined Emmanuel in our Jeep and as we’re slowly heading back towards the next lodge for another beautiful evening, again, Emmanuel got a call, abruptly stopped, turned around, hauled about 20 minutes and we found a tree with a baby lion cub, sitting on a branch all by himself. Emmanuel asked if we were in a hurry to get back, and we both said, “no way, let’s watch this and see what happens.” Emmanuel said where there’s a baby there is a mother and most likely there will also be a nanny as somebody has to hunt, and they never leave the cubs alone. He said if we had enough patience, we would be able to spot at least one full-grown lion, possibly two, and maybe some more cubs. This tree with the cub in it was about 80 yards from where we were parked, and with our binoculars and telescopic lenses, we watched around that tree for an hour and a half and took some great pictures of the cub but could not see any of the adult lions. When suddenly I saw what looked like a piece of paper floating across the top of the grass, Emmanuel said “that was not paper. Where did I see that?” I told him to look right in front of the green bush that was between us and the tree where the cub was, and he said that was the back of a lioness arm, she had flipped over to digest on her back. Apparently, when you see your dog, lying on his back with his paws up in the air, he knows that digestion happens better when they’re on their spine. The cub finally made his way down the branch, and when he did, it upset the apple cart, and suddenly out of nowhere, three cubs appeared, and two lionesses stood up. They had been between us and the tree the entire time and as hard as we were looking, we could not make them out due to the camouflage that they were gifted with. Emmanuel and I had an interesting conversation about camouflage, and I remembered an article that I read in the Atlantic magazine about 10 years ago about where people have gotten with camouflage. They have just about gotten it to where a person can be invisible as long as there is a backdrop for them. You should look up some of the crazy stuff that’s happening in the world of camouflage, but no one gets it better than animals in the wild.
That afternoon, after two or three more hours in the Jeep, we wound up at the next lodge. We had had a very full day as we crossed over the equator once again and saw a few more lakes that were craters that were just really water instead of salt mines. They were really beautiful to see, and the vegetation was a little lusher as we had gotten up a little higher in altitude. When we got to the lodge, we were introduced to the owners, who were a Scottish couple that moved there 25 years ago after deciding they didn’t want to brave the Scottish winters anymore and they didn’t like the jobs that they had so they decided to try a new life. She was the gardener and had done a beautiful job planting all kinds of perennials and tropical plants around, and he was more of the handyman and had done a great job with the lighting at nighttime around the lodge. We watched an incredible sunset and were lulled off to sleep knowing that tomorrow was going to be a big day searching for chimpanzees in the deep forest. I’ll stop this week’s article here so we can talk about the chimpanzees next week. It was one of the coolest parts of the trip so I will save that.
In the meantime, Mimi and I are preparing the nursery for what looks like an early spring and getting our yard right for the MRA Tour Of Gardens, which is coming early May. We had one of those days when our ideas for the projects that we wanted to do in our yard all came together, and one late afternoon when I guess the skies were smiling on us and gave us our answers. Now we can get to work and get this stuff done and get the plants in that it’s going to take. I know that the YouTube video that I put up on our website and that shows up on your emails is a lot. But if you want to see the pictures that generally come from this article, you will start the video at nine minutes and 11 seconds and stop the video at 13 minutes and 31 seconds. I will post some pictures on our website with this also, in case you don’t want to look at the 18-minute YouTube video. Until next week.
