Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On the other side of the flames, a group of men were busy preparing the ground for
the march of the fire. In order to direct it, channels of debris had to be built and others
cleared, so that the march of the flames could be controlled. Half-naked, these men turned
to watch us arrive. Boston approached to introduce us, but it quickly became apparent that
they were half-drunk; a bottle of waragi gin was lying on the ground, by the rim of a deep
charcoal pit.
'Five days,' Boston translated, as the man chattered at him in Bugandan. 'It took them
five days to clear all this.'
'Imagine what they could do in fifty.'
'A man's got to eat,' said Boston and, as the other man continued to talk, his eyes were
drawn to the charcoal pit. 'That's his pay,' Boston went on. 'He gets to keep some wood
to turn into charcoal, which he can sell at market.'
I was about to get on my high horse again - these men charged with destroying the an-
cient forests weren't even
paid
to do it? - when I heard a tiny squeaking from somewhere
up ahead, where the bush was still thick and green, helplessly awaiting its annihilation.
Leaving Boston to talk to this man, I crossed the desolation. Before I had gone two steps
inside the acacias I saw a vervet monkey, hunkered down in the undergrowth. Vervets are a
small but highly intelligent monkey, with white-grey fur and tiny black faces. Studies have
shown them to have almost human characteristics - vervets have been documented suf-
fering from stress, anxiety disorders, and even engaging in social alcohol use - and I had
never seen it more closely than in this little monkey. She was a little more than a foot tall
and her face was creased in anxiety that looked peculiarly human. In the bush she strained
to get a better view of me. I watched her, unable to descry why she was risking the fire and
smoke and wasn't fleeing deeper into the forest like every other animal.
Then all became apparent. From between the trees, two boys appeared. They were no
older than seven or eight and, between them, they were holding what, at first, appeared to
be a small rat. Instantly, the vervet set up an alarm call. The language of vervets has been
deciphered to have distinct calls for every predator of the forest, but this must have been
a very specific call - because, as the boys got closer, I saw what the vervet already knew:
the animal in their hands was not a rat at all. It was, in fact, a tiny monkey - a baby, not
more than a couple of days old. It was clearly the offspring of the mother fretting in the
undergrowth.
While I had been watching, Boston had come to my side. Apprising himself of the situ-
ation, he began to bark at the boys. 'Give it to her,' he said, indicating the vervet's pan-
icked mother, but the boys just looked at him dumbly.
'What do they want with it?' I asked.
Behind the boys, an elderly man was appearing from the undergrowth. It seemed he had
been watching our little confrontation play out, because he was grinning, with something
