Monkeying Around: 15/11/11

On the 9^th of November, me Busoti and Msigwa departed on another 5 day safari into the bush. We go as a 3 because it allows someone to stay in camp the whole time to cook and protect the stuff. That person was Msigwa. We left at 8am and travelled North East of camp walking until 4:30pm. As the crow flies it was 20km to our destination. Our destination is aptly named Muntindi which is Swahili for Hornbill. A hornbill is a genus of noisy, absurd looking obnoxious birds. The ground hornbill is found in abundance at Muntindi and can be heard fairly constantly.

Day 1, Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll, without the Drugs and rock n roll.

On arriving at Muntindi we were confronted with another camp. A large camp that was seemingly deserted and for the sake of this chapter we will call it Band Camp. Band camp was a very illegal camp in which a fairly large operation was evident.

To back up a little it seems there are several illegal activities in which local people can exploit these forests. They are the following; poaching, honey farming, gunpowder manufacture, logging and growing marijuana. Band Camp had 4 out of the 5 which were all but the logging. That’s right, they were growing the weed, the ganj, green, spliff, the ‘erb what every you want to call it. I can honestly say that this was the first time ive ever seen it in plant form! Not that ive ever seen it in any other form…. I mean I only knew it was weed cus I recognised it from the Bob Marley photos.

A Rasta's wet dream

A Rasta's bigger wet dream

The device used to filter Gunpowder from the soil

So needless to say Band Camp had it going in on, but being on the other side of the fence it was our duty to oppose such operations. A complication was that we had now set up our own camp a stones throw away from Band camp. The burning of Band camp could elicit some negative feelings from its proprietors. Therefore to burn it and then camp next to the evidence would be foolish should these people return. To avoid this I decided that we should burn it on the morning of the 5^th day when we had packed up and thus avoid any sticky situations.

Band camp being burnt on schedule

Day 2, Viking it up

I should say that of the 5 days in total, 2 are designated travel days to and from big camp. The 3 inbetween are exploration days where we search for human activity and chimp activity.

Anyway, about an hour into Day 2 we come across a geezer (lets call him Bob) in his late 40s with about 15kg of poached meet on his head, 3 spears in his left hand, an axe and a bucket of honey, a machete and a knife… It became apparent that he was returning to Band Camp where he had stashed his bike. I first saw Bob as I was relieving myself, which is generally safe to do anywhere as you don’t often come across people in the forest. Anyway, call it bad timing but we saw each other as I was in mid flow. A few shakes later we were questioning Bob and rummaging through his stuff. First things first we confiscated the spears and removed the iron tips from the wooden poles. Then we instructed Bob to build a fire as we were going to burn all his meat. Understandably he was not that happy but after making it clear that it was either that or the police, he was slightly happier to oblige. Off course the police thing is a complete bluff. The meat was of an adult Pongo from which 1Kg sells for 5,000 shillings. As he had about 15 Kg, that totals 75,000 TZS which is about 50 USD. A fair amount of money in these parts. We then asked Bob to show us all the traps he’d set. He said there were 10 which we found and cut down but there were probably more. After we’d done all we could with Bob we let him go back to Band Camp to get his bike and leave. We told him our names so that Msigwa would know we had already dealt with him.

BOB

Me with an axe

Later that day we found another camp, this one looked like it was solely for gunpowder. Again there were no people but this time being of a less delicate disposition we torched it. Im telling you, I started to feel like a Viking what with all this burning (and there was more to come!).

The vikings have landed

We returned back to Little camp at bout 4ish only to find Bob chillaxing next to the fire with Msigwa! Interestingly the man seemed to have completely put aside any bad feelings he might have had towards us and shared coffee with us before sleeping in Band Camp and leaving the next morning. Once he’d left little camp me and Busoti re attached his spear heads to have a little fun. Enough said.

Day 3, Day of the Pongo

So as I’ve already said, poachers are very active in these parts. The poachers kill catch their quarry in one of two ways; either with a gun or with a trap. Part of our work is therefore the removal of any traps that we come across. On this day however we sadly came across a trap that had already caught an animal. It was a Pongo which is a medium sized antelope that on first glance seemed very dead. As we approached though our dead Pongo swung its head in alarm. Not dead. This was a welcome surprise but it still looked in a bad way. The poor thing was clearly exhausted, It could have been struggling in the trap for over 24 hours. Its head was lolled back over its shoulder and the leg that was caught in the trap was strung awkwardly above it so at once we set about freeing the poor bugger. Busoti bent the pole whilst I pinned down animal and set about cutting it free of the trap. Once clear I lifted him out of the bush, he’d got himself tangled in during his struggle, and into a small clearing. Here I was able to clear its head of ticks and give it some water. It was a real Dolittle moment. After a few minutes of grooming, I got off him and let him go but in his sudden panick stricken freedom, he got up and ran straight into another bush. A second later he struggled free of the bush and ran back into the clearing only to crash to the ground 20 m from us. He did not get up. We waited near him for a good half an hour to let him gain his strength before urging him to find a better hiding place (the middle of a clearing is no place for an injured antelope!). This he did, and without crashing to the floor or any bushes. So there you have it, hopefully he’ll survive.

Pongo caught in a trap

Dr Doolittle rescuing sed pongo from trap

Happy ending

Later that day we came across another camp. This camp was a logging camp with a small vegetable patch. What did we do? We went Viking on it and burnt it too the ground.

burn

one for the mantle piece

Day 4, Guns

Today we came across a honey farmer who was in fact a very nice man. So nice in fact that he actually had a permit to farm honey in the forest! This is unheard of. No one has permits. We did find out though that for a 1 year permit it only costs 1,000 TZS (60p ish). So he was operating legally in the forest! He told us that he had 12 hives up in the area and that it takes 4 hives to fill one bucket with honey. Each bucket he can then sell for around 60,000 TZS (about £30). Not a bad little business if you ask me.

The honey farmer camp

Me and the honey farmers with their honey

Later on that day, on our way back to little camp, we heard a gunshot that sounded very close. We decided to follow the direction it came from. After about 10 minutes I spotted 2 men squatting, with their backs to us, about 60m away. We started to approach them. As we did so we realised there were 4 of them in total. Two men were squatting with their rifles whilst the other two were skinning an animal. At about 30m they noticed us. Without hesitation, one of the armed men grabbed his rifle and started to load it.. I did not expect that reaction at all. We continued towards them regardless. As we got closer the man loading his gun started to relax (perhaps noticing that we were unarmed). When we got to them it was pretty tense. We broke the ice with a few pleasantries before I asked them if I could take photos. They agreed that this was ok so I started snapping away, making a few jokes as I went in order to help every one relax. Due to the fact that there were 4 of them armed with 2 rifles, 1 machete, 2 knives and a spear it was obvious that we were in no position to give them any sort of slap on the wrist. So we simply took the photos and explained who we were and our work. I asked them how much 1 rifle cost to which they replied 70,000TZS (no more than £35). After 10 minutes we left. An interesting experience to say the least!