Please, oh please, just give me back my underpant!
I am now at the Uranex camp at Lukuju this is in the middle
of a State forest at the “headwaters” to the Selous National Park, one of the
biggest game parks in the world. A very
organised camp with its own laundry service but please oh please can I have my
underpants back, apparently washing underpants for Tanzanians is a sensitive
matter they even have had to buy a specific washing machine for them (generally
not mine!).
The forest we are in is apparently crawling with wildlife as
it migrates down to the Selous, the problem is you never see any because the
camp is noisy, terrain quite hilly, it is densely treed and the grass is up to
1.5m high. Here the old saying applies “you can’t see the forest because of the
trees” so it is difficult to get any sort of view because it is so densely vegetated.
But the views when you get them are quite spectacular, they are of endless
pristine and I mean pristine forest, congratulations to the Tanzanians for
retaining it like this.
Yesterday I did a tour of the site with some very, very
serious, geeky consulting geologists, one Scottish and the other French. Wherever we went we had to be accompanied by
a game scout with a shot gun with a bullet in the chamber in-case of attacks by
animals. Comment was made that the gun was probably built in the 1880’s
certainly looked old. The game scout is
a very serious looking dude in all jungle greens, apparently a brilliant
tracker and has total second sense about the presence of animals – let’s hope
that’s correct.
The Uranex camp is a major operation, we sleep in tents on
concrete plinths equipped with a double bed and chair. Tents are cleaned every
day and the bed is turned down for you in the evening, very comfortable and
contrary to advice no problems with hyenas. The camp operation is contracted to
a company that runs safari camps for tourist, we have our own kitchen, office,
laundry etc.. etc. Food is excellent (though will bring some muesli next time).
One could get fat here as there are 3 cooked meals per day. Apparently I’m to
come back in July for a couple of weeks to manage the whole shebang.
Some interesting characters in the camp, most of them being
whites of “another kind”. There is the nuggetty camp manager and professional
hunter Jason, the dour monosyllabic driller from Botswana and the drilling
supervisor Darren also South African who actually seems quite normal, plus our
Exploration Manager (American). We were
real men last night, sitting round the camp fire drinking beer and talking men’s
talk. Most of the conversation revolved
around hunting and which game was best to eat, what sort of bullets are
required to stop what animals or how to kill a donkey “mercifully” with a
hammer. Comments were made that there were not many 70lb elephants around
anymore, I’m thinking that’s tiny but
what they were talking about was the weight of the tusks. Not a conversation I’d
say was politically correct…all quite bizarre but this is their life. There was also a very different relationship
between these guys and the Tanzanians I’ll let you fill in the gaps here…
A funny incident last night I was first to retire and I had
just drifted off when I heard my tent zip opening, with the imagination an self
preservation instinct kicking in big time, I sat up and let out the biggest
blood curdling scream. Poor driller Darren had been given directions to the
wrong tent, just hope he didn’t run off looking for the elephant gun!
Tonight I head out to spend the night with the geeky
geologists at the fly camp. This is a
camp built for a crew that is doing some mapping in an even more remote area.
Apparently a great location on top of a hill but all sorts of jokes about being
eaten by animals but we do have our own game scout…. Wish me luck!!!
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