How the L'Houest was Won

After a restless night in a tree house and a morning tracking chimps, Anna and I were pretty beat. Still, we figured that since we were there, we might as well try to take in a hike at a nearby wetland reserve. We struck off down the road, confident that soon enough someone would come driving along and give us a lift.

6 Km and a blistering hot hour later, a truck pulled up beside us. Anna told the driver where we were headed and he replied that that was exactly where he was going. We asked how far away it was and he replied, "56 Kilometers." I started to curse. Anna declined the ride since it couldn’t possibly be where we were headed. We walked around the next corner, only to see the sign for the wetlands we were searching for maybe 500 feet away. Our friends in the truck had pulled up beside it, honking and pointing, apparently now in full awareness of where we were talking about. When we finally strolled into the centre, sweat coursing down my back, who should pull in behind us, from our own campsite, but the damned Dutch Dyke Trio. I could barely look at them I was so irritated.

Anyway, we set out with our guide Josea, who was a kind of timid little guy, with a less than perfect command of the English language. I started to wonder whether he was related to Wilson, master of the velocity safari, because every time he tried to point out a rare bird to us, he would cough or trip over something and scare the bird away. I was getting a kick out of it really, because every time it happened, he would get this pitiful look on his face and say, "oh." I also noticed that every bird we were seeing was very rare. I almost expected him to say, "Here you see the ‘Common Swamp Warbler’… very, very rare."

But suddenly I lost all interest in birds, rare or otherwise, as something inside me shifted, and those who know me (or have read this blog more than twice) will recognize that I was back in one of my common scatological predicaments. My face started to sweat as I simultaneously tried to squeeze the cheeks, hike through a swamp, and appear interested in bird life. Every time Josea tried to show me a new bird before he scared it away, my answers were becoming shorter and more curt. "Yeah… nice bird." My sister turned to me, "What’s wrong with you?" Then she looked at my face, and with a knowledge born of many years of siblinghood said, "Oh Lord." I ignored her and concentrated on not losing my shit.

After a harrowing twenty minutes, something shifted again and I was in the clear. But of course, new problems had arisen. Given my strange, clenched stride, my unexpectedly long hikes that day, the dampness of the swamp, and my generally poor choice of undergarment that morning, I had set in motion a painful process of chafing that was impossible to reverse. That's right, I was in the possible grips of Jungle-Rot. Still, it was better than dropping a long call in my drawers.

As we were walking along a shoddily maintained board walk, I heard Josea say something in front of me. "What?" I asked. "Mind the…." He mumbled. "Pardon?" I said. Finally he turned around and pointed at my feet, "Mind the Ants." I looked down and sure enough I was being swarmed by fire ants. I ran forward like an idiot, shaking my feet and trying not to fall in the swamp. I reached the field and brushed the last of the insects off my feet. "You’re in the clear," said my sister. I breathed a sigh of relief and kept walking another twenty yards before I yelped, "Like hell I’m in the clear!!" I ripped up my pant leg and swiped off the ants that were biting their way indiscriminately up my legs. Fire in my pants, and not in a good way. I managed to head them off at the pass, but after that I felt creepy-crawly for the rest of the day. And what with the intermittent pain of my chafing issue, I started to worry that maybe some ants had made it past the knee-cap. Oh the mind is a powerful fear monger. And I have to say, that in the end, Mom was right, when we were in the back of the car as kids, we did act like we had ants in our pants.

I almost forgot about the ants when the boardwalk collapsed beneath us and the boots I had so desperately tried to keep dry were soaked. At least it’ll drown the ants, I thought to myself, just marvelling in how much I was enjoying this hike. Then however, things began to look up. We spotted a very rare primate called the L’Houest Monkey. I started cracking up, because as we were watching this majestic black monkey with a beautiful white beard and whiskers, Josea kept saying to Anna, "Look! Look at the tests!" Anna was confused. "The what?" "The tests! The tests!" Finally he used the full term of "testicles" thus clarifying his attempt at "testes." Either way, a little black dude, urging my sister to stare at a monkey’s package is hilarious any day. But I have to admit, it was interesting, as the monkey’s genitalia are a bright blue, thus, I assume the L’Houest Monkey is the most frustrated of primates.

We finally made it back to base-camp, put up our soggy feet and waited for the Flying Dutch Dykes to return, to see if we could get a ride. We had a little tussle with one of them, who, when Anna asked her whether she spoke French to try and aid in the conversation, replied. "No, I speaks English." I almost said, " I beg to differ," but we were looking for a ride after all. Still, these damn women, my Ugandan Nemesis, were unsure whether they could give us a ride back. Finally we approached their guide, who said of course they’d drop us off at the campsite they also were returning to.

Thank God… I was swamped.