"Watch for horses" warned the parking lot sign at the KonTiki Hotel. The admonishment struck me as being almost as odd as finding a hotel named KonTiki in landlocked Uganda. My family and I wandered into the hotel bar, only to find it dark and the generator out. A few yards away, two German evangelists lectured a small group of African Baptist ministers against promiscuity, apparently unaware of the framed condom ad above their heads.
This was East Africa all right.
When I first arrived in nearby Tanzania in 1972, the world viewed Africa as mysterious and rife with unspoiled forests and wild animals. I was a HumBio student, there to study chimpanzees with Dr. Jane Goodall. People were spellbound by her tales of the chimpanzees—and knew little of Idi Amin or genocide.
Now, nearly 40 years later, my husband, our adult children and I were visiting rural Uganda to observe daily life here and help gauge the future for wild chimpanzees. It's predicted that chimpanzees will be extinct within 40 years if current trends in overpopulation and deforestation persist. We wanted to investigate the nation's respected primate research stations, a well-known chimp sanctuary, ecotourism, and social programs that link human welfare with great ape conservation.
It was clear that East Africa remains as fragile as ever. School classrooms typically held 120 children, and lacked books and chalk. We bathed in watering-can-cold showers, and felt lucky. We saw the impact of malaria, AIDS and malnutrition. Construction scaffolds consisted of brittle eucalyptus branches lashed together, and water sources were dire.
But in this place where so much is wrong, much is right. Seeing chickens and cattle going to market, we better appreciated meat and ate less of it. Bicycles on the road were stacked high with bananas. Learning to always greet people in the appropriate local language, we remembered how essential basic human respect is. The forests remain home to monkeys and iridescent birds. We stood breathless when we discovered a silverback gorilla feeding ten feet away.
One afternoon, my daughter and I watched a Ugandan family work on an impossibly steep Rift Valley mountainside. One woman repeatedly slammed her hoe into the clay dirt to plant Irish potatoes; another, with a baby wrapped on her back, threw her hoe less avidly. Three preschool-age boys played nearby, the eldest herding six lackadaisical goats. The littler boys climbed trees and joyfully rolled down the hill. Spotting us, they called "Allo, allo, wazungu [white people]" and began singing one perfect song after another for almost an hour. We drank in their serenade—and wondered how long these hills have echoed with these songs.
Back in the funky KonTiki, one of the German evangelists was being asked whether a prize rooster could be raised from the dead. We heard the clip-clop of approaching hoof-steps. As two riderless horses wandered by, my daughter drolly raised a toast: "Horses headed for the bar. Hey, why not?"
Nancy Merrick, '74, who lives in Ventura, Calif., is a physician and co-developer of ChimpSaver.org.
