Tim O’Hair, Marine Officer
Fort Portal, Uganda, May 2014
The closest thing to a plan was a general destination and a timeline—the Rwenzori Mountains, and we told the guys back in Kampala not to worry unless we didn’t show up on Tuesday morning for work. In that case, start the search at the Bwamba Pass. Earlier on Friday morning I had a meeting with my judge about an opinion he was to deliver later in June. It was something about conflict of interest and disclosing interests and presumption of guilt and some other Monday through Friday mumbo jumbo that would be a world away just hours later.
Our driver, Moses, was under instructions to take us to Fort Portal, the nearest major city next to the Rwenzoris, 5 hours outside Kampala, or 200 miles westbound down the rough but paved road toward Congo. In the back of our minds Congo was the target. It was about 30 miles from Kazinga, a small village-town due west of Fort Portal, and Congo would be right through the Rwenzori’s, past Bundibugyo, and finally through the border. We grabbed gear for two days: sleeping bags, 10 liters of water each, 4 cans of beans, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, muffins, 8 bananas, 6 apples, a box of cookies, and a homemade electrolyte solution, to go with the other necessities like sunscreen, bug spray, and note-taking gear. The packs were not light, but they would get lighter as the journey progressed and the water supply diminished.
As we approached, Moses’ directions were not getting clearer.
“So, we are now in Fort Portal,” he hinted, asking for a place to drop us off without being rude.
“Ok,” Andy said, giving him no indication of where to drop us off. Neither one of us knew. “The city center good enough for you?” Andy asked me.
“Ya, good as anywhere I guess.”
This was a larger town for Uganda, but still very much limited in terms of technology and amenities, and we had no reservations anywhere, just this vague plan of conquering the Rwenzori’s and heading into the Congo by foot. So we stopped at the most Mzungu (white person) pub to get one last good hot meal and juice before pushing out on the journey. We walked out of the restaurant and the adventure began immediately; it was 9:45pm and we were negotiating with boda’s to take us to the Rwenzori’s, 20 clicks away, but they were not exactly sure where the Bwamba Pass trail head began. Steven approached, a young local Muslim in his early 20’s.
“Where are you going my friend, I can show you,” he said.
After a month in Kampala, I just assumed he was any other boda boda driver trying to steal a fare, so I ignored him at first, but then realized that he had no motorcycle. I pointed on the map where we needed to get.
“Ah, these guys do not know, come with me,” he said.
“You know where the trail head is?” I asked naively.
“No, but you see, the boda’s on this side of the road,” he said leading us in one direction but pointing to where we were coming from, “they only know the villages that way. Down here (pointing to where we were headed), the boda’s know the villages near the mountains. Follow me.” It was hard to imagine—we were talking about maybe a 20-mile radius; how could a 20 year-old boda boda driver not know 20 miles in his hometown? After less than a year in Los Angeles I felt comfortable navigating most of the city, and certainly I felt comfortable in my native Sacramento for anything within 100 miles, but the perspective is quite different and the common radius of travel is much smaller out here.
Steven led us nearly a mile through town, and we hiked it with our heavy packs unsure as to where he was leading us. We knew we needed to head west and that was the general direction he was taking us in, so that was reassuring. At last we arrived to a group of boda bodas that had about 10 teenagers leaning against their bike looking as cool as possible in the moonlight. Steven negotiated with them for a couple minutes, telling them that their initial rate was too much and to take us for less than 10,000 shillings, or $4. We said 10,000 was fine, so we thanked him for his guidance, tossed him 2500 shillings as a thanks, hopped on the back of the boda boda’s with 50 pound packs and took off down the road.
The pack pulled against the force of the bike giving my hands a tough workout just to avoid falling backwards; the many speed bumps and potholes were especially tricky. At last, 20 clicks or so later, we turned off the main road and smashed down a rocky dirt path. The bike would temporarily lose control, and then be regained, and again be shoved in the direction of a rut on the road. Somehow we made it a couple miles down this road under the moonlight before turning onto an even rockier road. Fortunately, this road was too rocky for the bodas, so we didn’t have to risk falling; we just got off the bikes and paid the fare, then walked. The Rwenzori’s were right ahead of us; we could see that much, and we knew from the map that Congo was just a Western azimuth away, still unsure as to exactly why we even wanted to go there. It was a human test—a refreshing challenge that combines the mind and the body. We didn’t know what was going to happen, other than that we’d never forget the next 24-hours.
After less than 100 meters, a local outside a police outpost of some sort stopped us.
“You must check in with the guides!” he yelled, obvious even in the darkness that we weren’t local tribesman going home. We’d heard about this racket, about the locals collecting money, as a sort of tax from those who wished to cross the pass, but we half hoped we could sneak by the guards under the darkness and go at it without a guide, after all, this was an adventure trip, a human challenge. He led us down the path, backtracking ourselves, to the guide huts that we passed, where a mid-20 something man came out and told us that we couldn’t go without a guide.
“How about we pay you and we just go alone, no guide. We want to go tonight,” we said. It was closing in on 11pm but the temperature would be much more soothing for a difficult climb than in the beating sun.
“Too risky, you won’t make it. The guide will go tomorrow, first thing. You stay here tonight,” he said, walking us over to a small room in a brick hut that had a dirty bed and garden tools. This was clearly not slept in much, but would have to do for the night. We dropped gear, unrolled our bags (mine was an improvised bag; a wool blanket with a shower curtain taped to it to provide protection if it rained), laid head to toe, and slept peacefully, much better than anticipated.
The morning goats and chickens running around trying to avoid the breakfast plate served as our alarm clock. It was about 6:30 and I surprisingly felt wonderful—ready to take on a full day of work. We had carb-loaded the few days leading up to this, avoided alcohol, and downed water to get extremely hydrated for the journey, whatever it may be. We wanted our bodies in the best shape possible, despite both of us being very out of shape compared to our military days, but at least well aware that no matter what, our body was going to run out of gas—this was a mental challenge just as much as a physical one. Law school at least had our minds sharp. I packed my gear, tidied up (relatively speaking), and we went to the hut to go pay the guide. We signed the guest book, which had numerous African names listed that dated back a couple months on the first page, but no recognizable American or European names, and at last, we stepped off.
The first hour of the hike was with full gear and after a 15-minute nature walk through the village, it was straight uphill.
“Nice and slow, Timothy,” our guide kept reminded me, as I began in the point position. I was running the hills, only to stop every 50 feet or so out of exhaustion, but allowing the other two to catch up while I caught my wind. Somewhere inside of me I dumbly decided that this was the preferred method of taking the hills—fast, then stop, fast then stop.
“OK,” I kept replying, before naively racing up another hill and overusing my energy again. I thought I would just out muscle this mountain, despite my lack of physical fitness of late, but on an adventure like this fitness really means nothing. What difference does it make if you are going to get gassed on the 1st, 3rd, or 5th climb, when there are still about 200 more to go? The logic of my trek was about as sound as it is to go full speed once a traffic jam opens up for 100 feet, only to know that you’ll have to slam the breaks on again shortly. The arrogance was quite high too—why wasn’t I just listening to the guy that does this all the time? I was just going to have to do it my way, I guess, even if I knew it wasn’t smart. Alas, we made it to the first resting point an hour in, and upon getting to the plateau with a couple mud huts and an impressive view, we dropped gear and sucked air.
“So we’ll have a little more to climb, then hike for awhile, then it is all downhill,” the guide informed us in his good but non-native English. This sounded fine—I was gassed, but if we took 10-minutes here for a break and there was only one hard climb left, I could make it. The pack was now 1.5 liters of water lighter as I had already gone through my first bottle and sweated it back out along the trail somewhere, but it was still pretty heavy. After a few pictures and some food, we packed it in and hit the trail again, this time Peter (the guide) taking point.
The uphill came almost immediately and my legs started trembling again, but behind the much slower and consistent (and smarter) pace of Peter, I had successfully caught my second wind and was able to push. Andy had begun cramping in the legs, but we continued on for another hour or so. We passed through the villages on the Fort Portal side of the mountain and into the national park where it went from the highlands to the jungle almost instantaneously. The sun was now shade and the trees had leaves large enough to drag one of us out of there if need be—a car or helicopter certainly wasn’t going to rescue us up here. Eventually we stopped to get electrolytes and sooth the cramping—4 parts salt, 1 part sugar, shaken into a half drunk bottle of water. Disgusting but effective, and we continued up the mountain. We were embarrassingly out of shape.
Finally we reached the top, two and a half-hours after stepping off, and our climb was complete (little did we know how much harder the descent would be). We took another break and had apples, water, and let our shirts dry in a patch of sun to avoid our bodies freezing in the shade from the sweat. The water was cycling through our bodies, in through the mouth and out through every pore on our body, cleansing the toxins that we’d breathed in over the past month in the smoggy city of Kampala. It felt like an internal shower, something my body needed after a year of the library, beer, pizza, and traffic.
I needed to take a leak but was hesitant to just pee anywhere in the woods, as locals may see and I had no idea what the customs in this neck of the woods were. Peter pointed to an outhouse that was nothing more than four tree branches as the frame of the structure and some slats crossing the branches as walls, all encompassing a hole in the ground that emitted the odor of death. Who knows how many people had shit down that hole, but it was all down there accumulated, unflushed, and festering. I have to believe even the locals found this smell repugnant. There was no toilet paper or place to put it even if you had it.
We pushed again, being assured that the hills were over, but after a small decline that was very welcome, we climbed another short hill again. Our minds had been promised no more hills, but we climbed and made it through, and they were very small hills, leading into an aggressive downhill.
We saw the first of many tribal people once our decline began and were informed that they were passing through to see the king speak later that day on the Fort Portal side of the mountain. This was their common highway and they navigated it with ease and with no shoes, no water, and cargo such as homemade kitchen knives (with metal blades and tree stump handles) or animal hides, presumably to be given as tribute to the king or maybe to be sold at the gathering—I have no clue. They spoke no English, but stared carefully at us, examining our faces and skin tone and our general out-of-placeness, but then left with a friendly but distrusting waive and we were all on our way. We ended up going by 10-20 of these tribesman in the mid-morning, as their king was to speak around midday.
The decline continued and we made it into a jungle area where the guide, still on point, halted us and we dipped below some bushes to avoid being seen by the flying monkeys. Tons of them, maybe not a hundred, but somewhere between 10 and 100 were flying, jumping off a tree branch to another 50 feet away, then scurrying up the tree. Trying to follow them was like trying to see a fish jump: once you see it, it’s almost too late, then you stare at the same spot it came from hoping to see it again, but the fish (or monkey) is long gone by then. Fortunately for us, there were so many so if you stared into a bushy area long enough, you were bound to see a few. They cackled and yelled, and swung, and flew, and didn’t approach us but certainly gave us a magical show. Even the guide was impressed.
We pushed, now an hour into the steep decline with sore quads and shins, but into the bamboo zone. Every couple hundred meters we’d try a new method—maybe walking sideways would change the strain on the muscles to the side of the leg, but that was impossible for more than a couple hundred meters. Andy even tried walking backwards, but that lasted for 20-feet and the realization that the terrain was too steep and unpredictable not to be able to see your next step overwhelmed the burn. The bamboo zone was a forest of beautiful bamboo, 30 and 40 feet high, wildly growing and undisturbed by humanity. It went from a decline to slowly becoming the flattest the hike would be in the mountains, so we cruised serenely through the beautiful zone, for about 30 minutes, enough to give our legs a little juice. The surrounding plants were indescribable. I don’t know what kind of plants they were, but it seemed that every shape and size was well represented. Massive leaves, vines that could be swung on, overhanging trees filled with beehives that hummed and buzzed as you nervously passed underneath, and of course, a steady and thick background of bamboo.
The decline began again, and our legs quickly became jelly. The grade was steeper than a common set of stairs, but it was muddy and our packs still weighed 40 or 45 pounds and those pushed us down the hills. We slid, regained our footing, slid some more, fell, walked slowly, and then tried to get to a nearby flat spot 30 feet ahead, only to realize that another slope awaited around the corner or through the bushes. The downhill seemed to never end and was now much more painful than the uphill. The uphill wore at your legs and lungs, but the downhill stressed your feet, bones, muscles, and mind (but at least the lungs weren’t huffing as bad, although as I write this two-days later, I still am more comfortable going uphill than downhill. I suspect that’ll change in a couple days). The distant plateau that gave hope that the downhill was almost over was always just another massive mountain that blended in with the green background that surrounded it—you couldn’t even tell if the green was just blades of grass or massive 100 foot trees. Depth perception was waning and our minds began getting a little loopy. We were now probably 4 hours in and nearly beaten, but not quite.
We went through more forest, which slowly became tall grasslands that were higher than our head as we continued the descent. Visibility was less than 30-feet as we left the national park and was back into the tribal community on the Bundibugyo side of the mountain (a series of villages that we’d soon walk through). These people were not un-contacted by Westerners, but they were rarely contacted, and seeing a person of our pigment was surely the highlight of the day, if not year, for them. Groups would gather and unabashedly stare at us. If I pulled out the camera they would excitingly jockey for position and get in front, seeing an electronic for the first time in who knows how long. Their clothes looked as expected, with a few hints of Western contact in the form of a tattered and beaten up collared shirt or t-shirt, but for the most part the clothes were constructed off the land, as were the huts. The huts were all mud; some had tin roofs, others had thistle roofs. Chores were plentiful as all the adults and older children were either dealing with the animals, or repairing something on the house, or working with the crops. All would stare as we passed through the main trail, and one native would sprint 100 meters or so to the next neighborhood to prepare them for our visit. The whole mountain knew we were coming in no time, via a different form of Internet: old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
I couldn’t help but think how different we were, but also so similar. Miles from any hint of civilization (other than my iPhone to capture the moments), the only thing we had in common was that we both looked human and we both smiled. In a month or so I was headed back to LA to drive around in my hybrid-sedan and study the law; my biggest problems were cockroaches in my two-bedroom apartment and a slow Internet connection—theirs were much different. I drank from the Rwenzori™ branded water bottle free of bacteria and parasites; they sipped from a muddy river off the Rwenzori mountain range without fear. I “roughed it” with a can of chili beans; they grew and depended on the harvest of their yams to survive and their free ranging goat for milk. They weren’t camping, they weren’t roughing it or at their summer cabin-home, they weren’t doing this for the experience; this was just life.
Beyond the human form, I found another overlap: these people seemed immeasurably happy; they were simple, by my standards, but happy. They had a soccer field with goals constructed by uneven tree branches; they had plenty of food and shelter; they had those close to them right nearby. They were happy and intrigued by our presence, but not sad to see us leave either. They wanted their life (and I certainly wanted mine—a hot pizza and a beer sounded amazing at the time, not to mention a chance to check Facebook and yesterday’s baseball scores), but we shared the same level of happiness, at least at that time and place. We were both learning—both seeing something new, and it would be unfair to say that either of us were wrong in our ways of life—we both thrived, respectively. We were just different, but it became crystal clear how the logical extremes of post-colonialism have been detrimental and realized. To take people from this environment and force them into our own would surely ruin the equality of this happiness—something quite evident in the slums of the neighboring cities where people lived more like Westerner’s but simply weren’t cut out for it. Electricity is shoddy, communication to the world is scarce, and buildings are perhaps even more trampled than a well-put-together mud hut in the hills. Relying on a market economy where the whole community is a novice, tearing the binds that connect them to the land and from the hills and “civilizing” another seemed a barbaric practice that I struggled to see the humanity in. Today, I was a fish out of water balancing my life to make me miss my home, but for those affected most by post-colonialism, they were fish out of water left with no chance for escape. In the Western world, we paradoxically look to Eastern proverbs to seek wisdom and centering, one common phrase being, “happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.” If we as a people believe in this saying, it is hard to say that the tribal people living off the Rwenzori’s, by and large untouched by the West, are anything but kings and queens. They are satisfied, they are content, and they just live from day to day, year to year, century to century.
We passed through village after village, neighborhood after neighborhood, where people lined the trail to stare. We were the big attraction, and it was quite a show we were putting on. At one point we stopped to rest for a couple minutes. Villagers slowly accumulated, staring, hiding behind trees but still very visible. The white men were exhausted; the hills had defeated them. The look on our faces was defeat: “get me out of here,” although I was in no hurry to leave. It was not hard to see why great Generals from the Occident, from Alexander to the modern day, have always struggled in the hills. This was the native man’s terrain: they knew every turn, every crescent, every ambush point, every point of cover, concealment, everything. “Why were the white men so exhausted here?” Firepower is no match for this knowledge and comfort with the terrain—they could win with spears, bows, or probably even hands and knives. The hills are too much for a clunky and physically large group accustomed to restaurants, electronics, and comfort. Fortunately, these were a very friendly people that, despite a language barrier, didn’t hesitate to waive.
At one point two boys were playing catch with a ball and both Andy and I put both hands up, as if to say, “throw it here, let us play.” The boys had no idea what we were doing and just assumed that putting both hands up was a waive, so they mimicked us, as did the family 30 meters down, with two hands up, thumbs touching, as a waive. We waived back, the same way, for some reason. I can only wonder how long that will be a method of waiving there; how long will that be the way to greet a stranger, two hands up, thumbs touching.
We continued the decent. “One more, Timothy, one more hard one then it’s all flat,” Peter assured me. I’d learned over the past 5 hours or so that “one more” from Peter was really just candy for my brain—one more could mean two, three, four, or ten more steep declines. My legs were jelly and I was on pure mental energy to decline down the steep edge of the Bundibugyo side of the mountain—it hurt. In the distance, very faintly, I could see something moving quickly and smoothly: a boda boda! Civilization was within eyesight!
The decline continued, on and on and on, but at last, after 6 hours, we made it off the mountain and into the flatland villages, where we were still stared at as outsiders, but not so much as we were in the hills. We felt the premature sense of mission accomplishment. Our packs were now a gallon of water and some food lighter, but we were beaten. My knees hyperextended every step—it was just gravity and bone structure, snapping my knee on every step on the welcomed flat road that we were now walking across, but the muscles surrounding the bone were useless. My shirt was drenched and muddy and smelled quite native, my shoes were about to give out, and my face was flush from sun and exhaustion. My appreciation for the toughness of the mountain tribes cannot go understated—these people may appear tattered and beaten, but they have strong souls.
If we knew the hike on the flatland would be 5 more miles, we would’ve hopped on boda’s and just gotten to our destination, but around every turn, after every break (or mini-break that happened every 100 meters or so), Peter would tell us, “you are so close, we are right there.” So we kept going, and going, and going. Peter knew some villagers and talked and held hands with them as they joined our hike for a few hundred meters (a heterosexual sign of affection between men out here) as we continued down the road. He was nowhere near as exhausted as us. Though his back only carried one AK-47 with a full magazine (and a canteen that was filled in the river an hour into the hike), he looked like he could’ve walked back if he had to. My hat goes off to him for that, as I had nothing left in the tank—physically or mentally.
We finally made it to the center of town, right on the circle, plopped down and just laughed. What had we gone through—was any of that even real? Only one day, but we’d seen so much: mud-huts, amazing wild plants, flying monkeys, tribes. Congo wasn’t to be; Peter informed us that there were too many land mines and too much security patrolling the border; the closest we got was a mountain top where we could see into the Congo about 15 or 20 clicks away. It was so eye opening, but we were so glad it was over. A taxi back to Fort Portal came and picked us up—it had 16 people crammed in it and was no larger than a typical van back at home, but this still seemed like a great luxury. Fort Portal, which just the night before seemed primitive and backwards suddenly seemed like an oasis. What I wouldn’t give for that shack I slept in last night or just a hot meal and fresh passion-fruit juice. We drove 2-hours back around the northern tip of the Rwenzoris and pulled into Fort Portal, which looked like the skyline of New York City to our exhausted eyes. We splurged and split a $60 hotel room with A/C and complimentary juice, fruit, and egg breakfast in the morning—it was all amazing and felt like we were eating off of golden cutlery. It had only been one day.
The trip brought us back from our cushy law school issues in Malibu, back out of our element where we could really sharpen our minds, stop taking it all for granted, and appreciate what we have. Back to getting comfortable being uncomfortable. Things were backwards, to us, but they made sense that day. My legs only hurt going downhill, uphill was welcome; my shirt drenched in two-days worth of sweat did not smell bad to me (though it did when I unpacked in Kampala); a packed cab ride going 100 km/h racing around a mountain seemed safe and luxurious. I got what I set out for, mission accomplished.