The Udzungwas

The Udzungwas
Forest bathing
Nights punctuated by hyraxes’ rivaling calls
Shine your searching torch – there are orange galago eyes, treefrogs and the timid to and fro chameleon dance of a new dwarf.
With morning come deep throated bellows of a Sykes monkey male – is he alone or with a group? How far? How early is it? You check your watch.
Fresh duiker pellets ahead – was it a blue or a red? What frightened it – you or a leopard?
Across your path dashes a pair of rufous and black long-nosed giants – they too follow a path – a sengi tunnel near which
A camera trap lies on its side, the gesture of a forest-dwelling savanna elephant
How big are their groups in the Parinari forest?
You enter dense Aframomum, a smell of ginger entices your bite into its red fruit
Suddenly, loud wing flaps above – which hornbill was it? Silvery-cheeked!
By afternoon, you all are thirsty, you stop to eat chapatis by a slow-moving river, indulging in a few momentary glimpses of black-and-white coats of unknowing colobus, once knowing, disappearing clumsily from view.
Stopping allows you to admire fully the enveloping canopy above while you merge with the forest floor. Relief.
Then you climb again, until the sun-drenched ridgetop, where along an elephant trail are fresh piles of buffalo and kiti moto dung. The tall grass cuts at your arms, but you barely feel it – the view – ah, the view: Rolling endless green hills, don’t ever end.
And downhill again, toward the hums of another stream and a mangabey whoop-gobble and scream leaving Tabarnaemontana fruit for someone else to eat.
Still in the leaf-litter a satiated viper coils in camouflage, let him be.
Now towards camp, voices and smell of fire, a splash in the icy vigor of riverwater joined by wagtails, followed by warming blazes of fresh red pilipili on a heavy plate of maharage and wali. Tumeshiba.
Coolness of another night. Another story of the Udzungwa boys. The time we climbed a sapling to elude a lion – the sapling bowed to the ground; the cavalier lion had gone away anyway. Or the time we were lost after the arduous climb up Luhomero peak – who chose this short-cut? Or that night at Tembo camp when we slept in fear of reach of a blazing forest fire. Stories become legends, re-told but not embellished – no need. All pause at the hoot of an African wood owl – they are bahati mbaya! They are not!
The morning awakens with a mixed chorus of chipper chirps of flitting sunbirds, a distant striped kingfisher, and busy cooks. Chai and Africafe.
Soon you will spot the red colobus’ red caps across a valley, not far from the African crowned eagles’ nest, as you crunch down on the orange crabshell in otter dung, and stone-skip the width of the Lumemo with your eyes locked on the reassuringly ever-looming Mwanihana peak.