UgandAshis 47 Golden monkeys

UgandAshis 47

August 13, 2009

Golden monkeys

The king of the monkeys meets his match. After a two hour climb up the mountains though bamboo forest we find a troop of golden monkeys. Their skin radiates in the sun and as they chew on the leaves we get to look at this habituated group. After about half an hour I end up watching one eye to eye from a distance of about 2 meters. I see in the eyes of this adorable creature peace. He is munching away at his leaves assuring the youngsters in the troop are safe and that the tourists get a good opportunity to take photos a plenty.

The park is one of the smaller wild parks in Uganda and lies on the border with Congo and Rwanda. Three volcanoes are home to wide range of mammals, birds and reptiles. Nard and I have declared to be big fans of chameleons so everywhere we go we look for this well hidden reptile. He climbs trees to find the colorful reptile as I lie in the grass to check out the bushes from my hide out.

Being half monkeys ourselves we managed to yet one of our fellow visitors irate. He was focusing on making photos of the monkeys and did not appreciate our jokes driving the monkeys away according to him. Our theory however is that his bad vibes made the golden monkey disappear all the time. Yet he did make some good photos and we pray we will receive them by e-mail. Great new world.

To help us find the monkeys a morning crew of park guards has gone up to track the monkeys so the tourist can find them easily. Some of the camp guards know a lot on flora and fauna in the park. As far as I can see on the map Uganda has 11 nature parks and having seen three I am sure I want to see the other 8 as well. Each nature park has been so different so far and it gives a longing to see more.

One of the sad things about the nature park is that the original inhabitants of the park, the Batwa (pygmies) have been booted out of their cave home in 1990. As compensation they received homes and lands outside of the park. Yet not being used to houses led them to sell for a very low price to the local population. As it is today several of the families live a homeless existence. Unfortunately the same thing has happened in Bwindi Park. Not for everybody the setting up of a nature park has been a big success. Yet it seems to fall in a tradition in the world where the hunter gather lifestyle is having a hard time to remain on this planet.

One day we will look back and see we have preserved certain groups of monkeys and that the humans that used to live in those areas have disappeared.

Namaskar,
Ashis Brahma