January 16th

I told Mimi last night that I sure do get myself into some crazy situations. She looked at me like “Really”? We have only known each other for 40 years so she’s been a part of most of the nutty stories. This will be the beginning of one of the nuttier ones only this time she won’t be with me. By the time this Northside Sun reaches the mailboxes it will be my birthday, Friday the 16th, I will also be deep in Uganda on the equator. Yep, I am off on another life changing experience but this time with my mother!

In November I was just about to leave one of my nieces birthday party saying goodbye to everyone when Mom said, as if it were an afterthought, “I meant to ask you earlier if you would mind going to Rwanda with me?” I thought I had a banana in my ear. I laughed and told her it was funny because it sounded like what she said was “ would you go to Rwanda with me”. Mom said that is exactly what she had said. I was shocked and didn’t know quite what to say. So I asked “when?” She said she was 88 years old and that we had better hurry! Then I asked “why?” She said she had always wanted to see the endangered Mountain Gorillas, not the lowland gorillas, She specifically wanted to see the mountain Gorillas. I looked at Mimi and she looked at me, I was dangling precariously somewhere between my wife and my mother. Mimi said that she thought this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity doing something like this with my mother.

Mimi was behind the idea 100% at least outwardly. We both knew the hardest part about this would be the time apart from each other, something we rarely do. Mimi also had a funny feeling about Rwanda. When we got home we looked up some stuff about Rwanda and the few Mountain Gorilla groups that are left. It looked like Uganda is the best place to start and end a trip like this. We would have crossed over into Uganda from Rwanda anyway to get into the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest where the last of them remain. I always try to have as few border crossings as possible, every crossing is another potential problem and a different set of rules, best avoided when possible. We called mom that night to ask if she would consider Uganda instead of Rwanda since they are right next door.

Now to figure out the dates. We would try to figure out a time of the year when Mimi would notice my absence the least. January would work out perfectly since that is the time of year that Mimi goes to market in Atlanta. She lengthened the market trip by a few days so she could be away from a quiet house for as long as possible. She can use a couple of days to pack up without me disrupting her thoughts while she puts together outfits and pack in peace. She will stay in a safe neighborhood and have food delivered to the place so she won’t have to brave Atlanta at night. Mia lives 2 hours away and will be coming over to Atlanta to have a couple of dinners with her on the weekend. I will be gone for 15 days so she will have a few days back at home and the business without me buggering everything up. If all goes well I will be back on the 25th.

I called my buddy who I lived with in Holland who travels around the world more than anyone I know. I knew he had been to Tanzania and around that area extensively taking pictures and working with anything conservatory, he and his wife live for that. He had not been to Uganda but he worked with a woman at a zoo somewhere who had been several times. She had a guide company that she believed in and recommended them to me. That was a huge breakthrough because when you begin the process of finding a guide service the long list of companies can be daunting. They all say they are the best and there is no way to know what is what until you get there. Money has to be transferred and lots of information has to be passed around while preparing for these things, you really have to trust someone. This group that we will be hosted by has been great to work with, great communications and the money part has been smooth. If anyone wants to get an idea of what this will look like you can look up NkuringoSafaris.com. This company will host just me

and mom, we won’t be with any other people so we are bound to have more one on one conversations with each other rather than being crammed in a jeep with other people, all trying to get the information they need.

We have asked that the biologist that will be with us the whole time be as much into the flora as much as he is into the fauna, the lady whom we’ve been working with said we were in luck. It will be fun to have someone pointing out plants as well as animals and noticing things we might have otherwise missed. The other thing that I am excited about is that the much argued about source of the Nile River was “discovered” in this area when the explorers in 1700’s all wanted to be the first to make that claim. Many people perished in the Congo which is right next door while finding their way through this yet to be explored area. When I was in Egypt in the 80’s my parents stopped off there to visit me on their way to Israel. I had been on the road for a while by the time they made it down there. They brought me a new pair of jeans and a bag of Oreos and stayed for about a week while we floated down there Nile to the Valley of the Kings and Luxor. Mom and I will have been on both ends of the Nile by the end of this trip. I never dreamed that would happen but that is pretty cool.

Recently Mimi and I have been looking up everything we could to get a better picture of what I have gotten into. You can find anything on YouTube, the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the videos that people have posted while in the middle of a Gorilla family are pretty wild. That big ole silverback keeps a sharp eye on his harum and doesn’t like any kind of threat and I have learned to not look that dude in the eye or I might get rushed. I am not as scared of getting injured from a swipe of his massive arm as much as I fear having a heart attack if he does. I do plan to get as close as I can so I can get some killer photos. As you are reading this on January 16th I will be getting breathed on by a silverback if all goes well. Mimi and I watched Gorillas In The Mist about Diane Fossey and got a good idea of the lay of the land and the scenery. She gave up her life trying to slow down the poaching that was going on during the 70’s and 80’s. We will go to the place that she lived. We will also go on a chimpanzee search in another area. Jane Goodall is known for the work that she did as someone who brought better understanding of chimps and their relationship to humans. Mimi and I were lucky enough to have attended a sit down with Jane Goodall right here in Jackson when she passed through here in the early nineties. I collect National Geographic’s and happen to have the first one that they did on her when she was a 19 year old girl. I brought that with me that night and felt like such a nerd standing in line so I could shake her hand and get her to sign that. We got really lucky.

We also messed up and watched The Last King Of Scotland the other night. A great movie about a brutal dictator in Uganda during the 70’s. I was glad to see the scenery of Uganda but Idi Amin was absolutely the worst kind of a power hungry person that ever lived. That one didn’t exactly calm our nerves about the safety part of this trip. I turned it off before Mimi changed her mind and made us go to Disney World or the Jackson Zoo instead. I will leave tomorrow after 11 hours stopping in Amsterdam for a few hours then 12 more hours to the capital Kampala, Uganda. We will be bushed for sure but excited at the same time. Mom and I will take care of each other and have a trip that we will never forget. I plan to write the next article from down there after I have experienced some of this, I might be singing a whole other tune by then! I’ll be sending pictures home from time to time, stop by the nursery sometime and ask Mimi to show you some, she might appreciate some company.