African Silences (3 page)

In the rainy season, from May through October, Mare Sita N’di, a shallow lake or pan in the north part of the park, will overflow its banks as the greater part of Niokolo Koba becomes flooded, but in mid-March it is nearly dry and sparsely covered in a haze of green that attracts large groups of animals and a mixed company of birds. Beyond the Mare Sita N’di, and loosely named for it, is the Sementi Lodge, near the park headquarters, which overlooks a
lovely stretch of the upper Gambia. The slow river of the dry season is clear and green, reflecting the soaring fan palms or borassus; this high dark gallery forest by the river is a riverine extension of the Guinea forests to the south. Here in the heat of midafternoon the elephants come down to water, and hippos may be seen not far upriver. The shy, small forest
buffles
have been here, too, to judge from the bovine dung along the way.

In the dead heat that persists into the dusk, the kob and waterbuck lie down on the dry mud of Sita N’di (the western kob seems to ignore the hottest sun) but the bushbuck and warthog have retreated to the shade of the hot dry woodland all around. Here and there, the woodland floor is white with silk-cotton from the
Ceiba
pods, which are eaten by baboons as well as vervets and thereby scattered in the time of seeding. Bamboo the brown color of burning white paper sprouts from a crust of lateritic stone, and the common
Pterocarpus
tree is coming into pretty yellow blossom, as if in anticipation of the rains, but over the white woods hangs a ghostly stillness, intensified by hot wafts of the
harmattan
in the dry fans of raffia and borassus.

In a grove of fig trees, by a dark creek of stagnant water green with algae, a company of beasts has gathered in the heavy shade. A big roan buck leads a band of hartebeest out of the woods to join a rabble of baboons and vervets, a pair of bushbuck, and a pair of reedbuck, pale and delicate. Not far away is a red-flanked duiker and two oribi, the color of brown grass. In East Africa, the oribi are reddish, and thus these brown ones seem to be an exception to a general tendency toward erythrism (prevalence of red pigmentation) that characterizes a number of West African forms. At Niokolo Koba, for example, the bush pig, bushbuck, buffalo, and baboon are all markedly more red than their counterparts in East and South Africa, and so is the pygmy hippopotamus of the river forests of Liberia and Ivory Coast. Why this should be so is quite mysterious; the conspicuous
color would seem to be an evolutionary disadvantage. One theory holds that because, in early times, the forests were much more extensive than they are today, most or all of these “red” animals inhabited the forest, where animal colors tend to be brighter than on the savanna, perhaps for purposes of communication and display in a dim light.

Farther south, another roan crosses the track, then a long-tailed parakeet, bright emerald in color; as with many birds of the savanna, its range extends across the continent into northern Kenya, but as it happens, I have never seen it. The parakeet flickers rapidly through the dry air, alighting at last among white flowers of a
Vernonia
bush, at the edge of marshes. Not far away, by the wet sump of a dry pan, an extraordinary conference of birds has gathered, as if reconciled by drought to their great differences—speckled pigeons, laughing and vinaceous doves, the red-billed wood dove, black magpies and gray hornbills, the long-tailed and the purple glossy starlings, cattle egrets, squacco herons, and, on reed stalks, the Abyssinian and blue-bellied rollers. All of these birds or their close congeners may be found somewhere in East Africa; it is the makeup of the group that seems extraordinary.

Although this is the tourist season, the Sementi Lodge at evening is all but empty, and its gracious
patron
, Monsieur Patrice, supposes aloud that Americans “do not like West Africa.” One problem, of course, is the French language, and anyway, West Africa is less well known and does not advertise, whereas East Africa is now an industry. Many visitors have told Monsieur Patrice that they prefer West African parks because the animals here are less predictable, they cannot be taken for granted, things are more
sportif; ici, Monsieur, il y a toujours plus des animaux que des touristes!
One hears this a good deal in West Africa. Alas, the animals are far fewer than in East Africa, not only in species but in numbers. Even the “common” species are elusive. To see
chimpanzees or giant eland on a brief visit would be too much to expect, and as to predators, we had to be satisfied with some big lion pug marks on the road, but
buffles
are not supposed to be so shy. Of the twenty-five hundred
buffles
that are said to be here, we saw neither hide nor hair of even one, only
buffle
manure in great abundance.

From the Tambacounda road, we follow a narrow track across the back country toward Gouloumbo, in order to strike the main dirt road south and west to Velingara; our destination is the Parc National de Casamance, in the Guinea forest at the coast. The track wanders through small villages, in a fresh open countryside of light and silence, grassland and gigantic figs, rollers and helmet shrikes, long-tailed parakeets and speckled pigeons. This is a country of the Tukulor Fulani, who are agriculturalists as well as herders. As early as
A.D.
700, the Tukulor maintained a powerful state that extended north through the Senegal Valley into present-day Mauritania, which had not yet been overtaken by the desert. In the fourteenth century they retreated south before the Berbers, who were fleeing in their turn before the Arabs. Apparently the Tukulor were the first people of this region to accept Islam, which they helped to spread among the Ouolof people on the coast. Meanwhile, nomad Berber groups pressed southward, occupying the drier tracts of the savanna and forming an economic liaison with this tribe, until gradually the two peoples intermingled. In this farming country, the Tukulor are Negroid in appearance, whereas the pastoral “Berber” populations, the Peulh or Fula or Fulani who followed the savanna eastward all the way to Cameroon, are much paler and more narrow in the face—hence the curious name “Tukulor,” which is thought to be of recent derivation, from the English “Two Colors,” or the French “
tout-couleur
,” or even “Tacurol,” an old name for the country. The Tukulor maintained a separate state almost continuously until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
French subdued them on the way to the establishment of French West Africa.

This land is not nearly so dry as the Niokolo Koba country to the east, and yet the air is parched for lack of rain. Man’s thirstless goats, which have helped to spread the deserts of North Africa, pay heat no mind, but the thin sheep press themselves to the clay walls, seeking thin shadow, and the cattle must be brought each day to the village wells. Pumped by draft animals walked in a circle, the well is the center of activity in each village, which here in the backland is no more than a cluster of daub huts.

In these settlements southwest of Missira, we are struck by the utter friendliness of everyone we see. Even a group of newly circumcised young boys who are living now outside their village, dressed in a uniform of ceremonial sacking, rush to greet us, smiling and waving, eager to be of help. Because the rough and narrow track has frequent forks—and because when giving directions for Gouloumbo, the tribesman, knowing nothing of vehicles, is apt to point eagerly to a fork that later narrows to a footpath—we stop and backtrack many times, and invariably our return is welcomed with glad smiles that whites don’t see much anymore in Africa, smiles that make one happy and also a bit sad, like the last sight of a rare, vanishing bird. While the men laugh, consulting on directions, young children seated in the shade clean silver barbels from a lake not far away; women pause to lean on their big pestles, and girls wave prettily from the well, the water sparkling on round brown breasts.

These simple places far from the din of modern times reflect an order and well-being that seem missing in the villages by the main road, where noisy vehicles and the hard winds of change stir up the country folk and make them restless. The log mortar and big pestle like a hollowed stump, the three-stone hearth, a few bales of fresh raffia thatching, a few gourds drying on the roof—there is no
excess and no waste, no debris or litter of any kind. The yards look swept. Outside each village, the people have piled the few metal containers that have found their way into these hinterlands, and the pile is neat. A sense of order underlies the harmonious tone of the whole countryside. Perhaps order is quite natural to rural Africans, perhaps the littered habitations of most African towns is a sad symptom of the loss of the old rhythms, of the overcrowding, poverty, and low morale that has come about through enforced exposure to the white man’s way.

It is midday, very hot. We head west on the red dusty road to Velingara, in a landscape desiccated by the desert winds.

At Kolda, near the Guinea-Bissau border, the road enters a green tropic of banana groves, oil-palm plantations, and rice paddies like bright green glades among the huge boles of the gallery forest. Here the villages are prospering and the road is surfaced, and Baba Sow is driving hard again, one hand perched upon the horn. Repeatedly we ask him to slow down; there are too many goats and cattle on the road to drive so fast. But very soon he regains his speed, turning his head incessantly to address his passengers, and eventually a steer jumps out in front of him. Gil Boese yells a warning, and he swerves, brakes shrieking—BOOM!—a hateful jolt of metal upon flesh, a sprinkling of breaking glass as the heavy carcass looms, cracking the windshield, then spins, still kicking, into the ditch, its head wide-eyed on the road shoulder.

The car stops and its door creaks loudly as Baba Sow gets out; he inspects his car, ignoring the dying steer. A startled man in yellow rags—is he the herder?—had dropped his handful of long pods and now, without a glance at Baba Sow, far less the steer, he stoops over straight-legged to pick them slowly one by one off the hot pavement, continuing this for minute after minute in the
dead silence as if unwilling to raise his eyes to the kicking animal, to us, to the silent folk hurrying this way from the nearby village.

Baba Sow in his green woolen cap is glaring at his shattered headlight, dented fender, the manure streaks down the side of his white car. “
Ils sont fous, ces bêtes! Et ces gens
”—he indicates the people—“
Ils sont comme leurs bêtes! Ils sont stupides!
” Baba Sow is very upset, but he does not bother to upbraid the herder, saving his energy for the owner of the steer or the village headman. For want of a better way to help, Boese and I are kicking glass shards off the road. We eye the approaching villagers, feeling white as milk; incredibly, a slow tom-tom has started up behind the trees.

By the time the villagers arrive, the steer is still. A stern old man yanks the steer’s head up, lets it fall. Now he straightens, glares at Baba Sow; he looks at the whites not even once in the whole episode. The people steal glances but do not giggle or comment; for an African crowd, they seem ominously silent.

Baba Sow’s nerves give way first; he mutters something. I expect an angry retort from the old man, but his answer is quiet. I do not know what dialect is spoken, but the sense is apparent even to the whites: Baba Sow is told that he drives his car too fast, that he must pay, and Baba Sow answers that peasants should learn to keep their animals off the highway. Both are correct: drivers in the new Africa go too fast, and life in the old Africa moves too slowly. A paved road has no place in medieval landscapes.

There is nothing to be done. Both sides wait politely in the glowing dusk, ceremonious, unhappy. The discussion is finished but abrupt parting would be rude. The village has lost a fine young steer, Baba Sow’s new car has sustained grievous bodily harm, damage that in this inflated economy may cost much more than the steer is worth.
There is only silence as we get back into the car and drive away without good-byes to Ziguinchor.

In the morning we cross a tidal river on the ferry and drive mile upon mile to the south and west across the salt marshes of Casamance. In the Palearctic, it is nearly spring, and the African marshes are peppered with migrating shorebirds bound for Europe—mostly ruffs and whimbrel, marsh sandpipers and stints.

Nearing the coast, the road enters a romantic region of old oil-palm plantations and high forest, old weathered gates of colonial times and old stone walls. Small Diola settlements crouch at the edge of jungle. Diola houses are larger than the huts seen inland, rectangular with high-peaked pyramidal roofs and a space that permits air circulation between wall and the low-hanging eave, but this improvement on the hut of his own Ouolof tribe does not impress our lordly Baba Sow, who jerks his chin impatiently at these
paysans
, these
animistes.
He discourses at length on the
slowness
of these forest people, these “people of the south,” so markedly in contrast to the mental agility of northerners—“
le Ouolof, par exemple.
” He shrugs his shoulders. “
Sont des vrais Africains, ceux-la
,” Baba Sow concludes, and not in praise. Since they are
animistes
, not Muslims, the Diola happily eat pork, and pigs are common here; perhaps these pigs came with the Portuguese, or perhaps, here at the jungle edge, they are relicts of the old pig cultures uprooted by Islam all across North Africa.