African Silences (4 page)

Near the Guinea-Bissau frontier, a track turns off toward the sea and the Parc National de Casamance, a coastal rain forest dominated by big dark
Kaya
trees and figs and palms. Gratefully we walk about on foot, leaving Baba Sow to take his ease in his small, hot machine. Though the day is warm, the sea forest remains cool, its deep shade thinly
filtered by the sun. We find the print of a small antelope, hear the telltale puff of what might be a nervous
buffle
back in the forest, but here as at Niokolo Koba, the
buffle
eludes us. The only mammals seen, in fact, are squirrels and monkeys—green vervets and the guenon or mona monkey, that handsome red-and-black relation of the blue monkeys of Central and East Africa. The rare western red colobus remains hidden—this is the species I most wish to see. The paths are strewn with
tamba
, the small brown monkey-apple, which is relished in these parts by every anthropoid, from these small circopithecines to
Homo sapiens.

Where the forest subsides into red mangrove estuaries behind the coast, an observer with more time than ourselves might see a clawless otter or the swamp antelope called sitatunga. Here palm-nut vultures have convened in the most seaward of the trees—striking white birds that have mostly abandoned the vulturine habits of their kin and subsist largely on nuts of the oil palm, in the vicinity of which they are usually encountered. Therefore I am surprised, a little later, to see one alight on mud along the estuary and waddle about among the mangrove stilts in pursuit of fiddler crabs and perhaps mudskippers, both of which abound on the tidal rivers. Perhaps this is a well-known habit of this species, but I shall record it here in case it’s not.

At Ziguinchor is an “artisan’s market” where a few old masks and carvings may be found amidst the heaps of that shiny, mass-produced
art folklorique
that finds its way into unsuspecting homes around the world. The artisans’ traditional bird-head adzes, with their sets of hand-forged blades for finer work, are far superior in style and manufacture to their “art,” and though these carvers were distressed at first that these rough implements and not their wares were what we wanted, they soon got used to the idea,
and old adzes came at us from all directions—“
le vrai hâche de mon grand-père!
” one fellow shouted, an inspired lie that was taken up instantly by all the others. But we were satisfied with just one each, and so innumerable “true grandfather’s adzes” remained behind in Ziguinchor—the nucleus, I fear, of a whole new industry.

Outside the market, workers stacked enormous sacks of peanuts on a truck. Two men on the ground would heave the heavy sack onto the truck bed, where two more would seize it up to waist level, then slam it down again, stooping quickly as they did so to make the most of an infinitesimal bounce, then hiking it high above their shoulders, where it was plucked from their outstretched arms by yet two more atop the cargo. The feat was funny and exciting, and the workers were merry in the pride of strength and timing, strutting a little for the girls and tossing stray peanuts to admiring young kids. Every little while, the kids were scattered by a scrawny Muslim clerk in a blue
djellabah
, but the clerk did not dare to admonish the workers, and the kids would soon drift in again to snatch wild peanuts from the air. On a warm mountain of unsacked peanuts, a yellow wagtail walked about, as if seeking a way to adjust millennia of insectivorous habit to such plenty.

At dusk, small bats replaced the swallows that dip in the blue water of the hotel
piscine
, and from the darkness of the town came the sound of tom-toms. We followed the pounding noise a mile or more through the soft night, arriving at last in unlit streets at the edge of town. In an open yard beneath a giant fig, tom-toms were struck in a blur of speed by three musicians, and within a circle of several hundred Africans, under dim light, a kind of tournament was taking place in which a young dancer, spry as a cockerel, would leap and rail at someone in the crowd to come out dancing; those who accepted were fierce dancers, too, and the shouts of the crowd were the best clue to which had won. Dancers came and went, the townsfolk milled in
pleasure and excitement, and meanwhile the three tom-tom players never faltered, filling the night with the beat of their swift hands. Standing there half-hypnotized, content, I recalled a group of young Senegalese drummers and dancers who played years ago at a small Parisian
boîte
called La Vieille Rose Rouge. At first their faces had been wild and wary, but as the months passed, cigarettes appeared, and modish trousers protruded from beneath their
kikois
, and the fierce tom-toms were reduced to backup rhythms for bad fire-eating acts and self-conscious recitations of the poetry of Léopold Senghor, now president of Senegal.

Sang noir … sang d’Afrique
 …

In this crowd of several hundred, there were no white people, not even one. Instinctively we kept moving, staying back a bit, out of the light, never remaining in one spot long enough to gather attention. Yet there arose an accumulating awareness of our presence, a kind of murmur, more curious than hostile: who are these whites, how did they get here? And after a while, we withdrew into the pitch darkness of the unlit streets and returned toward the hotel, as the fading drums gave way to the growing shrill of tree frogs in the big trees all around.

The people of Senegal—near the coast, at least—were given a kind of civil status as early as 1848, and their feelings toward France were so equable that for a time they resisted the idea of independence. Even in the larger towns of Senegal, there seems to be little of the brooding touchiness and half-repressed hostility that one meets in the cities of East Africa. I wondered if following music down long dark African streets was something I would do these days in Arusha or Nairobi; I think not.

Early next day we cross the Casamance River by small ferry and, on a rough road across the airy coastal plain, drive north into Gambia, which lies enclosed by Senegal, like a narrow throat coming inland from the sea. Just beyond the border is the village of Seleti, where Gil Boese began his baboon studies in 1971, and, seeing baboons crossing the road, he sits forward in excitement, directing Baba Sow into a cow path. We continue on foot along a tongue of gallery forest that follows a dry streambed across the fields to a shaded place of boulders and damp sand—a rainy-season pool where animals can still dig down for water—and have scarcely arrived when a troop of western red colobus bursts forth in reckless aerial display from the high treetops, scolding and barking, hurling themselves down from rebounding limbs and swinging and crashing into the dry bushes as if intent on tearing down the forest. Boese is delighted that the red colobus are still here, despite the forest clearing on all sides that has confined them to this narrow tongue of trees; and I am delighted that my first sight of this spectacular species—they are black above, rich chestnut-red below—should occur in the African countryside. Even in East Africa there are few places anymore where one may see such animals outside the parks.

The red colobus will not be there very long. Less than a mile beyond Seleti, the people are burning down the forest; a huge crackling flame riding the wind roars through a copse of high trees near the road. The fire is attended by European kestrels, Abyssinian rollers, cattle egrets: the egrets stalk about in the flame’s path, intent upon the spearing of small fugitives, while the rollers and pale orange falcons hover and dart like spirits through the smoke, the harsh racket of the rollers lost in the violent crackling of the blaze.

One does not travel many miles in Gambia before one sees that too much forest has been burned—even more so,
it appears, than in Senegal—and that the inevitable and fatal end to the destruction of the land is now in sight. “The Gambia,” as it is known here, was formerly a British colony, and its dense population is a fatal consequence of that sensible administration on which the British pride themselves, whether or not it made sense for “the native.” At any rate, its English-speaking citizens have no wish to join with Senegal, where they would become an unpopular minority. “The Gambia” is little more than a narrow enclave in that country, a strip of territory on both sides of the river, some two hundred miles long and in places no more than thirteen miles in width.

Gambia is a huge thorn in the side of Senegal, separating all Casamance from the rest of the country, and controlling a natural trade route—navigable by ocean vessels for 150 miles inland—that could serve eastern Senegal and even Mali. Because it is overpopulated, even by the standards of West Africa, such wildlife as remains in Gambia is largely confined to three small reserves and a southward extension of an international park that is to be shared with Senegal.

The credit for Gambia’s reserves must be given to a dedicated British forester named Edward Brewer, who was mentor and friend to Dr. Boese in his days among baboons and who welcomes us to the Abuko Nature Reserve at Yumdum, not far south of the capital at Banjul. Though only 180 acres, this relict tract of gallery forest was the first of Gambia’s reserves and remains the most significant, at least in terms of public education.

Set aside in 1916 as the Abuko Water Catchment Area, it was later fenced to keep out hunters and domestic stock as well as would-be farmers. But local people made holes under the fencing to introduce their pigs for random foraging, and hunters managed to get in, as well, and both groups were indignant when, in the 1960s, a leopard took up residence in the small forest, making too free with the
pigs as well as frightening the hunters. Brewer, asked to shoot the leopard, became enchanted instead by the potential of Abuko, which at his behest was set aside as a nature reserve in 1968. Two years later, the leopard departed from Abuko, perhaps disconsolate over the expulsion of the pigs, but other native animals have been introduced, joining the few small mammals already in residence. In the 1.5-mile footpath through the forest, one may encounter a variety of birds, several duikers and the bushbuck, the serval cat, civet and genets, mongooses and porcupines, four species of monkeys, crocodiles, and pythons, as well as cobras, puff adders, and mambas.

“We’re on our way here now, with any sort of luck,” says Eddie Brewer, who is sunburned, husky, and unassuming, with fierce beetling brows and a gentle smile. He is delighted that Gambia’s president has issued a “Banjul Declaration” in support of wildlife; that a high government official noticed a loophole in the game-protection laws and moved to close it; that children who once killed anything that moved are now bringing small animals into Abuko. As in Kenya, where the Wildlife Clubs have set an example for the rest of Africa, the education of this new generation is the only hope for the wild creatures.

On the coast, we find accommodations at a Swedish inn, and I revel in my first swim in West African surf. Feverish local rumor has it that the Swedes come here for sexual safaris, like the Germans on the Malindi coast in Kenya, and perhaps it is moral disapproval of Gambian Christians that makes our haughty Muslim Baba Sow question the hospitality offered him by the reception clerk; these English-speakers, his sour look implies, might make a stranger sit up all night in a chair. Though he complains to me in French, the clerk intuits what he says, and responds with considerable dignity to Baba Sow, who understands more English than he will acknowledge. “I am not rich,” says the clerk. “I am black, like you. But if I offer you a bed, I do not mean that
you shall sit up in a chair. And if you do not like my home, you may go elsewhere.” To Baba Sow’s credit, he confesses next day that he passed a restful night among the infidels.

At daybreak, we skirt an enormous processing plant for the groundnut, on which Gambia, like Senegal, has based its economy. Beyond this monument to the congenial peanut lies Banjul, formerly Bathurst, where we shall embark on yet another ferry, crossing the Gambia River and continuing northward into Senegal.

At the waterfront, in a cool dawn, the patient blacks, the fish smell, chicken baskets, fruit and sheep, the carrion birds and blowing trash, sweet smells, sweet voices, urine tang, and over the silent broad brown flood the white Caspian terns in from the sea are all familiar; how often in life, without ever having come to Gambia, I have arrived at this old river.