Bangui - The president has fled the country, South African troops have taken casualties and wait to be evacuated from the Central African Republic (CAR), but some parts of the country are no doubt still peaceful.
Hopefully South African-born Rod Cassidy’s Sangha Lodge – on the Sangha River in the extreme south-west corner of the country and far from the capital Bangui – is in one such pocket of non-violence.
Recent travellers to the area have posted reports on the internet saying the only conflict they had was with overly zealous police or officials along the road from Bangui to Bayanga, the closest town to Sangha Lodge.
Last year, adventure travellers, writing in British Airways’ in-flight magazine, High Life, named the Dzanga Bai, a sandy salt lick, as having the wildest primate encounters on Earth, and mentioned Sangha Lodge as the place to stay when checking out the lowland gorillas and other wildlife.
For some years Rod has been trying to persuade me that a visit to his part of the world is really worthwhile. For my part, I was (and still am) hell-bent on travelling to Gabon.
“You will get much better lowland gorilla sightings here,” said Rod.
My excuse has always been that I have already visited the country. This week’s events have left me recalling days of relatively boring travel through flat countryside, while on an overland trip from South Africa to London many years ago.
The highlight, then, was a visit to a French cake shop in Bangui. Starved of sweet things, we overlanders had all inevitably landed up at this bakery, and come away with small ribbon-bound boxes of delicious pastries – which we demolished within minutes.
Less toothsome encounters were camping in a quarry, having blow-fly maggots cut out from under my toes, and a horror visit to a dentist.
When the dentist started drilling into my tooth, and I jerked in pain (no injection was given), he exclaimed in horror that he had drilled into a nerve, and that I would have to visit an American doctor in Cameroon.
Incidentally there was no steriliser for dental instruments. “I don’t have such a thing,” he remarked casually, as he put in a temporary filling – which fell out within hours – and sent me on my way.
More pleasant was a visit to the jungle, where we camped for a couple of days and walked beside a small river, looking in vain for wildlife.
Clearly, Sangha Lodge is in a different class altogether. Located in the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve, deep in the tropical rain forest, it is far removed from blundering dentists and, hopefully, marauding rebels.
Built in 1993 as a base for trophy hunters in search of the elusive bongo, the lodge was taken over by Rod, a well-known birder, for more eco-friendly tourism. In the early days he sent updates on progress he had made, the laying out of trails and how the locals were reacting to the new venture.
Before heading for the wild part of the the country, Rod was a technician with the Transvaal Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History) in Pretoria, where he worked in the field collecting items for display.
He performed a similar task with the Fitzpatrick Institute in Cape Town, and is an owner of Silver Safaris in South Africa, which specialises in wildlife and birding trips into various parts of Africa.
Some of his e-mails recounted how, after weeks of exploring stretches of sheer cliff face, he had found a tiny colony of the highly-endangered Picathartes, known as a rockfowl or bald crow.
He wrote about his interaction with the local Ba’Aka pygmies; and the flurry of excitement when the country’s president visited the lodge.
Visitors have an opportunity to go net and crossbow hunting, and collect medicinal plants. They also get to cook with tribe’s women and learn how to construct a leaf hut.
A highlight of a visit is gorilla tracking with the Ba’Aka, with one of only two groups of habituated western lowland gorillas in the world in the reserve.
Then there is the Dzanga Bai, with its forest elephants. If you are lucky, you might get to see bongo, giant forest hog, red river hog, African forrest buffalo, chimpanzees and an African brush-tailed porcupine.
River trips on the Sangha River are a must; time to just sit and reflect or enjoy the spectacular sunsets over the water. It sounds idyllic.
Okay, Rod, when the troubles are over, as inevitably all wars eventually are, I might just be heading your way. - Sunday Tribune