Read Online The Masque of Africa by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
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conservation people do boat trips to the sanctuary fromEntebbe. It seemed to me a trouble-free way of being on the lake where a hundred and fifty years ago Mutesa I, with some boats of his navy, liked to go picnicking with his court and harem.
The gardens or grounds of the conservation body grow lush and green almost to the water’s edge. It should be idyllic, but in the early morning the lake flies, feathery and brown, swarm over the lake. After what must be a life in the air, a short life, they are looking for places to settle down, and they do so on hair and clothes. For some inches below the boat-jetty cobwebs hang down pale-brown and heavy, like decorative swags, with their load of trapped flies—Africa prolific in life and death. The boat, starting up and moving on, cuts through another cloud of lake flies, which fall twice as fast on faces and clothes, and settle where there is no wind to blow them away, especially on the floor of the boat.
Then, mercifully, the fly-cloud is no more. The water is choppy, dark-green, and you soon start to see fishing dugouts. There are two men to a boat, which sit so low in the water that the fishermen (who might be showing off a little) appear to be skimming the water with their bodies, and you find it easier to believe the newspaper item that five thousand people drown every year in the lake.
The romantic lake islands begin to appear, forest and parkland, their colours softened by the haze. What seems near is farther away than you think. Much white smoke comes from behind an island, from a fisherman’s settlement which is slowly but surely polluting the lake, making it a carrier of typhoid and cholera. It would have been like that in Mutesa’s time, but there is no mention of it in Speke, who has trouble describing an asthmatic attack he suffered over many weeks.
It was an hour and a half to the island of chimpanzees. Immediate order: mown grass, neatly thatched huts, paths and signs, with the brilliant yellow weaver birds busy about their extraordinary nests. Twice a day the chimpanzees are fed. The launches from the mainland arrive in time for this.
A pebbly red path led up to the fence that marked off the chimpanzee and forest area from the rest of the island. A tremendous racketfrom somewhere in the bush told us that the feeding had begun. There was no meat for the chimpanzees, only cut fruit thrown from a platform. This was fought over with mighty blows that when they landed on a chimpanzee seemed to strike hollow ground. The cries of beaters and beaten were overlaid with a continual squealing, relish indistinguishable from pain.
The chimpanzees might have been orphans, but in the sanctuary old ideas of size and authority ruled. The leading male ran back and forth the length of the viewing platform and beyond, thumping males not as big as he was. Only the very small, close to infancy, and strangely melancholy, were allowed to eat quietly, long, jointed fingers fixed round their pieces of fruit. One or two chimpanzees were made to perform little tricks for the visitors, using sticks or twigs to drag within reach pieces of fruit that had been deliberately thrown outside the wire-mesh fence, so that we could see the trick.
Gradually the feeding was over, and there again the bigger animals led the way, being the first to lope back to the forest, moving swiftly on arms and legs.
One couldn’t help remembering that in times of national emergency, it was the zoos and the animals that were the first to suffer. Just a little weakening of the central authority here, and all the elaborate support of the chimpanzee sanctuary would wither away. The chimpanzees had skills, as we had been told; they were close to human beings; but against guns they, like all the world’s animals, were helpless. Fifteen minutes or less with a gun could reduce these animals to the African bush meat their parents had become. The paths of the sanctuary, maintained now with so much trouble, would become
The gardens or grounds of the conservation body grow lush and green almost to the water’s edge. It should be idyllic, but in the early morning the lake flies, feathery and brown, swarm over the lake. After what must be a life in the air, a short life, they are looking for places to settle down, and they do so on hair and clothes. For some inches below the boat-jetty cobwebs hang down pale-brown and heavy, like decorative swags, with their load of trapped flies—Africa prolific in life and death. The boat, starting up and moving on, cuts through another cloud of lake flies, which fall twice as fast on faces and clothes, and settle where there is no wind to blow them away, especially on the floor of the boat.
Then, mercifully, the fly-cloud is no more. The water is choppy, dark-green, and you soon start to see fishing dugouts. There are two men to a boat, which sit so low in the water that the fishermen (who might be showing off a little) appear to be skimming the water with their bodies, and you find it easier to believe the newspaper item that five thousand people drown every year in the lake.
The romantic lake islands begin to appear, forest and parkland, their colours softened by the haze. What seems near is farther away than you think. Much white smoke comes from behind an island, from a fisherman’s settlement which is slowly but surely polluting the lake, making it a carrier of typhoid and cholera. It would have been like that in Mutesa’s time, but there is no mention of it in Speke, who has trouble describing an asthmatic attack he suffered over many weeks.
It was an hour and a half to the island of chimpanzees. Immediate order: mown grass, neatly thatched huts, paths and signs, with the brilliant yellow weaver birds busy about their extraordinary nests. Twice a day the chimpanzees are fed. The launches from the mainland arrive in time for this.
A pebbly red path led up to the fence that marked off the chimpanzee and forest area from the rest of the island. A tremendous racketfrom somewhere in the bush told us that the feeding had begun. There was no meat for the chimpanzees, only cut fruit thrown from a platform. This was fought over with mighty blows that when they landed on a chimpanzee seemed to strike hollow ground. The cries of beaters and beaten were overlaid with a continual squealing, relish indistinguishable from pain.
The chimpanzees might have been orphans, but in the sanctuary old ideas of size and authority ruled. The leading male ran back and forth the length of the viewing platform and beyond, thumping males not as big as he was. Only the very small, close to infancy, and strangely melancholy, were allowed to eat quietly, long, jointed fingers fixed round their pieces of fruit. One or two chimpanzees were made to perform little tricks for the visitors, using sticks or twigs to drag within reach pieces of fruit that had been deliberately thrown outside the wire-mesh fence, so that we could see the trick.
Gradually the feeding was over, and there again the bigger animals led the way, being the first to lope back to the forest, moving swiftly on arms and legs.
One couldn’t help remembering that in times of national emergency, it was the zoos and the animals that were the first to suffer. Just a little weakening of the central authority here, and all the elaborate support of the chimpanzee sanctuary would wither away. The chimpanzees had skills, as we had been told; they were close to human beings; but against guns they, like all the world’s animals, were helpless. Fifteen minutes or less with a gun could reduce these animals to the African bush meat their parents had become. The paths of the sanctuary, maintained now with so much trouble, would become
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