Of Witchdoctors, Gorillas and Maasai Toyboys

by Marco Monteiro-Silva, 7 September 2007

The more I travel around Africa, the more amazing people I encounter. Locals, adventurers and transient nomads; sometimes I find them while on African journeys of my own and other times I simply bump into them while going about my daily business.

Recently relocated to South Africa, and now working at Go2Africa, Catja is settling into the real world after having lived in remote parts of Africa for the last few years. Her first book is hitting bookstores this month. Tracking Bubu is Catja's firsthand account of living in the Central African Rain Forest for two years and tracking western lowland gorillas in the hope of habituating them for tourism in Gabon's Lope National Park.

A good day for warships

I meet up with Catja on the USS Normandy. She's flirting with a shy American sailor and asking him if they ever encounter pirates while at sea. Tracking Bubu's print run is supposed to have arrived in South Africa on a boat from China two weeks ago, and no one seems to know where the ship, never mind its precious shipment, is.

"It doesn't hurt to ask" Catja says, as the sailor shuffles off to a new tour group and I sidle up to her. "Somalian pirates can be such a nuisance." Catja utters this in a matter-of-fact tone, as if pirates and mosquitoes inhabit the same space in her brain.

M: I take it the sailor doesn't know where Bubu is?

C: Unfortunately no. Bubu is stuck on a ship between here and China. I have this fear that the ship is going to sink and we're going to lose Bubu... I can't believe that after all this time I'm still tracking him.

The wrong way is always right

We jump off the Normandy and walk onto another of the several warships in Cape Town's Waterfront Harbour. The ships have docked here for a few days and are open to public inspection, much to Catja's happy fascination.

M: You have lived and traveled in several major African countries - Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya, Botswana...So why Gabon?

C: I love doing something the other way around. There's just this part of me that really believes I'm an explorer stuck in the wrong era. I love things to be difficult when I travel, to explore places where it's not comfortable and easy. I got to Gabon, this place I knew nothing about, and fell in love with it.

There I was in the world's second largest rainforest, living with pygmies (Baka people), tracking gorillas while trying not to incur the wrath of ill-tempered forest elephants, fire ants, and witchdoctors. It was all just so incredibly exciting.

M: Weren't you scared?

C: Of course! But you simply adjust. You run when the trackers tell you to run, and you try your best not to look gorillas in the eyes. To be honest, I was more concerned with the African fire-ants on the forest floor. But you also get surprisingly complacent. My tent was a kilometre from the main camp, and many nights I'd misplace my torch and have to crawl in the darkness... things like that.

The meaning of Bubu

M: I get the feeling that Bubu is more than just gorillas. What does 'Bubu' mean to you?

C: For me, Bubu is the rainforest. It's the mouldy damp smell I still can't get out of my journal; the high-pitched sound of cicada insects; the smell of paraffin lamps; the strain of reading and writing in my tent by candlelight.

M: So Bubu is rainforest romance?

C: Perhaps.

M: What was your first-ever encounter with Bubu?

C: The first time I ever encountered western lowland gorillas was in Disneyland. I worked in the animal kingdom in Orlando for a year after my conservation studies; teaching kids about gorillas and guiding visitors. The funny thing is I remember saying to myself, 'I wonder when I'll get to see these gorillas in the wild. Five years and several countries later, there I was: living in the Central African Rainforest and tracking Bubu.

Curious Catja

M: So why are we meeting on a warship?

C: I like extremes. The conservationist in me craves exploring unknown jungles and another part of me want to see man at his most extreme. I guess this would be it.

She's looking up at a missile launcher that boasts a firing range of one thousand miles. "This thing could hit Gaborone from here. That's incredible," Catja says.

M: Is that why you walked cross Kenya and Tanzania with a Maasai - another extreme curiosity?

C: Oh, Toiman? I called him my Maasai toyboy. When I left Gabon, I attended a friend's wedding in Kenya. Toiman was a friend of the groom's and he'd walked, cycled and hitchhiked to the wedding from Tanzania. He'd managed 1,000km in a week. I'll never forget seeing him at the wedding - the service was on a hill at the base of Mount Kenya. As the sun was setting, there he was behind the bride and groom, silhouetted and holding his spear.

Two years later we landed up working at the same lodge in Kenya. I wanted to visit my family in Botswana and was feeling conflicted about always flying around. Here I was this supposed conservationist, polluting the environment. Toiman simply announced that he'd walk with me from Nairobi. I bought a bicycle, we managed to hitchhike to Lake Magadi and from there we just started cycling. The journey took a month in total.

M: Like so many of your other adventures, that sounds amazing. But there must have been low-points?

C: I remember cycling alongside Lake Natron. I had huge blisters on my feet and the mud was slapping up and hitting them. Natron's a soda lake so you can imagine how much it stung. I was crying and secretly swearing at Toiman, who was a few 100m ahead of me, the whole time. We were starving and practically living off milk. I was dirty and aching and tired and no one seemed to care about me."

M: Well there's always Bubu.

C: Yes. I guess there is.

We say goodbye standing under the shadow of two warships. Catja has a strategy-meeting scheduled with her publisher which she assures me will involve some serious counter-pirate strategising. I speed off into the rest of my Saturday, amazed at my encounter with yet another of those people with such remarkable African histories.

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