I wasn't carrying the rifle this time. It was too dangerous, so Cuan, the tracker, carried it. It was just as well; he was the only one who knew how to shoot it. Willie had left that morning in the jeep to find the herd of buffalo. We knew they were near. We had been tracking them for days, studying the tracks and stool left behind on their annual migration. This was winter; the ponds were dry and the buffalo were on the move, desperate to find water. The rains wouldn't come for months. Cuan thought there were maybe 200 in the herd. How could 200 buffalo be so hard to find? We walked on. Later in the afternoon, when the sun was high overhead, we started to hear them stamping and occasionally barking at each other, cranky in the heat. It was another half hour until we saw them, spread out over the savannah, swishing their tails and rotating their ears at the sound of our approach. We had been quiet since we first heard them, silently motioning to each other and pointing to tracks along the way. Confronted with the sight of 200 buffalo, our first instinct was to start snapping pictures. Cuan motioned no, be still. Flies were buzzing all around us. This was a tsetse fly area, spared from the government chemical sprays because this wasn't farmland and these buffalo weren't domesticated. No, they were wild; unpredictable in the company of humans. The tsetse flies descended upon us, attracted by our sweat and delighted with our thin skin and warm blood. Cuan cautioned us to be still; slapping the flies or waving them away might disturb the buffalo. We endured the bites, trying to remember if we had taken our anti-malarial pills on schedule. Most of us liked the pills because they gave us crazy dreams for two nights. Some got nightmares or nauseated; they didn't like the pills so much. We stood silently watching the herd for what seemed like eternity, but was probably closer to 15 minutes, as they sniffed the wind and eyed us warily. Some of the older ones decided we were no threat, so returned to grazing or turned their back on us. Cuan indicated cameras were OK. We snapped away, posing comically in the foreground. They weren't far from us. I could have hit one with a rock. Then, it happened. Click, wheeeeeeeee. Someone had reached the end of the film and the camera began rewinding. It was sudden and loud, and startled the herd. The closest ones jumped, frightening the ones who hadn't heard the camera. They started running, in every direction. At us. Instinctively, we drew together and, as a group, started to drop to the ground, hands covering our heads. "Don't sit down!," Cuan yelled. We could barely hear him over the thunder of hooves. We thought he said "Sit down!" We continued to ease on down until we heard Cuan very clearly yelling, "No! No! Don't!" We straightened up. The buffalo ran around us, heads lowered, frightened. They were very close. If we dared extend an arm, it would have collided with a buffalo, been gored or trampled. The buffalo dispersed quickly, in all directions.
We were all fine, scared and itchy, but unscathed, which is rather remarkable. The flies had taken chunks from our arms, legs, necks and faces. Some drew blood. Could we get sleeping sickness from these bites? Possibly, but sleeping sickness can lie dormant for up to 10 years. We were instructed to alert our doctors back home that we had been bitten by tsetse flies, in case we developed any unusual health problems down the line. I have two more years until the 10 year time period is up, and so far, so good. But every so often, I go through cycles of extreme fatigue where I feel drugged, and manic insomnia. Once I was awake for three nights in a row. It is during these periods of fatigue when I remember the buffalo stampede, and look up the symptoms of sleeping sickness yet again. It is only after bouts of fever, headache, joint pain and extreme swelling of the lymph nodes, confusion and reduced coordination that a sufferer of sleeping sickness gets to the interrupted sleep cycle the disease is named for. I have none of those early symptoms (though anyone who has seen me on roller skates might question the reduced coordination symptom). I'm safe. But, oh, so tired.
Dinner last night: cookout at the Pink House
Dinner tonight: chicken supreme; couscous with yellow squash