Bush Babe -- Part II
My ankles are a mess, a tangle of angry red welts and scratches. I blame Olivier, a photographer I've been working with lately, although he claims it's my lack of long pants that led to my hideous disfigurement.
A French photo agency has asked him to do some pictures on the theme of bush meat. Olivier wants to follow guys who set fire to the bush and smoke out the little beasties that are then served with fufu. Ghanaians -- actually, West Africans -- seem to be crazy for bushmeat. It's illegal to hunt it during the dry season, which starts in October and ends in March, but this is the time of year when the boys selling bushmeat by the roadside do the most business. They line the road to Kumasi, waving dead duikers and "alligators" and sticks of dried grasscutter stretched out on racks and smoked over a fire. They look like giant jerky lollipops with little rat heads. (The bushmeat, I mean. Not the sellers.)
So Olivier contacted a firefighter in Winneba, a coastal community about two hours from Accra, and he arranged for us to meet up with some hunters. Once we arrived, they got cold feet and needed a day to be coaxed into letting us follow them into the bush. Our first disappointment was learning that they don't use fire; they use clubs and cutlasses, evoking images of the baby seal hunt. Dogs flush them out of the thickets and grassy knolls where they burrow and feed, then the hunters whack 'em til they're dead and then slit their throats.
There is an outright ban on hunting with fire, but lots of people do it because it's so much faster. The animals run in a predictable direction and you can kill them on their way out of the fire. The downside is that the bush is dry, I mean DRY, and it tends to light like tinder and get out of control quickly. Farms go up in smoke, the entire livelihood of a couple families can be wiped out in a matter of minutes. Plus, it kills everything in its path and steals the sustenance for any animal lucky enough to survive the fire.
I'll have to put up a picture of a grasscutter; this is the second time I've mentioned them. As I've said before, they look like the result of a drunken encounter between a beaver and a rat. They're furry and rather large, but there's surprisingly little meat to them.
And apparently they're really fast. And rather good at hiding.
We set out at 5 a.m. We met up with the hunters and their 20 dogs at 5.30 a.m. and started walking. The dogs' tails were wagging in excitement. The boys were laughing and joking. There was one dog hopping on three legs, the fourth having been hit by a car. There was a whiny one named Burundi who sounded like a squeak toy and a white pit bull named Robot.
By the first hour, we had tramped through a burned field and soaked our shoes with dew. All the boys were carrying clubs/walking sticks. The dogs were trotting along happily. They boys were talking low, exchanging whistles and grunts. Any time there was the slightest sighting, the slightest sign of excitement from the dogs, there was a shout for Mamadou, the ringleader, who wore a white ski cap on his head and white plastic sandals over black socks. Each time, the hunters formed a circle around the thicket, encouraging the dogs to get in and sniff out the rodents with little clicks and sounds like "och! och! och!" I couldn't understand most of it; they were speaking in Twi.
By hour three, the dogs tongues were practically touching the ground. We stopped briefly to knock a few papayas off a tree, grab a drink of water and douse the dogs with river water. (Olivier and I brought two litres of water and a sack full of snacks, so when I say "we" I mean "them.") By this time we had waded through knee-high grass. We'd seen a few signs of grasscutters, little corn sprouts chewed by their little rat teeth and drops of grasscutter poo. I'd turned my ankles a couple times stumbling into little holes. There were vines and thorns and myriad other scratchy things to catch arms and legs and patches of skull. My pantlegs were soaked to the knee, my sneakers were black with ash and dotted with little pickers.
By hour four, I was wondering if anyone would notice if I just curled up in a little ball on the ground.
Finally, FINALLY, Olivier cried uncle and said he could stand it for another hour, but then he'd have to pack it in. (We were both hoping that it would just take another half hour, then we'd finally find something. Then another half hour. And another half hour.) He'd already taken all of his water and I was selling him sips of mine for 5,000 cedis. I had recorded lots of sound, but hadn't taken a single note. Olivier had taken a billion pictures. But had we killed anything? No. Usually the guys catch five grasscutters and a couple rabbits in one go. It's the curse of the journalist that when you want to see something, it doesn't happen, whether it's an overcrowded ER or a good grasscutter bashing. And frankly, all that blather about the seal pup hunt? I was just waiting for something to get its skull smashed before I melted. I was ready to pass around matches and smoke out the little critters.
The dogs were dead tired. There were no more wagging tails. Anytime their owners called them into a thicket, they waded in, then sat down, panting. Who could blame them? It was roughly 50,390 degrees.
At hour four and a half, the boys stopped to point out a "wampum," a lizard that they said they don't bother hunting. The junior firefighter accompanying us obviously missed that line, because when they released it, he went after it and bashed it once, in a two-handed, over the head kind of smash and sent it to the afterlife. A guy called Biscuit put it in a bag, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, a sharp tooth having gone through it. He said he might get 35,000 cedis for it, a little less than $5 Cdn.
At hour five, I threw in the towel, chased down the lead hunter and told him we were leaving him. A quick interview later, we were walking down a dirt road to find a tro-tro to get out us out of there.
The only thing I got was the scratches on my ankles, and the comforting thought that if I'm going to make any money out of this misadventure, I've got to do it all over again. Only this time, with fire.
A French photo agency has asked him to do some pictures on the theme of bush meat. Olivier wants to follow guys who set fire to the bush and smoke out the little beasties that are then served with fufu. Ghanaians -- actually, West Africans -- seem to be crazy for bushmeat. It's illegal to hunt it during the dry season, which starts in October and ends in March, but this is the time of year when the boys selling bushmeat by the roadside do the most business. They line the road to Kumasi, waving dead duikers and "alligators" and sticks of dried grasscutter stretched out on racks and smoked over a fire. They look like giant jerky lollipops with little rat heads. (The bushmeat, I mean. Not the sellers.)
So Olivier contacted a firefighter in Winneba, a coastal community about two hours from Accra, and he arranged for us to meet up with some hunters. Once we arrived, they got cold feet and needed a day to be coaxed into letting us follow them into the bush. Our first disappointment was learning that they don't use fire; they use clubs and cutlasses, evoking images of the baby seal hunt. Dogs flush them out of the thickets and grassy knolls where they burrow and feed, then the hunters whack 'em til they're dead and then slit their throats.
There is an outright ban on hunting with fire, but lots of people do it because it's so much faster. The animals run in a predictable direction and you can kill them on their way out of the fire. The downside is that the bush is dry, I mean DRY, and it tends to light like tinder and get out of control quickly. Farms go up in smoke, the entire livelihood of a couple families can be wiped out in a matter of minutes. Plus, it kills everything in its path and steals the sustenance for any animal lucky enough to survive the fire.
I'll have to put up a picture of a grasscutter; this is the second time I've mentioned them. As I've said before, they look like the result of a drunken encounter between a beaver and a rat. They're furry and rather large, but there's surprisingly little meat to them.
And apparently they're really fast. And rather good at hiding.
We set out at 5 a.m. We met up with the hunters and their 20 dogs at 5.30 a.m. and started walking. The dogs' tails were wagging in excitement. The boys were laughing and joking. There was one dog hopping on three legs, the fourth having been hit by a car. There was a whiny one named Burundi who sounded like a squeak toy and a white pit bull named Robot.
By the first hour, we had tramped through a burned field and soaked our shoes with dew. All the boys were carrying clubs/walking sticks. The dogs were trotting along happily. They boys were talking low, exchanging whistles and grunts. Any time there was the slightest sighting, the slightest sign of excitement from the dogs, there was a shout for Mamadou, the ringleader, who wore a white ski cap on his head and white plastic sandals over black socks. Each time, the hunters formed a circle around the thicket, encouraging the dogs to get in and sniff out the rodents with little clicks and sounds like "och! och! och!" I couldn't understand most of it; they were speaking in Twi.
By hour three, the dogs tongues were practically touching the ground. We stopped briefly to knock a few papayas off a tree, grab a drink of water and douse the dogs with river water. (Olivier and I brought two litres of water and a sack full of snacks, so when I say "we" I mean "them.") By this time we had waded through knee-high grass. We'd seen a few signs of grasscutters, little corn sprouts chewed by their little rat teeth and drops of grasscutter poo. I'd turned my ankles a couple times stumbling into little holes. There were vines and thorns and myriad other scratchy things to catch arms and legs and patches of skull. My pantlegs were soaked to the knee, my sneakers were black with ash and dotted with little pickers.
By hour four, I was wondering if anyone would notice if I just curled up in a little ball on the ground.
Finally, FINALLY, Olivier cried uncle and said he could stand it for another hour, but then he'd have to pack it in. (We were both hoping that it would just take another half hour, then we'd finally find something. Then another half hour. And another half hour.) He'd already taken all of his water and I was selling him sips of mine for 5,000 cedis. I had recorded lots of sound, but hadn't taken a single note. Olivier had taken a billion pictures. But had we killed anything? No. Usually the guys catch five grasscutters and a couple rabbits in one go. It's the curse of the journalist that when you want to see something, it doesn't happen, whether it's an overcrowded ER or a good grasscutter bashing. And frankly, all that blather about the seal pup hunt? I was just waiting for something to get its skull smashed before I melted. I was ready to pass around matches and smoke out the little critters.
The dogs were dead tired. There were no more wagging tails. Anytime their owners called them into a thicket, they waded in, then sat down, panting. Who could blame them? It was roughly 50,390 degrees.
At hour four and a half, the boys stopped to point out a "wampum," a lizard that they said they don't bother hunting. The junior firefighter accompanying us obviously missed that line, because when they released it, he went after it and bashed it once, in a two-handed, over the head kind of smash and sent it to the afterlife. A guy called Biscuit put it in a bag, its tongue hanging out of its mouth, a sharp tooth having gone through it. He said he might get 35,000 cedis for it, a little less than $5 Cdn.
At hour five, I threw in the towel, chased down the lead hunter and told him we were leaving him. A quick interview later, we were walking down a dirt road to find a tro-tro to get out us out of there.
The only thing I got was the scratches on my ankles, and the comforting thought that if I'm going to make any money out of this misadventure, I've got to do it all over again. Only this time, with fire.
posted by Palmer in Africa at 11:06 AM
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