On Safari With Baboons At Mole National Park
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We heard an almighty scream at Mole National Park, followed by a loud crash in the motel room next door. We ran into the adjoining room, my driver and I, to find a white American male red-faced on the floor with blood pouring from a gash in his forehead.
“What’s happened to you?” I asked, fearing the worst. He said he left his bedroom door open while he went out to fetch some documents from a hired car parked nearby. He got back to find a baboon stretched out on his bed, eating his Butter Bread.
The white man had tried to coax the animal at first, doing his best Doctor Dolittle act. But the raging baboon “with wild maddening eyes” leapt up and struck him in the face. “It was like some corned methhead back home,” he grinned, trying to make light of a bad situation. But neither Ibrahim nor I could see the funny side.
We were both wondering the very same thing, it seems. Whether this pathetic looking tourist had gone and got himself bitten by a baboon and managed to catch Ebola? Even though we knew there were no known incidents of Ebola in Ghana, we figured if it were to happen, it could only ever happen to an ‘Obroni’. And that tickled us immensely, later, laughing in the car heading back down south.
We had picked the bleeding white man off the floor and led him to reception for the young girls there to patch him up. He was in good, capable hands and smiling broadly when we left.
It would be a 12-hour drive from Mole National Park back to Accra. Ibrahim suggested we fill up the tank with petrol and place a 5-gallon plastic container with the same unleaded gasoline in the back of our jeep, just in case. With enough fuel onboard to blow up to kingdom come, I hoped he might ask Allah to protect us from any accidents along these treacherous dirt roads when he sat for morning prayers.
You might be the most careful driver in the whole of Africa, but you never knew your luck the way most Ghanaians take to the roads. We had already witnessed numerous accidents on our two-day trek up north. Overturned and burnt-out vehicles littered the route like carrion.
A few hours into the long ride back, I decided to stretch my legs along the motorway. I wanted to photograph a school of baboons quietly gathered on the roadside in Wa. The animals must have smelt me coming.
Although happy enough canoodling close to passing cars, my cautious approach from 100 ft away was another matter entirely; Moms, Pops, and babies, too, quickly scurried off into thick overgrown bushes within easy reach of the roadside. All suddenly invisible amongst dense green foliage.
Good time to take a quick leak, I thought. Stepping off the paved roadside, I strolled across the hot savannah ground to stand unknowingly, my left sandal atop a large colony of ants. So tiny were these little blighters that I couldn’t feel them, skating over my skin while I happily relieved myself down a long wet trail along their path. It was probably karma coming back to haunt me for having laughed at the American.
I hadn’t noticed these ants at all until they were crawling between my toes and biting with a hard, sharp sting, then swiftly moving up to my ankles. By the time I’d got halfway back to the waiting Land Rover, I was hopping on one leg, unbuckling my belt, while scratching myself inappropriately on the motorway. Some industrious climbers had already reached up to my groin. I was sure I could feel some crawling among the hairs there.
On reaching the jeep, there was nothing to do but drop my trousers and search for the little critters. So, right there on the Wa to Accra motorway, as groups of churchgoing Ghanaian families whizzed past in their Sunday sedans, I launched into a happy slapping routine with my jeans and underwear around my ankles. I was fighting off minute ants while trying to hide my nakedness behind our parked vehicle.
I probably should have got into the damn Land Rover Defender to hide my modesty, but I somehow didn’t want to take those vicious ants into the vehicle with me. I had to have them all gone or dead before I’d get back in the jeep or let Ibrahim drive on. For his part, my chauffeur sat there in the driver’s seat, watching me in the rearview mirror with an odd curiosity.
My everyday driving companion must have thought, “here we go! What now?” But those bloody ants were so fast and furious; they seemed to get everywhere in no time at all. Hours later, way into the night, I was still scratching inappropriately from my one mistake and endless bites. My left foot was heavily swollen and much too big for shoes by morning.
Ouch.
- You may also like to read: On the Luxury Coach to Kumasi — Your Life in God’s Hands.
