behind the scenes at an ecolodge

This week's visitors cancelled their trip, having been in contact with someone Covid-positive and not wanting to take the risk (you still need a negative PCR test result to be allowed into this country - and also need to pass a rapid test before being allowed to go to look for gorillas).  So we have another few weeks without clients here.  & life is better when clients are here - better food, constant hot water - not to mention the income for the owner that he needs to maintain the on-going repairs to the place.

It is astonishing how much needs to be done.  Not just the obvious things like keeping it clean, but things like dealing with ants and termites.  Driver ants apparently nest in colonies of up to 20 million, and from time-to-time they decide to relocate.  We had one such move within my first few weeks here, with very organised lines of driver ants crossing the trails, as well as big masses of them which appeared to be milling around aimlessly over large areas.  The trails are easy to step over, but the big masses are trickier.  They are interesting to watch, as you can see how some of the ants ‘stand guard’ along the sides of the trail – sometimes standing on eachothers’ shoulders and forming a tunnel within which other ants carry the eggs – and the occasional very large ant also stands guard alongside. But these ants bite!  I’ve heard of instances of people disrobing in public to get them off their body, such is the discomfort when they’ve climbed up inside your clothes and then all start biting at once.  So we always have to look where we are going – but sometimes when they are looking to enter the bedrooms, dining room or kitchen, then the flame-thrower has to come out to discourage them!

‘Couper branches qui touchent les toits’ can also include ‘cut branches which obscure the path between the satellite and the dish’, which in this case involved going rather higher up a rather larger tree.  But the Ba’aka (the pygmy tribe found in this part of the country) are rather good at that, and one of them – barefoot and with his machete – was 30 metres up a tree within a matter of minutes, ready to hack at the offending branches.


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