The U-Turn Journal #3
Sese Island Wood hunt

We continue the U-turn journal (journal index) A toilet, a shower, 4 double cabins and a larger canoe to go. Drying fresh Sese Island's wood yields a three months delay, compared to buying dried Kampala wood. Worth it to save far less than 2000 euros? Yes, we do it, this is Africa. Moreover, would I earn 2000 euros sailing tourists 4 months earlier? Far from sure. Better start earning my money right now on Sese! Let us see if our African experience will make us do better this time

In September 2010, after having made my U-turn, planning the dhow's refurbishment, I checked for the Kampala hardwood prices. Finding them high, I contacted Dominic who runs a camp site on Banda Island, to inquire whether anything cheaper could be bought from the Sese Islands. Dom reported a deal was made. By Christmas, one mukusu (similar to mahogany) log had been brought to the beach, and Dom reported himself unable to get the guys on the telephone, let alone to summon them to his beach, unable to talk clearly with them because of language problems, unlikely to get any useful information out of them because of culture differences and substandard brain function, and telling me that among the rumours concerning the cause of this total defaulting he found such issues as: chainsaw broken, logs too heavy to carry by canoe to Dom's beach, other customers paying higher prices than Dom agreed for my logs, and the need first to finish the beer obtainable with the 130 000 Uganda shilling (�40) yield of the delivery of that notorious first log that had remained so desperately single. "It's a fine log, Dom added, if you do not want it I would be glad to buy it from you". That generous offer obviously did not bring me any closer to the solution of my problem. On my question for phone numbers to call the woodcutters directly, I got two, but Dom discouraged me to engage in any conversation since the English on the other side would not be liable to any understanding.
No need to say, half of February 2011, 5 months after my first contact with Dom about a possible Sese hardwood order, my diagnosis was: total general deadlock for reasons unknown and to be identified only by personal detailed anthropological field work.

So, not expecting much, I boarded, at Kasenyi, Entebbe one of those open rotting wrecks serving as outboard "ferries" to Sese.

On Banda a small calf wound I had acquired some days earlier, developed to a 5 cm ugly red moist rotting spot. Since this was the first time I ever saw a wound grow, I soaked it in waragi (local gin), scraped the crust, shit and puss off and found, in quite a deep hole (see arrow), soaked in my gin, something like this: . A fortunately available Maasai expert told me this was a jigger (a worm using your skin as a nest for procreation). After my cleaning, the wound dried nicely but got infected again the next day. Later, back home, somebody's expert Samia (Mount Elgon) house keeper said it surely had been a mango fly (a worm that can grow up to 10 cm under your skin and from there spreads her babies all over). Finally my white doctor said it surely was just an infected wound, my brown "jigger/mangofly-"-find must have been just a piece of blood crust, and put me on antibiotics, successfully. So far for local expertise.  White doctors I met on different occasions during this antibiotic week however, differed on the usual alcohol ban during antibiotics use. Some laughed and called it superstition. Both medical currents are well represented on internet. So far for professional expertise. But after taking the antibiotics the wound was clean and vanished. I will not relate all other advices I got from virtually everybody, limiting myself here to observing that as soon as you have a decently visible health problem, the entire human race starts to pose as expert advisors with eagerness and enjoyment, and serious faces full of suddenly miraculously acquired self confidence - this curious frenzy is joined even by the otherwise most decisively modest!!- bombard you with the most ridiculous nonsense. What was our subject again? Oh yes, wood!
The morning after arrival I made myself ready to head for the fishing hamlet at the East side, crossing the Banda Island jungle by foot (a 2 km rough walk). But Dom had unexpectedly overcome his months long total frustration, revived his long dead - apart from offering to buy from me the only log that had arrived - interest in my hardwood project and had already volunteered to call the woodcutters for a meeting on his beach, including the deforestation gang's hub, Banda's hamlet's school's headmaster. Remembering Dom had assured me months ago that they were never to get on the phone, let alone on the beach, I waited. And he got someone on the phone! They would come, Dom assured. But unfortunately, Dom's sympathetic attempt just showed that his former general despair was justified: we saw no one. Ok what is one more day after 5 months?
Early the next morning I found Dom again phoning "wood", but I told him to relax. After all, I had come to the island for a last strong, inspired but probably vain attempt to personally  make a difference. I cut my way to the fishing hamlet Banda East.

Banda Island: up and down through thorny thick forest & bushes, lots of ants and the odd snake

Descending the hills you will first see some cassava, then footpaths start, maize, more maize, a fishnet repair platform, then the first huts

Descending the hills you will first see some cassava, then footpaths start, maize, more maize, a fishnet repair platform, the first shabby huts on the main road to what I silently call "Caf� Central", opposite of which you find the local whorehouse, the "restaurant" (well: beans, goat, chicken, fish, rice, posho, tea) and an open air chapatti seller. But no "headmaster", though a genuine non-deforesting schoolmaster was produced by the bystanders, whose English was incomprehensible indeed. Then, a known face: Vincent, the owner of an outboard-canoe I often use when my stinky ferry heads for the wrong island and cannot be bribed to drop me on Banda. Vincent knows the headmaster, and one of his workers Richard who is present! But the headmaster is chopping trees on Serinya, the next island, and will be back at sunset (19:30). The two numbers I got from Dom turn out both to be of the headmaster, but none of them is active on a network. I pay Vincent to drop me back on Dom's beach by canoe. Richard will catch the headmaster at sunset and come to Dom's beach with him and Vincent. I add Richard and Vincent to my phone contacts, and decide to start my phone harassment of everyone from Dom's beach at five.
Five o'clock. Vincent and Richard take the phone, headmaster not yet arrived, neither of the two headmaster numbers are registered on a network. This remains the same every half hour until well after sunset. In the dark I order Vincent to pick me from Dom's beach and bring me to the fishing hamlet, to catch the headmaster whenever he arrives. In the light of an oil lamp I eat chapatti with chicken and tea in the thatched-roofed wood-walled restaurant adjacent to the whorehouse (sporting, by way of roof, the rusted remains of some corrugated iron sheets) and at half past ten...the headmaster is announced!
Ten minutes later he enters the restaurant. A young boy, excellent English. Yes he can deliver mukusu wood, but the price of a log is now 180 000 Uganda shillings a piece (�60) because the trees are now further from the beach where they are loaded. Yes whole logs are a bit heavy for transport but he could cut them in half logs for same price. He can deliver 20 half logs in two weeks. He could confirm delivery and I could pay by crediting his Kalangala Stanbic bank account nr.....!!! (Having a bank account is very unusual in this environment). But, I ask, could transport to Dom's beach at Banda be included and proper shady storage for the delicate 2 or 3 months drying process? Yes! We have a deal.

I firmly reckoned with the possibility that Dom's engagements five months ago started as well as mine this memorable night in the hamlet, and thus my effort might end up like his. But I decided first to refrain from trying to make a proper anthropological diagnosis of the previous stalemate, go straight back to Kampala with Dom, who, like me, headed for Nairobi, and just wait and see what would happen.

To everyone's astonishment, first of all my own, 17 days later all my wood was reported by Banda camp staff to be on Dom's beach.

Again 6 days later, back from Nairobi, the "headmaster" happened to be in Kampala and we met for payment of his USh 1,800,000/= (at the latest rate of the quickly sinking Uganda Shilling that is � 530/= for 4 m³ of mukusu (similar to mahogany) hardwood or � 134/m3. The  Kampala m³ price is � 500, Europe: � 2500). My astonishingly young headmaster told me he is no longer headmaster. "Government office weakens you". He is has now totally shifted to mukusu-hardwood tree cutting on the Sese Islands. He cuts and delivers about 10 trees a week and estimates on this pace hardwood trees will last another three years. Then the mukusu on Sese will be finished. Even more valuable hardwood, like mahogany and muvule is already "rare", he says. But when the mukusu is finished, he will have the profit invested in a large island farm with cows and goats, and this will form a, yes!, sustainable source of income for his family. He promises to do the proper storage in three days, and the conversation was such that I did not even withhold part of my payment in waiting for that final job.

                                              Wood properly stacked in the shade of Banda trees for drying (Photo � Dom; I've not been there yet)

And rightly so: three days later the wood was properly stacked in the shade to gently dry for two or three months before we will sail there to load and take it.
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*) Remember the wood hunt when starting dhow building 6 years ago at Mwanza, the pages: No Wood, Maps, Screws, But Still No Wood, No Train, No Wood and Malaria