Kenya (Mount Elgon) – Kenya Side

The tiny stream cascaded over the eroded pyroclastic rock wall and splashed onto rounded solid black basalt boulders and vibrant green shrubbery. I shielded the camera and tripod from the tiny waterfall’s spray behind a large volcanic block and hopped from stone to stone over a heavily cratered pond of mud and shallow still water into the wide mouth of Kitum Cave. The rocks disappeared beneath a porch of fine dry dust that exploded into ankle-high plumes of soft mist with every footstep—one of many different animal prints pitting the floor. With the entrance now a broad sliver of iridescent green vegetation, I switched on the headlamp before handing my spare flashlight to the guide. Dressed in military green camouflage with an AK-101 gripped tightly by his right hand, he kindly led me up a series of large blocks. His narrow face and wide smile reminded me of the rapper Tupac.
Echoing around me, the cries and whooping of short screeches and dull fluttering quickly escalated in volume. I turned my light to the vaulted ceiling and caught the glitter of hundreds paired rusty-gold blinking beads.
The screeching stopped to give way to waves of rubbery flapping. Dozens upon dozens of agitated Rousettus fruit bats fled from of an unseen cavity in the dome roof and surrounded us with movement. I turned the light away and almost as immediately as the storm began it subsided with the bats returning to their roost. We pressed forward, I every now and then glimpsing clusters of citrine eyes nestled overhead in shallow indentations. The unsettling chatter and movement continued.
“You can see here,” the guide said tracing his finger inside one of many pickaxe scrapings in the wall, “these are ‘tuskings’, where the elephants carve at the rock to get to the salt.” Elephants, as well as many other animals like buffalo and bushbuck, will eat the porous soft agglomerate for the salt embedded within. “Some predators will take advantage of those animals and eat them for food,” Tupac noted over piled hyena bones beside an enclosed underground pool.
“When do the elephants come around?” I asked.
“At night, but you cannot see them now because they are on the other side of the mountain.” The “other side” meaning the elephants are on Ugandan portion of Elgon Mountain, which both Kenya and Uganda share including the national park. “Kitum cave goes into Uganda.”
“Really? That’s like forty kilometers from here.”
“Yes, but you cannot get there because a few years ago there was a cave in. You see, the elephants scrape at the rocks and can sometimes cause large boulders to fall.”
“Can you access the Ugandan Kitum entrance?”
“Ah, I don’t know. I think it’s spelled, Kip-tum. Kitum means sacred, I do not know what Kiptum means.”
Could a “border” be all that separates the transmission of a virus? I absurdly mused. What would make the bats on the Ugandan side harbor the Marburg virus, and not those from the Kenyan side? …A number of factors drew in my head, assuming the virus does in fact exist in Kitum cave as spotlighted in Richard Preston’s book, The Hot Zone. The truth is, two victims of Marburg during the early 1980s had visited the cave prior to dying from the disease, but it is not known if the virus was contracted there. Field studies of Kitum cave and its occupants (bats, rodents, insects, etc) revealed no evidence linking Marburg or sister virus Ebola to Kitum cave. As a result of the book, Kenya’s Kitum cave has received a bad stigma, and when asked about the virus in association with Kitum cave, park rangers will quickly laugh and assure you there is no association. Unrelated though, a few scientists studying the bat flu disappeared in the cave and never returned, Barasa, the grounds keeper informed us over a campfire.
From the top of Endebess bluff we watched the late afternoon bring its routine seasonal downpour to Elgon’s east facing forested slopes and the endless crop fields dipping below the horizon. In timelapse, the clouds develop and expand over the world’s broadest mountain slope returning to the valley with brief but sometimes drenching rain. Upon clearing, the mass movement of bushbucks, dik-diks and baboons roll past our banda’s doorstep near the park’s entrance below. Dusk passes and the clouds part revealing a moon-washed southern Milky Way overhead. Like last summer, Jupiter graced its yellow brilliance at zenith now positioned on the handle side of the teapot shaped constellation, Sagittarius. Although being just north of the equator, I noted the north and south poles at the horizon and from my seat beside the fire and watched the sky rotate directly toward the west. I discussed elementary (college) astronomy to a skeptical Carolyn and quiet Michelle. Both girls were volunteering at Sister Freda’s for the month, and knew Tyler from last summer’s volunteer work in Transmara; our next and last destination.