1 May 2006
Firefly, light my way
Posted by Anne, GFRS volunteer
During one of our stays in the forest the foresters had to split up in two teams because the boundary walk hadn't been finished. Brian decided to finish the boundary walk by himself, while us volunteers and the other foresters, Bonte and Kafuri started the inventory of the forest.
At the end of the afternoon, quite late, it was time to return to our camp – a beautiful hut in the middle of the forest. Brian wasn’t there yet. Two hours later, at 6:30pm, still no sign of Brian. We started to worry a little, but the day before we also had some trouble in getting back to the camp as we were waiting for the boat at the wrong spot.
The boat couldn’t find us until we started to make all these animal sounds, a way of communication here that can reach quite far! One of the local boys, Sam, climbed a big tree and started to scream something in the local language, his voice reaching across the lake. Quite different from using a mobile phone, really.
Yet today, it was already dark and the boat had gone back to the village. Bonte and Kafuri said that Brian could always sleep in the jungle. “After all he is a bushman!”
The chief said that he and the local guys that accompanied him probably will sleep in a little village or maybe even borrow a canoe from them. So we worried a little less and were about to have dinner when we heard some noises out of the forest. It was 7:30pm and he was back!
Brian told me that he’d forgotten to bring his torch and although his GPS provided him with some light, the batteries ran out. But he managed to catch a firefly and that little but powerful fellow showed him the way back to the camp. Isn’t that something wonderful?! I had a good look at the firefly, which is actually quite small but produces a lot of light. Then it was time to release it, so the firefly could go back to his friends in the forest.
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