what a week!

monday - pretty average day, a decently productive smattering of work at my day job and a nice evening hanging out with a friend in town from overseas.  who is sort of in love with me.  but only just sort of.  i think.

tuesday - chair a monthly meeting on trafficking.  pick up a package at the post office of leg warmers and fingerless mitts from the lovely lady over at Yarn is My Metier, beautiful and so comfortable.  every girl needs a pair of leg warmers.  american idol watching with my neighbour/guy i dated a year ago.  a failed hill run - 8 hills turned into 4 miserable hills.

wednesday - teaching high school for the morning, which is almost as exhausting as teaching junior high school, but not quite.  the first screening of the film What Are We Doing Here? that went really well, including the panel discussion on aid to africa that i participated in.  i was proud to have addressed people's questions with intelligent answers.

thursday - drafting of a project proposal for funding to do my own research in the province.  the second screening of the documentary followed by another panel discussion, where i wasn't nearly as articulate as wednesday night's event.  beer and nachos with my ever supportive friends afterwards.

friday - a half day workshop on temporary foreign workers in alberta and the challenges and successes of the programme.  met the nephew of my nairobi chemist by chance in calgary.  handed out tonnes of my cards, networking, networking, networking.  running around the city getting wedding gifts and cards.  a gorgeous wedding with great people that ended with me and the best man shooting tequila at the bar.

saturday - a touch of the hang over.  catching up on adminstrative work for my evening/weekend job.  watching ufc fights, which i swore i would never do and will never do again - boring and disgusting at the same time.  an early night.

sunday - a good 12km run, but with frozen hands.  a hot bath.  some shopping.  sushi.  roast dinner with my parents and one bro (my other bro is in tanzania!).  traffic fines paid.

gorilla gorilla!

(march 23, 2008)

i woke up at 5:30am to meet my driver with whom the only language i shared being kiswahili. he brought me to parc national des volcanes headquarters where i wished i had someone to chat with as i waited to be assigned a group nursing my rwandan coffee and fighting off a nervous pee while everyone else chatted with the people they came with. damned travelling alone.

but a nice australian lady befriended me in the loo queue and we ended up being in the same group with our guide, a man named patience. (gender specific names are apparently not so important in rwanda.) we went through the generic platitudes of new group formations and i was happy to find out that we were just 6 people, 2 of which were fellow solo travellers.

i thought we’d get on with hiking then, but we had to drive another 30-40 minutes to the base of the volcano we would climb on some of the worst roads my bum’s experienced. but the countryside with houses constructed with mud and wooden skeletons and the women walking along the road wrapped in brightly coloured fabrics was enough to keep me distracted. it is quite a different picture than kenya, where there are always signs pointing to some ngo or evangelical organisation down each red dirt road. but the children in the villages we passed are already realising there is money to be made in the increasing numbers of tourists; pens and sweets to be collected from the foreigners passing by in their safari mobiles as they run alongside the car trying to sell you their drawing of a gorilla or a flower they just picked.

before long, we arrived at our starting point, a stone’s throw from the border with the drc, where we met out porters and were convinced we needed them to carry our things. but being the control freak that i am, i insisted i could carry my backpack. you pack it, you carry it, right? i had thought very carefully about what i would pack and had made home roasted cashews and maple granola as well as brought along 4 extra pairs of socks in ziploc bags (paranoid?!) in case my feet got wet and i wanted my stuff to hand.

the hike itself was uphill, was very muddy, was full of stinging nettles that went right through my two pairs of pants, was led by a machete-wielding porter to cut away the rainforest so we could pass through, and was chaperoned by armed rwandan soldiers because i guess they don’t like to take chances that there are still hostile poachers in the area, especially with instability in the drc.

but all of it was forgotten when we turned a corner around some forest and saw the first gorilla. there were a group of about 10-15 of them sitting in an area where they’d squished the trees and leaves and were so close the only thing keeping me from touching them was the rules not to. they regarded us as we approached and then carried on doing what they had been doing previous to our expected arrival: the baby gorillas played and turned somersaults down the hill, the silverback groomed one of the females, some sprawled on their backs and just relaxed, and the mama gorillas cradled their babies.

one gorilla, a middle aged female, was not thrilled with our presence and challenged our guide, who she knew and who grunted at her to let her know he wouldn’t back down (or she would charge) and told us to ignore her so as not to encourage her, as if he was talking about a misbehaving child. it worked, and she walked past and behind us to find some trees to swing on while we sat with the rest of the group.

how many other ways can i say amazing?

once the silverback decided it was time to move, they slowly followed him out of the nesting area and we slowly followed them through the bush. that female who had earlier been asserting her authority must have decided that she didn’t like being on her own after all and came barrelling through the bush and walked RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, which scared the living bejesus out of me and like a human with a natural fear of a wild animal twice her weight, i turned and ran right into the austrian man in our group while reminding myself not to scream. oh, i am such a natural animal trekker...

we followed them until we reached a ravine that was not human-friendly and watched them disappear into the forest.

worth $500 for the permit? in a word, yes. would i do it again? absolutely. the chance to spend more time with the gorillas would draw me back to this country even if the fried bananas don’t.

the trek to the trek to the gorillas

(march 23, 2008)

i have not been as nervous or excited for anything in a long time. the kind of childlike excitement that keeps you awake at night and makes you ever so slightly nauseous with anxiety about what is to come. i had done my last minute preparations before leaving nairobi, packing clothes suitable for hiking, bagging high energy snacks, and throwing my swiss army knife in my backpack for good measure. i had heard that trekking with the gorillas was a once in a lifetime experience not to be missed whatever the price and that it was surreal even if the hike up the volcano is tough.

to get to ruhengeri, the village close to the parc national des volcans, i took a bus from kigali (that was more like a matatu) and sat between 2 sweaty men where we had to fold our shoulders like accordions to fit 4 people across the seat. I thought at that moment that it is a good thing i don’t take up a lot of space and that rwandans tend to be thin people.

the 2 hour drive was on paved roads without potholes and with guardrails, both of which have become novelties to me. the views of the countless hills and valleys draped in all shades of green were stunning and made the numbing of my bum worthwhile.

my complimentary thoughts on rwanda and rwandans were temporarily suspended, however, when someone on the ‘taxi’ began a conversation, that soon involved everyone of the 18 passengers and driver, about the mzungu that continued for awhile in kinyarwanda with people looking in my direction every now and again without ever explaining what they all found so conversation-worthy about my existence. annoying.

but my limited kiswahili was useful in explaining where i wanted to go and soon realised that the person who bought me my ticket purchased the wrong one. makes me want to reinvigorate my swahili study, not to mention learn french once and for all. (but let me say now that the languages in rwanda are a bit of a smorgasboard of french, english, swahili, with nearly everyone speaking kinyarwanda – many of the people living in rwanda today grew up in kenya, uganda, tanzania, or further afield in the us or canada and so speak english or swahili instead of french, even though that was the official language for decades).

my guesthouse in ruhengeri was friendly and cozy enough. i was contented that it had warm water, and mosquito net (less because there were mosquitoes and more just so i could rest assure the creepy crawlies who neither creep nor crawl on my during the night), and a pillow. i’m afraid i may have offended the hotel staff though, when i didn’t eat much for dinner and wasn’t interested in indulging in friend bananas for dinner. but i managed to get to sleep in spite of my excitement and only woke about 5 times during the night worried that i had overslept.

le pays des milles collines

the country of a thousand hills is very hilly. and very green. and very friendly. and very orderly. and very different than nairobi.

i have been here only 3 days and have been enjoying what rwanda has to offer, which includes good cheese, good coffee, good museums, good hiking (gorillas!), and good roads.

at the moment, i am avoiding the monsoon outside as i wait for my bus to depart from ruhengeri back to kigali and dreaming of a bathtub full of hot water and a cup of tea after a very uphill hike to see some gorillas this morning. i am also at this moment wishing i spoke more french and wishing i was a millionaire and could just hire someone to drive me in a very comfy car back to the city and then spend the night in a swank hotel while i process and recuperate from the last few days.

pictures and more stories to follow...