More of Dave's Rwanda Trip
A bunch of pictures are here - once they finish uploading. :-)
http://www.thecathouse.homeftp.net/Filez/2008107-8
Mandy and I a nice evening last night in the restaurant below the Sky Hotel chatting with our neighbor Jack, and his fiancée, about a variety of things - from religion, to politics, to technology, to human civilization in general. He and Mandy are religious, while I am not, so we had some good discussions about what the roots of religion were, why to believe what, and what it implied in society both good and bad. Despite having some very different premises, we came to some very good agreements. Jack is Kenyon, here on business, working with the installation of satellite communication systems for voice, video, data, etc. Not what you'd first think of when you think of a Kenyan. Apparently, according to Jack, Kenya is the technological leader of eastern Africa, due to its longer stability over the years (free of wars, genocide, internal regime changes, etc.).
We had lunch at La Sierra Restaurant- which had good Indian food and other options, including a nice buffet. This also contains one of the many local grocery stores we've been to. At this one we bought 5 Liter jugs of water and samosas, and could have bought donuts too. If you're ever in Rwanda, I recommend it. Their menu had this written down, though I'm not entirely sure how to interpret it - B.P. 369 (address?), 575486 (non-mobile phone #, as indicated by the lack of 08 in front?). It's about a block away from the center of town.
Then we took the Acape Express to Ruhengeri. The busses here are impressive, without any reservations we got tickets for 3000 Frw to go from the capital to a small city on the edge of the country (about 1.5 hours?). Granted we were packed in, but it was comfortable. Plus there was cool music playing, and friendly people near us. This also felt like the native experience, traveling with normal middle class folks (the poor were walking). For these busses to be so cheap, they would have to be, and certainly appear to be, very commonly used. There are several competing companies running the same routes. This one, I read later in the news, has it's own soccer team, one of those that competes to be the Rwandan national team. :-)
We also on this ride met a friendly American now become Rwandan (which is apparently a 2 day process). He's from Indiana originally, and is a minister in the New Wave Ministries. Very talkative. Great opinion of African/Rwandan natives. He described them as very friendly and very willing to help you out (though also happy to take money too). Not necessarily honest, he said, but given what they've gone through it makes sense. He then told the story about how his wife (who is 25ish? he's in his 50s.), a Tutsi, was during the genocide pulled from a bus along with other Tutsi. But she told her captors that no no, she was Hutu, and that her father was actually their commander, or someone in their command structure (I'm not remembering perfectly here), as she knew his name. They asked her who her mother was, and fortunately she knew that name too, as did they. So they agreed that yes, she was Hutu, and let her back on the bus... and proceeded to kill the other 7 people they had pulled off. This was the story he told to explain that while yes she was wonderful, lying came easily to her, and perhaps that this was common amongst Africans here. I certainly won't generalize about an entire population based on my few days of experience and one story from one other foreigner, but it was a pretty intense opinion to hear. He then continued, and apparently, again according to Greg, Rwanda is making a big effort to exert the rule of law, to get away from bribes etc. The common knowledge here is that if an official takes a bribe, he'll be in jail 24 hours later. I gather that's rather unheard of in third world nations in general. Impressive. He also told a tale of a foreigner who misunderstood a motorcycle taxi driver when he said the fare was "200", and gave him $200, instead of 200 Frw (the motorcycle taxis are everywhere, and it is really cheap to ride them though I haven't convinced Mandy to try it yet :-)). The taxi driver took the $200... but then also apparently ended up in jail 48 hours later. How they found him, I have no clue, but again an impressive story. And I have to say that my impressions agree. It seems that here in Kigali while you're likely to pay way more than you could have paid if you're not good at negotiation, you're not likely to be robbed or blatantly cheated or have any sort of violent crime done. Is it because we foreigners are more valuable as repeat visitors, or is it because they really respect us, or is it that they really respect life in general? Does it matter why it is?
Greg invited us to come visit him for dinner, here or in the US, and said he loved to meet travelers in general, so here's his contact information. We haven't had a chance to yet ourselves, though we may, depending on Mandy's schedule with professors and officials etc.
Greg Cunningham
0337 5026
Oct 17t 574-679-0011
newwave.greg@gmail.com
www.newwaveministry.com
The bus ride took about 2 hours. It was fun, and great to see the countryside. The pictures I link to above try to capture the general feel of what Rwanda is like, in the city, between cities, in the villages, and in the mostly rural farmland throughout. (1. are pictures of the area on the way there and back, 2. are pictures of the gorilla trek, 3. are some random pictures of folks, and 4. are movies, which you have to play some tricks with the URLs to get at - see the note at the top.) There is very little area of Rwanda outside of the national parks that is not completely occupied for the tech level they have. The lack of available land helps lead to some of the problems they've had, but more about that later. The bus ride was a great way to see the country. Plus it was kind of like a mild roller coaster with no restraints (no safety belts either). Definitely no sleeping going on. Our speed was limited only by the laws of physics.
Arriving in Ruhengeri, there was a bit of confusion as we figured out how to get to the guest house. Way smaller than Kigali, there weren't crowds of taxis waiting right there. We wandering around looking lost in a pseudo random direction. We lost Greg right away, which is unfortunate, I wanted to say goodbye, and also to get his advice. But typical of Kigali, people stare at us, and pretty quickly also ask where we're going, what we're looking for (do we want to buy what they're selling, will we give them some money, etc.). But I say Gorilla Tour, and Kinigi Guest House. They point us one way, and we start walking... clearly into a worse part of town, off the paved road, away from the actual concrete strip-mall style of building so common in Kigali, onto dirt roads and shacks, past a lumber mill (this is within about 1/4 mile, things change quickly).
Feeling a bit sketched out, still more people come up to us, we the obviously lost foreigners, asking where we're going. We again communicate Kinigi Guest house, and they laugh, talk to each other about things we can't understand, and confer amongst themselves, then direct us to a mini-van/bus and a driver. Eventually I know we're getting somewhere when he says 4000, in negotiation for the fare. Apparently we were in the gathering point of this city for local mini-bus transport. I'm not certain they really know where we're going, and a small part of me is wondering if they're planning on driving us off into the wilderness and killing us and taking all of our stuff, but fortunately I ignore that part and we decide to be brave and trust them. In retrospect I think they were conferring and smiling about how much they could get away with overcharging us, and that's what was giving me the sense of dishonesty and nervousness. Which is hilarious... if they only knew that I simultaneously thought they were ridiculously undercharging us. These country folk clearly lack the experience of the city folk who have better learned how much we white people are willing to shell out. :-) So after some trepidations, and almost aborting and heading back to the clearly more touristy center of town, we agree on the price and get into the van. Then we get back out of the van, as other locals come up and successfully negotiate also for passage, for them and half a dozen boards of fresh cut lumber (which smelled great! :-)), which gets loaded into the van under our feet. So we ended up sitting in the front seat instead, which afforded an amazing view as we drove. In retrospect I think the area we were in was for taxi/minivans with no specific route, that just got contracted for destinations as needed. Hard to deal with if you're expecting to show up and see signs telling you where to go and what to do. Yet on the other hand very effective. Rather than thousands of dollars for an organized safari with our own vehicle, we continued our journey for a few dollars more. I also got to learn by observation how to drive the 4 speed manual transmission on the column minivanbus thing. By the end of the trip I optimistically conclude that I may have been able to make it move the direction I wanted it to, in an emergency.
The area we moved through next was a close up look at what from a distance it appears that most of the country looks like. Simple structures right next to farms. Mostly sustenance farming, but with little shops and cell-phone vendors and "restaurants" advertising Coke and Primus and Mutzeg from structures that look very similar to the homes. Concrete construction gives way to wood huts with mud patched walls. More dirt. Paved road, but apparently that's new within the last few years, and previously would have been a disaster to get up there. Here I was struck again by the amount of manual labor going on. The motorcycle taxis gave way to bicycle taxis. People carried other people, or huge loads, on the backs of these simple bikes, sometimes pedaling and sometimes pushing. Others carried large loads on their heads - I was astounded by the size of the sacks of potatoes I saw people carrying, without even using their hands. 50 pound? 150 pounds? Fricken huge. At least the land appears to be very fertile, and our visit to the museum later confirmed that this area of the country has some of the best land for crops. And farming with a volcano on the horizon has got to be cool too. There were nice little stone and flower gardens in front of many homes, even though the homes themselves were made of mud. Though with the clay content in the ground here, they're really just one kiln firing away from being brick anyway. :-)
We stayed at the Kinigi Guest House. As we guessed for a Wednesday, the fact that we didn't have a reservation wasn't a problem. It was $50/night for the two of us, for a private room. I heard rumors there were $10 dormitory style lodging, but that was just in the literature, they didn't offer and I didn't see where that would have been. If you're ever here for the gorilla tour- I recommend it, their # is 250 0 830 5708. This small hotel/villa is about half a kilometer down the road from the Gorilla Tours main office, at the base of two of the volcanoes. I believe it is run in collaboration with the national park, as it's the only one anywhere nearby. Other hotels/resorts/safari lodges are several kilometers away. The view of the volcanoes is wonderful.
We met a kid named Apolosejay, who had a sob story about having to leave school because his parents were killed in the genocide, and was looking for a sponsor to get back in. I gave him my email. As always I'm not certain who or what to trust as legitimate versus just another scam to get money from the rich tourists, but how can you argue with education? I broke out the frisbee and we threw around for a bit, with more kids joining in as they passed by. Apparently this other group of kids was from the local village (another kilometer or two past the Gorilla Tour office) and had their own story about how they were a football team, but couldn't practice anymore because their ball was destroyed. In defense of this, I did see kids playing with some of the most ragged & torn soccer balls ever. So I went with them to their village where conveniently enough one of the adults was running a shop that had a new soccer ball for sale, for only 20k Frw. So I bought them a new soccer ball. Then there were sob stories about needing a pump, needing a French dictionary for school, etc. but I decided to stop there lest I spend all my money on the local village. It was interesting to see the natives - the village reminded me a lot of the village we visited in Peru, similar tech level and affluence. Will the soccer ball help? I don't know. Would it be wise to try to sponsor Apolosejay? (he's the kid in the pictures with the dark sunglasses) I keep vacillating between thinking anything would help, and thinking it's best not to get suckered in.
Environmentally, it was really dark up on the hill, at their village, and along the road between it and our guesthouse. The city was far enough away, there were no streetlights, and the few offices or other places with lights didn't have enough for it to carry. It was only 7-8 pm, everyone was still awake, but what do you do when there's no light for 12 hours out of the day every day of the year. The quarter moon helped. Makes you think about how much we take for granted being able to bath a room in light at the flick of a switch. They had tiny LED lights hanging from the ceiling in the shop we were in, and a couple of other of the simple huts. Interesting again, they've skipped right ahead past oil lamps and incandescent bulbs to the latest and greatest that has become cheap and easy in the US. If we can get them to skip past the coal fired power plant industrial revolution straight to the wind and solar society, that would be a good thing. I've got to get to work designing solar cells! :-)
The guest house was nice- simple but comfortable except for the sporadic water that sometimes ran, sometimes didn't. Later I saw some guys filling a cistern on the uphill side of the property with a chain of buckets up a ladder, drawing water from a tank in a truck. I felt guilty for needing water seeing how much manual labor was required for them to pass buckets up into the local equivalent of a water tower. We didn't shower that night, but did flush the toilet a few times.
It was cool, and this time I mean thermally speaking rather than in a more general sense though it was that too. :-) In fact I've never been hot here, except briefly in the middle of a couple of days, mostly after exercise. I think the altitude counteracts the latitude. I have, however, been fried several times and really should be more careful about my hat and sunblock. At the guesthouse it was cold at night, we wore much of our clothes to sleep in, as there was no heat available either. But the temperature was perfect for hiking. Cool, with a few clouds, but then sun coming through as we got closer to the top. Good thing too, I think we would have broken many bones during the hike if we'd been struggling through rain as well.
I also note that there was no trouble with mosquitoes despite tromping through forest. So much for all the bug spray and Perethrin I brought. I will keep taking my malaria pills just in case, but this area doesn't really seem to be a serious concern. Perhaps it's just this time of year?
We got up early (5:45 - ugh) and partook of the free breakfast that was included in our fee, and walked down to the Gorilla Tour office. There we found a large crowd of other tourists milling about getting ready to go, close to 7am. We waited a bit, they provided tea and coffee, and then we were pseudo-randomly bunched off into groups and assigned to gorilla groups to go visit, and tour guides to come along. We'd heard some rumors about which groups were best, the Susa group is supposed to be the largest, but also the furthest to get to. But we ended up having that decision made for us. We got paired with a South African (but white) couple, and had one of the smallest groups of just the four of us.
The one regret of not having gone through a safari agency, or made any other advance plans or reservations, was that there was no vehicle available at the park to get us to the trailhead. In retrospect the guidebook did say something about needing a vehicle, and that it had better be four wheel drive, but we interpreted that as meaning to get to the park office. But from the office the trails start 10-50 km away depending on which group you were visiting, and our guide was depending on us to have transportation for him as well as the group to get there. The other couple in our group also didn't realize this, but fortunately had a land rover with friends nearby that they were able to call, and we got going after only a half hour or so delay.
Our guide's name was Edward. The couple we were with, um, unfortunately I can't remember their names for sure. Edebe? P something? Their friends who came to bring us the land rover were named Lorette (Loretta?), Robert, who was a native minister. This car had apparently been driven up, though I don't think by them, from South Africa as a donation to Robert and his church so he could visit various smaller churches around the area.
We drove for 5-10 km on actual asphalt, and then it got exciting. After this trip I have a new and immense respect for Land Rovers. You haven't seen bad roads until you've seen these - they would have destroyed most vehicles, including most SUVs I've seen (though a Hummer would have been good). It was essentially a plane of large stones in close proximity, interspersed with mud, going up and down hills. It reminded me more of a riverbed than a road. I got put in back on foldout seats along with the Africaaner guy, and we were banging our heads against the ceiling, slamming around, and generally struggling not to injure our backs, and this was at only a few miles per hour along this road. It would have been faster to walk, and for part of the return trip we did. But after an hour or so journey, we finally arrived at the trailhead to get to the gorillas.
We were met there by two groups. The first was a bunch of native porters, who could have carried our packs up the hill for us. Our group ended up hiring one of them. They also loaned us gorilla walking sticks to use during the hike. The second group was a troop of 4 Rwandan soldiers, in full camouflage and combat gear, carrying AK-47s (I think). They were along for our security, but not to worry, it's perfectly safe, or so we were assured. :-) This is the point where I remember that this park is along the border between Rwanda and the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). Across this border there have been waves of immigration, refugees, etc. as well as armies passing back and forth for various conflicts. And on the Congo side it's not nearly so stable as here. So on the one hand it seemed like a really good idea to have them along. On the other hand I wondered what 4 soldiers were going to do if we ran into an invading army. Fortunately it didn't come up. Only 2 actually accompanied us on our journey, and the 8 person group was a very manageable size for this trek.
The trek up the mountain was a lot of fun. It was dense jungle, muddy but thankfully not too bad as the rain held off, and not too dissimilar to my untrained eye from the plants you'd see in Michigan - just amazingly dense. The trail was clear for most of the journey. There was a lot of uphill, but not too bad. And again we were lucky, apparently the gorilla group we were visiting was currently stationed relatively low on the mountain, so it only took half an hour to an hour to get there, as opposed to the three hours it could have been. Beautiful views from the mountain, I took many pictures, some of which are included in the link above.
It's a serious operation they have going on for these tours. There are trackers that stay with the various gorilla groups constantly - following them as they move, then reporting back their location to the tour groups, who apparently come to visit year round. So our guide Edward made contact with his radio, and pretty quickly found the point where we were to head off trail directly to the gorillas. About 5 minutes off the trail we met the trackers. We left our stuff there (bringing our passports and valuables with us, as advised, since apparently there have been issues in the past with people leaving their passports in their hotel and then accusing the porter of stealing it - though I felt guilty grabbing things out of my pack to bring along) with the trackers and military, and just Edward and one of the trackers, and us 4 tourists went up. About 5 minutes later, suddenly, there was a gorilla in front of us.
And by "in front of us", I really mean right in front of us. At the office they'd advised us to stay at least 7 meters away at all times... in practice that was about the furthest we got. It was a bit intimidating at first, but then it was really cool. They did seem so peaceful and friendly - happily chewing away on vegetation, the younger ones playing with each other. I didn't feel in danger at all. The guide kept us a couple meters away, but sometimes the gorillas would change course and just walk right by, not caring at all that we were there. Obviously they get visitors every day, so it's nothing new to them. But it sure was new to us. They limit the exposure to about an hour, which felt like a good long time to us. We took probably hundreds of pictures between us, and several movies. It was a group of 9, but they were spread out so that we only saw a few at a time. We followed them short distances as they moved about, eating, resting, just relaxing. Apparently they eat over 30 kg of foliage per day, making it a pretty much full time job. But the density of forest around us was so high that it was clear there was no shortage, so also no reason to be aggressive really. Apparently there are fights between the dominant males- the silverbacks - over breeding rights and control, which causes groups to split up as they get too large. But this one was far from any conflict, the leader Charles, was huge, and clearly the leader. The other males were much smaller, and not doing any challenging any time soon.
You can find more information on the Gorillas, and the tours, and the different groups here. http://www.rwandaecotours.com/gorillas/gorillas.shtml
We visited the Umubano Group, which I believe was on the side of Bisoke Volcano (Visoke on Google Maps?), which I believe has a peak height of 3711 m above sea level. The Kigili Guest House was at 1°25'58.0"S 29°35'55.24"E, according to my GPS, so I put together the map included in the pictures linked above to show where we were relatively speaking.
The trek back was easier, going downhill, but equally beautiful, and I got several more pictures of the vistas we passed on the way down. We were met by locals selling gorilla statues at the bottom- I bought several. :-) Then we started walking back, since the land rover wasn't back yet since our trek was a couple hours shorter than we'd originally estimated. But they'd radioed the office, who then called the folks with the rover, so they met up with us soon.
We had pleasant conversation with the other couple and their friends on the way back. They were talking about a trip the ladies wanted to do driving up Kilimanjaro in Kenya. That sounded like fun. We passed many small farms and farmers, and lots of children, several of home chased us along for some time trying to sell us pictures they'd drawn, or just generally begging for money, pens, t-shirts, etc. Next time I come here I'll bring a couple of boxes of pens to give out. :-) The people we were with were speaking to each other from time to time in another language, which he said was Africaane? Africaaner?, which is apparently based on Dutch, with some other stuff mixed in? Sounded like Yiddish to me. We walked for awhile on the way back to get away from the bumping and banging, but Edward was nervous about us walking too far, so we traded places and he and Robert sat in back where the bumping was the worst, and before long we were back on the main roads.
We had lunch at the Kigili Guest House restaurant (yummy spaghetti), I reorganized and repacked my gorilla army, and we has them call a taxi for us to get back to Ruhengeri. From there we bought tickets on the Volcano express to get back to Kigali, and were on our way. Again, going completely unplanned and with no advance reservations worked fine, except that we got lucky with the other couple having a car. That's the one thing I'd plan further in advance next time. I think you can rent vehicles nearby, or if nothing else jump in with one of the many safari companies that operate locally.
I was told that the national speed limit is 40 km. The joke is that if you go any faster you'll miss Rwanda entirely. :-) The other joke is that they limit their speed by anything other than the laws of physics. We've had a range on both buses and taxis of how fast/reckless the driver was, but pretty uniformly they go as fast as humanly possible while dodging other cars and pedestrians by centimeters. I heard later that until recently it was legal to move herds of cattle and goats along the main roads too, and that the level of traffic to dodge now is actually exceptionally low. Perhaps at certain places in the city the speeds are well regulated. And we did see pairs of uniformed cops standing along the road in some remote locations as well, though they didn't have radar detectors, or cars with which to chase us down. Our bus drivers did slow down a bit for them though, and wave amicably as they passed, and the cops waved back. So maybe the limit is there in some places.
So Rwanda is a mutated potato shape about 50 km wide and a little over 200 kilometers in its longest dimension. By comparison Michigan is a little over 250 km wide at the base. So you could fit at least 4 Rwandas in Michigan, not counting the UP. Yet travel is both easier and harder than in the US. On the one hand there are only a handful of nice paved roads like the ones we've been taking to get to Ruhengere, Butare, etc.. To get any distance off of those would require four wheel drive and a lot of patience. And this really is the land of a thousand hills... maybe more like a million. The roads switch back and forth continuously in three dimensions. It would be a motorcyclists dream (I do wish I had my bike here), but it does not make for 100 + km/hr speeds with any vehicle no matter how big the roads are. So crossing the country is a several hour endeavor at best. Yet on the other hand, we showed up unannounced, with no reservations, and were on a bus heading between major cities in less than half an hour. If we'd been late, there would have been another one leaving within another half an hour. And if we want to get off before the final stop, we just yell at the driver and he'll pull over to the side of the road and let us off. It cost less than $6 for both of us. All day long, every day. Granted, not late at night, but what if you wanted to go from Ann Arbor to Detroit? Or to Lansing? You'd better own a car, because the busses only leave sporadically, and probably require reservations well in advance, not to mention costing an order of magnitude more. Within Ann Arbor we've got AATA, and that's pretty good, but only for short distances. And you can't even open the door of a taxi for less than twice the cost of most trips here. We need to work on that. Granted part of it is the cost of labor. If you need to pay a driver $40k/year, you've got to charge a lot more. But more-so I think it's getting people to be willing to wedge themselves into small spaces in large groups. These van-sized buses carry 20 people or more. There is a small aisle in the middle to get back, but as the bus fills there are fold out chairs to sit in this aisle as well. People in the US would not be so okay with that. But maybe there's a compromise. Maybe it costs $10 to get to Lansing, but there's a bit more space? I need to do the math, but it seems like some middle ground should be possible.
But in summary we had a great time visiting the gorillas and got back to Kigali and the Sky Hotel easily and without great expense. I felt like I learned a lot more about Rwanda in the process, and I'm just getting started. :-)