Around The World in a 60s Daze...: The Dark Continent

Dear family and friends,

Spike Jones: “Doodles! Hey Doodles! Did you hear about the owl that married a goat?”

Doodles Weaver: “Yeah, they had a hootnanny!”

I know. It’s not funny. Not even in the least. But here in Rwanda, not much is.

Rwandan Kids at Mt. Bisoke

On February 2nd after my Vietnam visit, I flew from Singapore to Entebbe, Uganda where I caught a cab for a crazy one hour, night-time drive to Kampala, the Capital City. It was there I was to join Dragoman Overland, a travel company that has been operating overland tours for forty years. Their motto is ‘Not Your Everyday Journey’. And it certainly lives up to its mandate. To Mercedes Benz truck chassis, the company fitted purpose-built safari type bodies to carry camping gear, water, and seats for twenty odd passengers.

Dragoman Truck Set Up for Camp

The first of these trucks was built 25 years ago, and I had the dubious pleasure of riding in one of the early brutes for my tour. They were not long on creature comforts in their original models. The first overland route was from London to Kathmandu. Now 35 of these vehicles ply the globe. Mine started in London and was headed for Cape Town South Africa, a total of 35 weeks travel. One is able to book on and off for any one of about 30 sections; the two week section I booked was to take me from Kampala into Rwanda, back into Uganda and on to Nairobi Kenya.

Our driver was Darren, a Brit who has been driving these things for three years now. He was a very conscientious driver and he never failed to wave back at all the people who waved at us. But the biggest part of his job was to keep the truck going; every day he was under it, or under the hood working on something or other.

We also had a cook, Vesh, a Kenyan women who’s job it was to make interesting meals with produce and meat bought from local markets. Not an easy task, I’ll tell you. We all had to take turns to help with meals. And Vesh ran her camp kitchen with the charm of a sergeant major the day after a too short leave. God help anyone late to help, or late for the meal. We dried our dishes and cooking utensils by flapping them in the air, a very frustrating technique when it was raining, and you would sure catch hell if you tried to sneak one away not fully dried. I liked Darren and Vesh a lot. This is pretty basic travel, tenting at almost all sites. I upgrade whenever I can, but it is not always possible, so I have spent several nights on the hard ground, only saved by the camping mattress Kara and Joe gave me for Christmas. But in spite of (or maybe because of) the long days and some tough nights, it has been an adventure.

Ruhengeri Market in the Rain

Rwanda, ‘Le Pays des Milles Collines’, or the land of a Thousand Hills, is a small African country (at 23,000 sq. km it is smaller than Vancouver Island) bounded by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is beautifully lush and fertile, and this, combined with the fact that it is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, means every available piece of land is cultivated. Every hillside is terraced or cultivated in some manner (they are all small, family sized plots) with crops of bananas, plantain, corn (maize), coffee and tea seeming to be the most common.

Mountains of Parc Nationale des Volcans

We all learned of Rwanda, the tortured country that it is, in 1994 when a genocide of unprecedented viciousness took place leaving one million people dead after 100 days of butchery. The horror of this story has been documented by Canadian General Romeo Dalaire, then head of the UN peacekeeping mission, in his book ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’, and the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’. The principal character in that movie, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, has also written a book ‘An Ordinary Man’ which gives background to the event as well as another first hand account of those terrible three months.

Our first stop in Rwanda was in Kigali, the Capital, to visit the sobering Kigali Memorial Centre, a must for anyone coming to this country. It is more than a memorial of their particular tragedy, as one floor is dedicated to the many other genocides of recent history, Armenians, Jews, and Cambodia. The main exhibit is very well curated and documents the calculated planning that lead to the genocide. From what was shown, the event was not the spontaneous tribal conflict I recall it being presented by international press at that time. Hutu and Tutsi were not nearly so delineated as other tribal groups; they had existed for 600 years of relative harmony, with intermarriage very common.

What does seem to be a significant part of the story behind the genocide is one of colonial manipulation. Originally colonized by Germany, Rwanda was awarded to Belgium after the First World War. And like European colonizers elsewhere in Africa, the Belgians played on ethnic differences to divide and rule the locals. The Belgian Administration implemented ID cards that divided the population on strict ethnic lines. However, assignment to one group or the other was often very capricious; sometimes on the basis of the number of cows one had, or the size of one’s head, measurements of which were assiduously taken. They then tapped into the Tutsi as leaders to help control the Hutu majority. But then, as independence approached, the Belgians switched sides to favour the Hutus, setting up the conditions for Hutu leaders to effect retaliation for what they viewed as decades of exploitation. The result was thousands of men, women and children participating in a frenzied slaughter of neighbours, colleagues, and friends. An ugly aspect of the carnage was the part the Catholic Church played in it; many priests and bishops facilitated the ‘genocidaires’ by leading Hutus to the churches where Tutsi had sought refuge.

The most poignant part of the exhibition are the many walls covered with photographs of the children who perished, their eager, small, smiling, faces stare out seeming to ask why.

Today Rwanda is trying to get back on its feet, assisted by the guilt so justifiably felt by foreign governments that allowed this massacre to happen, and thousands of NGOs. Most of the 60 odd leaders in the event are now in custody and facing trial along with 120,000 participants. With the justice system totally overwhelmed, the government has instituted a traditional custom for dealing with conflict called gacaca, or ‘justice in the grass’, a form of truth and reconciliation mechanism. Every Thursday morning everything in the country stops and these courts sit to hear testimony. The gacaca historically was a group of village elders convening to hear complaints and adjudicate between villagers, possibly over the ownership of a goat or a property boundary. There is considerable skepticism that the gacaca can adequately deal with the crimes they are now forced to consider.

Beyond the need to put the genocide behind them, the people of Rwanda are struggling for daily subsistence. The country is the most impoverished I have visited; it is ranked 173rd out of 182 countries by the World Bank, with per capita income of only $230 per year.

Kigali

But enough of this bleak past.

Most visitors come to Rwanda to view Mountain Gorillas, the largest of the great apes. There are only about 700 of these magnificent animals left in the world, 380 of which live in the mountainous frontier Rwanda shares with the DR Congo and Uganda. The balance lives in Uganda but Rwanda is currently the place considered the surest for sighting of gorillas. The number that survive would surely have been much lower had it not been for the work of Dian Fossey who worked with these animals from 1967 until she was murdered in 1985 (no doubt for her efforts in combating poaching).

So, from Kigali we trundled northwest to Ruhengeri to access Parc Nationale des Volcans. All roads in Rwanda are in terrible shape, including the highways, but on the occasions we left the main roads, it was easily understood why Dragoman had chosen such rugged trucks. The highways are potholed and bone jarring, but the smaller ones would be impassable with a normal vehicle. Our route took us through dozens of small cities and villages, the buildings and housing are of the most basic design and made of the meanest materials, many are of red mud adobe bricks, but often they are just made of branches, twigs, and mud. The roads were always lined by locals, seemingly all the young males had nothing to do but hang around the streets. But everyone waved. In all their misery, one could not help but marvel at their cheerfulness, particularly the children who would start waving as we came into sight and continue till after we were gone.


Rwandan Road Hazards

Our Guide, Peter

We were up at 4:30AM on the morning of our trek (It was usually 5:00. I’m serious!) for the one hour drive to the park headquarters where we were to be divided into groups of eight, the maximum that can be around a gorilla family at any one time. There are currently eight family groups on nearby Mt. Bisoke, the mountain where Fossey worked. We were offered the choice of a short trek of about one hour, a medium trek of two, or a long trek of three to four hours. I chose to do a two hour trek and was grouped with others to go to visit the Umubano group, a family of eight members. A one hour jeep ride took us to the base of Mt. Bisoke where we were to start our hike. Aside from our local guide Peter, we had a tracker, and an armed ranger whose services we would need should we run into buffaloes or poachers, both considered unlikely, but not unheard of.

Our trek turned out to be a full two hours, up some of the steepest slopes, through dense jungle with stinging nettle on all sides, following a barely discernable trail. And such as it was, the trail was gumbo mud from the heavy rains characteristic of this area, so it was largely two steps forward and one slide back. It was certainly a lot more difficult than I had expected and we were a pretty spent group when we started to see gorilla tracks, scat, and nesting spots.

Then we were right in the middle of the Umubano group, some in the trees, others placidly chewing on leaves, and juveniles wrestling as the ‘silverback’, the dominant male, looked on. They were all quite untroubled by our presence, sometimes coming within a meter or so, all the while contemplating us with a languid sort of semi-interest. After one-half hour it started to rain and the gorillas took shelter, as did we, but with less success than the apes. It lashed down on us for about 15 minutes soaking us through. When it stopped the gorillas came out for another showing, but soon our hour was up (the maximum time allowed for a visit) and we had to leave.

The Silverback

This was the signal for the skies to open up again. Our two hour trek down was more difficult than the one up. In the heavy rain the trail was soon slippery, running mud. On the steep ground footing was almost impossible and some of our group literally slid the whole way down. Even our guide Peter was seen to fall on his ass at least four times. By the time we got to the bottom, and headed to the park headquarters, the newly paved road had washed out forcing us to take a longer detour back. It was an exhausted, soaking, muddy, but elated group that arrived back to be given our certificates of encounter. It was certainly an unforgettable encounter, or ‘Mzungas in the Mist’, as the souvenir T-shirts proclaim (Mzungas meaning ‘Whiteman’).

And so ended my Rwanda visit. After two days of drying out back in Ruhengeri we packed up and crossed back into Uganda.

Spike Jones: “Hey Doodles! Your hair is getting thin.”

Doodles Weaver: “So who wants fat hair?!” Now that’s a killer.

I hope you are all well.

Merv.