Amazing Trip to Rwanda

Big mother Gorilla staring at us

Above almost all trips that I have taken for the last 12 years living in Tanzania, I believe the most powerful was our trip to Rwanda last week.  All I can say, is that I was exhausted when we returned, and the whole flight home thought about the experience.

1.    Seven months ago I could not walk.  I could not walk three steps without pain and I could not even sleep at night without pain that woke me up.  So who would think that I would walk 6.5 miles up and down steep hills that were laden with thick clingy mud, tall rocks and stinging nettles.

2.    I could not comprehend what it would be like to visit with Gorillas for a little over an hour.

3.    I did not even know that golden monkeys existed, and so obviously, that they are nearly extinct.

4.    I did not understand the full impact of how Rwanda kept poaching low by hiring the poachers to become “Trekkers” to locate gorilla families, and making the entry for the park high enough that a portion of every person’s fee goes to the local villagers to keep them from encroaching with their farm animals into the National Forest. 

5.    I thought, but did not really know the history of the Rwanda Genocide-when the build up began and only knew the smallest amount about the role of the Belgium’s and French in fostering the hatred between the Hutu and Tutsis.

So, here we go.  After we flew into Kigali, we were met by a wonderful guide/driver Jean Marie.   

John Bob and our guide Jean Marie

 He gave us a bit of an overview of what was going to happen and we began our 3 hour drive to the Volcano National Park and our hotel, the Mountain Gorilla View Lodge.  Every so often Jean Marie would point to a hillside with a fence and some concrete shiny rectangles and say, “there is a genocide burial ground” and name some extraordinary number of bodies buried there.  Many villages we drove through had signs for Genocide historic sites.  The roads were much better than Tanzanian roads so except for a huge beer truck wrecked on the side of one of the many mountain curves, we made good time.  Incidentally, lots of bottles of beer had fallen out, many bottles broken, and a huge number of people surrounding the vehicle along with the police; the people nearly all smashed from the amount of beer they had quickly consumed. Some were wandering dazed around the road.  We learned about Skol and Primus Beers first hand.  By the time we arrived at our hotel, the temperature had dropped and inside our lodge it was quite chilly.  There were fires of coal that gave off a little heat and we were encouraged to have coal brought to our rooms for a fire there. We did! Our rooms were big….great though the heat did not begin to get to the bathroom or shower. Our traveling buddy Bob came over for gin and tonics and we sat right in front of our fire. We walked around the beautiful landscape of the hotel a bit and saw some extraordinary birds.  But a bit of rain started, so we came to the lobby to wait for dinner.

New cottages and the volcano National Park

Our tiny coal fire took the edge off the cold

After a buffet dinner that was pretty good (especially the grilled lamb right from the grill) we returned to our rooms to try to sleep before our 6:30 call for meeting the rest of our group for the trek in the Volcano National Park.  I think that John agrees with me that sleep was hard to come by.  We were excited and anxious (mostly about how I would do) and it was really cold in the rooms. The thing that saved us was a fabulous hot water bottle in our bed when we came back to our rooms.

Bob and John at dinner in the lodge.

After breakfast, we drove to our meeting point and found that somehow the trek we had chosen “medium/hard” meant that just the three of us would be in the group! (Most groups are 8 in size but we think most people took the “Easy” hike). We watched the mandatory traditional dancing (to reoccur in our hotel every day and every morning before hikes) We were going to see a family of 10-15 gorillas. 

Traditional dancers at the meeting point

Our Gorilla family

Our guide was named Patrick (I said he must be my long lost grandson since we were namesakes and we all had a good laugh).  When he said that we could be walking to them as long as three hours it was a bit daunting.  Our trackers had not found the Gorillas yet, but could see where they had been.  As we learned, Gorillas move their nests every day to protect themselves.  Thus, the trackers had to look for signs of them and then wait for them to lie down for a nap for the day.

Trish with Pyrethrum and shamba in hike beginning

Same Trish and more Pyrethrum

My favorite Shamba pic

John and Bob starting gorilla climb

The trek was hard.  The path narrow and filed with thick volcanic mud.  At first we were walking through beautiful shambas with potatoes in the fields flowering with blue and white flowers, and with Pyrethrum, which looked much like daisies.  
 

Three Peaks Mountains (Uganda, DRC Congo, Rwanda)

 In the distance was the park and the huge mountain we were to soon enter.  We stopped after entering the park and a new guide joined Patrick.  He had a gun.  The gun was not to shoot the gorillas, or any animal but to scare away particularly water buck if they got in our way.  Apparently, they do this frequently. Patrick had a panga and we had hired a porter Jean Claude for me (and to carry our backpacks). While we had poo-pooed the idea of hiring a porter, we were all grateful for Jean Claude before much time had elapsed.  The horrible mud continued as we entered the forest and it seemed like our path was actually a small river with deep mud and slippery stones.  John’s left boot pulled apart leaving a quandary about how to some how cobble it together so he could continue the trek.  First, get the rubber part out of the mud, and then Jean Claude and he tied shoelaces around the boot to hold it together.  Very tight and uncomfortable but forward we went. Jean Claude pulled me along through the mud and lifted me up to the stones like I was "light as a feather", (ha ha) After the trackers found our gorillas (about 3 hours) Patrick and the other guide had to hack a path for us through the stinging nettles.  We had gloves though John had laid his down when he was tying his shoe together.  Bob had an extra pair of red mittens!  But we were really careful and only got a few nettle stings. 

Red faced Trish with Trackers and Patrick on the side

Another of the same

Our gorillas were napping when we arrived but as they became aware of us they slowly got up out of their nests and strolled around us and to new positions where they sat and ate or scratched each other or picked fleas and ticks out of each other.  The babies were very interested in us, and one brushed up against Bob.  For some reason it was not at all frightening though these animals probably weighed three times our weight and the big Silverbacks (the oldest of the family) were huge.  But even then, they seemed friendly and to an extent disinterested.  John said it sort of seemed like they were stoned. Lots of pictures and movies came out of this, and it was very hard to leave them.  We were privileged to see “jiggy jiggy”, with the big Alpha male and a female who was in estrus. We were told that this public display of “affection” could happen as much as 12 times in a day.

Love those gorilla faces

Quite content gorilla

People know I am a hands and foot person.  Here is a foot

Here a hand

Unconcerned momma with napping family

John and a bunch of nappers

John and I next to Gorilla feeding

Gorillas thinking unconcerned with our presence

The first nest--happy hands and toes

Gorilla planning to come down from nest

Three Gorillas together

Sleeping teenager

Silverback watching over his family (maybe)

Bob with Gorilla moving with him

Patrick taking Silverback picures

Sadly we had to return to the hotel, but our wonderful driver and guide took John’s boots to be repaired in town to a local cobbler and they returned clean perfectly glued and even sewed together, all for @ $6.  Our boots were also cleaned by hotel staff and returned to our rooms. While we didn't return until 3 in the afternoon, we had lunch and the rest of the day was ours to wander around, nap or try e-mail (which did not work).  Nor did it work to charge any batteries in our rooms.  Every outlet was not functional.  But we had room for more gin and tonics and talk about the awesome day. 

We three slept better probably because we were so exhausted, and our next day was a trek to the golden monkeys.  We also packed everything so that we could leave after lunchtime for our hotel in Kigali.  This trek was quite short in comparison.  I think we walked about an hour or less to the Bamboo forest where the trackers had found a whole clan of monkeys.  Our group was much bigger but we also had a bigger area into which we could go in search of the monkeys so we broke off quite a few times.  The funny thing was for two days John and Bob had carried binoculars, when the animals were so close to us that we could have touched them.  I think I deleted at least 100 monkey pictures, and while it was great to see them, I thought about the monkeys at the International School and what pests they are.  Indeed there are several now in the compound and they are a complete headache.  But these were cute.  There were babies clinging to their mothers, and small young ones who were very curious about these big people with cameras.  

Monkey guide Ignatious

Monkey Porter Emmy

Group photo Monkey Trek

Young Monkey

Monkey about to jump

Many monkeys

Baby and mother

Baby nursing Mother

very wet Monkey

Trish near monkey

Trish looking at monkey

John and his monkey

Trish and John after wet hike to Monkeys

Drying Pyrethrum at end of hike in mud

It was good to come back to a warm shower (in a cold room) and change clothes for the drive to Kigali.  Again, the green of the country overwhelmed us.  It had rained a little on our first day, and poured on our second day with the monkeys, and rained again on the way back to Kigali.  Everything was beautiful and green.  People seemed friendly.  Our hotel, Lemigo was very nice.  We had a nice view, the room was big, and modern, and WARM.  Snobby me, happy to have heat and wifi. 

rainy motocycle stop in Kigali

We ate dinner at a very cute Ethiopian restaurant the Lalibela (brought back memories of our trip there!) and the food fantastic.  All three of us slept well.  This was good because the next day was heavy.  

 

Delicious Dinner Lalibella

 We went to the Rwanda Genocide Museum in the morning where we stayed at least two hours.  I cannot describe it. First of all it was well laid out and they prepared you for the horrors inside through videos with survivors.  We not only learned the background history for this horrible time in 1994, but also the actual days of genocide themselves.  We were introduced to heroes, including one witch doctor who said to the Hutu Interhamwe, “if you want to die, go inside and you will be swallowed up."  She saved hundreds of people that way.  But, for most there was no help.  As we talked to our driver later (who was in college at the time) he thought it would never end because no one came to their aide.  Every day was worse than the previous.  And, he believed firmly that if anything happened to the President now or the near future, the whole genocide would start again.

Genocide museum

Cartoon about Tutsis

Hutu Ten Commandments

Witch doctor telling about saving 100's of Tutsi's

Bob and John outside Genocide Museum

Stadium where 10,000 Tutsi's killed

250, bodies buried here

More graves

Wall of Names of dead buried in the Museum (250,000)

heart shaped flowers at end of graves

I must say it was an eerie feeling to be having lunch in the Hotel that “Hotel Rwanda” the movie was named after. 

Lunch at Hotel Rwanda

Hotel itself

Mille Colines Hotel (This is the real name of the Hotel Rwanda)

The last big adventure was going through many security checks to get into the airport and through security and through more security into the horrible holding area.  By the time we were back in Kilimanjaro we felt like we were dead.  But, what an adventure.  An incredible adventure.

Last Security

Skol Beer Rwanda