APRIL 15, 2008 (Rwanda)

It's been awhile since I've updated and a lot has been going on, so I will fill you in on the most important stuff... We spent our last couple of days in Uganda chilling with local friends who we met and getting toured around on the backs of their motorcycles. We literally had our own personal tourguides for free, which was a lot of fun. We then boarded yet another overnight bus and made our way down into Uganda, arriving in Kigali (the capital city) last Saturday morning. Kigali is a lovely city and presents itself as much cleaner and safer than Kampala (in Uganda) did. Of course that cleanliness and safety comes at a cost though, as Rwanda has certainly been a more expensive place to travel! Going back in time for a minute, when we were at the end of our stay in Uganda, I got the joy of testing out developing world health care, falling ill with a kidney and bladder infection that required medical attention and lots of drugs. I do have to say one thing for the health care system there though - they roll out the red carpet for Mzungus (white people) and they are a hell of a lot faster than in Canada...I got a doc visit, blood tests, urine samples, and ultrasound all taken care of in 1 hour, including getting the results and the medicine. And the diagnostics and the medicine only cost $50 to boot! Anyhow, after dealing with these health issues, Maggie and I decided that we needed to upgrade our accomodations in Rwanda to one with our own bathroom and a hot shower. Thus, we have had to pay a bit more money, which is why Rwanda has been more expensive. After all of that, I think my kindeys are doing better, however, the medication gave me side effects which have presented other problems, thus requiring more drugs. In sum, East Africa is kicking my ass! We arrived in Rwanda to the tail end of the national week of mourning for the Rwandan Genocide. I cannot express to you how much of a big deal that is in this country. The mood is very solemn, people look very sad and serious, and everyone is glued to 24/7 radio and television programs covering the Genocide. We had the honour of being able to go to the Genocide Memorial during this week, which made for a particularly sad and eye-opening experience. When we arrived at the Memorial, there was one of numerous week-long burials going on there. The Memorial site has all of the victims who were killed during the genocide buried there and as more remains are found, they get buried with the others during these annual mourning periods. Inside the Memorial we were greeted with great seriousness by a woman who instructed us how to proceed through the exhibitions. As we walked around, viewing the history of Rwanda up to the Genocide, through the Genocide years, we were brought to tears by the graphic images that we saw and facts that we read. All throughout there were also many videos of survivors who are the same age as Maggie and I, telling of how they watched as their siblings and parents were raped, tortured, brutally murdered and thrown down sewage wells and how they are trying to cope today. It is very difficult for me to make sense of what I experienced at the Memorial and to convey it to you, however, I will say that it was a horrid feeling to try to relate to people who were 11 years old and running from bullets and machetes, frequently in the hands of their neighbours and family friends, while I was in the comforts of Canada playing with Barbies and worrying only about which shoes to wear so that I would be cool at school. As we walked through the Memorial, about a hundred people from Rwanda came through as well, crying and often going into fits of sadness. As proud as we were to read about Romeo Dallaire - the UN peacekeeper from Canada who tried to sound the alarm about how extreme the situation in Rwanda was - that pride was overwhelmingly deflated by a feeling of great embarrassment for being part of a humanity that completely and overwhelmingly neglected and turned its back on Rwanda. I can only say that staring into the eyeless skulls that lined one room, I will forever be haunted by the sense that living by the Xhosa word "Ubuntu" (which means: "I am because we are") is the only way forward for humanity to be spared of such wretched crimes against one another. Perhaps the most haunting image of all for both Maggie and I was a room that displayed clothes found on numerous victims - young and old. We shivered when we saw the clothing of a young boy, hung as though it would have looked on his young body, with the words "Ottawa, Canada" written on it. I apologize if this is upsetting to anyone, however, it does not begin to convey even a fraction of the experience and I urge anyone who ever has the chance to please visit this incredibly important Memorial. On a far more pleasant note, Maggie and I departed Kigali on Sunday to head up country to where we would go gorilla trekking. Rwanda tourism still has a long way to go, so getting to the area was a bit interesting...we took a minibus for 2 hours to Ruhingerhi and then another minibus (the kind that is stuffed full of people AND animals) onwards to Kinigi, where we rode on the backs of motorcycles for the last 5km to our guesthouse. Riding on the back of a motorcycle in Africa can be scary enough, yet alone riding on the back sans operational helmets and avec large travel backpacks, day backpacks and sleeping bags on our backs! On Monday morning, we hitched a ride with some very nice women from Canada and the USA to our departure site. There are a few groups of gorillas that people can go and see, so we were divided into small groups with 2 guides each. Our group had 6 people. Each day they only allow about 30 or 40 permits to go and see the gorillas and you are legally restricted to 1 hour of viewing at a maximum closeness of 7 metres, so as not to stress them. Our group fortunately only had to hike for an hour or two through the dense rainforests to find our group of gorillas. We had a bit of difficulty finding them at first because it was raining, so they had moved from the ground up into the trees, but when we did find them, it was absolutely incredible. Because of the density of the forest where we were, we definitely ended up being way closer than 7m from them. In fact, at times we were only a metre away, making for an absolutely surreal encounter. As our guides used their machetes to clear away the dense bamboo and brush, we all excitedly tried to remain quite and still as we observed a number of the gorillas. At one point I got a video of a young gorilla charging at us and coming within only a few feet of us! We were all desperate to see the silverback of the group - the largest silverback in the region. At 260 kg, we thought that he would surely be quite the spectacle. Unfortunately, he refused to come down from his perch up in the trees. Our guides were amazing however...they let us stay with the group way past the legal limit, for about an hour and a half, and by the end, they were so desperate to get us a chance to see the silverback, that they cut back some bamboo and let us climb up into the silverback's perch. What a sight that was! I was the first to climb up the bamboo and stare face to face with a 260kg male gorilla only a couple of metres away! Absolutely incredible experience and at a proximity that most people could only dream of. At one point, as one of the other girls in our group was up the tree with the guides, the sillverback let out a large hollar and began to charge...the poor girl almost fell out of the tree!! Gorilla trekking is incredibly expensive, but definitely one of the most incredible experiences someone could ever have and the money that they charge people is the only way that they can be sure to conserve the endangered species at the site where Diane Fossey spent her life observing the mountain gorillas. Tomorrow morning we are boarding a Rwandair Express flight to Mount Kilimanjaro back in Tanzania, where we hope to do a safari in the Serengeti, before heading onwards to Zanzibar. This will prove to be an absolutely AWESOME flying experience for someone who hates flying as much as I do! At any rate, we are having a great trip and we hope that we continue to have amazing experiences for our last week in East Africa!