Uganda Safari

It seems like Uganda has become a regular for long weekends during my time in Africa. Taking advantage of the fact that Katie, my boss, was leaving for the US, and that Meda had a few more days here, I just decided to take Friday and Monday off and embark on a real safari (yes, pretty much my first 'touristy'-like experience around here - costly, how else, but absolutely incredible).

These are some of the most memorable moments I managed to capture on camera in Queens Elisabeth National Park. Complemented by my other trip around Lake Mburu National Park last month, I can now safely say that I have a pretty good idea of what savanna is - and even more so what savanna FEELS, SMELLS and SOUNDS like. Quite addictive, actually - especially the very early mornings and late afternoons, when the plains are incredibly refreshing.

Cluj in Rwanda

On my bus back from Kigali to Musanze this morning, I absolutely adored a radio conversation (in kinyarwanda, obviously, so one that I didn't understand pretty much anything from). However, I was very proud to hear the commentators talk extensively of CLUJ (world premiere, maybe?!) in connection with the Champions League game tonight (even more remarkably, against my all-time favorite team, AS ROMA). I will, of course, try and catch it later on TV - although, at how crazy Africans are for English teams, I assume all bars will just show Arsenal and Chelsea games. My consolation: that I will hopefully have tickets to watch the return leg, live, in Cluj, on Dec. 8, as my first post-African Cluj experience!

Swimming in An Exploding Lake

I had already been on Lake Kivu shores several times, both in Rwanda and the DRC, but this weekend was the first time I actually swam in it. Together with Meda, we spent Saturday on the beautiful Gisenyi Serena Hotel beach, and decided to go for a dip in the beautiful - but EXPLODING - methane lake.

From the extensive scientific explanations, I pretty much only get the following (thanx Wikipedia):
"Scientists hypothesize that sufficient volcanic interaction with the lake's bottom water that has high gas concentrations would heat water, force the methane out of the water, spark a methane explosion, and trigger a nearly simultaneous release of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then suffocate large numbers of people in the lake basin as the gases roll off the lake surface. It is also possible that the lake could spawn lake tsunamis as gas explodes out of it.

The risk posed by Lake Kivu began to be understood during the analysis of more recent events at Lake Nyos. Lake Kivu's methane was originally thought to be merely a cheap natural resource for export, and for the generation of cheap power. Once the mechanisms that caused lake overturns began to be understood, so did awareness of the risk the lake posed to the local population."

From the local folklore - well, dive and run away if the lake actually overturns (!). When I asked my Guatemalan boss a few weeks ago whether it was safe to swim there, he just answered "Define safe!"...

So, obviously, I was drawn to the experience (and so far, two days later, I am still seemingly unintoxicated and definitely in one piece). The only danger I was actually in while swimming in the very peaceful, warm waters: some crazy boat surfers, who almost knocked me over. The other "injury" I actually sustained myself: applying some sun-screen rather carelessly, I completely burned on half of my body, and remained pretty much white on the other half (a sun-protection factor of 30 is definitely required around the Equator, but SO not conducive to a beautiful tan...)

Otherwise, of course, the beach is also divided: the local hang-out place, which is always overcrowded with staring people, and the 'white hang-out place', where you are treated royally (and expensively). I would have totally gone for the former, but sometimes, in this overly populated country, you DO need a place just for yourself, without having to be constantly scrutinized and pointed fingers at. So the all-white place it was in the end, and the choice was just right. The downside, of course: you will always find incredibly annoying, loud Americans on the private beach, who are know-it-alls from early morning to late evening. Leaving them aside - wonderful day, asking for more of the same in the near future!



Swimming in Rwanda, with DRC land strip in the back...










A beautiful sunset a couple of weeks ago









Idyllic Lake Kivu shores from our house in Goma, DRC.









A not-so-idyllic work-day in Kivu Lake in Goma. Far, FAR away from where that NYC bag came from...

Sinziana

I have spent my entire life explaining to everyone what "Sinziana" means, and I thought I had it all covered. This weekend, however, I found out there's a WAY more interesting approach to my name. The sweet Romanian explanations (name of flower, religious-pagan holiday, mystical night, etc) suddenly became complemented by a much more straightforward East-African meaning. In Swahili, KUSINZIA (stress the last "i") apparently means something like dozing off (how appropriate, actually, since I am a fan of naps), but the whole thing is actually going one step further. SINZIANA means something along the lines of "dozing off together with someone". So yes, to my utter shock, I was voted the girl with the sexiest name on the face of the Earth. It required lots of Tuskers to calm down and take it all in!

WEIRD BIG CITY MIX

After three months of Musanze provincial life, I decided it was time for a big-city weekend. Kigali it was, of course, and the weekend was truly amazing.

Actually, it started already on Wednesday afternoon, when I was summoned to our Rwanda headquarters for several meetings. Luckily, the office is on the same beautiful property as my Guatemalan boss's private residence, so, before I realized, I spend two days a-la-Antigua together with him and his incredible family. Unfortunately, I was unable to produce much content in Spanish (since for the past months I've hung out mostly with Italians, so the mix is bad in my head again)... Otherwise, though, what a sweet family-style pre-weekend, with great Central American dishes, good wine, and lovely conversations.

On Friday, excitement was mounting: Meda, my good friend from Cluj, was supposed to arrive. Luckily, she had far less adventure than I did on my way to Africa, so I picked her up at the airport exactly on time, with all her luggage intact. We were invited to spend the weekend at Beth's - my Kenyan colleague - but as she was still engaged elsewhere, Meda and I chose one of the fanciest spots in Kigali for lunch, great Rwandan coffee-based products, and loooots of catching up. Bourbon Cafe was a real treat for several hours, just in preparation for the looong evening/night that was awaiting us.

Accompanied by Beth and a lovely Ugandan-Rwandan guy, Mujisha, we first had dinner at an Indian restaurant and then started the club-hopping phase, since Friday nights are really THE nights to party in Rwanda. But because we started too early (around 10), it took some 2 hours of trying and several spots of checking out until we finally got our stamps at KBC and unleashed the dancing for some 2 hours. Great music and amazingly-looking people, of course, but since Meda was falling apart after her journey we called it a night around 2.

Since this was also my first casual visit to Kigali, I was as much a tourist as she was. And what else do you do in the Rwandan capital on a Saturday morning other than spend it at the Genocide Memorial... BRRRRRRRRRRRR is all I can say about this place (just thinking that several hundred thousand people, hacked by machetes in a few weeks, are buried there, and you are pretty much at the end of your wits. Of course, the horrendous Belgian-connections were reinforced everywhere, so another weird experience on that topic.)

To somehow be able to complete the day without hitting utter depression, we went shopping - first for foods in a fancy and EXTREMELY expensive supermarket, then back to Bourbon Cafe for a... burger, and then to a souvenir shop (where, yes, I bought some green dresses and matching accessories.) Beth then convinced us to go get golden in a Senegalese back-alley store, so here we were buying long "vipuli" (yes, exactly, "ear-rings" in Swahili). All set for the night, we went out again - this time to the famous Kenyan joint in town.

Extremely tired and readily dizzy after a couple of Tusker beers, we started looking around and mingling. We were dearly adopted by these imposing men (all middle-aged, married, with wives back in Kenya...), who were all dishing out 'country-manager' business cards in different areas (airlines, auditing firms, etc.) It was just the best evening in terms of laughing since I got to Africa, and even if we just wanted to take it easy for a couple of hours, we ended up in this super cool club, Cadillac, way after midnight.

The adventure was just about to begin, though. Beth's landlady, who apparently has a ferocious dog let loose at night, would not pick up her phone at 2.30 a.m., which meant that we could not go back and open the gates to the property. Stranded in Kigali, we were rescued by Mutua, one of the guys in the group, who just offered us his PALACE for the night (some 20+ rooms that villa had...) Of course we all just slept peacefully!

:-)

Sunday morning, we invited Mujisha to a Romanian-type breakfast (with delicious salami Meda had brought over), and then we followed the trail of the odd-mixing weekend, by going to two villages (Ntamara and Nyamata) with more genocide memorials. These two, however, were haunting in a much more personal, direct way: the sites we visited were former Catholic churches, where Tutsis had hoped to find refuge, but where thousands of them were slaughtered instead. The buildings are full of blood stains and contain all the shredded clothes and decayed belongings of everyone who was butchered there. Honestly, the stench of death is still so pervasive that you get the creeps in a matter of seconds. The fact that you walk through shelves of skulls and walls of bones does not make it any easier............

So yes, clubbing and genocide memorials combined, this is what our fabulous weekend consisted of. I crowned it all with Amaretto (brought from Roma) and pufuleti (fetita cu bicicleta, of course, brought from Cluj), and returned to Musanze on Sunday night with a record two mosquito bites-only.

UNIQUE WEEK

This has been a memorable week by all accounts – good and bad.

Thanks to President Paul Kagame (who won the elections last month by a landslide), we were going to have a day off on Monday and celebrate his being sworn in… Being bored at home, I came to the office to check emails, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

My colleague Veronica, the Gorilla Program Manager, came over in a frenzy, with the saddest news: Tuck, a 38-year-old matriarch, one of the most famous gorillas EVER, had just died. Of course, since this was a day off, no research assistants or data technicians were in the field, and we had no video or photo equipment out there either. In a matter of minutes, our boss, Katie, came over, fumigating, that this was completely unacceptable (Tuck had been sick for days, so we were kind of expecting the bad moment to happen). Only NOT on a holiday, of course.

So there… Since Veronica has a small baby at home and could not leave, and no one else was answering their phones, guess who had to leave the free day aside and get ready asap to climb the steep mountain… Yes, that’s right. In a few minutes they got me a car, driver, porters and military escort, and off we went.

And, OMG, what a day it turned out to be!!!

I, basically, became the first person in the world to EVER capture on video a mountain gorilla mourning ceremony. Absolutely heartbreaking, stunning, magical! I was there for some 5 hours, a few meters away from the dead body, seeing Tuck’s sons come and grieve, the big silverback kicking the body (trying to wake her up), the rest of the group calling her desperately… I simply could not believe what I was witnessing.

On the way down, I realized that I have this unique material in my hands, and the journalist in me was screaming. However, all that had to be put to rest… Since I have to have everything approved from Atlanta before posting it online, I knew the story would die then and there, since in the US they were also celebrating a day off (Labor Day weekend). Before they reacted in any way, 36 hours had passed… So sad, of course… However, this gave me time to go back the following day and see how the gorilla group was slowly moving away, and how the porters came to stealthily recover the body for necropsy. What an incredible sight, again…

I truly feel blessed to have been then and there. Once in a lifetime chance, of course! RIP Tuck!

Food Issues

No, not those... My stomach has been remarkably cooperative since I came down here. But yes, I have had food issues - mostly in terms of getting used to the way you are supposed to search and/or order food.

In Uganda, I was in the hotel restaurant waiting for the "breakfast included" to be served, so when this lady showed up next to me and asked "breakfast?" I said "Yes" and smiled. She went on declaiming: "fruits, juice, eggs, bread, coffee." It all sounded excellent, so I nodded. She wouldn't budge though, and kept staring at me. I then realized that we had to take EVERY item and discuss it: what kind of fruits, juice, eggs, bread and coffee. I ended up with a huge plate of all fruits available (their ‘selection’ was actually ‘all-in-one’), passion fruit juice (the only one available, so I didn’t quite see the point of ‘discussing’ it), eggs (we agreed on “Spanish omelet”, which was anything but), toast (after I had asked for fresh bread), and Nescafe (after I had ordered “regular coffee”). But yes, it was all very good, of course :-)

The other thing that I became an expert in is ordering sodas. Here, you say “A coke, please”, and then you have to detail what kind of “coke” you meant (was it Fanta, Sprite, or actual Coca-Cola)?

But the thing that threw me off completely was this conversation I had yesterday in a ‘supermarket’ in Musanze (where only the white people usually shop):
-Je cherche du chocolat.
-Pour manger?
-Oui…
-Automatiquement ?

?!?!?!??!

Now, I am not sure how chocolate is consumed and/or served in all parts of the world, but from my pretty extensive traveling experiences, chocolate usually IS meant for eating. As for the “automatic” part – I continue to be baffled. Maybe this woman thought I was looking for chocolate powder (Nesquick-type) – so ‘instant’ instead of “automatic’?! In any event, now, whenever I take a bite, I think of mechanics instead of sweetness…

Some of The Most Striking DRC Visuals

A Poster at a radio station









In a village, people are told to wash their hands with soap or ashes after returning from the loo (amazingly, I understood the message in Swahili!)








In another village, people are taught all about conservation









The all-in-one service in another village









The funkiest item in a 'supermarket' in Butembo. Note the Asian tea, featuring white people, aiming to get the black people going?!









A poster cautioning against sexual violence at a local village clinic... Amazing to see this right during the week when you read about the massive rebel gang rape against hundreds of women in Congo...










Small flag celebrating independence from the Belgians. Everyone is flying it in their cars.