Crazy Friday

I had finally relaxed about Rwanda - such a peaceful, orderly country, where nothing bad ever happens. People behave and police is out there everywhere, making sure that everyone keeps behaving. Even the large gatherings and massive outdoor parties are so controlled and, well, just safe.

It seems, though, that when something bad happens here it doesn't even come in twos, but in threes - and that it does not hold back. And Friday was exactly like this - the most bizarre, painful string of events, that threw everything in the air.

The day for me started at the office at 6.30 a.m. in Musanze. I was due to prepare a lot of materials and send them to Atlanta with our CEO, who was visiting Rwanda with some very rich tourists/potential donors. I worked like a maniac the whole morning, and then I realized I needed to go to Kigali to get some things done at our office there as well. My Guatemalan boss, Juan Carlos, who had also spent the night in Musanze, was going to give me a lift. All fine and happy until we actually got word that one of the lady-tourists, who had trekked gorillas in the morning, had been 'attacked' and that a gorilla "took her arm out."

Now, since coming to Africa, I did hear some horrific stories about wildlife attacks - mostly chimpanzee-related - but after spending a lot of time around gorillas and the people who have known them for years, I was pretty reassured - they are HUGE, but so nice. Of course, a silverback would sometime 'charge', frightfully, but stop just in front of you (and yes, you get petrified, even more so thinking that he would whack your camera out). And yes, blackbacks come often to slap you - and they are soooo powerful, and the slaps do hurt, but you get over them.

All things considered "a gorilla-attack" sounded terribly serious and unbelievable at the same time. Plans changed, of course, in a heart-beat: we would all drive in a convoy to Kigali, and immediately have the lady examined by this mythical Belgian doctor - who has a clinic within the Belgian Embassy, in the fanciest part of the capital. He was actually nice enough to wait for us at the Serena Hotel (the Burj-al-Arab of Rwanda), where everyone was going to spend the night. He offered to take us to the clinic in his car - but Juan Carlos preferred that I and him drive further in his car.

Now, panic everywhere to get the lady treated, I still had the instinct to collect my back pack from the back seat and take it with me - which I would have not normally done, considering we were in the best guarded part of Kigali. Juan Carlos did leave his stuff inside, though. The next thing we would never do in Rwanda - park on the street, even if the guards urged us to go inside. No, no, we are only here for a couple of minutes, to get the lady inside. JC would then drop me off at the office of Kenya Airways, to sort out a mess-up with my return ticket to Europe.

Sure enough, that's exactly when they broke into his car. He lost everything: laptop, brand new passport (he had just traveled to Guatemala to get this resolved), American green card, keys to house and office, etc, etc. Everything. In front of an embassy, in front of guards!

In the midst of all confusion, the lady turned out to be fine - apparently she had just gotten a serious gorilla slap, but her skin being very fragile broke everywhere into bloody patches. Our worries had moved in a second though - how do you deal with this car break-in on a Friday night (at the same time, I could not count my blessings that I had taken with me my bag with laptop, phone, documents, plus the external drive with our whole gorilla photo archive...)

Helped by our Rwandan colleagues, we managed to locate the police-chief - somewhere so dodgy that you would expect to be robbed in a second. While waiting to get the report done, we see this girl in the corner of the room, crying her eyes out. Of course we all wondered what had happened to her and imagined the worst - until, a couple of minutes later, a police woman and man approached her and started hitting her with two sticks so hard that we were aching. Completely dumbstruck and embarrassed at the same time, we forgot about our worries and just felt like crying out - but what do you do when two police adults beat the hell out of a girl at the station, in full view?! What we gathered is that the girl was actually turned in by her mom, for misbehaving at home. HORRIFIC, of course. Even more so when they took her to lock her up.

All the while, our report was lingering - nothing could be done until the next morning - Saturday. The investigation would only begin on Monday...

So there, then: wildlife attack, car break-in and police brutality, all within a few hours of each other! Happy weekend, everyone!