The Intriguing Goma Mix

I was not quite aware of the ethnic divide in the Goma society before a couple of weeks ago, when I first hung out with the ‘metisse’ community. Yes, those light-skinned people, who have the strangest, most appealing kinds of heritages: French, Belgian, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, etc., all seasoned with a dash of Congolese blood. Result: BEAUTIFUL features, and a definite noblesse and style not easily found in Black Africa. Add to that the fact that they all grew up in luxury (owning massive tea and coffee plantations in the vast countryside, as well as the most beautiful houses on the Goma Kivu Lake front), that they all got high education in Europe (mostly in Belgium – a country which, incidentally, they quite dislike), and that now they are supremely influential in the Goma high-life, and yes, the mix is all the more appealing. The fact that their properties were devastated in the last decade of civil war in Eastern DRC seems to have been largely overcome, and I am now impatiently waiting for the rain season to pass, so that roads can be usable again, so that I can visit their famous cheese-producing farms near Masisi, north of Goma.

I was introduced to this community through Dario, a young gentleman, who might just as well qualify as the nicest guy I have ever met. He works for a partner NGO and is an avid basketball player/lover, so after a cold business meeting a few months ago, we finally connected on a personal level as well. (Nothing more to read into this, as he is also married to one of the cutest women I have ever seen in my life. She is a girlish beauty, beaming with happiness, as she is quite far in her first pregnancy). The stylish house they have on the lake - one in the long row of houses owned by the metisses here, among which also the previous marvelous house my organization rented here – is quite the glamor in this decrepit city, and seems to be the drag of all parties. Great music on the lawn, crepes flambees on the terrace, fancy wines and liquors flowing everywhere, a huge plasma TV showing NBA or La Liga games for the crazy fans, all on the background of a tropical rain and high-class French (these people only speak Swahili to their staff, not amongst themselves) and yes, this is quite THE perfect night in Goma. Amongst the guests I met there: a pilot with his own private company, the main wine and spirit importer for East Africa, a professional football player (who spent years in DC and Brazil, and is now on his way to Cape Town), a hotel manager, a bar and club-owner, AND the leader of the Mai Mai (a middle-aged Congolais ‘pur’ (i.e. Black), who started the conversation by the following: “I got divorced a month ago, and I am now looking for a wife’…)

As the parties flow, the weekends in Goma are certainly more interesting. And when the parties are over, I am putting on my sneakers (actually their sneakers, they have dozens of pairs for guests) and going to shoot some hoops on their private court, next to the lake. On a day like this, I really believe life cannot get any better…

The Libyan Factor

Over the last decade I have found myself in some pretty crazy situations, but I can hardly recall one that shook me as strongly as the one starting some 26 hours ago. And I mean quite literally SHOOK, inside-out and upside-down.

The connection goes back to a very random evening some five months ago, when I met this Libyan guy, Essam, in a bar in Kigali. A few weeks later, we also happened to plan a Burundi weekend at the same time – and he duly served me and my friends with a lovely shisha session on the beach, for some 48 hours. And that was that, until a few days ago, when I called him up, to ask how he and his family were doing with all the craziness in Libya.

Now, please imagine someone who speaks English quite badly, multiply it by a 1,000, and then add the funniest accent you can possible think of. Long story short, Essam is a very hot, rich and seemingly highly-educated guy, who works for the Libyan Embassy in Kigali, but unfortunately communication between us (on a verbal level, of course;-)) is just IMPOSSIBLE. Somehow I managed to understand that he was going to Gisenyi with friends the next day, and that he would love to have me over in Kigali whenever I needed a place to stay.

On Saturday, as I was also at the beach with my girl-friends, we briefly met, and I asked Essam and his Libyan boy-friends whether I could get a lift from Ruhengeri to Kigali the next day with them. Sure I could. What I did not know was that I would almost sign up for suicide.

I have NEVER before been seriously afraid for my life in a car as I was yesterday. These guys were, quite literally, INSANE, on this very narrow, windy, suspended road. What it normally takes the other crazy African drivers around 2h15 mins. to make, we did in 1h22mins. I keep wondering how come I didn’t throw up a million times in the back seat, and how come I was still in a somewhat good mood by late afternoon.

Well, I actually do know how – as shaken as I was by the road, I was yet to take in a different shock in Kigali: the PALACE these guys live in, and the lifestyle they have, on a very regular basis. Simply put: lie on sofas and smoke shishas. My mistake was to think that this is just a late afternoon-relaxing habit, but after getting completely high last night (only with legitimate tobacco, of course), I realized that the only way to wash that away was to have more shisha first thing on a Monday morning, on the terrace. And then break for lunch, have delicious couscous, and top it off with even more shisha.

In between puffs, I was trying to get more insights from Libya, but apart from Al-Jazeera in the background and the Sevilla-Barca game in which we all suffered terribly, my knowledge of Gaddafi is still mostly from the NY Times. I did, however, experience first hand the AMAZING Libyan hospitality, so, all shaking aside, this was quite a remarkable moment in my life.

Half of the palace (imagine the same to the left)















Monday morning treat

Going Congolese

I have resisted buying pagne (the typical African cotton waxed fabric) for quite a while. Everywhere you go in the markets, the patterns simply dazzle you - and make you realize that you could never wear most of them anywhere else outside Africa. Even more so, as the ones they consider 'high quality' and that are exorbitantly expensive seem like quite some cheap plastic table cloths to us. In one attempt last fall, I did get some green-based fabric, and took it to a tailor in this isolate village in Congo (the idea was to help the local women's cooperative there, without knowing that the 500 women had a man-tailor). The result was a total catastrophe - I had asked the guy to combine some cuts from several designs he had on the wall, explaining it in terms he could not have understood (I wanted to dress to be flared, 'like a salad', and then I realized he didn't not know what a salad was, so I said in turn 'make it like a cabbage', and that's exactly what he did...) Oh well, the finished product was anything BUT what I had imagined, but at least it is wearable around the house, and it did make for a nice photo op (see below).

After that experience, I refrained for the next few months, until last weekend, when I was stranded in Goma (after another trip to the field had been canceled.) Slightly bored one day, I asked my new friend, Dr. Anny (who always wears these mind-boggling dresses) to take me to the market to purchase some stuff. It was quite a crazy day, as the place was invaded by the Uruguayan UN contingent - men looking for shorts - and this one Romanian girl who could NOT stop buying completely unwearable things. That's what I thought, at least, because it turned out I did wear my first Congolese dress in public just yesterday, at the beach in Rwanda. The lovely day out, with my Italian and American colleagues/friends - Veronica and Stacy - was quite something, and it certainly gave me the best opportunity to put on outrageous colors and feel totally at home :-)

Gorillas in the Mist

I have never, before yesterday, seen gorillas in the mist. Surely, I saw gorillas, and surely I saw mist, but never in the mind-blowing combination of yesterday. A cold and rainy morning in the forest coincided with my first visit to Isabukuru group. Fantastic visit too, as for the first time I saw a huge silverback tenderly cuddling an infant. As I was absorbed by the family-scene, the mist started sweeping through the forest. Thick and deep, with almost a milky texture and a heavy autumn odor. As the trees and giant lobelias became ever less visible, gorillas all sat down, in the morose-like pose, and sulked it all in. Quite surreal. And definitely worth $500 (if I were to pay the tourist rate)…

The chimps at Gishwati

Once the excitement of being new in Africa started winding down late last year, I began becoming more aware of other, more subtle things that pertain to today’s realities in this part of the world. And one such thing has been Rwandan geography -- and essentially the way in which it has been reshaped in the last few decades. First, lots of forests were cleared in the ‘70s, in a governmental program aimed at extending agricultural lands (mostly for potatoes and pyrethrum fields – yes, those lovely daisies, which are actually the most effective natural insecticide in the world.). Then came the wave of degazetting former protected areas in the wake of the 1994 genocide, to give lands to the returning refugees and make place for the cash-crops, such as coffee and tea. So much so, that when you now drive from Ruhengeri to the DRC border (an hour on a perfect road), you look left and right and see just over-crowded villages and rolling tea-plantations, where less than 20 years ago you had deep wilderness.

No surprise then, that my curiosity to trek Gishwati, the one forest left intact in the east of the country, kept growing. All the more so, as in the last couple of years they started a program of habituating the previously-thought-long-gone chimpanzee population. As I had never seen chimps in the wild, and as this is still off the tourist-map of Rwanda (i.e. FREE, i.e. unbelievable), I kept trying to get a visit there. Finally, last week, the people running the project there accepted me (as a representative of Karisoke) and my friend Alberto to go visit.

Now, as with all things in Africa, everything is totally last minute. I was in Congo, recovering after other last-minute plan changes, and on my way back to cross the border on Sunday afternoon, when I got the call that the visit to Gishwati was in place for EARLY Monday morning. Alberto and I met in Gisenyi (the border town of Rwanda), got accommodation at the Dian Fossey Hotel (what a perfect match, right?!) and then prepared for a crazy adventure the following day.

We were picked up at the crack of dawn, drove to this village for about two hours, then waited for the habituation team to come over for the second shift of the day. And off we went. I had NO IDEA that Gishwati was so radically different from the Volcanoes National Park forest, where I go to see gorillas. It is still very high up (2,500m), but it is completely humid, and thus swampy in places. A real, majestic rain forest, with waterfalls, huge ferns, and incredible birds (finally saw the turaco up-close – WOW!). We were really lucky to get a fantastic day – and then, when a bit of a heavy rain started coming down, we were so well protected by the canopy that we barely got a few drops. Actually, the only annoying thing of the day – some crazy biting ants, that somehow targeted me only, and that were crawling everywhere in my pants and underwear – and, quite remarkably actually, even within the layers of my knee bandage?!?

Anyhow. After quite a hike (not comparable to the one for gorillas, though, which is much more abrupt), we met and swapped the first habituation team after midday, and spent the rest of the afternoon staring high up in the trees, within the very narrow space between the hoods and the masks. These chimps are quite something. Fission and fusion, as I learnt. Meaning, they come together in small groups, then they go apart again, then reunite with other chimps. Basically, impossible to keep track of all of them. In theory, there are about 20 in Gishwati, but we were told we were lucky to see four of them (of which, one female with a really cute baby).

It was all quite an experience, although completely exhausting (we made it back to our hotel in Gisenyi at midnight, after another hike, a long wait in a completely dark village with dozens of kids around us, and the drive back, of course). 24 hours later, my neck is still hurting from looking up so very high for so many hours. In any event, I have a new appreciation for the guys doing the habituation. What a difficult (and, honestly, boring at times) job! But what a day they gave us!

The Board

I am finally at ease to sit down and write a few lines, after the craziest last decade in February. The mighty, rich, gorilla board members descended from the US upon Africa for what was supposed to be a week-long ‘board meeting’. In my naiveté, I assumed that that would include a lot of actual meetings, with budgets and strategy and stuff. Wrong, of course. Already in January, I was entrusted to put together an agenda, to which people kept adding ‘drinks’, ‘cocktails’, ‘beach party’, ‘dinners’, ‘receptions’, etc., etc. When I finally had it all ready, it struck me that the time for ‘meetings’ was down to the grand total of four hours in seven days. WOW!

That being said, I was not all that upset about organizing fancy events on the beach here and there. The only problem: no one had given me a budget from the outset, so after running around both in Rwanda and Congo to find appropriate venues, book music bands, decide on fancy drinks, AND invite people, I was told that “we need to cut back, as there is no money.”

It was, actually, an interesting exercise for me, juggling with inexistent funds and actually coming up with a really good event. I feel like I have strongly enriched my set of skills – as in a field job you are really supposed to be on top of all sorts of tasks, that no one has ever trained you for, and deal with last-minute changes in the most unexpected ways.

The only problem: I was exhausted! All of this came, of course, on top of my daily duties, which included gorilla runs and writing a ton of stories for our publications (funnily enough, the “Gorilla Journal” that comes out in March has me as the sole author from cover to cover…). On top of that, I was deeply involved with giving our center a facelift for the board visit (this implied cleaning everything and everyone up, including our dogs and cat, who all got a ceremonial bath in view of the American millionaires coming down to Rwanda). As the communications coordinator, I was also charged with getting all our staff to speak proper, efficient English, pretty much put together all their presentations, and give concept for the brochures we were going to give out.

Throughout this entire process, I was not exactly in the best shape ever, as I busted my knee on Valentine’s Day, and kept limping with a large bandage ever since, PLUS I was already deeply illegal – as my passport kept being a no-show, stuck in some office somewhere, during which time all my visas were running out. As the board visit was getting nearer, I was getting completely stressed out, having to organize their entire visit to Congo from across the border (and, I am sure you all know by now, that in the DRC if you are not there personally, pushing everyone hard, NOTHING ever gets done.)

With all this in mind, I should get a medal (or at least a raise) for actually turning this whole thing into a big success. AND for having the patience to cater to the board participants in a very calm, constructive manner (some of them were at times worse than 2-year-olds, of course). My job was particularly demanding when I had to make sure that no one stayed behind in some random toilet, that they all had their passports with them when we were approaching the border (even after intense training some of them had not quite understood that necessity), show them how to sign their names under the ‘signature’ column on some forms that I had already filled up for them, AND find an answer to the brilliant question, posed while queuing at the heavily militarized DRC border: “How do you say ‘what’s up’ in Kinyarwanda?”

So there. In all honesty, and despite the exhaustion, this was all a great week. Too bad at the very end I didn’t get a helicopter ride with the billionaire (yes, you read it right) of the group. He just happened to have too many bags for me to fit in as well (and thus I missed the opportunity to take aerial shots of the Volcanoes National Park, on a truly glorious day).

My depression wore off quickly, though, as like this I had the chance to stay one more day at the Kivu Lake beach, in Gisenyi. Funny day, too – the luxurious Serena Hotel was being prepped for the presidential retreat, so pretty much all guests had left, and about 200 soldiers with sniffing dogs had taken over. We were literally just a handful of mzungus, being shoved back and forth, in the middle of this armed-to-the-teeth regiment. It was the most unlikely setting to start any kind of romance – but as luck has it, I did meet a really hot guy, so we were flirting over lots of beers, on the beach, surrounded by staring soldiers. I also met another back-in-the-day-hot-man, who is the head of some mining company that intends to produce ‘organic, green gold’ in Congo, and who was really interested in giving me this story as exclusive, to cover :-) Add to that the joy of Barca's win and Messi's goal over the weekend, and this was a really amazing wrap-up of February.

Stay tuned for after-exhaustion updates!