Anti-poaching

As I am waiting to get out of the three-week-post-international-flight-quarantine and return to the gorillas, but as I have been missing the forest all too much, today I went for a routine patrol with the anti-poaching team. The ulterior motive: interview David, the guy in charge, for a piece through which I will … give him up for adoption (little does he know that he’ll be adopted online many times this year, by some very rich Americans – some new concept our Atlanta bureau has, whereby we don’t only give gorillas, but also trackers for hefty adoptions)…

Anyhow, I am glad to report that I had a FANTASTIC day today – not only was it shiny and warm, and the forest majestic, but I actually survived the first hike in 2 months quite gloriously. On top of that, David was a great guide: he was stopping a lot along the way and explaining so much about the vegetation zones, the animal trails (other than gorilla trails), and also about the huge conflict they have with the local population (right now, many enter the forest to collect honey, and I was explained in detail how this is done as well). At the end of the day, I emerged quite knowledgeable – I now know to differentiate the dung of two antelope sub-species. WOW.

The only downside – we didn’t actually find any snares (I know, it sounds awful to call this ‘downside’, when it is actually fantastic to have a clean forest, but for my photo collection I was certainly missing something). David helped again – he called the anti-poaching team to actually set up a snare for me – and then destroy it, of course!

Next week, if all goes well, I’ll join them on a different kind of mission – the shock patrol, where they go all the way to the Ugandan or Congolese borders, with very definite targets in mind (on one of these days, they can find dozens of snares)…It is certainly a heck of a job – and I was thinking, again, how much we would need this kind of discipline and monitoring of wildlife and habitat in Romania as well….

Never-cease-to-amaze-me-Congo

Ever since I set foot in this crazy country last June, I've had such a fascination-rejection relationship with it. Nothing works properly, everyone is incredibly slow and inefficient, there’s some sort of danger at every corner you turn… And yet, somehow, this place is mesmerizing. And just then, when you think you’ve gotten it under your belt, there will be something else to surprise you in completely bizarre ways.

This time it was the new visa regime. Before, you could easily get a $35-7-day-visa at the border, which was perfect for tourists and businesses alike (then, in case you’d stick around, you would get a much more expensive 6-month-visa from the Immigration Directorate in Goma or Kinshasa). Now this is all changed (‘to avoid the bribery at the border,” they say). They created this ‘visa volante’, which costs $250+$35 for 7 days – and which you can’t even get easily anymore (either you apply to the DRC consulate in your own country – which could not have been my case – or you get someone to write a letter for you in Goma, depose it at the Immigration, get the A4 paper approved, take it to the border, get it signed, then get it to you in Rwanda, and then hopefully get you across the border, without being stuck for hours in no man’s land (which, in fact, had just happened to my Dutch colleague last week – 6 hours on the dirt strip between the two countries, because some papers had not been signed properly)).

When I tried to inquire what this was all about, I got Jackson (our PR guy in Goma) to answer brilliantly “C’est un vol organise. Visa VOLante-VOL – c’est tres simple”… So there, after paying this absurd amount, to basically just get my foot across in Goma, we gave my passport and another $470 to a guy named Paul in Immigration for my long-term visa (Paul greeted me like an old friend, as he already ‘knew’ me from my passport pics that had been circulated around…) So there, fantastic working for an NGO (which always complains about money), in a decrepit African country, where the right to enter and do some good costs $270+$35+$470…

At least I was in Goma again! YAY! Curiosity to see our new house/office was eating at me. While I mourned the change of our FABULOUS, but too expensive, lake property, I was excited about this new house – which was pitched to me as this wonder-place, ‘where EVERYTHING works AT ALL TIMES”. (Having water, electricity and internet in Goma, on a constant basis, is truly a matter of dreams). So here we came, on this very rough volcanic-lava road, just behind the Governor’s house, to this two-story, imposing building. My English colleagues Sandy and my new Dutch colleague Luitzen were already here, so it was going to be a fun few days, trying to figure out a work-schedule for our 2011 DRC programs. Instead, our priorities turned out to be quite different, in a house where the never-ending scenario is along these lines: the water goes away, but we have electricity and internet; then electricity is cut off, and the generator cannot be turned on, because we use the same battery for the generator and some car office, and some wise-guy leaves for the night with that car; then electricity comes back, but the internet is hiccupping; then the water also comes back but floods everything downstairs; in the meantime, we have light in the rooms upstairs, but the sockets are not working, and neither is the light in the bathroom; finally we try to start the boiler to heat water, and in the middle of the luke-warm shower the water is cut again. ALL this in a house where “everything is working properly”… And I didn’t even get to mention all other logistics problems (we have several cars and several drivers, but when you need to go somewhere noone is ever ready, while the cars are all unusable for some reason - no fuel, need of washing, need of registering, etc, etc.)

When you finally move, everything turns into a real expedition: even if you have a very precise destination set out in your mind, you will need to incorporate a million other things: dropping off and picking up people everywhere, going to get some receipts for God-knows what in some God-forgotten alley, stopping every 5 minutes to chat with this and that, turning back because someone forgot something or someone is calling for something… So yes, you are always guaranteed to arrive late and be already exhausted, and then sit in another meeting where noone is ready for anything (for example, I was summoned today for 10 a.m., and at 10.30 I am writing this blog, as everyone is just bypassing me completely unfazed and unprepared… At least I had a HOT shower today (miracle!), and the best, juiciest, sweetest pineapple of my life for breakfast, and I am wearing a beautiful green dress to match the sunny day. So, ultimately, I am smiling and being happy for another day of adventure in mad Congo!

WOW Kenya!

My second Africa chapter began last Friday, when, after a strange pneumonia combined with all sorts of weird fainting symptoms, I was finally in a good shape to leave Cluj. Just in time, apparently, as right now I am reading about blizzards and fog that have taken over Romania again, turning everything into chaos.

After a very smooth three flights, on Saturday morning I landed in Nairobi. It would have been a nice week-long vacation, but with my medical condition and last-minute flight postponing, I was going to have just one weekend instead. My friend Beth, with whom I work in Rwanda, was home for the holidays, and she turned into the best guide for my rushed, fantastic 36 hours in Kenya.

Now being Africa-savvy, I realized how completely relaxed I was there, even if Nairobi is far bigger than any other place I had seen on this continent, and even if its reputation is not exactly the best (some call it ‘Nairoberry’, and apparently for a good reason too). The first things I noticed, half-amused, were the green “city-hoppa” buses and the huge predator birds, hanging from trees everywhere on the Mombassa Road (the large avenue that connects the airport to the city). Well, backtracking a bit – I was actually shocked by something: when I had asked Beth to give me her address, so that I can fill it in on my visa request, I was stunned to get a long line of numbers, instead of a street name and house number. Now driving along the large Mombassa Road, I was curious as to why houses were not somehow linked to the name of the street. I was told things were so chaotic in terms of urban planning that no-one could keep track which building is placed on which street or path or plot of land or something, so getting a code is the only way to go (of course, there’s no way you can find such a place by yourself)…

After a quick drive through the city, we actually headed out for the rest of the day, to catch a glimpse of the majestic Rift Valley, the cone-shaped Fly-Over mountain (which I had actually flown over a few hours beforehand), and then to see a natural reserve, Elementaita, renowned for its splendid flamingo colonies. The taxi Beth hired for the day was rather dodgy, but still it kept going boldly on the “highway” – i.e. a two-lane street going all the way to the Ugandan border and then Kampala. I thought I had seen it all in terms of traffic in Africa before, but now, since the road was ‘good’ (i.e. paved), there were other challenges: when you try to overtake, at very high speeds, everyone else does it at the same time, so you have all these cars suddenly jumping from the queue, one in front of the other. The two lane-street instantly turns into a four-five lane (each car finds its own course), and, well, it is quite scary. No wonder accidents are so commonplace (a big and a small bus had collided frightfully just in front of us), but since the flamingos were calling, there was no other way but forward.

Once we left the highway, some guys selling ‘nyama choma’ (roasted meat) sent us looking for flying pigs – i.e. a dirt road, where the only directions were provided by huge stones on the ground. The scenery was surreal (not very different from the stone-desert in Morocco): completely dried up, with huge cactuses with incredible white flowers everywhere, and the lake at the horizon. We drove around for some half an hour, but since it was clear we were completely lost, and Beth was fearing robbery, we turned and took instead the civilized way: paying an entrance fee to a fancy lodge that administers the reserve, getting an imposing Masai guide, and driving on a better-shaped dirt road.

All of a sudden, the colors around me blew up: the deep red of the Masai garment (‘assorted’ with knee-high NBA socks!) and the suave, yet striking pink of the flamingos on the lake (we were lucky to see up close the nicer of the two subspecies, the lesser flamingo, whose pink is way more intense, especially under the wings). In a few minutes, I also received a crash-course on these incredible birds: they fly only at night, up to 500 kms in one stretch; they breed only in Tanzania; their flocks can number up to 1 million individuals; they feed on some algae in the lakes, which eventually gives them the color of the plumage; they are not hunted, as their meat is poisonous.

Mesmerized, but remembering the clock-ticking fast, I had to agree to leave the lake and return to Nairobi. After one police hold-up on the road, a bribe of $15, and a lunch-on-the-go (sausages, fries, and fresh mango-papaya-banana-carrot juice), we finally made it back, right in time for a crazy shopping spree. After the most beautiful African skirt-top duo I got in a store, we headed out to the mind-blowing Masai market, where I had my craves fixated on three kinds of things: bead-embroidered leather shoes (lots of them), bead jewels, and pole-pole T-shirts. (“pole-pole” means ‘slowly-slowly’ and is my favorite expression in Swahili. From the airport in December, I had bough a T-shirt with a tortoise and ‘pole-pole’ for a friend in Cluj, and since then I had been yearning for one myself :-)).

A couple of hours and hundred of dollars later, I could hardly move anymore, and yet I could not stop the bargaining. Shopping addiction it’s called, I believe. I could have spent a week in that market for sure, and still not be satisfied. In fact, once I got home and unpacked, and saw all those beauties in my bags, I knew I had to go back for more, so the next day I quickly returned for more bead work. Luckily I had anticipated all this and left enough space in my bags that were going on my next flight to Kigali.

As if the day had not been already overwhelming, the evening came with the most extravagant culinary experience EVER. The famed restaurant in called ‘Carnivore’ and it borders the Nairobi Natl Park. Traditionally, you could eat here every possible game meat, but since 2004 this has been illegal in Kenya. Not to worry, though, meat lovers! The choice and quantities here are INSANE and everything goes by the rule of the flag. You receive a small ‘carnivore’ flag and you fly it on your table until your own feast is done. The set menu goes for abut $25, which includes soup and desert, while in the middle you have the Beast of a Feast. Or the Feast of a Beast. On your plate, the first thing that appears are bull balls, to prepare your sensitive mouth for what is to follow. Basically by the entrance they have this massive fire place/grill, where they cook everything on very long sticks. Whatever is ready (turkey, crocodile, chicken, ostrich, goat, beef, etc, etc) is taken around the restaurant and shared on everyone’s plates. Then again and again and again and again. The waiters (dressed in traditional animal-skin patterns) just do these rounds the whole night and tempt you with one delicacy after another, until you are DONE. When you feel like you cannot take ostrich meatballs any longer, you let them know by putting the flag down. And maybe calling an ambulance. And starting the meat lent for the next few months…

At that point, after almost two full days of flying and going strong, I was ready to collapse. Luckily my body had cooperated very well, so a good night’s sleep was going to do the trick. The next morning we visited the all-in-one Nairobi Museum (the first museum I ever saw in Africa), and learnt so much about this part of the world: the amazing, unique flora and fauna they have; the mind-blowing discoveries of early hominoid skeletons (the largest, most precious collection in the world); plus a well-crafted presentation about the composition of the Kenyan society (with their fascinating 42 tribes), as well as the history of the common fight for independence of East African countries in the 50s and 60s. Wow. Lots to take in, but so so interesting (really, the first structured, comprehensive institution in East Africa that has given me the bigger picture). Above everything else, though, I found out that I weigh as much as the hideous warthog, on the comparative scale of man-to-Kenyan wildlife. I would have probably preferred to be like a zebra at 120 kilos rather than be forever tied at 60 to the warthog, but what do you do… Eat more meat at Carnivore, probably, and expand accordingly…

The last few hours were out in the wild of the city – a lunch in the National Park, with the same ugly warthogs and hysterical baboons running around. I also immediately bonded with the on-duty Masai dancing group, and I learnt how to jump around and wear beads with dignity and boldness at the same time.

All in all – WOW Kenya!!!

FANTASTIC census results!!!!!!!!!

This is the last Africa blog entry for 2010 - posted from Romania... We just got the fantastic gorilla census results yesterday. Here's the breaking news story I prepared for this momentous event:

http://gorillafund.org/Page.aspx?pid=846

THE Gorilla Transfer

When I signed my contract in May, it all turned into this terrible frenzy: I HAD to show up here very early in June, to deal with the impending gorilla transfer. Six months later, due to a million reasons in two countries, it still hasn't happened (so it seems I have to come back in January to hopefully see it go to fruition).

Well, THAT transfer didn't happen (Grauer's gorillas, from Rwanda to DRC, by UN helicopters). This past week, though, we finally carried out the OTHER transfer: Mountain gorillas, from Rwanda to DRC (completely different location), by road.

And only because I am too lazy on this Sunday night, and because I have the material ready, here's the news story I wrote on the occasion:

http://gorillafund.org/Page.aspx?pid=844

Decadent Burundi

I've slacked on this blog lately - simply due to too many travels. I know, when I am in Musanze more than a few days in a row, I feel so provincial and I want to start moving. And then - well, I end up on these never-ending trips and complicated border crossings. My passport is almost overflowing with stamps, btw. So yes, I thought that before I run out of pages, I should have it stamped in Burundi as well :-)

It had actually been on my mind for weeks now - Bujumbura and especially Tanganyika were too much of drag-names for me to pass on seeing them. And finally last Friday afternoon, after another crazy week, I got together with my Kenyan friend Beth and a new house mate from England - Katy - and started on the long journey south. There we were going to meet a Romanian (clujean, even) guy who works in Congo, and who was going to cross into Buja was well, and this Libyan guy who was flying in from Kigali. I was so tired that all I wanted to do was get great weather, lie at the beach, and sip expensive cocktails.

As luck has it, the day we drove south through extremely lush, green countryside, we ended up in this tornado-look-alike storm, so the first impressions on the shores of Tanganyika were - well, sort of like flooded Musanze. I could not believe I was still wearing my rain gear, instead of some beautiful beach attire. In any event, the welcome was glorious: Stefan, the Romanian guy, was a gracious host (with whom I also bonded immediately - fascinating, actually, to be able to speak your own language and make the same kind of stupid jokes after sooo much time). Later in the night, Issam, the Libyan, also showed up, with a ...shisha. He carried the pipe on the plane (!) and here we were, smoking ourselves into oblivion at the beach - mostly to warm up, actually.

The next day, Buja yielded sun and beautiful waves - so here I was, taking a dip into the world's second deepest lake (for the first, I'll have to go all the way to Siberia...) I started the day with an $8 mojito at the beautiful beach lounge Bora-Bora, and then I joined the group at Club du Lac Tanganyika, for a glamorous day at the pool. Kir Royal never tasted better, actually, than when accompanied by mint shisha and hot weather. Truly bubbly I was :-) I had indeed been given what I had hoped for: lazy day, beautiful weather, exclusive drinks. So mzungu-style, of course; but well, now-and-then this must also be sought after... Who would have thought that I would have my most glamorous, decadent Africa moments in tiny, poor Burundi...

Unfortunately it all lasted too short. The trip back was quit uneventful (OK, apart from 1) the fact that I almost got arrested for taking a picture of Stefan in front of the market (!), and 2) an accident we were in, but when you see how they drive over there, I consider myself lucky to only have been involved in something without human victims...)) To make time pass faster on the bus - I helped Beth undo her hundreds of braids - and I was even GREAT at it! (Next step - to have the guts to have some braided on my own head...)

After coming back, of course, nothing settled down: the first morning I spent with the gorillas and the second I traveled to Congo (and I swam for the first time in Kivu Lake, on the Congolese side). I am now dead tired, with a million deadlines pounding on me. But when I look out of the window of our fantastic villa, right onto the lake, I am just HAPPY :-)

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!