Leah’s Travel Page

In case anyone comes back to this blog to get info about my Gorilla trekking experience, I just found out that as of July 2007, the price is increasing to $500 in both Rwanda and Uganda. Definitely still worth the money, you won’t regret it! That being said, I’m sure glad I didn’t have to spend the extra $100+ at the time…

Okay, so I’m not in Africa anymore obviously, but I just came back to this blog because today marks one year to the day that Zach, Charles and I were in the village of Nyamasheke, Rwanda, for the 12th National genocide commemoration. I’m sure no one reads this anymore, but I figured I’d post this anyway! I can’t really believe a year has gone by, I’ve only got about 3 weeks left of living in Montreal, and I’m planning on moving to London for grad school next year. Even though I’ll be ridiculously broke, I hope that the proximity of England to Africa will allow me to visit again, because I can honestly say that I miss it sooo much. Especially Rwanda, that country is so incredibly special and beautiful and wonderful! If I could wish anything for all of you it would be that someday you all have the chance to travel there! This year, practically ever essay or term paper I’ve written has been about that part of the world. In the fall, I got into a heated debate with a T.A. about Rwanda during a conference, and she said arrogantly, “Oh yeah, well have you ever BEEN to Rwanda?”, and I (probably even more arrogantly) retorted, “Actually, I have, I most recently returned from there in April!” Hehe, that ended that!

Last night I saw a special on the Rwandan genocide on CTV news. Every time I see these sort of reports, I have mixed feelings, because I know that we get so few news stories about Africa here that they should be encouraged. But on the other hand, the only time we ever hear about Rwanda is with regard to the suffering and violence of 13 years ago. You never get stories about the fact that Rwanda is one of the safest, most well developed, friendliest countries in Africa, with an amazingly well-established and burgeoning tourist infrastructure, and the most unfathomably amazing example of reconciliation I think ever exhibited on this planet. I mean that. There is no malice, no desire for retribution among the Rwandan people. Just a profound sorrow that they allowed this sort of atrocity to occur, and a true and heartfelt belief that harboring hatred for behaviours of the past will only lead to more death and suffering, and they’ve been through enough to know that that’s not worth it. To be honest, I don’t know very much at all about the Middle East, but I feel like many people there could learn a great deal from this tiny country. The people of Rwanda are really a testament to the goodness of humankind. But if you just got North American news, wouldn’t you think just the opposite?

Okay, well this wasn’t going to be a philosophical rant, but I guess it is now. I hope you’re all doing well, and hopefully I will resume my travels soon to be able to add more real stuff to this page!!

Peace out, homies,

Leah

So the morning after the lip-synching ridiculousness, we got up super early because we were leaving Kigali again, and met back up again with Lindsay, Sam and Steph. We went and got our groceries at this wicked cafe/supermarket called La Galette, which makes you feel as though you’ve entered Europe upon crossing the threshold, with everyone sitting around watching Premier League football (the team everyone supports in Man United) and eating 20 cent baguettes…We used these baguettes many a time to make giant peanut-butter and banana hot dogs. Mmmm. Then we had to catch a bus to take us down to Butare, 2 hours to the south. Butare is the main university town in the country, and we visited the National Museum there, which was supposed to be extraordinary…and I’m sure it was when it opened in 1987, but I think the only exhibit they’ve changed there since then is the picture of the president on the wall, so needless to say it felt a little outdated… However, as we were walking along the road to get to the museum just outside of town, there was a road sign that said “Bujumbura – 155km”, and therefore me, in all of my African Studies geekiness, was ridiculously excited at how close we were to the border with Burundi! No one else I was with thought that this was exciting at all…but naturally I took a picture. Then after the museum, the three girls went back to Kigali – this was the last time we were going to see each other because they had to run off to climb Kilimanjaro – and the other three of us spent the night in the most ridiculously vast and bare hotel room imaginable. Imagine a giant cement room the size of an olymic swimming pool with nothing but a bed and a chair sitting up against one wall…very bizarre.

Since there’s not really much to do in Butare, we decided to leave the next morning for Cyangugu, a town that’s right on the border with the DRC. After a a bit of a fiasco getting bus tickets and then having to wait for four hours for another bus to come, we managed to finally get on the most packed minibus imaginable…not an exciting prospect when you know there’s an imminent 3-hour journey on possibly the windiest road in the enitre road. I was crammed into the back row with three other people (and really only designed for three people maximum), and there was so little leg room that I had to sit leaning slightly forward for the whole bus ride, which meant that with every bump my head pounded into the ceiling – it’s an Easter miracle that I didn’t get violently ill. Although at least I was better off than Charles, who was sitting directly in front of me and got vomited on not once, but twice, by two different people! Apparently when Rwandans puke out the window of a rapidly moving vehicle, they neglect to check whether or not the windows behind them are shut! Poor Charles…

When we finally got to Cyangugu (pronounced Chan-googoo), it was in the middle of a torential downpour, and this was the one location where we had made no accomodation arrangements at all! So we ran under an awning to wait for the rain to stop, and were immediately swarmed by dozens and dozens of locals just standing there looking at us…We soon discovered that this is quite the norm in Cyangugu, and later when we’d be walking around town, the second our feet stopped moving in a forward motion, we’d be completely surrounded by easily 50 or 60 people, just waiting to see what we were going to do. But anyways, under the awning we met a guy named Hamza who spoke a fair bit of English (as did a lot of people in Cyangugu, surprisingly, which was nice for me because that meant that I didn’t have to do all the translating all the time), and he showed us to this awesome little hotel called La Petite Colline, which, as the name would imply, is built down the side of a little hill…Except we were planning on staying for three days be we could only get it for one night because the president had booked the entire hotel for the next two days! You see, this was April 5th, and on April 7th was the national commemoration day for the 12-year anniversary of the start of the genocide (actually the entire month of April has many commemoration events), and each year the really big ceremony is in a different part of the country. This year it was to be in a small village an hour from Cyangugu, so most of the accomodation in the small town was booked, except for really expensive stuff. So while Charles stayed back at the Petite Colline to wash the vomit off of himself, Zach and I went out into town to see if we could find even so much as a room for the next two nights (we did manage to get a place – probably the most meager accomodation ever, but the only room in town, a tiny cement room with a single bed so that two of us would sleep on the floor in our sleeping bags, and no bathroom – but hey, you couldn’t beat the price at $2 a night!). As we were wandering around, Zach and I met two guys named Said and Ali (cousins) who were secondary school students on Easter vacation. We ended up becoming really good friends with them over the next few days, and they told us where we could get really cheap dinner that night. So we joined up with Charles, and went to the tinest little unmarked restaurant ever, that certainly has never seen a mzungu of any sort. The woman who served us turned out to be the kindest lady ever, and spoke French because she’d moved from Kinshasa a few years ago to work as a chef in this, her brother’s restaurant. And it was one of our best deals at 300 francs! She was really interested in us, and I had a big long conversation with her, and she just seemed so excited that we had come to her place! So we promised her that we would come back again for sure.

The next morning, after some elaborate planning with minibus drivers, we managed to get a ride out to the Nyungwe Forest National Park, an hour from Cyangugu back on the road to Butare. We had really wanted to visit, the rainforest looked amazing as we’d driven by the day before and it has a huge concentration of monkeys and chimps…But after all the effort of getting dropped off out there, it turned out to be waaaayyy more expensive than the tourist office in Kigali had told us – the park entry fee was $20 US, but that didn’t allow you to do anything except walk through the gate. To do any sort of hike would cost at least another $30 US…which seemed totally excessive to do a little 3-hour hike. So one of the guides there, Edward, told us that the best he could think of to do would be to walk us up and down the main road (aka the highway) and point things in the park out to us from afar. Well, we really had no other choice since we’d gone through all the trouble of getting out here and were going to have to hitchhike back, so we decided to do that… It actually turned out to be a great afternoon. Edward was awesome, and we just had lots of conversations with him about a great many things. We began to talk about the commemoration the next day, and I asked him if he’d lived in Rwanda during the genocide. He was probably 6’4″, and he said “Are you kidding? I’m so tall, I would have been one of the first people to be killed!”, which shocked me to hear him say it so matter-of-factly, and he said that his family had been refugees in Uganda and Congo for nearly 20 years before 1994. After walking up and down the road, we sat by the gate and Edward tried to signal down any buses or vehicles going by that had space, but they were all so full because of the number of people going to Cyangugu for the commemoration – there were tons of military vehicles passing too, and we thought it would be a riot to hitch a ride back with a bus full of soldiers, but none of them stopped for us. After a few hours of talking and watching various monkeys run by, it started to rain, so Edward took us up to the building where the park guides live while they’re working at Nyungwe, fed us tea and bananas, and taught us some phrases in Kinyarwanda. Then, when we got back to the road, almost immediately a big bus stopped by and picked us up. It was completely full, but we sat in the door-well of it and only had to pay 400 francs, thanks to Edward’s bargaining with the driver. We agreed that we’d meet him the next day at the commemoration, and headed back to town.

When we got back to Cyangugu, we bumped in to Ali and Said again (I swear, everyone in town knew where the three mzungus were at all times), and they insisted that we come over to their house for dinner – the night before we had been talking to them about how much we like ugali, the local dough-like substance made from cassava, and they had said we were most welcome to come over and have some. Naturally we weren’t about to say no to being invited into a local home! So we went down to Ali’s house – which was actually really nice compared to the houses around it – and met Ali’s family and Said’s family, and all of the neighbours…Said even said that word must have spread that there were mzungus at there house, because there were children looking in at the doorway that he didn’t even recognize! There were probably three dozen children running around, but they were so curious and playful…and of course they loved it when we got our cameras out and started taking photos. Every time the flash would go off, they would all start running around screaming and laughing… The most hilarious moment for me was one of total chaos – we’d just taken group photos with Charles’ and Zach’s cameras, and then the children were shouting and pushing to get close to the two of them to look at the photos on their camera display…it was total madness and noise, and then just at that moment, the front door flew open and six goats came running in to join the melee, pranced around for a few seconds amongst the dozens of people, and then went running out into the back room! It all happened so fast and there was so much going on that the others didn’t even notice! Pretty funny stuff. Then, Said’s mother shooed all the kids out of the house and brought out the biggest African feast I’ve seen…the food just kept coming! Ugali and beans and cabbage and fish in vast quantities… oh my gosh, and we were expected to eat it all! They even bought us Fantas for the special occasion of our visit, which was so incredibly generous. I made a valiant effort, but I physically was not capable of consuming more than half of the food they gave me! I felt really bad, and I’m sure they were all wondering why we weren’t eating all the food, but we tried to explain as much as we could that we’re simply not accustomed to eating so much at once. By the time we left it was dark, and we thanked them so much for being so kind to us…they were all really sad that we were leaving and kept saying just how happy they were that we had come. Imagine all this after knowing someone for less than a day! It was a really great experience.

I’m back now in Nairobi – you have no idea how hard it is to find reliable internet cafes in small Rwandan towns when half the time they’re closed for national holidays, and the other half the internet is out because it’s rainy season and apparently that happens a lot… I don’t really know the connection between the two, but apparently that’s their excuse when you’re half-way through a giant blog update and suddenly all the power dies!

So the last time I wrote anything, it was the night before Zach, Charles and I went to do the gorilla trek. That evening was notable for two reasons. One, we found our cheapest dinner in all of Rwanda! A giant heap of rice, beans, vegetables, potatoes, etc for 250 Francs… about 40 cents! Trust me, this was a very momentous occasion. Secondly, Sam, Steph and Lindsay came back from having done the gorilla trek that day, so we got to get their input on what they had just experienced before embarking upon our own trek…and, frankly, it made me a little nervous! It had poured rain the entire time they were hiking, which was about 7 or 8 hours in total…in fact, the gorilla group they were tracking had gone so far that they were actually in the Congo, and I think there were only 6 or 8 gorillas in the family. When they got back, they were sooo cold and exhausted – it sounded like more of an adventure hiking through stinging nettles and mud up to their waists, and the gorillas themselves seemed kind of secondary. This was totally different from any other account I’d heard from anyone, so I really now had no idea what the next day would be like.

So we got up bright and early at 5:30am and met with our driver, who drove us on the bumpiest, boulder-filled road imaginable for 45 minutes to get from Ruhengeri to the actual Parc National des Volcans. When we got there, we were ridiculously lucky – usually there are thirty people registered to do gorilla trekking every day, with 10 people in each group to see the different gorilla groups… However, our day, for whatever reason, there were only 10 other people registered and none of them showed up! They thought that maybe their flight didn’t get in from Belgium or something…I mean, it is low season there, but we never imagined that it would be just the 3 of us in our group, and that we’d get to totally pick whichever gorillas we wanted to see. I think they really wanted us to go see the Sabinyo group, which had just recently had an extra silverback join the group, so they were really agressive, which is very unusual – we met some people who had just done the hike the day before, and they said that they were terrified! Instead, though, we opted to go to the group that would involve the longest hike possible, and that was the Amahoro group (which means “Peace” in Kinyarwanda). They said it would be about 2 hours, and that the group had two babies, one 11 months and one 2 years old, and we’d be able to get much closer to the gorillas than if they were fighting for male dominance! So we chose to go to see them, and I know it was definitely the best choice! After only actually about an hour of hiking up the side of a massive volcano covered in bamboo and jungle (partly bush-whacking with machetes) with our guide (who was actually one of the people who had habituated this particular group) and two armed guards (as protection from poachers, mostly), we came to an open clearing on the mountain-side where we met the two trackers who had been following Amahoro group and letting our guide know by walkie-talkie where to go. They told us to keep quiet and bring only our cameras and jackets… And sure enough, we looked to the left and about 200m away we could see the big black hairy forms of gorillas through the dense foliage! As we approached, one of the gorillas was peering over a bush at us, and as someone had described to us before, it really looked like it was a man dressed in a gorilla suit watching us!

As we got there, the gorillas were all scattered about in different trees and bushes, eating leaves and wild celery…One of the first gorillas we came across was the giant silverback, who was unfathomably huge! His head and hands were massive – he was probably the size of three linebackers put together! He just sat there munching away with his gigantic belly giggling away, every so often turning his head in an entirely uninterested fashion to look at us before returning to his meal…and we were probably only about three feet away from him! Gradually I started to realize that we were actually surrounded by gorillas – there were 14 in Amahoro. There were both males and females climbing the trees, muching away on plants – they would grunt just like you would imagine hearing the sounds King Kong would make (I hate to make that comparison, but that’s what they sounded like!). And when they would chew on the celery, it sounded just like a human eating celery, which was so crazy! And then one of the females came through a trail with the tinest, most adorable gorilla imaginable clinging to its back – you just wanted to reach out and put it in your backpack and take it home with you! For about 20 minutes, they just all surrounded us doing their own thing, but they must have communicated somehow because they all converged in a line and started walking to a small clearing about 10m away. We followed them, and watched as the silverback rolled spread-eagle onto his back for a nap, while the two little ones and even some of the older gorillas took this to signify playtime! They would jump on top of one another and play-wrestle, swinging off trees and jumping off of other gorillas. One of the adolescent males actually did a ninja roll and then started pounding his fists on his chest! What a show! And we were no further from them than I am to this computer screen… Actually, at one point, we walked a little further to see one of the gorillas that was standing guard just off in the forest to keep watch from threats – he was the second-most senior male, but had lost his left hand in a poaching trap. As we were descending the hill a bit, another adult male came suddenly and unexpectedly running out from the bushes to the right of us. The guard tried to push me back out of the way, but the trail was really narrow…The gorilla was brushing right up against me, and actually fully grabbed on to my leg with his hand to pull himself up the mountainside! I was seriously shocked – a wild gorilla just grabbed my leg!

Sadly, we only had 1 hour with the gorillas, because they do get stressed by humans if they stay too long, so it’s important for their conservation that we don’t stay too long. If you can believe it, there are less than 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, found only on the Virunga volcanoes of Rwanda and DRC, and in Bwindi rainforest in Uganda. Even though the price was steep ($375 US!!!), it was 100% worth the hike…Easily one of the most exciting and memorable experiences of my life. Not only that, but we were really lucky, and it didn’t rain!!

By the time we got back into Ruhengeri town, it was about 2pm, so we decided that there wasn’t much need to stay the night and we’d head back down to Kigali, which is only about a 2 hour drive. So we got back to our old friend, the Kigali Hotel, and our other old friend, Le Palmier (the place with the 500 franc all-you-can-eat buffet). The day had been pretty exhausting and exhilarating, so we had decided we were going to call it a night, but then suddenly the phone rang in our hotel room…it was a guy named Abdul that Zach had met a few days before playing basketball, who had noticed us coming back to the hotel and wondering what we were doing (yeah, it’s like that…everyone knows the every move of the 3 mzungus in the neighbourhood). So we decided to go out to the Sky Hotel, which is kind of a hot spot for young people in Kigali…and put on one of the most entertaining spectacles I’ve ever witnessed in my life!

As we walked in, we saw someone performing on a stage and signing into a microphone, so we thought “Hey, live music!”…but then we realized that the guy on the stage was lip-synching his heart out! Not even karaoke, lip-synching! At first we thought that this seriously couldn’t be for real, until he finished and five guys – who were obviously all really cool guys – came out and started doing a whole routine lip-synching to some rap song. It was totally ridiculous, but this was obiviously the cool think to do in Kigali! Over the course of three hours, it just kept going… Some guys had costume changes, there were two girls in matching outfits that must have put hours and hours into a choreographed routine, one guy was the most amazing dancing I’ve ever seen – this was serious stuff! And they would lip-synch to everything from Ugandan music to rap to NSync and Britney Spears…one guy came out dressed up as Kenny Rogers (he put something like baby powder all over his head and face to look like Kenny’s white hair and beard) and did a whole rendition of “The Gambler”…Then as the night went on, the three of us and Abdul were just sitting there and thinking we were blending in as the club filled up with several hundred people, but then the guy who was the MC called out to us from the stage on the microphone, asking where we mzungus were from, etc etc…clearly we had not blended in even remotely! And then of course the MC started pointing to me and saying that I would be his wife, and then another guy came on stage and then started arguing about whose wife I really was (this was not unusual at all by now for me, because I probably got about 6 marriage proposals a day during the time we were in Rwanda)…So then the second guy dedicated his next lip-synched song to me which, based on the lyrics, wsa probably called “You’re my African queen…”, and after that the first guy dragged me up on the stage to sing some kind of Rwandan love song to me. Possibly the most awkward moment of my life! But the whole night was pretty hilarious in general… I really want someone to do a documentary about lip-synching in Kigali, it would be awesome!

Okay, so that day was ridiculously full…and so even though I’m not even close to being caught up on our Rwanda trip, I think I’m going to leave it there for now… Next update soon!

Okay, so I’m in Ruhengeri right now, not Butare. It’s way up north, near the border with Uganda (and Congo, but I shouldn’t say that because my parents will freak out regardless of the insane amount of security). We were talking to some people in Kigali yesterday who told us that the main national activities on April 7th (which is Genocide Commemoration day here – 12 years after the genocide began) are in a town called Cyangugu this year, which we hadn’t known before because the location changes every year. So we had to rework our itinerary somewhat, and we’ve been able to change our dates to see the mountain gorillas to tomorrow! So exciting! So the town that I’m in at the moment is just outside the Parc National des Volcans, surrounded by the absolutely stunning and massive Viruga volcanoes. The road up here was equally as dramatic, similar to the amazing hills and valleys that we went through coming from the border…although it was raining rather torentially, which made the ride somewhat hair-raising, but thankfully there are guard-rails everywhere. The only problem was when the roof of the minibus started leaking all over us, and I guess also when the windshield fogged up so much that I quite sure the driver must have had superman vision to see through it.

Ruhengeri is a bit of a one-horse town…. Even though the gorillas are one of the biggest touristy things to do in Rwanda, it seems as though they’ve never seen any Mzungus before. It’s great for us, because I love being in a place that seems so unspoiled and real, but at the same time I wish for the sake of this place that they could get more tourists. Randomly,we managed to find this huge internet cafe with amazing high speed internet, which was definitely a shock. Strangely, the keyboard is like nothing I’ve ever seen before…The letters are in totally random places, the concept of QWERTY clearly having been thrown out the window. Trust me, it’s taken a very long time to write this!

I’ve arrived in Rwanda! Along with the five other people I’m travelling with, Zach, Charles, Sam(antha), Lindsay and Steph. The bus ride here was actually not that bad, considering what it could have been. That being said, it DID involve 24.5 hours in the back row of a coach with seats whose reclining function didn’t work, so they kept on bouncing back and forth. Since the Kenyan roads are so abysmal – and that was the part when we were trying to sleep – it felt rather like trying to take a nap on a rickety wooden roller coaster that didn’t slow down at the station for three hours. Another analogy that came to mind at the time – during a particularly rough period when I’m sure I lost several layers of tooth enamel – was the feeling of sitting on top of a jackhammer. Nonetheless, I probably mustered a few hours of decent sleep, interrupted by a 4am border crossing into Uganda, where it was so pitch black that Lindsay tripped over a foot high curb and fell right into an open sewer! Luckily it had rained recently, so the stench wasn’t too bad! And, at 4 in the morning, that’s just about the funniest thing that can happen. We stopped again in mid-morning in Kampala and then reached the Rwanda border at about 4pm. It was really lucky, because Canadians and Americans don’t need visas to enter, so we saved a bunch of money. And the landscape driving from the border was absoutely stunning – Rwanda is just as beautiful as I’d heard, with amazing steep green hills and beautiful valleys filled with tea fields (and roads in FANTASTIC condition – better than Vancouver for sure!).

It had just gotten dark when we arrived in Kigali at 7, so it was a bit chaotic getting off in the terminal – some people we had befriended on the bus ride made us all panicky telling us to grab our luggage quickly so no one ran away with it, and then we were sort of shoved into cabs to get to our hotel, which was called Hotel Gloria, and turned out to be the sketchiest place in the entire world. It was just kid of this big barren room with a small desk and a couple of rooms leading off of it, and there were a bunch of weird men standing around in the ‘lobby’. Not only that, but they’d given away our reservation and only had two beds, which was actually kind of a blessing because it gave me the creeps. So we were told the name of another hotel nearby- Hotel Kigali – which turned out to have space and was totally secure (it didn’t have running water the first night, which was annoying, but they fixed it by the next afternoon- it was out for the whole neighbourhood)…Phew, it was a bit hectic that first night for sure. But we were tipped off by some other mzungus at our hotel that there was an all-you-can-eat buffet right around the corner for only 500 Rwandan francs…less than $1 US!!! Naturally, we’ve gone there every day since.

The next morning I woke up and got my first view of Kigali…not at all what I had expected! The whole city (only about 250,000 people I think) is sprawled out very dramatically over 3 or 4 big hills, with roads going in all kinds of crazy directions and brown houses built up and down the hillsides. Our hotel costs only about $9 a night, including breakfast, so we’re definitely able to live on the cheap here! We set out that morning for the Tourist Office to ask questions about various destinations, and bumped into another Canadian named Jen – she just finished up her job as a MuchMusic VJ, you might recognize her as the one with the short red hair. She’s been in E Africa since January too, almost the same places as us, doing various journalistic things…And she’s freelancing an article for the Toronto Star/Globe on the “New Rwanda”, which we may very well be referenced in! I’ll let you know more details if it comes out. We met up with her again for our 500 FRw dinner and then went out for drinks afterwards – it was great to talk to another North American who’d gone through the same experiences as us!

We spent that afternoon at the Kigali Memorial Centre, and brand new museum (2 years old) about the 1994 genocide. It was an unbelievably well done exhibition, and of course really emotional, but I learned so much from it. It was multimedia, so there were videos of peoples’ testimonies who lived through it, and boards with the history of what happened before, during, and after it (for you Canadians, there was a whole section on Romeo Dallaire). Then, the second floor had a display on some of the other genocides of the 20th century (Cambodia, Holocaust, Balkans, Albania), and outside there was a burial site of 6 mass graves where 250,000 victims were interred, whose bodies were found in Kigali alone. One woman who was at the museum (she was African, but I don’t know if she was local) left the museum sobbing uncontrollably, supported by her friend. Some of the videos, displays and descriptions were so difficult to watch – especially when you contrast it to the Rwanda of today, which is so unimaginably different and peaceful and friendly and safe, much more so than any other place I’ve been. Looking at the human and physical landscape, I just can’t rectify the past with the present of the country – I have so much respect for and am so impressed buy the people here. They have overcome so much heartbreak and devastation, and I have absolutely no idea how they’ve done it. There is some evidence of the genocide in the physicality of some people; it breaks my heart to go into a store where the vendor has massive scars on their face, or a pass a fairly young person begging on the street who has no legs…I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. But for the most part, you would simply never know otherwise.

Another thing about Rwanda is how friendly the people are! Some particularly like it that I ca speak French to them, but even others – for example, we have dinner plans tonight with a group of people we met yesterday at the 500FRw buffet (can you tell yet that I’m obsessed with this place?). Yesterday we had lunch with a British guy who’s a student at Oxford in African Studies (Mom, Dad and Adam: he lives at 62 Woodstock Road!!), who just came running up to us on the street to say hi! And when we were at the bank getting our money out (which is almost IMPOSSIBLE to do here – note to any future travellers, get out all your money in Nairobi or Kampala!), we met an expat from Chicago who offered for us to stay in his 8-bedroom house, and a local man who insisted that he drive us to the Memorial because otherwise he was simply not being a good host to these visitors to his country! It’s really awesome how genuine everyone is! Basically, the whole impression of yesterday was that is was just a great day – man I love it here.

This morning we slept in (Well, Zach and Charles didn’t – they went for a walk around and played some pickup basketball with local kids who thought they were hilarious), and then went to spend a relaxing morning at the Hotel des Mille Collines, the name of which you might remember from the movie Hotel Rwanda. Even if you’re not a guest there, you can sit by the pool for free, and go swimming for $3. It was crazy to be at such a remarkably historical site – although it’s not the same building that’s in the movie at all!

Anyways, tomorrow we’re heading south for Butare, which is supposed to have an amazing National Museum. I’ll update you next from there! Bye!

We flew to Zanzibar from Mombasa, after 3 hours of delay during which we managed to weasel our way into a free meal from the airport. We were hardly in the air when the descent onto the island began. We flew over amazing turquoise waters, tiny white-sand islands and mangroves forests, before landing in Stone Town. We waited in a huge line to get a Tanzanian visa, and then just when we were two people away from the front, the guy went on a break, so we had to go to the end of another line…And then a bunch of people’s luggage was left behind in Mombasa (but thankfully not mine). It began pouring torrential rain while we were in the airport, and as we were driving to the Garden Lodge, the streets filled up with probably a foot of water… Not the most auspicious of beginnings.

But once we began to got to the hotel, it was amazing. It was a gorgeous old building with amazing Muslim architecture and gorgeous canopy beds (draped with mosquito nets, of course). By the time we arrived there, the rain had stopped, and from the dining room on the roof of the building we could watch the sun set over the Indian Ocean. It was gorgeous! Then a male voice began singing in Arabic, projected on a P.A. system out throughout the whole town, calling the men to evening prayers (This would happen 5 times a day).

Stone Town itself was a pretty incredible place to experience, especially for someone who;d never been to an entirely Muslim community before. The narrow streets were full of people dressed in traditional clothing coming and going by foot or bicycle, and with the ancient buildings and laid-back atmosphere it was as though I’d stepped into a medieval storybook. All of the girls in our group would drape ourselves in shawls and sarongs to be as covered as possible, but still we would get harassed by men wherever we would go… I never felt as though I was in a bad situation, but I definitely made sure to be walking around with guys after dark, and I felt as though the guys with us definitely had more of a chance to explore freely.

Unfortunately it was the last week of our program, so we had to spend a fair bit of time finishing up assignments and writing essays. But thank goodness we were there for nine days so that we could fit a ton of amazing things in. We spent one day out at a spice plantation, and seeing all the various spices growing in nature was actually really cool – pepper, cinammon, vanilla, tumeric, cloves (Zanzibar is one of the world’s largest exporters). Too bad the temperature was over 40, and we all thought we were going to melt into the earth, but at the end we got to eat local fresh fruit, which is always amazing – the mangoes on the coast are absolutely glorious, and I don’t even normally like mangoes.

We also took a dhow (one of the traditional sail boats) from Stone Town out to Prison Island, which is visible from the town, and where they used to keep slaves during the Indian Ocean slave trade. Around the island we got to do some great snorkelling over the coral reefs – I was doing a biology project on the association between clown fish and sea anemones (think Finding Nemo), so I got to do a bunch of observations on them in their natural habitats, as well as crazy amounts of starfish, eels, rays, sea urchins and other fish… And of course I got probably the worst sunburn of my entire life on the back of my legs and couldn’t sit down for a week without being in pain.

Probably the greatest experience of all that I had in Zanzibar was the chance to go swimming with dolphins in the wild. We went out in groups of 10 in local boats where they knew there are frequently groups of dolphins, all dressed up with our flippers and snorkels, although they warned us that it’s not guaranteed to have a sighting… Well then we must have been the luckiest group in the entire world. Within 5 minutes of being out in the crystal blue waters, a group of humpback dolphins glided by, coming out of the water. However, you’re not allowed to swim with humpbacks because they are afraid of humans, so we had to wait until we found some bottlenose. A few more humpbacks went by before we actually saw any bottlenose dolphins. The thing you have to do it drive the boat up ahead of the dolphins, the get into the water and let them swim towards you, because they will be frightened if you just jump in beside them and chase them. The first time we got in with three bottlenose, the just swam about 30 feet below us, but it was still pretty amazing. But then our boat hit the motherload. We saw a large group of dolphins approaching, and me and Dominique, one of the other girls on the trip, were the first to get into the water. Suddenly in front of us, we saw three adults slowly emerge out of the murky waters, coming directly at us. The sun was beaming through the water in rays as they approached, closer and closer until we could almost touch them and then just in time they swooped below us (and a good thing too, because they were huge! Much bigger than I expected). Then I turned around and saw probably about seven adults and two or three babies all swimming around our group. One of the guys swam down low in the water and a dolphin went down and did a loop-the-loop around him, and the babies swam right beside their parents as they continued in circles around us. The dolphins would come right up to us at the surface, I swear looking me right in the eye – so many times I felt I could reach out and touch them. They probably stayed with us for a good two minutes, and then as they began to swim away, suddenly there was an explosion out of the water 100 yards away as a dolphin soared into the air before splashing back into the water! Probably four dolphins did this as they left us – I didn’t even know they did that it the wild! It was so exciting and incredible, that the whole group of us bobbed on the surface and just screamed and yelled out of sheer excitement! I can hardly think of time in my life when I have felt so elated! That was definitely the most wonderful Zanzibar memory.

Alas, all good things had to end. So now, as many of you know, I’m in Nairobi, and our program just ended so I’m travelling independently now. I was supposed to stay on for a few months to do an internship in Nairobi, but because of a lot of logistical problems it kind of fell through. So I’ll be spending the next months travelling with friends before returning to Montreal to take some summer courses at McGill (which I’m actually really looking forward to…I’ve had so many experiences that I’m totally okay with taking some time away from it to digest it all).

Right now, I’m at Nairobi Backpackers, and I leave in a few hours on a bus for Kigali, Rwanda (22 hours, via Uganda). I’ll be there with 6 friends for 12-14 days, before heading back to Nairobi. Then I’ll have a few spare days before heading back to the coast to go to the island of Lamu, an island that’s similar to Zanzibar, only more remote – there’s a huge annual festival while we’re there called the Maulidi festival that’s supposed to be extraordinary. Anyways, I’ll keep you all up to date now that I have no school work to bog me down! So next time I send in my report, I’ll be in Rwanda!!!

Once we left Nairobi, we headed off for Mt. Kenya, which also happens to be the 2nd tallest mountain in Africa. It was totally different from anywhere else I’ve seen in this country, especially considering the lack of rain in most parts. It was lush rainforest, with some of the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen, a little bit of rain, and actually quite chilly – reminded me of B.C. in a way… well, except for the massive piles of elephant dung all over the camp (I am so unfazed by dog poo now) and hearing the forest buffalo calling at night. Unfortunately, in true Leah style, I was sick with a fever for most of the time we were there, so I got to know the inside of my tent quite well (at least it wasn’t like in Nguruman, where we woke up one morning to discover probably 2000 ants crawling all through our stuff, which then forced me to engage in a large-scale massacre, DEET being the weapon of choice). I did manage to get up enough to climb up Mt. Kenya with the rest of the group…well, we didn’t go the whole way, that would have taken five days, but we did get a good ways up, far enough to where the vegetation changed to bamboo forest, which was so awesome – I definitely never thought I’d stop to have a picnic amongst a natural forest of bamboo. The campsite was also really great, except for the fact that we had some sanitation issues when our toilets stopped flushing and the showers stopped running because 40 people over-extended the system. But of course, we could solve the latter problem by showering in the waterfall that was 500m away – insanely cold but very surreal.

After Mt Kenya, we had to make our way to the coast, which was about 30 degrees hotter and 100 times more humid than where we had just come from. Enroute, we spent 2 nights in Tsavo National Park, which is where ‘Out of Africa’ was filmed and is the biggest national park in East Africa. The coolest thing here were the baobab trees, which look absolutely amazing – massive stocky trunks and then wild thick branches – like something out of Ichabod Crane. In Tsavo I also saw my first leopard!! Now all that is left for me are the elusive rhino and cheetah. Also, as we were leaving the park, the sky was so clear that you could very clearly see the distinctive Mt. Kilimanjaro in distant Tanzania, which was really exciting.

We got to the coast via Mombasa, and then headed up to a beach just south of Malindi, called watamu. The water of the Indian Ocean was the most perfect colour of turquoise I have ever seen, and was warmer than a bath (WAY warmer than most of the showers I’ve had on this trip, for sure). Dhows (the coastal sail boats) dotted the clear waters, and the white sand and palm trees were gorgeous…the environment definitely made it difficult to concentrate on school work (not withstanding the fact that when we woke up in the morning it was 31 degrees, and easily hit 41 by eleven o’clock)! Whenever we could we all ran to the beach, which was interspersed with giant coral boulders. This part of the country is very Muslim, so the architecture and the culture and the dress was so unique compared to what we’ve seen so far. All the houses were built out of coral and seashells. The Islamic influence, though, had nothing on the traditional and amazing experience of Zanzibar…I’ll write about that very soon!

After our long foray around the Mara, as February turned into March, we stopped back in Nairobi for a few days before heading north and then to the coast. Although the stay was brief, there were a few things of note about it. First of all, there were the first signs that the rainy season was imminent – tons of heavy rain, which was a nuisance in that we couldn’t do our laundry if we wanted it to dry, but really was a blessing. I can now appreciate it so much more having been through some of the more arid regions during this horrendous drought. The second thing of note was that we got to see President Kibaki, as he was laying the cornerstone for a new wing of the National Museum (one of our profs is the director of the Kenya Museums, so he hooked us up). Now, this is not necessarily that auspicious since Kibaki is currently embroiled in a massive corruption scandal and about to be deposed, but nonetheless, it’s always cool to see a head of government (Well, maybe not Canada’s Head of government, but that’s another story).

The best experience we all had was spending a few days with MYSA, the Mathare Youth Sports Association. Nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, the organization was started by a man from St. Catharine’s, Ontario. The purpose of the organization began in the Mathare slum of north-east Nairobi, and involved organizing soccer leagues for youth to play in to get them involved in something worthwhile outside of their squalid living conditions. It has now spread to many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, getting kids playing soccer, doing dance and performing some AMAZING acrobatics. Many of the kids have gone on to get scholarships at North American universities, and it is involved in an annual tournament in Norway, that some of the most talented and dedicated youth can get to attend. It really is a source of inspiration for the entire Mathare community. We also became friends with many of the people involved with MYSA, and so got the chance to visit their homes in Mathare. As in previous experiences, it is always extraordinary to visit a slum, see inside the tiny homes, walk the miniature pathways filled with rubbish, try to imagine where people collect their water or go to the bathroom. We also got to visit one of Mathare’s elementary schools, which has been there for 10 years but you’d never know it – it’s basically been put together makeshift-style in what I imagine was once a small abandoned office building of some sort. Definitely some of the most cramped teaching quarters I’ve seen yet. A couple of people in our group are doing work with MYSA after the program…I don’t think I’ve really done it justice with my hurried summary, but I think you can check it out at www.mysa.org, so please do because it’s a really extraordinary example of a community coming together to try and make an improvement in the lives of their children.

Sorry everyone! I’ve been entirely neglecting my blogging duties because, a) I spent a considerable time away from internet (and electricity, and running water, and showers, and general hygiene), and b) frantically finishing up ridiculous amounts of school work that I had had no choice but to procrastinate upon before because, heck, I’m in Africa. But basically my infrequent interneting has been simply to monitor incredibly urgent matters, such as where the Canucks and Habs are in the standings (hangin’ in there for now, eh, boys?), and whether or not Roy Halladay will be able to start the season for the Blue Jays… You see, these are the thoughts with which I am consumed, and I’m sure you can all understand therefore why I gave the appearance of having fallen off the earth.

So I guess I have an insane amount of catching up to do, what with my month-long disappearance. So I’ll just give a synopsis of the best parts (that’s really all you wanted anyway, isn’t it?).

First off, I NEED to talk about the amazing opportunity I had to do a homestay with a traditional Maasai family near Elangata Wuas in the heart of Maasailand. I was paired up with another girl on the trip, and a local interpreter named Paul, and we stayed with the Kibunga family. The other girl’s name is Aliya. My name is Leah. Think about explaining that one to a group of people who only speak Maa. We walked to their home, which was about 45 minutes from the nearest village, through incredibly dusty savanna and acacia land, across huge dried up riverbeds with makeshift wells dug into them during this drought period, past a few carcasses of cows that had already succumed to the intensely dry conditions (enroute we also saw some camel, ostrich and dik-dik…all in a day’s walk). The Kibunga shamba (a kind of enclosure containing 4 or 5 buildings), had four houses (for all the various family members – it’s a very biiiig family) and a cow/goat enclosure in it, fenced by thorny bushes. The houses were small, maybe the size of my kitchen at home; the walls were made of sticks and cow dung (it didn’t smell…or maybe I was just used to it), and inside was incredibly smoky, as the cooking was done in the adjacent room. The walls were so thin that you could be speaking at virtually a whisper and someone in the next room would resond – not much privacy, eh? The bed that Aliya and I slept on (normally the father’s bed) was a slightly raised platform built of more sticks, cardboard and covered with a cowhide. The roof was covered in tin and plastic sheeting – it actually rained a tiny bit that night, and the sound was like rice falling slowly into a can. The Kibungas had no electricity or running water (given the location, it’s almost a preposterous notion)…To go to the bathroom (referred to locally as taking a “short call” or a “long call”) involved finding a patch of bushes where there were as few children running around within eyesight as possible!

The family family was great. We spent most of our time with the father, his three wives, and some of his sons and daughters (he has 17 children in all – some of whom have already left home). We went with two of the wives to go collect water from the well and firewood, although these two little old ladies were able to carry way more than us on their shoulders. We also milked some goats, although there was very little because it’s in the middle of such a hard drought and they produce very little. The family also has several cows, but they were off with other family members being herded in some distant area that wasn’t completely dried up. There was a little puppy that was running around the shamba – we asked if it had a name and the response was that they call him “Dog”. So we asked if we could name it, and we chose “Hanson” – then we tried to teach the whole family the song “MmmBop”, but that was a highly unsuccessful venture. In the evening (or shall I say, once the sun went down, because there really is no evening), everyone sat indoors by candlelight, drank tea and listened to the radio…and yes, a little Celine Dion came on. One of the sons also asked us if we listened to Sean Paul….what???!!! If only these artists could imagine where their music was being listened to.

For supper we ate cabbage and ugali, which is an extremely dense starch made from maize that is the absolute staple in this part of East Africa. We ate with our fingers, even though we knew they had spoons, but apparently they feel more comfortable without. They fed Aliya and I such massive portions that it was absolutely impossible to finish what they gave us…and yet we had to eat it all because it’s very rude not too! They kept on laughing at me in particular for how slowly I eat. And then of course, the next morning at breakfast, they fed us the exact same meal in the exact same gigantic quantities (Although they normally only eat one meal per day, a big dinner – it was just that they had guests, and that we had brought food for them, that they made so much on this occasion). The morning we awoke to find the entire family already up and about – at 6:30am, we had clearly overslept! Not my lifestyle, I tell ya. It was Saturday, which is the major market day at Mile 46 (the name of the village). So we all walked back to the village and wandered around the market before saying goodbye to our family and connecting back up with the McGill group. I wish I could think of more details to tell you about the experience, but there are so many that it’s hard to sort through…I’ll definitely add more as I think of them.

Well, that was a lot of writing. I’ll take a break now before doing the summary of my last few weeks on the program.