Lamu, a small island off the north of the Kenyan coast, was one of a handful of Arab/Persian trading ports, operating from the 1400's - first by Arabs, then the Portuguese, and then the Omanis until the take over by the Brits in the late 1830's. The Arabs liked to build their cities off the mainland for the protection it afforded them, and used the ports to ship ivory, precious metals and eventually hundreds of thousand of slaves from the interior. The Arabs and Persians mixed with the locals, Bantu, to create what is today called Swahili culture - Swahili means of the coast from the Arabic sahil. With their religion firmly based in Islam - with a few local twists, the people, language and culture is a mix of Bantu, Arabic, Persian and Indian influences. Interestingly, Swahili the language became the lingua franca for most of East and Central Africa because of the large trade caravans bringing goods to the coast. The colonisers adopted it and developed a Romanised script - which has now replaced the original Arabic one, and it is still spoken today by people as far west as Rwanda.
Its history has a major influence on the layout of the place - the town is built on a narrow strip of the coast facing the channel to the mainland, with building concentrated on the waterfront and then for a short distance back away from the water up the hill. Most of the buildings are several storey high, square, whitewashed buildings, split by wandering, narrow lanes - their width restricting even modern transport to the ever reliable donkey - there are around 3000 wandering about. A number of the older buildings have ornately decorated, carved wooden doors, with detailed inscriptions in Arabic. The cooling sea breeze blows off the aqua marine channel almost every afternoon, moving on the heat of the day. Whilst the population remains predominately black (or Bantu) there are a larger number than on the mainland of very Arabic looking locals, and many women - both light skinned and dark get about in the full veils - only their eyes are visible. Like on the mainland the traders are mainly of Indian descent and they too are predominantly Muslim. There are a number of mosques littered about the town. Add to all this the whales of the call to prayer echoing out across the town, and you can almost imagine yourself in a coastal town in the Mahgreb.
The melange of cultures, and the ready availability of sea food has created a gastronomic culture of its own. In the evening the streets are filled with the smell of street food - mainly goat shish-kebabs roasting on charcoal fires, and a number of small, dingy cafes come alive serving all kinds of delicacies from sea food pilau to sweet green and yellow dahls, all washed down with chai and a chapati.
One evening as I was buying some mendazi - small pakora like balls of fried heaven, I stood next to a fully veiled women - dressed completely in black, with only her eyes showing. I heard her talking and turned around to see her lifting her veil to pop a mendazi in her mouth. The lifting of the veil revealed a mobile phone earpiece, and microphone. For some reason I was completely astonished by the idea that she was chatting away on a mobile phone. Whilst the town does kind of create a lost in time atmosphere, I guess it had never occurred to me that somebody who was forced to (or chose to) dress in such a conservative and old fashioned way would be exploiting the wonders of modern technology.
Maybe Nokia is fuelling a secret revolution, going on under the burka,that nobody knows about !!
The Kenyan capital of Nairobi, formerly dubbed Nairoberry has a reputation as Africa's second most dangerous city (after Joburg) The reputation was well earned, stories of muggings, violent crime and hijackings were what kept the pulse of every ex pat and Holy Planet reading tourist racing. However since the post election violence in early 2008 the police have cleaned up the streets, to use that dirty euphemism, however the reputation remains. It is one of those cities were even locals think that it is dangerous, which generally indicates there is some danger lurking about.
On my first morning in town I was having breakfast in a cafe, after having sat down at a table with some locals I had to return to the counter to collect a spoon. I left my bag attached to the seat, walked the three metres to the counter, collected my spoon and returned to the table. The woman sitting opposite me at the table immediately warned me "Never leave your bag like that. Sometimes even if you just look away someone will come and take it". Considering that the place was filled with men in suits, and a few elderly women whom I imagined to be beyond too much swift movement, I wondered whether the reputation rather than reality influenced the way people felt.
I subsequently started chatting to the guy sitting next to me about Nairobi and life in general. Nairobi is filled with matatus, the ubiquitous Toyota Hiace, which are used as share taxis, usually crammed full with 18 people, plus the driver and the bus boy. Some of them have been done up, new paintwork, images of the suffering Christ or invocations to Allah plastered on all the panels, plush (imitation) velvet interiors - one even had a big, flat screen TV in the back so the passengers could watch music videos as they had their ear drums blasted out. However, most are in a rather parlous state, bald tyres are standard, brakes are optional, and a driving licence and road rules mere urban myths that rear their ugly heads from time to time. As the number of matatus is high, and the fares quite low, the competition for passengers is frantic, a potential passenger is constantly in danger of being yanked from the street in to the waiting matatu, or being flattened by a speeding matatu, using the footpath as a road in an attempt to get ahead of the others and claim any potential passengers. Every day the news contains at least one story about a matatu crash, usually involving the loss of life. The guy in the café explained to me that in the society brimming with corruption that is Kenya the matatus are all owned by the police, so the police rarely worry about stopping the matatus for violations, they would only be eating in to their own profits !!
Despite the black cloud of fear that seems to hang over Nairobi, I actually found it quite a pleasant place. It's main streets are wide and tree lined, its altitude makes it quite cool, the streets are clean and there is a large park in the middle of town. Kenyans are used to foreigners, yet they are still more than happy to stop and have a chat and assist you in any way they can. I wandered in to an internet café and
after having trouble connecting my laptop I was assisted by a technician. When I returned to the same place later in the evening, the same technician recognised me, greeted me like an old friend and made sure that everything was working fine. About an hour later the technician reappeared and said "I am out", which apparently means "I am going" in Kenyan English. He was knocking off at the end of his shift and came and said goodbye to his new friend. The warm heart of Africa indeed.
There are thought to be less than 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, and they are found only in a small area in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda - until recently one of the most unstable areas in the world. Gorillas however are a big money maker for all three countries, and prices have shot up to $500US (that is about $123 million in Australian dollars) a permit. Damo and I managed to knock them down a bit which you can read all about HERE.
Once the bargaining ended, and despite never receiving the permit in our hand, almost before we knew it we were in the back of the troop carrier heading off to the trail head for the Susa group. The Susa group are the largest family of mountain gorillas with 40 members (the other four groups have 13, 16, 13 and 6 members) and the hardest to reach. We drove through small town after small town, the space between them filled with fields of bananas, sorghum and corn, and local kids who waved and yelled out "mzungu, mzungu !!!" like they had never seen a honky before. After about 40 minutes we reached a small town, parked up, introduced ourselves to each other, got our wooden walking sticks with a lovely kitsch carved gorilla, and headed off along a narrow path between the fields behind a man dressed in olive green with a big gun (allegedly for rogue buffaloes), and our guide . Before long we had attracted a crowd of thirty or forty kids, who followed us at a small distance, and steadfastly ignored the repeated attempts of the guide and his assistants to shoo them away. There 
was a little nervous tension and expectation in the air, which we all tried to cover up with conversation with our new tracking mates, a diverse mix of Swedes, older and younger Americans and ourselves.
After about thirty minutes walking we reached a metre high stone wall which marked the border of the park, as the path started to head up the side of the volcano. Once we crossed in to the park we entered the bamboo forest, thick, bare, green bamboo trunks stretching straight up, topped by a canopy of greenery.
Despite only sharing 95% of human DNA gorillas are clearly far clever than homo sapien sapien - they are vegetarian. They can weigh as 
much as 200 kilograms (females are about half that) and consume about 15% of their body weight in bamboo shoots, giant thistles and wild celery, with the odd insect for some protein. (OK, so not pure vegetarians)
After another hour or so walking the undergrowth started to appear, thick knee high grass, and bushes and vines feeling in the space between the bamboo trunks. We then came upon our four trackers. The trackers set out early in the morning and try and find the gorillas, and radio through to the guide to let him know where they are.
We left our bags with the trackers, and started to hack our way through the forest which with the change in altitude changed, far less bamboo. The undergrowth became thicker and darker the further we went. I had stupidly forgot to put on my long sleeve shirt, so I was trying to play a game of limbo to avoid the stinging nettles. Needless to stay I was largely unsuccessful and was soon itching with stings up and down my arms. Without warning, we appeared in a clearing and there in front of us were 8 or 10 gorillas spread across the clearing, two gorillas sitting 3 or 4 metres directly in front of us, munching away on bamboo, oblivious to us.
I was immediately struck by their size - gorillas are huge - thickly set, large heads, bulging biceps, long arms and thick fingers, broad chests, big bums and a thick, glossy almost radiant covering of jet black hair. There was a lot of gasping as we watched a group of two or three munching away on some bamboo, breaking the stalks with their hands, then chewing on the crunchy inner part, completely ignoring our presence.
The guides grouped us together, and then looking behind us I see a huge silverback sitting 5 or six metres behind us. This gorilla is massive - sitting on the ground, with only his shoulders and head showing above the thick brush - broad chest, thick arms, chopping block head and
across his lower back a strip of bristling, 
white hair. Suddenly I am reminded of King Kong, and can easily see how the idea of a massive gorilla was so easily insinuated in to the public consciousness - here is King Kong, a lot physically smaller than the movie, but almost as big in stature.
Gorilla families have a silverback, so called because as males reach maturity at between 8 and 15 years their hair on their lower back turns silver, at the top of the hierarchy. Further down the pecking order are the other silverbacks, younger black-back males, females and then infants. Most gorillas leave the group when they reach maturity. It is the silverback that dictates the days movements, which we witnessed near the end of our stay when the silverback decided it was time to go, and most of the gorillas scurried off ahead of him in to the bushes.
Not long after, Damien spots the silverback, even larger than the one I had spotted, sitting in the middle of the big group, surrounded by perhaps 10 to 15 gorillas. In this group are the huge silverback, a few infants and their mothers and some juveniles as well. We all watch in complete awe as a couple of infants wrestling with each other, jumping on each other, and rolling about like small furry balls. All the while the rest of the gorillas are constantly eating. The younger ones use their whole body to leverage shoots out of the ground, and as the bamboo is torn loose from the ground, the gorillas almost inevitably fall over backwards, then get up, dust themselves off and start eating. For as long as we watch them they munch away on the greenery.
The incredible spectacle we witnessed was a single group with five silverbacks all together at once- at one point each way we looked there was a silverback looking back at us.
Gorillas use a variety of means of communicating including facial expressions, gestures and calls. (Interesting at the San Francisco Zoo a gorilla has been trained to understand more than 100 words using a touch screen, however whilst the gorillas can use multiple words he is unable to construct sentences or acquire language) Being surrounded by so many silverbacks, we had the privilege of hearing a few go through the chest beating routine, producing a hair raising, deep and thumping call which reverberated through the forest.
As we watch this group at play, over to our right is another silverback who appears as though his work for the day is done. He is lying prostrate, on his back, hands behind his head stretched out sunning himself. He has a huge white belly sticking out, his eyes are closed and he his very relaxed. At one point he rolls over, still lying down he rests his head on his hands, opens his eyes for a while with a look of deep contemplation, and then goes back to sleep.
The guides are frequently moving us around, for our own safety, better views and to avoid crowding out smaller groups. The head guide wanders off away from the main group, and I follow close behind. As he cuts his way through some bushes we spot a silverback with an small infant. Interestingly in gorilla families when a mother dies the infant is often adopted and then reared by a silverback, creating the arresting spectacle of a 200 kilo behemoth, tenderly playing with a tiny infant gorilla, about the same size, and appearance, as a carnival stuffed toy. (Almost the same size relationship as King Kong and his paramour) As we approached the silverback he became a little perturbed, and with one hand in a single movement scooped up the infant and threw him on to his shoulder. The infant squirmed about, eventually sliding down the chest of the silverback, and ended up on its bum on the ground. The silverback decides it is time to leave, and gets up and wanders off with the infant scampering closely behind. (PICT 209)
We return to the main group and watch them for a while longer. I start to notice heir faces - the eyes are most striking, and the expressions are most human-like, whether playful or pensive, it is easy to slip in to anthropomorphising these looks, faces and acts. Likewise the sitting posture, including the beer gut, the use of the fingers to handle the food (and each other) and the manner of eating, reinforces the gorillas' humanness.
Being so close allows us to get a good look, and whilst they only glance at any of us a couple of times, you can 
clearly see how evolution didn't force much change over the millions of years that separate us. So much so that I start to see the resemblance with a few people I know - one ex-boss in particular springs to mind.
Eventually the main silverback decided it is time to move on, he stood up on all fours and immediately all the other gorillas turned around to pay attention. The silverback began to chase another large gorilla - and all the others begin to scuttle. Interestingly, despite their size, gorillas are relatively placid, and conflict is mostly restricted to shows of strength and vocal disputes. The silverback catches the target, taps him on the head, and then waddles off in to the bushes, with the others following not far behind.
As the main group move off we head back to where the lazing silverback was - he is now sitting up, happily chewing away, their is a glint in his eye as if to say about time I got some attention. We move a little closer to him, with Damo in the lead, and the silverback decides it is time to leg it. As you can see in the video, gorillas have a very particular way of moving on all fours, lumbering around with their bums in the air. Like myself, Damo seemed so intrigued by the way the silverback was moving that he got a little too close, and had to beat a hasty retreat - but all in the name of capturing that authentic experience. (INSERT VIDEO 224)
We get the five minute warning from our guide, and quickly search out a few of the fringe dwellers. Another silverback puts on a little show for us, posing on all fours, looking around for a while, a smile for the camera, and then collapsing on to the ground for a nanna-nap. We spot a few more in the bushes at a distance, and then our time is up, and we reluctantly drag ourselves away, trying to catch one last glimpse of these awesome animals.
We manage to capture these two hairy ones as we leave the clearing.
On the walk back to the cars we are again surrounded by children, who treat the mzungu (honkies) like we treat the gorillas. Every once in a while Damo and I pull or coordinated kid scaring move, on the count of three we turn around and run at the kids growling. The kids immediately scatter, with the look of fear in their eyes as though they are about to be eaten by the mzungu. Every one, them and us, ends up in fits of laughter, and yet the trick continues to work not matter how many times we pull it.
When we finally arrive back in our hotel in Ruhengeri we find our faithful friend waiting to direct us home
Getting to see the mountain gorillas was the last mission Damo and I had to take on before he heads home and I start to make my way to the north and the deserts. We had been convinced by all those we met who had forked out the ridiculously large amount of cash that the experience was that once in a lifetime must do thing that quickly extinguished the angst of paying. However, when we ran in to a Dutch guy in southern Uganda who told us that it was possible to get bargain or cancellation permits, our mission became a double, actually triple mission - to secure permits, at the last minute (of course we hadn't arranged anything beforehand) and at less than the full price - all this despite warning by all and sundry that permits were hard to come by, and a complete silence on the net, by tour companies and from other travellers about discount permits. We felt as though we were in an information black hole which as time progressed started to shed a little light on how the whole thing works but at the end left us more in the dark than ever.
Our ringing around in Uganda didn't prove to be too successful, one company had two spare permits but failed to get back to us, and nobody else want to play dice. We decided to throw caution to the wind, head down to Rwanda and the town nearest the gorilla tracking HQ and see what happened. We got in to town early in the evening, and on our way home from dinner saw a guide for a local tour company. We chatted to him, and he explained that there was a possibility of cancellations, which required us to negotiate with the guide on the particular day. We left our phone number with him, and started the waiting game. We also saw another tour company car on our walk back to the hotel, but we couldn't find the driver, so we didn't chase that one up - which turned out to be a little frustrating the next day.
We didn't receive any calls that morning, so we went to visit a guy who a Ugandan we met on a share taxi recommended. He treated us to an office breakfast, the full spread with some spicy and milky African tea, whilst telling us about how he was born in a refugee camp in Uganda, and only returned to Rwanda in the late 1990's. He confirmed that the cancellation permits did exist but were hard to find. He took our details and said he would ring around, but if worst came to worst he could find us a full priced permit in a day or two.
That day we wandered around town, and Damo met two Americans on his way to the Parks Authority HQ. The workers there turned out to be less than helpful, but on his way back Damo met a tour guide who told him that he had 5 cancellation permits that very morning - and if he had known we wanted them he would have sold them to us for $300. It turned out that it was his car that we had seen parked in the street the night before and he was the driver we had been unable to locate. Of course this discovery led to a fair bit of swearing under the breath, and a few statements starting with "If only..."
The guide recommended that we head out to the park HQ in the morning and wait around to see if there was a cancellation. He explained that some groups book multiple days with the gorillas and after the first or second day they don't want to go back, but that they only cancel at 6 in the morning when the guide goes to their hotel to collect them. How anyone could throw away the incredibly rare experience of seeing gorillas (whether for the first or twenty first time) and $500 was beyond me, but if that let me get in on the cheap, then so be it.
The next morning we set off with the two Americans, Greg and Jonathan, at just after six, there was a chill in the air but the sun was out and was slowly starting to warm the day. On the way our driver told us that he had 4 permits at full price, and I started to feel as though we were gently being corralled in to paying full price - but when we objected, he said that we would need to speak to the tour company guides when we got there. Damo and I decided that he would be the lead negotiator and that we would hang back and be the bad cop - giving him a chance to blame us for not being able to agree to a higher price.
We arrived at the park HQ and there were only two other cars there. Damo immediately got on the prowl and started asking anybody who looked like a guide about cancellation permits. More cars started arriving, and Damo stuck to the task but wasn't having much luck. A few of the guides we had previously met showed up and gave us hearty greetings. By about 7.45 there were around 20 cars in the parking lot but no sign of any cancellations.
We were starting to get a little nervous when a guy who worked for the park authority came and searched us out and asked if we were the four guys who called yesterday about cancellation permits - Yes, yes that's us we replied, as if he couldn't tell from the cut of our collective jibs that we were only people there who hadn't previously organised everything and paid out the big dollars. Ok he said, I think there has been some cancellations and I am waiting for a call to confirm this, so you can have some free tea and coffee over there and wait a little and we will see. Suddenly our stocks looked like they were on the rise, cancellation permit and a free coffee !!!
A little later a tall guide working for the biggest tour company arrived, greeted us all milling around the back of the car filled with nervous energy and told us that we might be lucky today. Damo who was very keen on seeing the biggest and farthest away group - Sussa - went off to see how we went about ensuring we got in to that group once we saw the rangers starting to sort people out in to groups. Damo made sure we had our name on the right list, despite the fact that we didn't have a permit. Out around 8.15 the tall guide returned and asked us if we had our permit. When we said no, he asked what were we waiting for, we should go in to the office and sort it out.
At this point I should explain what we understood of how the system worked. Groups visiting the gorilla are limited to 8 people per group, so with six gorillas families there is a limit of 48 permits a day. These permits are released by the park authorities and rapidly bought up by the tour companies, either as they get bookings or in reserve. The permits bought by tour companies may not be date specific, so it is possible that on some days there are empty spots, and walk in tourists like us can get these permits on the day and pay the fee directly to the park. Theoretically, therefore everybody ends up paying the full amount, unless a tourist who has paid for the permit cancels, which means that a permit that is valid for a specific day either goes unused or is sold a second time by the tour company to savvy tourists like us.
So Damo headed inside, and asked who he needed to talk to. When he was directed to the park authority staff, who indicated that he had to pay full price, he again had to go through the explanation of cancellation permits. He was then directed to the tall guy from the tour company and asked him to step outside. We saw them appear as we waited nervously behind the car, the caffeine rush quickly starting to kick in and we watched the bargaining process intently whilst trying to pretend we were disinterested. In the beginning they tried to hit Damo up for us to pay the full amount, and then as a special favour they cut $100 off, and then Damo pushed them town another 25 to $375. At this point, with all of the groups divided up and spread out across the lawn receiving their pre tracking briefing we were called over and filled in on the details. All three were inclined to accept the offer, but of course my inner tight arse was thinking - if this is the first day we have tried this, and they have exactly four spare permits and we are four, surely they will come down a little more - so I suggested $350. There was some further discussion but the guide appeared to be standing firm and getting a little angry as time ticked away. I tried to do a little bargaining myself, pointing out for him he was missing out on the chance of four permits being bought for a measly $25, and I showed him that I had the money in my wallet and was ready to go at $350. He didn't seem to be biting, and in fact was seemingly getting a little more pissed off.
The Americans agreed between themselves, and before we knew it the guide had slipped his hand in to Jonathon's and they were shaking on a deal. The guide then disappeared and we were left looking at each other wandering how we had been railroaded. My inner tight arse refused to accept that agreement had been reached, so Damo and I started to have an intense discussion, which mainly centred around me saying I would pay $350 maximum, and him telling me not to be an idiot to miss out on a once in a lifetime experience for 25 bucks, and being frustrated that the Americans had agreed to the price without us really having a chance to think about it. So we told the Americans that we weren't happy and that we were going to try and push the price down further, and they agreed that they would pay $375. We went in to the office where the guide was talking with the park staff, and he remained firm despite our request to split the payment to two at $375 and two at $350. Damo and I walked away and continued to argue between ourselves, him making all the salient points about how much sense it made to go that day and me sticking to my strongest suit - being a tightarse. After a brief discussion, and feeling very much as though time was running out and that we were missing out on an important briefing, I drew the line and went to tell the guide that only three people were going and that I wouldn't be joining them, again this didn't move him. As we walked out of the office Damo continued badgering me, and finally said he would pay the extra $25 for me, and then immediately realised that he would be paying $400 whilst everyone else paid less. The discussion continued, and when we returned to the office to tell of the changed circumstances, before we really had a chance to talk the guide agreed to $350 for us - and we were off to see the gorillas.
This is were things started to get really weird. The guide told us we should pay our driver (he was in no way related to any one we had spoken to) in front of the park staff, including the head honcho. The briefings had finished so we went back and stood around our car with the driver, rejoicing a little in our triumph. The guide appeared and was pissed off that we hadn't handed over our money yet to our driver. So we all paid the driver and that was the last we saw of our money or any discussion. We never received receipts, which is strange in a country obsessed by receipts, we never had to fill in our names or talk to the park staff again. As we headed out in the car to start the tracking, despite our elation, it all seemed a little strange.
One thing I noticed on my first day in Rwanda is that it is an incredibly clean country, roadways are bush, grass and then road - no great piles of rubbish, endless bits of plastic blown around by the wind at caught together by barriers. In town you wander around wondering who collects all the rubbish, no rotting garbage piles, no filthy piles of trash on empty blocks.
In futuristic Rwanda plastic bags are banned - that is right, in the whole country there are no plastic bags. Instead everything comes in paper bags - from sliced bread to vegetables from the market. A friend told us that if you bring in bread from Uganda, they make you take the bread out of its plastic bag and put it in a paper bag. The difference is very discernible, no clogged waterways, no eyesores along road sides and no dirty, smouldering piles of refuse.
Goes to show you how pathetic the political leadership in Australia is - a tiny, poverty stricken African country has band plastic bags, and it works and life doesn't suddenly come to a halt.
If love at first sight is possible then I think Damo and I have fallen head over heels for Rwanda. We have been here for a sum total of 3 and 1/2 days, and the friendless, openness, vibrancy, sense of humour, smiles and laughs of Rwandans have one us over, throw in some incredible scenery filled with rolling green hills covered in a patchwork of tilled fields up and down the hills, some sinuous lakes filling in the gaps, a cordillera of volcanoes poking through the clouds as a backdrop, a small town lulling with activity and an hour with some of the last mountain gorillas left in the world and we are well and truly sold. However, perhaps the most endearing thing about Rwanda is the sense of bizarreness that hangs in the air, where ever we go.
Today we headed out to a small lake near the border with Uganda. We caught a share taxi down to the turn off and then walked six kilometres down a track to the lake. Throughout our walk we came across lots of people, who all seemed at first surprised to see us, then overjoyed, and then very curious, many following along behind us for kilometres.
Damo has developed a multi-lingual hello game for this multi-lingual country. He goes through his lost of greetings to see how many correct responses he an get
"Amakuru?"
"Ni meza"
"Abari gani?"
"Mzuri"
"Ca va ?"
"Ca va bien"
"How are you ?"
"Fine, thank you"
Surprisingly, he hits four out of four almost every time.
On the way down to the lake we pass a school, and I decide to head in and see how things are. It is lunchtime and soon things become very chaotic. I end up in a classroom, with kids piling in, more and more and more, filling the room and surrounding me at the blackboard as I try my best to explain where Australia is in relation to them. Meanwhile outside Damo is putting on his eyebrow show, and is surrounded by probably a hundred kids. I escape the oppression in the classroom, which only attracts more people to surround Damo outside. Eventually we decide it is prudent to leave the school, and on our way out we are followed by a big group of kids. One of them touches Damo's bag, and the whole bizarreness and being surrounded leads to Damo snapping at the kid, who quickly slinks off amid the other kids calling him thief. By the time we make it down to the lake, we are left with only three or four kids, and when they get word that the Principal has returned to the school they all scamper off.
We find a café by the waterside and our delusions about being the only tourists there are rapidly smashed, a group of four or five roll up in a van from Uganda, and we see an older couple taking a boat ride on the lake.
I take a swim which the kids again find as a source of intense bemusement, a big group of them stand on the edge of the shore and watch me undress and splash about in the water. We watch the other tourists head off, after handing out a pencil (strictly one per child) to the kids who have been persistently begging since we got there. It is a strange sight to see this clearly malnourished kids, dressed in no more than rags, some high from sniffing glue and all wagging school, running around with pencils in their hand - probably wondering whether they can ear them. Damo wants to say something to the departing tourists, but the tension is broken when they laugh at him offering them pencils as they drive off.
We are met by the local social services co-coordinator who takes us to be big time tourism investors. He repeatedly tells us that the land is available here to buy, and whilst conceding to our point that the lake is beautiful, goes on at length about how it is undeveloped. Both Damo and I come away at the end of the conversation imagining how ruined the Lake will be in 10 years by inappropriate development right on the shore and gaggles of wealthy Europeans and Americans zapping about on noisy jet skis.
Suddenly the sky turns very grey, and dark thunder clouds march across the lake, lighting cracking across the sky with roaring thunder in tow. We decide to leg it, and just as we reach the outskirts of the first village, the sky opens up, and the initial thick, fat drops of rain, turn in to an almighty downpour, making us seek refuge outside a carpenters workshop under a tin roof. Again we are the main source of entertainment to the group of Rwandans who are trapped with us. Mzungu, mzungu, mzungu.
After about half an hour the rain holds up, the sky clears, and we are on our way again. By this time it is late afternoon, and there are even more people out walking on the road. Damo and I get our timed scare tactics going again, and even the older locals are joining in our laughter at the terrified kids. I develop a new tactic of shaking the kids' hands, and then deciding not to let go. This usually terrifies a kid, and when they can't run away they become even more terrified. Strangely, once I let go, they run off, and then look back and see me, and everyone else laughing, so they join in. One young girl chooses to run off through the gate, and is petrified when I follow. She continues in to the house and waits behind the door, so I follow. She promptly runs into another room and slams the door, crying out Mzungu, Mzungu !!! A couple of minutes later she gingerly reappears to see the mzungu still around.
We finally arrive back in the junction town where we got off the share taxi from Ruhengeri. Even in town we are followed where ever we go. As soon as we become stationary we are immediately surrounded by groups of kids and adults - most just watch but some ask questions. The crowds form tight circles are we are not really ever being able to escape. So I decide to grab one of the bicycle taxi boys' bikes and do a few laps of the town, which only bemuses even more people and makes the surrounding circles even larger. A whole day of being the centre of attention is starting to wear me down, and when a share taxi arrives we quickly jump on board, looking for some respite.
On the way back to Ruhengeri we play the Conductor game, yelling out the destination as we drive through small towns, and trying to identify or perhaps even convince bystanders that they want to go to where the share taxi is headed. We cause plenty of laughs, and manage to find a couple of passengers before the real conductor does, which ends in the driver telling his conductor off because the mizungus were doing a better job. The driver spends the remaining 30 minutes of the ride back explaining to me in French that it is much cheaper to buy left hand drive mini-vans, and that the government taxes everything too much. We again arrive in Ruhengeri on dark and are both worn out and amazed by Rwanda.
And of course the sweetest thing about Rwanda is that whilst everyone told us it is expensive, we keep tripping over cheap options - a nice hotel room, lunch for less than dollar, bus rides for less than a dollar -truly love at first sight.
We had the pleasure of meeting Godwin in Gisenyi, the Rwandan town on the border with Congo - just across from Goma. Godwin was born in a refugee camp in Uganda, and leads the lonely life of a local journalist, working for the leading English language newspaper in Rwanda, covering the goings on in Congo. No big expense accounts, no laptops and no satellite internet connections like the BBC and Al Jazira boys. Instead his phones and emails are tapped by the government, and when we met he was awaiting his paper to send him money so he could continue his work and go back to the Congo. And he has the misfortune of covering the absolute misery of Congo, a tragedy that not only are most in the West going out of their way to ignore but a story most Rwandans don't want to hear about either.
Godwin revealed some home truths about what was going on in the Congo, and told some rip roaring stories about meeting war lords and spotting bare-footed Chinese miners wandering about in small villages in Congo, (I have asked him to write a guest blog, so keep your eyes peeled) but his greatest wisdom came in a few choice comments he made during the day we spent with him.
- On the Congolese government
- " The Congo Government, that is not a serious government. They only control Kinshasa and a few other towns. There are generals who control areas bigger than Rwanda, they run markets, they even impose taxes"
- On the Congolese farmer
- "In Congo the only job they have is to dance...the soil is so fertile that food grows everywhere, even if you walk in the jungle there are bananas and cassava"
- On corruption, or the lack thereof, in Rwanda
- "If he (public official) eats even one dollar, he will be in jail for a very long time. Everywhere there is someone watching"
- In response to my question as to why local Rwandans chase after the most rickety looking buses (that are the most expensive) arriving at the bus terminal and form long queues
- "Ahh, you know, locals are ...., locals"
National borders are artificial constructs, and no more so than the colonial hangover that is Africa, however sometimes they do mark real and noticeable change. As we approached the Rwandan border from Uganda even the weather seemed to change, as five huge volcanoes reared up in front of use, indicating the border between these two East African nations.
Once we entered Rwanda everything seemed to change; the landscape changed from small treeless terraced and over-farmed rolling hills, to wild, thickly forested jutting hills, sculptured lakes winding between the hills with wispy layers of cloud settling in for the evening in the valleys; the people had the same appearance as Ugandans but they looked different, they looked more nervous, as though they were on edge, that kind of look that desperately poor people have - resigned yet still enjoying the misery of life; and of course we butted head with a new language barrier, pushing me to rack my brain for any French that remained.
We boarded the next to leave Hiace van taxi, and almost at once everybody began asking us for money, even the woman sitting on the seat in front of me. Perhaps the most well known phrase in English has now changed from "OK" or "coca-cola" to "Give me money". A couple of women sat next to me on the bus, the one immediately to my left had a small baby strapped to her back. I peered over to look at the baby, and as soon as it saw my face it began to bawl, scared at the very sight of a mzungu (the universally used Swahili word for whitey/honky) All of the women in the bus began to laugh at the either the frightened baby, the embarrassed mzungu or both. The woman sitting behind covered the babies head in a shawl but even that wasn't enough to stop the tears. The mother took the baby off her back and started feeding it - which proved to be a far quieter activity than mzungu spotting. However for the next hour on the trip every time the baby saw my face, it bawled, and everyone surrounding me broke in to raucous laughter, both at the baby and my feigned attempts to hide my face to prevent a further crying episode.
After the usual wait, as the twilight began to fade we set off heading towards Ruhengeri, gorilla tracking capital of the world. As soon as we started moving I noticed another difference, there were people everywhere, walking on both sides of the road, and often down the middle. Women were dressed in bright kanga (sarongs) seemingly all carrying small children on their backs, and making everything seem a little brighter and alive than even Uganda. The stops on the thirty kilometre trip we fairly frequent, dropping people off and picking people up. Every time we stopped a crowd gathered, the usual pointing and shouting Mzungu !!!, with the added twist of Give me money !! There was a strange divide between those who seemed surprised and petrified to see mzungu in their mist - usually shown by kids who spotted us and then bolted, or the passengers refusing to sit next to Damien in the front seat; or surprised and curious -usually shown by people pointing at us, coming up to shake hands, or yelling at us in a mix of Kinyarwanda, Kiswahili, French and English and then rolling around with side spitting laughter at almost anything we said to them.
When we finally reach Ruhengeri, darkness is setting in, so it is difficult to form any coherent impression of the place. The streets are unlit, so other than a few shop fronts throwing dim light on to the wide streets, and the odd car, it is difficult to make out anything in the darkness. We drive past a big touristy, hotel and then trickle in to the centre of town. The Hiace drops us off just behind a mobile cell phone promotional car, 3 foot high speakers sitting in the back blaring out music at full volume. There is a crowd surrounding the car, and the young kids on the outskirts are shaking their booty like they just don't care. Normally this would be most unsettling, the perfect conditions for a robbery, and we expect touts to come running at us, but instead Damien finds himself dancing with the kids, who are clearly appreciative of his interest in them, and start as Damien so aptly describes, smiling with their entire bodies. Not long after the car drives off and the kids, and everyone else disappear in to the night. We both look at each other and almost simultaneously say, "how weird is this ?"
Rwanda is infamous for what most consider to be the last real genocide of the 20th century, and with it being so recent, I expect things to be a little different. However, the general level of weirdness still arises with disturbing frequency as we wander around the streets.
Seems the AFL is getting a toe hold in Africa - by the way of Dennis Cometi's commentary.
Saw this sign out the front of a nursery in Dar Es Salaam, no idea what it means or why it is there.
Something to aim for I guess.
As Damien pointed out, travelling Loiterer style does involve an inordinate, and sometimes unbearable, amount of time getting around. Whether it is waiting around for a van to fill, or making seemingly endless stops to drop off or collect passengers, getting anywhere always takes time and patience.
Heading south from Kabale in southern Uganda to Rwanda we arrive at the bus stage by the side of the road just out of town to find there is a share taxi heading south for not much more than the bus. Share taxis in Uganda are an experience in themselves. Usually they are average sized Toyota sedans, which Ugandans cram seven people plus the driver in to. That is four in the back, two in the passenger seat, and one sharing the driver's seat with him. We count ourselves lucky that this one is only taking six, throw our bags in the boot and squash in the back with two distinguished looking middle aged gentleman. Not long in to our journey one of the passengers in the front introduces himself as Rubes, and tell us it is our lucky day as he is going to be our tour guide for the trip. He explains that he owns and runs a camp just outside of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, and as he loves his country Uganda he takes great pleasure in showing around tourists. When we explain we are thinking about tracking the gorillas in Uganda or Rwanda he introduces us to Sunday, sitting in the back with us. Sunday (yes, he was born on a Sunday and hence the name) has been a guide for the gorillas in Bwindi for the last 18 years. After the shit stopped hitting the fan for long enough in Rwanda for tourists to start coming back he went there to train Rwandan guides.
Rubes gave us a running commentary as we drove through the Ugandan countryside, hill after hill denuded of almost all tree cover, divided in to long thin cultivated parcels of dark green. Some hills had terraces on them, but most were steep inclines, ploughed and planted - you could almost see the soil sliding down the hill as you watched. Along the roadside and on the odd parcel of land are stands of eucalyptus, and the odd wattle tree. Rubes reminds us these are from Australia, and that they grow like weeds, he concedes that they are better than no trees but should be replaced with natives. The road continues to weave up, down, through, over and around the hills and we are afforded some picturesque views from the passes - back towards Lake Bunyoni, forward to the town of Kisoro, and the dramatic landscapes of the towering chain of volcanoes along the Uganda, Rwanda and DRC border.
Having just finished The Last King of Scotland, and not really seeing much physical evidence of a bizarre and traumatic eight years under Amin from 1971 to 1979, I was interested to see what Ugandans had to say about events in the recent past. To my first question of what do people think of Amin now, all three agreed that nobody remembers him well, and that the time of his rule was one of fear and danger.
Sunday explained that he was in grade 5 when Amin took power in 1971, almost as a way of trying to avoid talking about it in depth. I kept plugging away with my questions, and they opened up a little.
Sunday stated that Amin was illiterate, and that was a reason for so much of the violence and cruelty of those times. He was a military man, and military men are trained only to fight, when they have power they want to keep on fighting.
The passenger next to him said in those times everybody was afraid, They would just take people, anybody, from the street, from work, from their homes. Nobody ever felt safe.
Rubes, in a half hearted defence of Amin said that he did at least one good thing. When some farmers dug up a cow that had been slaughtered because of anthrax to eat, Amin sent a helicopter to the small little village and had them dealt with. Nobody can do this anymore lamented Rubes, however all three seemed to agree that this was a good thing.
I then asked what people thought about Musiveni (the current Ugandan President, who after two terms sought a third and is now seeking a fourth) All three moaned that while he had done some good things his refusal to give up power was disturbing. They all agreed that there was too much corruption in Uganda and that a clean, start was needed. Rubes told us he didn't like Musiveni because he wasn't environmentalist - he sold off forests to foreign investors to clear to grow sugar cane. We need a President like Kagame (Rwanda's charismatic President) When they asked him whether he wanted to be President after his second term, he said no, he would be too tired, he wants to have a normal life. Kagame is an environmentalist, there they protect forests, and stop people from clearing the land.
Rubes went on to explain that things were very different in Rwanda, the differences best encapsulated by his statement In Rwanda, things are different, there are traffic rules, and there isn't the corruption like Uganda. In Rwanda a law is a law, in Uganda it is..... Nothing ? Rwanda, here we come.
After a false start the day before, we headed out of town before sunrise and managed to make it to the chimp tracking station by around 7.30. We met our guide, had a little explanation about what we were likely to see and headed off in the the dark, dripping, the forest floor littered in wet leaves, the smell of decomposition thick in the air.
After about 10 minutes of walking we heard an almighty roar ring through the forest. This was answered by the well known screeching that sounds like a laugh. Our guide explained that his seasoned ear heard third distinct groups.
Not long after we spotted our first chimp, about 15 to 20 metres above us, sitting on a branch happily munching away on leaves. He gave us a glance and then went back to what he was doing. It was awe inspiring to watch what is effectively our immediate genetic predecessors, moving about in the trees. Using his tail, and his strong hands he looked at complete ease in the precarious looking canopy, walking along thin branches, and stretching out to reach other branches. Suddenly however the branch he was in began to sway towards the ground, and just as he launched himself for a nearby tree, the branch he had just been on came crashing down to the forest floor a couple of metres away from us. The noise of first the tree hitting the ground and reverberating through the forest, followed by the howls of a frightened chimpanzee was ear splitting. The chimp seemed to take offence at us witnessing his misjudgement and proceeded to try and first piss on us and then when they didn't work he started throwing his shit at us. Needless to say we scampered.
A bit of tramping through the bush, and listening carefully and we stumbled upon various groups of around two or three mothers with there infants. The chimps remained high up in the tops of the trees, but they were keeping a keen eye on us. At one stage on of the infants took a keen interest in us, and when his mother wasn't looking he did a little jumping dance for us, ran off, and then came back and did it again.
The strange thing was that despite the distance, with the chimps probably 10-15 metres up and 10-15 metres away, every now and then, particularly the babies would stare you straight in the eye. It was if they were trying to work out exactly what you were and how you fit in to the scheme of things. It was always fleeting, but it made me feel as though I was looking at a mind that was probably not to distant to mind, that was likely to be having similar thoughts to mine.
The chimps were fairly mobile, so we followed them around, finding new groups here and there. At one point we were surrounded by them, maybe 15 or twenty chimps jumping about in the trees above us. I was in awe of their size and their incredibly wide arm span which let them flit about in the thin canopy - running along branches and leaping from tree to tree. The size of their hands, and length of the fingers also surprised me, and watching them use their hands to grip the tree branches, or pull fruit off the branches made them look very, very human.
I found myself thinking how happy I was that I never visit zoos, both in the sense that seeing chimps for the first time meant I was surprised by their size and agility and their almost humanness, and enjoying the privilege of visiting the chimps on their own turf without really disturbing them. (This group of chimps has been habituated for human contact over a period of years, meaning they can tolerate our presence rather than immediately fleeing)
We managed to stumble across a large male, who was more than happy to pose for a few photos for us. He seemed mildly amused by us staring up at him, and after checking us out for a while, he turned away and got stuck in to eating some leaves - a far more interesting activity than human spotting.
We heard a few more loud calls from some males so we headed off to see if we could 
track them down, and perhaps if we were lucky, stumble on some that were down on ground level.
As we were wandering around we heard a series of loud, thumping noises, like drums ringing out through the forest.
Our guide explained to us that this was a chimp of the ground wacking his legs against the exposed roots of trees. He explained that they do this to signal to other chimps when they are on the ground. We scampered along the track to the source of the sound but there was no sign of the chimp. The guide explained that the chimps like to hide in the thick undergrowth and was probably watching us go by without revealing itself.
The clouds were starting to clear and the sun was getting higher in the sky allowing more light to penetrate to the forest floor. Damo with his hawk-eye spotted a chimp relaxing in his day nest. Chimps construct nests every evening to sleep in, and also build them in the day when they have finished feeding in the morning. We missed the actual construction but the guide explained that the chimp will collect a few branches and throw the nest together in a minute or two.
As we sat and watched the chimp every once in a while he would peer over the edge of the nest and check out what we were doing. If you look carefully at the photo you can see the pale part of the bottom of his face and his eyes intensely gazing at the camera.
Unfortunately our hour was almost up, however we had one final stroke of luck. Not far from the nest was another male chimp, living the good life. Put a beer in his hand and you are looking at Homer Simpson.
Riding along in the backwoods of Uganda in a mini-bus, the bus boy handed me his record book to hold so he could help a few passengers alight. Out of curiosity I started looking through it noticing that a detailed record was kept for each journey. Beneath the list of money received from passengers were two further headings traffic and call boys.
When I inquired, the bus boy explained to me that traffic meant the traffic police, and the figure was the total amount of bribes paid to traffic police for each journey. Call boys meant the touts, locals who would round up passengers in town or at the bus station before the bus was ready to head off, the bus boy explained that the touts received 4000 Ugandan shillings (US$2) when they filled the minibus - around 15 to 20 passengers. (We were paying about $5 for a four hour journey, which the mini-bus would make two per day, passenger numbers willing)
When I saw the mundane way that these two items are recorded it gives them legitimacy, they become an accepted, albeit begrudgingly, cost of doing business. Despite neither of them providing any real benefit: traffic police let the most unsafe and overloaded vehicles fly pass as long as long as they pay their tribute and touts collect people who arrive at the bus station anyway, operators seem to accept them as a cost of doing business (and providing a real service) and the wheel just keeps turning - one wonders why anyone bothers !!
Every country I have been to so far in Africa has the phenomena of the mini-cinema. Across the continent from little shacks that a decent gust of wind would blow over to large, public halls there are little cinemas or movie houses shocking the latest in Hollywood blockbusters, a small selection of Bollywood hits, classic shoot'em up action movies like Rocky, Rambo or anything with Chuck Norris or Jean Claude Van Damme, some Chinese or Hong Kong martial arts epics of very dubious quality and sometimes European football. They are usually easy to spot because they have hand painted pictures of gun totting action heroes or suave male leads all over the front entrance.
Inside they range from a small TV with the volume turned up to full distortion, surrounded by a few chairs, to a huge screen, the full stereo system and rows of seats. The daily schedule is usually put up out the front on a blackboard, but a few I have seen look like the schedule hasn't changed since last century. Some buildings are purpose built but most are simple shacks, the walls covered in old plastic sacks to try and keep the light out.
After spending a whole day in a minibus in Kenya, I rolled in to Archer's Rest, what could be only described as a frontier town. The frontier here is between the paved road and the corrugated, potholed rock strewn, dusty nightmare that stretches another thousand kilometres to the border with Ethiopia and is sometimes optimistically called a road. However, it also sees to be the frontier between lawful Kenya and the Wild West like country of the tribal pastoral lands of the north, a region surrounded by unstable neighbours - Somalia to the east, Sudan to the west and Ethiopia to the north, and filled with cheap guns - every shepherd carries an AK47, cattle thieves, violence and revenge. The night before two young shepherd boys had their throats slit by Somali cattle rustlers, and the whole town was talking about it. The settlement is filled with soldiers, who all wander about with automatic weapons slung over their shoulder. The bar I walked through had ten tables all filled with soldiers, in various states of undress, each with a weapon in one hand and beer or whisky in the other. The soldiers have an unenviable jobs, supposedly providing protection to the people, they are often required to take cattle from one group who have allegedly stolen them and return them to their original owners. Theft is so prevalent, and military intervention so apparently capricious that neither those they are sent to protect nor the enemy respect the Kenyan military, and out of the constant fear of attack the soldiers never put down their guns - I saw a few take them to the toilet, As we were drinking we heard a few gunshots ring out in the distance and the local guy who had befriended me on the bus explained that sometimes some soldiers got a little drunk and let a few rounds off. Needless to say I went to bed fairly early that night. The Chinese, who are there to build the road -the modern equivalent of the goldfields, roll in to town in their huge dump trucks every evening to complete the Wild West picture.
As I was sauntering through town looking for dinner I stumbled across the local cinema, easily spotted by the groups of kids surrounding the squat, square building, peering in through the gaps in the walls to catch a glimpse of a Hong Kong martial arts fight 'em action thriller. The doorman let me peer inside, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside it was like looking back through time. I imagined this is what the picture houses in rural Australia, in which my father used to describe he rolled jaffas down the aisles during the Saturday evening pictures, looked like. There were three columns of seats, arranged in rows of around twenty, filled to the brim with locals who seemed to be more entertained by what was going on in the audience than any of the action on the screen. I didn't see anyone making out or holding hands, but then I wonder if even that was allowed in socially conservative post war Australia. The movie came to an end, the house lights came up, and people had that same wistful look of wishing the fantasy could have distracted them from their mundane lives a little longer as they filed out the door.
Whilst the past may well be a foreign country, sometimes a foreign country is the past.
Somehow find myself one of five, squashed in to a little Toyota Corolla - four of us in the back, heading to Lake Victoria, after the seemingly endless torrential downpour peters out under a still threateningly ominous grey sky on a slap dash organised fishing trip. We - an Irishman, two Dutchies, Damo and myself, had agreed the night before to jaunt on Lake Victoria, we drank more beer and the night dragged on. The rain sucked our enthusiasm, the Irishman appeared saw our faces as grey as the clouds and returned to bed. The Dutchies showed up at 9, dressed to the nines in their best beach going gear, a taxi was called, and an hour later we found ourselves wandering in to the rather makeshift and filthy looking harbour looking shabbier than us, in a small town on the shores of Lake Victoria, with shopping a basket full of beer. The only thing that looked greyer, wetter and dirtier than the town was the lake. The storm had whipped up the lake in to a choppy mess, waves running across each other, and the menacing clouds looked a downpour could start any minute.
We found our fisherman, and after some further bargaining we finally managed to get on the boat and set out. Our fishing trip turned out to be a watch two local guys fish whilst drinking and trying to not look at the horizon to avoid getting sea sick (on a lake) The chop turned out to be bearable as we motored along at about the speed of a pensioner on a walking frame going up a hill. The sun came out, we had let out all our hooks, so we found a little beach and dried ourselves out. On the way back we managed to lose our hooks and floats and motored around for nearly an hour. When we reeled in the line we had two very, small fish - no gigantic Nile perch for us. We headed back to land, and were very glad to scramble off the boat on to terra ferma.
On the way out of the port our taxi was stopped at the gate by the security guards who held out his hand and was asking for a little something for his trouble. Damo, in a stroke of genius, wound down his window and said, "No, no, no problem, no corruption in Uganda", and with that our taxi driver gunned it and left the gate in our dust.
I think we may have broken two records today in one. We needed to go
about 40 kilometres north of Masindi, a fairly decent sized town in the
north west of Uganda, to try and track some chimpanzees. I went to the
matata terminal (matata is the Ugandan word for the ubiquitous Toyota
Hiaces that have become Africa's share taxis and therefore main mode of
transport) at around 7.30 and the right matata was pointed out and I was
instructed to return in an hour for departure. Damo and I showed up an
hour later to greet an empty matata - not a good sign in a country where
nothing leaves before it is full. So we waited, and we waited and then
when we had finished waiting, we waited some more. So that, we didn't
actually leave the terminal until 12.30. We then of course drove through
town to the petrol station to put some air in the tyres and get some
petty. By this point it started to rain so we had to unpack our bags off
the roof and throw them in the back.
By this stage however we had probably already set a record, Damo counted
up 26 passengers plus three babies - 4 rows of 4, the driver and two
passengers in the front, and the two money collectors/luggage boys
squeezed in to the front two rows - oh, and there were also three babies
on board !!!
We finally left down and the rain pelted down, and motored along at a
decent speed, stopping now and then to drop folks off, and each time
requiring a roll start. We eventually made it to our destination at
around 2.30 - six hours after we started waiting. So it took us six
hours to cover 40 kilometres - and the killer - turns out that they
don't track chimps there any more, so back on the road trying to hitch a
lift. We finally made it back to Masindi at around 7 pm - a long day
going nowhere !!!
Christianity and Africa have a very long and tortured relationship. Bringing Christ to the savages was one one of the main justifications for the scramble for Africa in the 1800's, providing a cloak for some of the most ghastly deeds of the colonisers relieving the white man's burden. I was surprised to discover that the same evangelising spirit is still alive and well today, the justification has altered slightly to helping bring development to Africa, but the motivation seems the same. In the space of two days in Uganda we managed to come across three different groups of missionaries - strangely all American, each more disturbing than the next.
In Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda we sat by the side of the iron red road, in the middle of a n iconical thick, green rain forest, seeking shade under a towering tree, from the scorching sun that burned ever more strongly as it made its way to its apex in the sky. We had seen the chimps in the morning, and were trying our luck waiting for a lift to take us up to the Nile and the reputably most powerful waterfall in the world. Very few cars passed in either direction, so when a red Landcruiser ambled up and stopped for us we quickly ran for the driver and began our pleading. The driver, a Ugandan heard us out and then said it was up to his guests, who conversed between themselves and agreed to take us on board. We threw are bags in the back and were soon motoring away.
It turned out that the elderly passengers where in fact the general counsel for the Church of the Latter Day Saints in Africa. He and his wife lived in South Africa, and travelled about Africa dealing with the legal problems of the Church all the way up to Sudan. After a while it seemed the driver was bored of his passengers, and when we got on to talking about safety and driving in Uganda he seemed to relish with glee answering Damo's question about whether he had been hijacked.
"Twice" he replied coolly, without battering an eyelid, "once on this very road and once in Kampala." We pressed him for details, and despite the looks of fear of the face of his passengers, he recounted both events in detail. He explained he was driving down this same road with an English tourist when he saw some soldiers on the road, he slowed down and as he drew close it was too late when he realised that they were in fact LRA soldiers (Lord's Resistance Soldiers - a wacko religious cult that wants Uganda run under the Ten Commandments, and in twenty years of fighting has managed to break all of these commandments. They are most famous for recruiting child soldiers, and routinely hacking off the limbs of those who are alleged to have helped the Ugandan army ) He said he could tell this because they were all shabbily dressed. When he wound down his window to talk to them the stench was horrendous, they all live in the bush, never wash and eat plenty of raw meat. When they were distracted for a moment he floored the accelerator and as they drove off the soldiers began firing at him. One bullet grazed his head (he showed us the scar) and another hit him in the shoulder. He managed to get away without any further injury. When they arrived at the camp the English tourist insist that he fly back to Kampala immediately, and then got on to a plane to England and has never returned to Uganda. The driver spent a couple of months is hospital, fearful that he would never be able to use his arm again, but he eventually recovered. The second time was when he was driving in Kampala, and stopped at a traffic light. A woman with a gun jumped in the back seat and told him to drive or she would shoot. He drove for a couple of hours out of Kampala, and then the car ran out of fuel before they had reached their destination. The woman directed him to a fuel station, and when she stepped out, he switched on the reserve tank she didn't know about, and floored the car to make another getaway.
Naturally both Damo and I were quite impressed, but both his passengers had become very quiet and had become a little more pale than they originally had been. The driver noticed the looks of fear and reassured them, "But all that was a couple of years ago, things are much safer now !!!"
We reached the river just in time to wander down to the bank and jump aboard the tour boat that ran up the river to the falls. Despite the boat being full with a little pleading we were let on, and secured a space on the roof. The boat filled up, and then we set off and crossed the river and picked up even more tourists - a large group of Texans, with accents as broad as a Stetson's rim, who all headed straight up on top of the boat and pulled out their lens envy inducing cameras. Wondering why there was such a big group of Americans in Uganda, things became clear when a Texan explained they all worked in a hospital and had come to Uganda to do some voluntary medical work - which sounds all hunky dory. My interest was pricked though when I noticed one of the women had a t-shirt on with a large red stain in the middle of it behind the words "I have been saved by just one drop of the blood of Jesus".
Each time the boat slowed as we drew close to some hippos or crocs, it would lean to one side almost tipping as everybody moved towards the edge to get a better look - or better photo, of the nearby hippos, crocs, gazelle or birds. Between spotting lots of hippos frolicking in the shallows, and a few crocodiles sunning themselves on the bank, we got talking to one of the doctors who explained that this was his seventh trip to Uganda. They came here at the invitation of a Ugandan who had been in Texas, and went around performing surgery in the makeshift theatres they set up in churches in small towns. (Apparently hernias and goitres caused by over work and poor diet and lack of iodine are the main problems)
After two hours in the hot sun the boat eventually reached the falls, and from a safe distance of a couple of hundred metres we saw the Nile squeezed in to a gap in narrow canyon about seven metres wide. The water thundered through, bouncing around and throwing spray up in the air, the pool below was constantly churning, and the boat had to fight hard against the current to maintain its position. The return journey was a much more sedate affair, the boat riding the current, and their being little interest in the animals that had already been spotted on the journey up river.
The next morning at camp, Damo in his inimitable way managed to chat up a group of Americans who had a car and were heading out of the Park that morning. They agreed to take us along, and we didn't hesitate to join them. As we motored along we got to talking and discovered that they were a group of vets, and a couple of vet science students - as Damo aptly named them - Vets for Jesus, curiously all female. They had come out to Uganda to work on a program run by an American vet, who helped some local pastoralists improve their animal welfare work. One of the vets explained that they went around to different villages, treated some animals, gave talks about animal welfare, and shared the word of Jesus - though it wasn't made clear whether that was with the animals or the pastoralists I got the general idea.
Later, in a conversation between themselves, the most senior vet explained that the woman who ran the project had gone to bible college for a year, and then had tested her missionary zeal in the States before coming to Uganda. Without missing a beat she said "Here parents haven't been saved, so they couldn't participate, but she bore witness to them..." I wanted to pipe up and ask about a million questions about being saved, but everybody else seemed to understand what being saved meant, and I didn't want to jeopardise our free ride. Later the younger vet students were talking amongst themselves about the names they would get when they were married - despite a couple not liking there new names there was no suggestion that they wouldn't take them on.
As we drove along my mind was ticking away, wondering at how scientifically well educated people can swallow all that stuff about being saved and Jesus' blood. Sure you can believe in a higher power - call her what you like, but how do Evangelical vets deal with evolution, or the pretty obvious scientific impossibilities of all those miracles required to save people. And further, what kind of whacko religion separates the saved from the um unsaved ? Does that mean people like me, probably beyond saving, miss out on all the fun and games that are no doubt going on in the Evangelical heaven ?
And beyond all that whackiness is the strange spreading the Word idea. Most missionaries seem to miss that historical context in which they are operating - the whole opening up of Africa to bring salvation. Sure they are doing good things, and are full of good intentions - but is that enough - isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions ? One wonders what the locals who see those of themselves who have converted to Christianity, and are therefore helped by missionaries, think. Do they consider trading in their own culture and beliefs to get the benefits of the missionaries ? In a world were tradition is constantly under threat, should Christianity be sticking its nose in. And if the answer is yes, shouldn't it be done in a more non partisan way - without dragging religion in to the whole bargain.
In the end, the missionaries are the side of religion that causes me the most difficulty - they waltz about saying I have the right answer, and the way you do things now is wrong. If you join me then you will be rewarded and if not you will be condemned. Who really wants to join a club like that ?
