Titbits

On my way back to the Netherlands. Sitting here in the airport lounge of Nairobi waiting some 6 hours for my KLM flight to Amsterdam. I just arrived here from Kigali on Kenya Airways. So far so good. Let's hope my suitcase will make it too, so my overall score of actually arriving with my suitcase at the final destination remains over 50%.

This will probably be the last post from Africa for a while as my assignment is over and there's no new exotic assignment on the horizon. This last one - as tradition demands - will be a collection of small little titbits of info and experiences.

Grenade

This just in! Last night somebody, probably a Hutu hard-liner, threw a grenade into the Kigali Memorial (the genocide museum), killing one police officer. It is still genocide memorial week and, like I stated in my previous post, the genocide ideology is still very much alive in some parts. Scary people.

Off the Chart!

Restaurants here are funny. Whenever you go out with 3 or more persons (that number seems to be the tipping point) there is a 99+ % chance that at least one of the meals you ordered is not available. At every restaurant! The best part is that they don't always say that right away. Sometimes you actually eat your entrées first (for the Americans out there: entrées is French for starters, not main courses), wait for another 15 or so minutes and then the waiter comes out to tell you your main course is not available.

White Ride

Taxi's are cute too. They have local and tourist prices. Well, it's actually the Muzungu price. Muzungu is local for white person, like Mulungu in Moçambique, Makamba in Curaçao or Bakra in Surinam. Once I went out with a Rwandan friend and as we left the place, he stopped a cab an negotiated a good price. As we were about to get in, the cab driver noticed me and immediately doubled the price. Of course, my friend didn't agree. The cab driver started pleading with him along the lines of "But he's Muzungu! You have to give me this opportunity to make him pay. It's the system!". He was more or less annoyed at my friend for denying him this opportunity to make me overpay.

However, people, including taxi drivers, are very trusting. On more that one occasion I got in a taxi, only to find out later that either I didn't have enough cash on me or that the diver didn't have change. "No problem! You pay me next time" and that was it. He would find me one way or another and than I would pay. Can you imagine that in 'our' world?

Street Selling

Kigali is nowhere near Maputo when it comes to selling stuff on the street. As you probably remember from previous posts, the Maputo streets combined make up one large open air mobile shopping mall. Guys run around selling everything. Kigali not. Apart from a whole bunch of boys selling prepaid cards for your mobile phone, you hardly find street sellers. It is mainly limited to some guys selling magazines and newspapers and some other selling maps. Yes, maps. Maps of the city, the country or the continent. And not street maps, but the kind you hang on your office wall. I had no idea you could make a living of maps.

What you can also do on the street is make a phone call. No, not with your cell phone and not in a public phone. Well.... some sort of public phone. You have guys walking the street carrying what looks like a desk phone. Just like the one in your office. The difference is that there is as small antenna attached to it. These guys are some sort of mobile public pay phone. You stop them, make your call and then pay for it. It's a funny sight seeing someone making a phone call holding the horn while some guys is standing next to him holding a telephone base station in his hands.

Street Labour

As I mentioned before the streets are very clean and that is partially due to a local tradition. On every last Saturday of the month, between 9 and 11 am, people stop doing their usual routine, but all go on the street to clean it. I'm not kidding! The government has introduced this form of community service and all participate. Cars on the road stop, people get out and clean the street! Can you imagine this? In Holland you only have to clean the streets for some 80 hours after having committed at least 3 murders in the first degree!

By the way, if you ever intend to travel to Rwanda, do not bring plastic bags. They will not allow plastic bags to enter the country and you will have to leave it at the airport customs. All stores also pack your groceries in brown paper bags.

Night Life... or dead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what some of you really want to know is, what the night life in Kigali is like. The short version is that night life in Kigali is slow... barely existent. You have 2 dance clubs, one dance lounge and a small handful of bar restaurants. One particular bar restaurant is quite okay. It's called Republika and you can eat outside on a terrace overlooking the city. Inside is the bar where people have drinks on a weekend night before they go out. They play way-too-loud R&B music on way-too-small speakers. The music is totally distorted, but so are the ears of the staff, since none of them seems to notice it. And it is like that every night.

Then there's the B Club (or Big Club, as no one seems to agree on the name). That's a very pretty lounge place. Trendy interior and trendy prices! Normally you pay some EUR 1.20 for a beer in Kigali night-life, but in B-Club a double vodka red-bull will set you back some 14 Euros.

Then there are the two clubs. Cadillac is a place mostly visited by locals, with the occasional muzungu. They play mostly R&B, hip-hop and local dance beats. When you walk in this place, you think you've just time-travelled back to the late seventies. It's dark! Very dark and the lighting exists of tons and tons of blacklight (the purple UV light that makes your fake peroxide blonde hair light up like Baghdad) and a whole bunch of light tubes. Remember those? The transparent garden hoses with running lights in it. These days you only see these being used as Xmas lighting at home, but in Cadillac it still has the coolness factor.

The most famous dance club is Planet Club, but all locals refer to it as KBC. It is located in the Kigali Business Centre, and business is definitely something that goes on in there. The place itself is quite dark and divided into several sections. There's the dance floor, a bar area, a section with pool tables and a large lounge area with comfortable couches, beds and two large film projection screens.

Even though it is a normal club, frequented by locals and foreigners, it is also very much a working girl place and therefore quite dodgy if you're a white male and not interested. You will be hunted down and after she has shown her 3 best dance moves in front of you, she will tell you the code words: "Will you buy me a beer?". Saying 'No!' means "I'm not interested" and she'll walk away looking for the next victim.

Of course, naive me didn't understand that at first. The first night I was there, I was standing at the bar ordering a beer for me and a colleague. A girl came up and popped the question. In Mozambique it was not unusual that a girl would ask the same question, but there it meant exactly that. You're a white guy in a position to buy a local person a drink. No strings attached. So in Planet I decided to be nice and actually gave the girl a beer. She just looked at it with surprise and then gave it back telling me she didn't actually want a beer. That's when I realised my mistake. Oh well, more beer for me!

There's one thing I see in Kigali night clubs which I haven't seen anywhere before. The large number of guys that are sleeping in a club. Once it gets late, you will notice guys all around you sleeping. In their chair, on a couch, with their head on a table, in a barstool leaning on the bar, everywhere! It's bizarre! Go home!

Musicology

I will leave you, Rwanda and this blog with the most spectacular item I have found in Africa. Forget about the elephants, shrimps, the cars and even the gorilla's. The best item to be found here is the following Hifi Stereo Set (for those of you that think Wham! is a laundry detergent: HiFi stands for High Fidelity and that was as spectacular back then as Dolby DTS THX Digital 7.1 Surround is today). This is the mother of all sound systems! I think we should all save up and buy it for James' new apartment. It will come in handy during his house-warming party. I found in a local supermarket, which - by the way - also sells tennis rackets, garden chairs and pool tables. And it's only 800 Euros!

Do notice the opening at the top. That space is especially carved in there for your CD player, which is not included. What?? You thought that 800 Euros would by you ALL those lights AND a CD player?? Get real!!

The G-word

Back then in January when I started telling people I would go to Rwanda for my work, almost everyone made the same face. It's that face you make when somebody tells you that tonight you'll be eating in a 5 star restaurant having steamed mice meat accompanied by mashed leeches with a cockroaches syrup. It's that combination of surprise and disgust, mixed in with a little bit of shock. And they all repeat that word slowly, as if they haven't heard it right: "Ru...wan...da?!?!?"

And that is for one single reason only. What happened back then in 1994. Yes, it has been 14 years ago and it lasted about 100 days, but most people seem to have that image stuck in their minds as if today it is still a daily thing. Well, actually it still happens sporadically in the very remote villages. I am, of course, talking about the genocide. There's no way you can do a blog on staying in Rwanda and not touching this subject at all. I will not start with a history lesson here, apart from saying that it is a lot more complex than the simple version of Hutu's trying to wipe out Tutsi's. For starters, they executed their own as well.

I'll admit, apart from watching Hotel Rwanda a few years ago, I actually did not know much about the story. Back then when it happened, I had just started my first job at the bank in Curaçao. That island is already not known for its focus on world affairs and the fact that the story was barely told outside this country didn't help either. I could've - and probably should've - read up on it before coming here. In the end, it didn't matter that much, as once you get here, you're knowledge on the subject will quickly be updated, as it still dominates life over here.

Not that people talk about it much. Quite the contrary, but prosecution of the leaders is still going on, some hard-liners are still hidden in the jungles of D.R. Congo, a lot of campaigning is done to ensure this never happens again and of course, many people here lost close family members. Some lost all of them.

Some three weeks ago I visited the Kigali Memorial which is a 'museum' dedicated to tell the story, to educate on the subject for prevention purposes and to bury the unidentifiable bodies still found today. It is a large two story house with a very well kept garden. The ground floor tells the story of the genocide starting with the colonisation and how the different occupants contributed to the division between the Hutu's and the Tutsi's. It is mostly text, photo's and a few 2 minute video interviews with survivors. In the centre are two different rooms. One with a large collection of family portraits of victims and the second with mainly bones coming from dug up mass graves. A bit eerie.

The second floor is a collection of small rooms, each dedicated to a different genocide in the history of the world. Obviously there is one dedicated to the second world war, but also to the killing fields of Cambodia and the fairly recent Serbian acts of genocide. Yes, Europe is actually quite the 'leader' on the subject. Oh yeah, there's also one room dedicated to the Turkish acts in Armenia some 100 years ago. Yes, while European governments are disputing among themselves and with Turkey whether or not to label it a genocide, it seems that the Rwandans have already officially made up their minds.

Then April 7th is Genocide Memorial day. The entire country goes into some sort of mourning. It's a countrywide funeral and everybody attends. Restaurants and bars close, sport activities are put on hold and people are quite subdued. My hotel even drains the swimming pool and closes the gym for the entire week. It is an extensive and lengthy commemoration, probably also due to the fact that people have different days in which they lost their family members.

There are calls out there suggesting that it has been a while ago now and that the people should start looking forward and not mourn the past any more. At least not to this extend. It's a tough and sensitive subject and let's face it! 14 years is not that long ago. It is less than a single generation! By comparison, how many years has the second world war been commemorated?

Well, whatever the result of that debate, the genocide is still very much a subject today. Just two weeks ago was the 4th annual Rwandan Film Festival. They quite appropriately named it Hillywood. The head of the organising committee announced that this year it would be less 'heavy' as previous years and they would even have "some comedies programmed". Well, some colleagues and myself attended most of the evenings and studied the entire programme, but the only comic part about the festival was the state of the technology used. Programmes printed after the festival, screens that waved in the wind, copied or - more likely - downloaded movies with Dutch (!) subtitles and an inflatable screen that simply did not inflate.

And the movies were all on sub-Sahara Africa and what happens or happened there. Let's face it, not much of it is great material for a comedy. Also, as a film-maker said with some disappointment, they do not get subsidies to make non-historical movies. The American and European NGO's that provide the funds have objectives to educate and confront the viewers, more than to stimulate the art of film making in Africa.

In the end I only watched one movie. It was on the subject of - obviously - the genocide. It is called Shake Hands with the Devil and it is the story of the Canadian United Nations General at the time of the genocide. It describes mostly how he, his staff and soldiers, the UN and the local and international political community acted during these 100 days. It is based on his autobiography and a very insightful story, especially from a political standpoint.

Other movies on the subject are, of course Hotel Rwanda and Shooting Dogs. The later is called that, because that's all the UN soldiers were authorised to do. They shot the dogs that were feeding themselves on the rotting corpses lying on the streets... In the first week I also met a French film crew, which had been here for months and were shooting a movie on the role of the French before and during the genocide. It is not a pretty story. The working title - and probably the release title as well - is Operation Turquoise.

For the time being, many persons will still make that face when hearing of coming here. That will change at some point, as this is a nice country with some very nice people. True, a lot of them did not-so-nice things back then and the country has been trying to deal with it since. They've abolished the registration of tribe on identity cards and spend a lot of energy in education. As a friend of mine here said, when asked whether he was Hutu or Tutsi: "We are all Rwandans".

Gorillas in the Mist.... and Rain!

Riiiiiiing! Riiiiiiiing! @#&#$! My 04:00 am wake up call! On a Saturday morning! Isn't that normally a time to order your last beer before you go home...? Well, reason for this early call was our 04:30 pick up at the hotel to go on a 2.5 hour drive to Kinigi. What's at Kinigi? Volcanoes Park. And what's at Volcanoes Park? Volcanoes of course! Some 8 of them, of which 3 are actually active. But that wasn't the reason we were going there. No, we were going to track down and observe a few of the remaining 650 gorilla's in the world. Yes, we were on the hunt for King Kong!

The driver came on time, we loaded up the car with water, food, camera's and spare clothes and we were on our way. During the ride I was trying to get back to dreamland, but as I soon found out, that is impossible in this country. Rwanda is not nicknamed Land of Thousand Hills for nothing. That implies that there's basically no such thing as a straight road. The entire ride was a continuous mountain road and one with many holes in it too. No way you could even think of dozing off.

The driver was a fast dude too. He was racing this road, which - by the way - was unlit and thus pitch dark. After less than two hours we were at the head office of the park keepers. There we got introduced to our guides and the rest of the group of 8, all from England. We also found out that we might actually come as close as 7 meters from a gorilla. Seven meters! Now that was stuff to get excited about. Other instructions included not using flash lights and it is okay to look a gorilla in the eye. It is okay!!! For you non-Dutchies out there, last year a woman in a Dutch zoo was attacked by a gorilla named Bokito, which got excited as she had stalked him for the past months and escaped his cage. Immediately all the publicity hungry experts came forward saying that you should not look a gorilla in the eye. Yeah right! And Global Warming only exists in the imagination of Al Gore...

First we had to drive another 30 minutes on a very rocky road to get to the foot of the mountain. The road looked like the surface of the moon (or the surface of the Hollywood studio the moon landing was filmed in, depending on which story you believe). At the destination we got our climbing stick and we could hire a Sherpa for our bags if we wanted. Later we found out that the Sherpa's came more in handy for carrying people than bags.

We were now at 2,400 meters above sea level, the air was already thinning and we still had a 500 meter climb ahead of us. The trackers - who are the guys that go up early in the morning to locate the gorilla's - radioed in that they had found the kongs. We were ready to find them! To hunt them down! To smoke them out of their cages! Ehhh.... No! That was someone else.

Luckily, the weather cooperated. It was dry with quite cool temperatures, which is not that surprising given our height. The climb started pretty relaxed. Just a slightly uphill walk. That soon changed. Within ten minutes we were climbing. I mean climbing! The ground was wet and slippery and the way up was steep. The path, or whatever was left of it was totally overgrown, full of nettles and often blocked by tree trunks and rocks. The guides hadn't told us how far and how high up the hike would be. I guess they both passed their Expectation Management training.

About 2.5 hours later we finally came close to the gorilla's. We were now at 2,900 meters. Unfortunately for us, the animals were not so kind, as to find a spot for themselves which we could easily approach. No, we had to do some serious climbing on vertical mountainsides followed by lowering yourself using lianes ("Me Tarzan, You Insane") to land on a ledge. This is not an activity for people suffering from vertigo. From there on we had to slowly move a few meters and then..... we saw our first gorilla! It was just sitting there on the bushes some 4 meters below us eating.

At first you remain very still and whisper "look! there's one!" and watch in amazement. Then soon you see more. Gorilla's travel in groups and stick together. There is usually one male leader, a silverback. Our group had 9 gorilla's, including 2 kids and one 18 month old baby. That baby was of the "ohhhh, he's so cute. I want one!" type.

The gorilla's basically did one thing: eat! It seems that they eat 15% of their bodyweight on a daily basis. For me that would mean 13.5 kilos of food every day! Where's that buffet??? And..... Don't bother to calculate. Yes, I weight 90 kilos. All beer muscles of course... And you know what these animals do continuously? Fart! And they don't even apologise!

They moved on as we got closer. At first I thought it was because of us, but I realised later that people do not really bother them at all. Apart from the occasional glance, it seemed like we were not there. as long as we didn't annoy them, everything seemed fine.

At some point we saw the silverback. The others are quite cute and not even that big. An adult would be around 1.50 meters I guess. The silverback, however, is the big strong gorilla! Now ladies, don't get too excited now. I know most of you have King Kong fantasies, wanting to be swept away with that big strong hand, of that big strong beast, with that soft heart. You girls all get weak knees and mushy in the head with that thought, don't you?

The big boss is obviously the most mean and aggressive looking. The others seem to be quite relaxed, even friendly. Remember the 7 meter sign back at the office? Foggetaboutit! You can almost come as close as you want. At some moments I was as close as 1 meter from a gorilla. Not the silverback, but the others. A kid gorilla even used my leg as a pole to swing around me as he needed to get to his mother. That was awesome!

At times I wondered if the experience was 'real' enough, but we were not in a zoo, nor in a circus. We were at 2,900 meter in the middle of a rain forest jungle in the middle of Africa. These animals were real! Okay, probably more or less used to people by now, but still... They were in their natural habitat and there are only a few of them left in the world.

We spent about an hour with them and then it was time to head back. Almost exactly at that time it started to rain. No, not drizzle... Rain! with a vengeance! There we were, on top of a tropical volcano with a tropical rain pouring down on us. Going up a mountain is tiresome but doable. Going down a mountain is tough and if it rains: nearly impossible! I spent 500 meters downwards slipping and sliding. By the time I was finally down, I looked like a very muddy bigfoot. I was an exhausted, soaked, mud-covered, but very very happy guy! What an experience!

PS: Below is a video showing a gorilla doing what gorilla's do best: Munching away! a real Burger King Kong