1 passport and waiting for the tide to rise - or a weekend on the shores of lake tanganika

I love africa and I love my life here in kigali. it's easy and fun and in recent months I have not been feeling oppressed by the fact that there are virtually no spaces where you can just go and hang out, meet people and relax. here it all depends on the people you know and what you can come up with in terms of 'disconnection-strategies' - and I have good friends and am quite good at disconnecting when I need to. but nonetheless - sometimes you just have to get out, change the panorama, breathe a different kind of air and explore new shores.

we had been planning on visiting friends in bujumbura for a while and last time it fell through for various reasons. this weekend we made it. on friday afternoon part of the 'kigali possee' boarded the tiny little plane that takes off only to land pretty much immediately again. I was excited like a child before christmas and by the time we got to the airport I was going into overdrive.

having lived most of my life in close proximity to water this is what I miss most in kigali - true, there's the artificial lake, but let's face it, it's a puddle compared to the river in berne or the sea in brighton and it's not exactly the hang-out spot in spare time, you wouldn't even want to swim in there if your life depended on it... to cut a long story short - what I was most excited about was the fact that I would get to spend time on the shores of lake tanganika, enjoy the beach, listen to the waves crashing onto the land and feel the breeze on my cheeks.

we landed and as the plane doors opened a gust of warm and humid air hit us - it felt like being on holiday instantly. and I had forgotten about that sensation of a warm summer evening, a slight breeze blowing but leaden with warm air and like the hug of a long lost friend. the smell of bujumbura reminded of the sea although it's nowhere near the sea. we got in the car and drove towards the city - and we were definitely in africa.

this is what strikes me every time I leave kigali and rwanda - it's so much more africa the way we imagine it from outside: bicycles everywhere, transporting anything and everything, people walking somewhere, coming from somewhere else, people sat along the road under the big mango trees selling fruit, veg, and all sorts of other paraphernalia. it's colourful, noisy, chaotic and yet it all ticks over somehow. it's wild and unpredictable, joyful and sad, rich and poor, beautiful and shocking - full of contrasts.

after a twenty minute drive we arrived at the first house where we were to drop one of our friends off. and of course the houses of our friends are in posh neighbourhoods which are lush and quiet and many houses have views which simply take your breath away. the houses are similar to the kigali ones - spacious with huge gardens and terraces that make you want to sit down and never get back up again.

birds twitter in the trees and shrubs, the leaves move with the soft evening breeze and you just want to drink a gin & tonic because it's what you do in the early evening on a terrace in africa.

bujumbura as a city has a lot to offer - it is much better geared to make visitors feel comfortable than kigali and it has more flair than kigali. restaurants are done up that little bit more than we are used to here; little details that make all the difference. waitors actually greet you with a smile and overall people are more cheerful and outgoing than we are used to from this side of the hills. it was a very pleasant experience in that sense. at the same time there is more chaos and more potential for violence. you have to be much more vigilant when walking in the streets and I have been told that particularly in the posh neighbourhoods you cannot walk around after dark - in that sense we are spoiled here. but it is not an insecurity that paralyses you either; it has not reached these levels and when we went out it was much like being out and about in europe in that respect.

we spent time in open air bars built around beautiful palm and mango trees with low lighting (fair enough, mostly red and blue neon, but hey - quite atmospheric in its own right), listened to live music and dj's and danced the night away sweating from sunset to sunrise despite the light clothing we were wearing. and I enjoyed it so much - I have missed these hot nights where you walk out of the house in a tank top knowing that you simply won't need anything else.

we spent time on the beach, lying in the warm sand, soaking up the sun, swimming in the warm lake, drinking cool beers delivered straight to our towels, later we lounged in the bora bora bar on comfy sofas eating pizza and watching the light of the day fade away and enjoying the lounge music and the general hubbub of the afternoon on the beach.

on the one side you have a view of the city of bujumbura against the backdrop of the hills which are covered in fields and settlements, the dominant colours red and green and brown. to the other side the mysterious congo - hills covered in lush dark green forest with clouds idling between the summits, the panorama emiting an air of mystery. truly the dark continent, well more like country as we now know, but you get the picture. when you see it in contrast with the lighter side which is burundi you can understand the fascination people have with congo; it is a place of secrets and mysteries - and from what I have seen beauty.

and now enough love declarations to africa - I have lost my heart here before I set foot on the continent and I have a feeling this is not likely to change anytime soon.

and finally I just want to share two anectdotes with you:

on the plane we were given the immigration cards for burundi which we had to fill in for our visa prior to arrival. these cards are virtually all the same everywhere in the world and you'd think someone who's been to a few places would fill them in without even thinking twice about them. well - I am a bit different sometimes ;-)) so there's point 14 'number and type of identification' - my answer: 1 passport.

now - I didn't flinch as I was writing this as it just seemed the logical answer to the question; however, about 3 minutes after completing the card I looked over it again and suddenly realised that they actually wanted to know the fact that I was travelling with a passport (as opposed to an identity card) and my actual passport number... I was in stitches!

and the next day on the beach I was sat with my feet close to the waves, listening to the sound of the waves, enjoying a moment of peace and quiet to myself. and as I sat there I started wondering until where the tide would rise on the beach.

again, it took me a few moments to realise that I was sat on the shores of a lake - yes, one that could easily pass itself off for the sea, but a lake nonetheless. and we all know that lakes are not subject to tides... and shortly after realising this a large wave splashed into my lap and soaked my towel ;-))

nothing to do - but lots happening

as mentioned already - kigali could go down as one of the more boring places in the world; but as always - it's not about what the city can offer you but what you can offer yourself. and as it happens I'm surrounded by great people who don't shy away from creative solutions for social interaction.

last saturday was definitely one of my kigali-highlights. a friend brought back (or should I say illegally imported?) fresh salmon and tuna from nairobi which was promptly turned into sushi by another friend. I had multiple culinary orgasms that night.

ok - you might sit there and smile, thinking why is sushi something worth writing a blog post about? well - to really appreciate that you have to understand that kigali really hasn't got all that much to offer; it's not like kampala or nairobi or johannesburg. it's a small city which is still quite basic compared to the other big african capitals. although it is impressive how much has changed in the last 12 months already - you might remember my excitement about the new supermarket nakumatt.
there are few restaurants and they range from pizza and pasta to more traditional meat and veg dishes, there used to be an indian restaurant which was closed down but might be reopening soon; there is a wanna-be tapas bar which hasn't all that much to do with tapas in fact - but a nice place nevertheless; then there are a couple of chinese restaurants; the ethiopian place and of course the local restaurants where they serve a fish that makes you fall out of your shoes. but that's about it. so after a while you have your one plate you eat at each restaurant and dining out looses its appeal slightly. and when the only fish you can get is tilapia and it's always grilled... well - it does get a bit boring.

I have been having serious sushi cravings for a while now, remembering the sushi bars in new york (I know - you shouldn't go there... but sometimes you just can't help it!) or my fantastic lunches with friends in moshi moshi... makes my mouth water just to think about it.
and what really is the best part about not having everything right there for you to grab and devour is that you REALLY appreciate it when you can have it.
and what could be more fun than to all sit round a table, drinking wine and chatting, and at the same time making sushi? yes, right, eating it afterwards ;-))

and finally - have you ever been to a sushi bar where you just get up from your chair and start dancing to awesome techno music only to nip back to the dining table and having another mouthful because you can?

well - although I sometimes think it would be nice to be back in a place where you have it all on your doorstep I wouldn't change my life here if I had to!

a date of a different kind

well - some people come to rwanda and find it an utterly boring place. and it's true - there's none of the usual distractions available to people living here - no cinema, no theatre, no shopping, no concerts (well - almost none) - and just generally a very basic cultural infrastructure. but I am not lying if I say that I haven't had one boring day since I arrived. it's all about the people you surround yourselves with and the initatives you take to cut boredom out.

a few weeks ago the wife of a colleague asked me if I wouldn't like to go and see the gorillas (yes, THE gorillas in the mist - in danger of extinction and only about 700 left in the world - half of them in rwanda). I was just about to reply that I'd love to but couldn't afford the permit at this point in time, that it was something on my list of things to do before leaving the country eventually. but before I could say anything she adds 'for free' - well, HELL YEAH!
turns out she had a group of japanese journalists coming here to film a documentary on the impact of illegal mining on the mountain gorillas and they needed 'tourists' that they could film. well - I'll gladly be a tourist and get an amazing experience for free.

so last week we had our date with the primates. we left to go to ruhengeri on wednesday afternoon - in 2 cars; I was a bit scared as to whether bertinchen would make it all the way without misbehaving. but she was marvelous and got us to ruhengeri in one piece; although I have to admit I was a bit dizzy by the time we arrived; between the serpentine roads and the inevitable shaking and clonking of the car... well - there's worse.

I remember ruhengeri as this freezing cold place in the mountains and had brought a lot of warm clothes; surprisingly it wasn't half as cold as I remembered it being. we got up at 6am, had breakfast and then headed to the tourism office to get assigned to a particular gorilla family for our visit. there was tea and coffee there and a lot of people waiting to be assigned themselves.
it was the first group of monkeys I saw that day. predominantly middle-aged people in brand spanking new trekking outfits which they had almost certainly bought specifically for their once in a lifetime trip to the gorillas. but the most fascinating group consisted of a group of students from the US - they were apparently on a college trip and as part of that they also took a trip to the gorillas. now - gorilla trekking is what it says - trekking. it's not like the safaris you do in kenya and tanzania where you traipse from your hotel room into a comfortable car and only stick your head out the top to admire all the animals as you drive through incredible landscapes. in this one you get down and dirty; and there's no way around it.
these kids can't have been more than maybe 16, 18 years old and looked to me like proper city kids who had never had a face to face encounter with a live cow in their lives; and here they were stranded in the middle of nowhere in rwanda - waiting to go and see some monkeys. all wearing their city clothes and shoes - i.e. anything ranging from white fashionable but completely useless trainers to (my personal favourite) blue leather boots; the kind you wear to go out on the town; not the volcanoes...
they were all standing around taking pictures and chattering away. eventually the whale of the group got out the DEET insect repellent - at this point I must also say: if you want to go to africa withouth having to worry about all sorts of f***ed up diseases then you should come to rwanda. it's a safe country in that respect - yes, there is malaria, but it's not nearly as prevalent as in other countries - especially when you move in the environments these people are likely to move in; there are amoebas, and there's bilharzia - but I wouldn't know of any other weird disease that you'd be likely to contract.
anyway - back to the gringos - they were literally showering in their mosquito repellent to the point where the cloud was so big that I couldn't help but breathe in a good lungful and then couldn't get the stuff out of my nostrils for a few minutes... we were at 2000 metres above sealevel, it's cool and I couldn't see a single flying insect. but apparently there were some because suddenly the girls started crying out at an insect on someone's bag; a grasshopper. they must have come from a big city. and I had a laugh.

anyway - after observing our brother and sister apes for a bit we were assigned to our family and set off. first bit is by car over a ridiculuous wanna-be paved road - but really it's more like a field full of rocks and I will never stop being amazed at what a car tyre can hold out! so we were bumping over that 'road' towards the place where we would be leaving the car and continuing on foot. shaken not stirred we started off, first through fields cultivated with 'irish potatoes' (the definition of which is: not sweet potatoes), african daisies which are used to make insect repellent (if only the stuff smelled like the flowers!), beans, and in between the fields the cows were grazing. I always find such scenes romantic; little straw huts scattered among fields of blooming stuff, cows and goats and children. but of course it's not really that romantic. people in the rural areas of rwanda - basically everywhere - are poor and make a subsistence living off the produce their farm, land is getting scarcer and scarcer and therefore families have to produce more with less - a challenge. but wonderful landscape - and in the backdrop the volcanoes which absolutely fascinate me.

eventually our path hit the wall which demarcates the boundary between the fields and the volcanoes national park. we climbed over the wall and were instantly surrounded by thick vegetation. off we trudged up the slopes of the sabyinyo volcano. it was steep and humid and absolutely amazing. it was also muddy and not very easy to not take one step forward and two steps back ;-)) all the while the film crew were running up and down the path, sometimes we had to stop and wait for their commando before walking on again; after all we were in a movie! well, a documentary - but who cares. all the while as we were climbing higher and higher up the mountain the guides were in radio contact with the trackers - by the time we'd entered the national park they still hadn't found the gorillas... but on and up we walked and then suddenly they said that they'd spotted them about another half an hour from where we currently were. we were mostly following paths made by humans and/or animals and eventually we took a sharp right turn straight through the thicket - the porter with the machete ahead cutting down the most obstructive plants. and then we were told to stop and take off our bags; we had to leave them a bit away from the gorillas. and just as we had stopped we heard this grunting sound and saw a black fluffy back disappear in the trees.

we slowly and quietly moved across to the spot where the 'hirwa' (lucky) family was chilling out after their breakfast. it was on a very steep slope and we had to perch together holding on to trees so as not to slide right into the gorilla family. and there they were. the silver back, lying face down on the ground; only his tremendously impressive silver back visible. his 6 wives surrounding him and his 5 kids playing. two of them just kept chasing each other round a bamboo stem, then every 5 minutes or so they would stop completely and not move for a couple of minutes only to then start all over again. others were bouncing off branches and practising the climbing part of being a gorilla. we were about 7 metres away and it was just incredible to watch these animals who behave so much like humans. and because they're so used to seeing people every day they will look at you with mild interest and then turn back to doing whatever they had been doing before you turned up to stare at them for exactly 60 minutes.

but then there are the less human parts to being a gorilla: one female came walking up the hill with a ginormous pooh hanging out of her backside - and she didn't seem to notice at all; quietly sat down - the thing still hanging there - and started munching on some bamboo shoots. a little while later she got back up and just pulled the pooh out with her foot, dropped it and never mind the twigs that were still protruding from her behind marched off to the next bamboo shoot.

I was at first not very impressed by our spot as it was steep and the vegetation quite thick so you couldn't really see them all very well. and a couple of females were on the other side of the mountain ledge - so after a while we went over there to have a look - and that was impressive. one of them was sat supported only by two bamboo twigs about 2 metres above the ground eating. another one was sat on the ground with her arms in a distinctly human position, looking at us with a surly face - they seem so similar to us when you see them like that. and there we were, all of us perched against the mountain on an extremely steep and muddy and slippery slope when suddenly the silver back had obviously decided it was time to move on and led his family in a perfect line along in front of our stunned faces. 1 metre away... we could have easily touched them if that had been allowed. and then they disappeared into the undergrowth. who knows when I'll see them next time.

and we then had to climb back up towards our bags from where we started our descent back to the village. going down was way quicker than walking up - partly because it was so muddy we were skidding half the way, holding on to the bamboo stems to avoid a mudbath and generally chattering away excitedly.

once down again we had to drive back to the tourism office to pick up our fantastic certificates. on the way henri's samurai slid into a ditch and got stuck. and because I love a good adventure I got excited and decided to show off the qualities of my samurai who everybody laughs at. I got the cord out and put the 4WD in and pulled - well, the rope broke... bugger! I really wanted to be the hero of the hour who pulled henri out of the mud. instead we all joined forces and lifted his car out of the ditch. yes - lifted, by hand.

and after that the adventure was over; what was left was lunch in ruhengeri and a 2 hour drive home along the winding roads of rwanda's country side. beautiful!

home sweet home - or why do we call it spreadeagled?

In a previous blog post I talked about how people who live outside of their mother country sometimes have a tendency to complain about the current place they're living at claiming that everything is oh so much better back home.

well - last night got me thinking about that - and today I would disagree with the above statement. around 9pm I get a phone call from my house mate informing me that the pipe below the sink had burst and that the house had been flooded. that now the water had been cleared out but that we remained with a burst pipe. what's that got to do with 'home' you might think now. well - in england this sort of thing is quite likely to happen to you as well. when I think about the place I lived in and the home made and generally extremely creative plumbing solutions...
anyway - I called my landlord instantly and informed him of the problem and that we would need someone to come and fix the pipe. I told him I wasn't sure whether the cleaning lady was going to come this afternoon or tomorrow and that definitely friday afternoon someone would be home so the plumber (or rather the guy who will replace a pipe I myself could probably replace in a more professional manner; considering the burst one is barely 3 months old...) could get in the house. he said - no, friday is 3 days away; I think we should fix this as soon as possible - it is inconvenient for you. then he apologised for the inconvenience.

now - when have you ever called your landlord or agency in the UK and they apologised for the fact that your bathroom is playing up for the umpteenth time? in fact - rarely do they even bother to come immediately to fix the damage; it usually takes several phone calls and some getting angry before anyone even remembers why you called.
it has to be said - we are very lucky with our landlord; they are not all like this here - but hey - can't say of myself that I miss things working oh so much better back home.

and finally - I found nature's explanation as to why we call it spreadeagled:

or should we say 'spreadhawked'?