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This section is composed of a series of six e-mails, that Rohit has written back to friends and family from his adventures, while in Africa!

From the cradle of Civilization

Jambo!

I am now back from the gorillas (and the "guerillas") - in one piece ;) What an experience to look into the eyes of a silverback at close quarters!!

It was a truly authentic Congo jungle experience where we went with an experienced tracker who tracked the gorillas... climbed up a STEEP mountain with thick jungles and no trails - a guy with a machete cuts the vegetation out of our way... we are standing on 8-18 inches of vegetation - not on terra firma! Talking of terra firma there wasn't ANY of it - it was raining and we were slipping and sliding all over - trying to slide not too fast down the slope (after all we climbed up about 2500 meters in a couple of hours). The highlight was a baby gorilla actually waving at us!!!  (We had armed militia with us for our own protection too - with rocket launchers and rockets IN HAND not even in their knapsack!)

On the way back, there was a truck that had rolled over - so the (mountain) road was completely blocked. In a few minutes, a guerilla emerged from the jungle... we were there for about 2 hours and more than a dozen (obviously armed!) guerillas kept emerging from the jungle - so we know they were actually there. It is estimated that about 10,000 guerillas inhabit the jungles around Kabale alone.

Now to quickly share my

IMPRESSIONS OF RWANDA

• Almost all women wear a headdress, and
• have a baby strapped to their back.
• Some younger kids have a baby strapped on as they work/walk around
• All the women seem to work rurally
• The kids are adorable as they wave to us as we drive by
• and as they shy away from my camera
• With the rain, out came the red-yellow-blue-green umbrellas :)
• in addition to the guns that all the soldiers are casually armed with!
• BEST OF ALL: despite all the strife and turmoil the Rwandans seem like a happy people that are going somewhere and not just lazing around like most Afrikans :)

Until next time, Kwa heri (or Goodbye in Swahili)
_Rohit!

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