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!