Tell Them to Change that Sentence

Eastern Congo is not a popular or particularly recommended travel destination, but neither is Kinshasa a popular or particularly recommended expatriation destination. And once you have already moved to the latter, visiting the former seems to be no big deal.  Despite the fact that in Congo bribing the traffic cops just to let you drive down the street is a standard precursor to grocery shopping, or that the wealth below the soil has brought more terror than prosperity, or that everything from the crazy drivers to the sharp and allergen infused elephant grass to second-degree burn inducing acid bugs seems like it's aimed to kill you (or at the very least cause considerable discomfort), Congo is a one-of-a-kind-in-a-good-way place. You won't find bonobos or okapis anywhere else in the world. The raging Congo River, 700 hundred meters deep in some places, flows so incredibly strongly that it spins out species after new species of fish, each evolving in tiny sections of river isolated by the currents. DRC is also one of the few places you will find a lava lake and mountain gorillas, and that, along with a ferry ride to Bukavu was what I had in mind for the Easter vacation. So while my friends back home were packing for Mexico or Europe and most of my colleagues here headed for Cape Town, I was flying from Congo to Kenya to Burundi to Rwanda just to reenter this gigantic country overland from the other side. 

Eastern Congo is known for a lot of things: a refuge for Rwandan genocidaires, rebel war, rape as a weapon and continuous conflict fueled by the coltan, diamonds and other minerals below the soil.

This is what it should be known for... 

...We drove here past the airport displaying rusty carcasses of airplanes and the remnants of a dilapidated Red Cross camp, the 4WD jeep spitting out black chunks of hardened lava from below the wheels. Mount Nyiragongo last erupted in 2002, devastating much of Goma. 

But the volatile nature of volcanos in a country where scientists' efforts to predict the next eruption are thwarted by rebel activity was the least of my worries. The week before we were due to climb, a park ranger was shot and killed on one of the trails and the mountain was subsequently closed for the investigation. We were unsure whether our plans would go ahead but the night before we were scheduled to hike my three colleagues and I were informed we would have the dubious honor of being the first to hike the volcano since it reopened. The bearer of this news was Daniel, our 60 year old tour guide, prone to random fits of hysterical laughter and dressing like a boy scout. He gave a reenactment of the murder in a failed attempt to assuage any possible mountain-anxiety and then began his proselytizing. "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Tomorrow you will climb a volcano!!!!!'"

We hiked with a massive entourage of park rangers armed to the teeth with AK47s and RPGs. Daniel called what they were doing with these alphabet letters "educating the rebels." Forever a teacher, I conjured an image of rangers and rebels reading picture books under a tree with their Kalashnikovs leaned against the trunk. It was however explained to me that the rangers were "educating" the rebels on the serious and comprehensive nature of security on the mountain. Why anti-tank weapons were necessary in this particular location, barely passable by humans, was not entirely clear, nor was I entirely decided on whether big guns and cartoonish-looking rocket propelled grenades made me feel safe. But to be honest, I was more preoccupied with staying warm and dry in the pouring rain and on the freezing summit than any of the other issues. I was also more preoccupied with the view below...

We spent the night in the crisp, freezing sky, breathing in sulphury gusts in the freaky red glow before descending the following day to get ready for mountain gorilla trekking. 

We drove (by which I mean careened, swerved and tilted at impossible angles), racing with UN tanks into Virunga National Park. I made a concerted effort to not vomit, while Daniel's response to the violent road and resulting vibrations was shouting, "Free Massage! Free Massage! Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Today you will see go-REEEEE-las!!!!!'"

And so we tucked our pants into our socks and meandered through villages which were occupied until 2007 by guerillas (not gorillas, although they wandered in every now and again to nibble on the crops). After passing countless farms we reached THE BUSH.

Imagine a jungle, dense, thick, hot. Now imagine the minute spaces between trees and brush were clogged with more trees and brush. That is the Congolese forrest. I can't say we walked- it was more like stumbling and wading through an ocean of leaves, squeezing in tiny spaces carved out by the hacking machetes of our guides. The minutes stretched on and on, the silence full of cracking branches and our guides making gorilla calls. The white noise was broken by an instruction to don our surgical masks (required to protect gorillas from our germs). I took two steps and my heart hurdled into my throat as I stared into the face of this massive creature.

A member of the Himba family of gorillas we watched this terrifying guy breathe and laze before looking for the rest of his relations.

Mama and juvenile

Lady in a tree

Juvenile in a tree

Mama with a baby on back

Silverback snacking

Who needs a jungle gym when you have a jungle?

While trailing behind one of the females, the silverback in his alpha question of "what are you doing following my woman?" decided share our 2 foot wide path. So what do you when a massive silverback gorilla who doesn't know the 7 meter distance park regulation tries to share your already too-small lane? You get the hell out of the way. But, with nowhere to go, all we could do was turn sideways, stand on our toes and lean back into the brush as he passed. I gripped the shoulder of my gun-wielding guide while my vision and olfactory senses were assaulted with gorilla. His breathing filled my ears and the flies on my face were the same as the ones on his.

SILVER.BACK.

Upon returning back to the park headquarters Daniel shoved a visitors book at us, bouncing up and down shouting "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence. Today you came here and saw a silverBACK!!!!!'" One of the teachers asked if he could use "bad language" in the visitors book. Daniel said, "Yes. Be honest. If the road was bad, you write 'the road was bad.'" My friend clarified, "Can I write, 'I was a foot away from a f***ing silverback?'" "Oh YES!," was Daniel's enthusiastic reply, "You speak like an insider American and if you write that, more Americans will come here."

Back in Goma we decided to check out the ferries to Bukavu.  A ferry sank overloaded in Lake Kivu killing 30 people earlier that week so we had our eyes peeled for a sturdy looking boat. Everything looked nice but when it came time to head to the ticket counter, we realized that we were tired and satisfied with staying in Goma, which although not the cleanest place, at least tries (note incongruence between signage and litter below)...

So we stayed in Goma. We met up with a former teacher from our school who took us to eat local food, told us about her work in the East and pointed out the gas station where people wheel and deal coltan behind the petrol pumps. We took long walks along the lake and through the dust choked town, eating pizza and swapping stories into the night. 

When we said goodbye to Daniel his parting words were, of course, "Lonely Planet says 'Don't go to Congo. It's not safe.' Tell them to change that sentence!" I don't know if I will say that to Lonely Planet but I will say this: Congo's not perfect, but it was the perfect adventure. I hiked an active volcano and spent the night on the bubbling edge of its lake of lava, getting impromptu French lessons from guys with rocket launchers in their backpacks. I went deep into the jungle and saw gorillas, not guerillas. I gazed out over the beautiful lake and didn't cross, not because I was afraid of drowning, but because I was happy where I was. Goma might be a mess, but people still find a reason to smile, to say please and thank you and to help lost travelers find their way to a long-abandoned, bombed-out book store. 

My final night I took this photo at a delicious pizza restaurant. I asked the guard there if the sign is really necessary, if people bringing weapons inside is a problem. He said "yes" than "no" and the limits of language left it at that.

He did insist though, that I take a picture of their other sign. And I did. It was only fair.

Getting to and Being in Rwanda

I stopped in Kigali en route to Eastern Congo partly because I wanted to see Rwanda, the Mille Collines (Thousand Hills), and partly because it's one of the only ways to get from one part of Congo to the other without flying a blacklisted airline. Congolese airlines are known for their old, rundown planes, questionable pilots and banishment from European airspace. Goma in particular is known for its frighteningly short landing strip. After a UN plane crashed in Kinshasa last month, killing 32 out of 33 passengers and crew, I was all the more confident in my decision to take the "scenic route" (Kinshasa to Nairobi to Bujumbura to Kigala and back into Congo overland) and a normal airline, figuring my life is worth the extra money and layovers.

Hilariously (or something) enough while our Kenya Airways flight was descending, we encountered massive fog (it happens in Rwanda). Clearly not trained in tactful announcements, the pilot said something to the effect of, "We have no visibility but we are going to attempt to land anyway." With images of the blown apart UN plane ingrained in recent memory my traveling partner contemplated the brace position while I considered removing my seatbelt so as to be ejected in the event of the plane splitting open (unintentional strategy of the one UN survivor). After a few moments of silent panic the pilot came on and said something about as articulate as "never mind." And so we made a u-ie in the sky and went back to Bujumbura to wait for the fog to lift. Only that never happened. So we went all the way back to Nairobi, got on a different plane and flew to Kigali directly. It's 1000 miles from Kinshasa to Kigali and it took about 24 hours. 

Kigali is a lovely city. Granted I stayed and wandered in the nicer areas but they were better paved, greener and cleaner than any of the 14 other African countries I've been to, except maybe, just maybe South Africa. I didn't get harassed, got lost in a lovely bilingual bookstore and drank mutzig on draft. And it really does have a thousand hills or maybe a gazillion. My walks were beautiful and runs even better. 

It was so beautiful and peaceful that it was difficult to imagine that less than 20 years ago this spring hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered here. But they were. So I spent one morning at the genocide memorial center in the city. 

Outside were a string of beautiful gardens planted around the mass graves where remains continue to be buried. Each garden represents a facet in the causes and aftermath of the genocide. My favorite was called something like "Garden of the International Community Who Stood by and Did Nothing" (but more succinct). See garden statue below: monkey on a cell phone.

The museum itself was painful to go through especially in the last exhibit, where murdered children were profiled ("favorite food: mother's milk," "cause of death: smashed against a wall"). 

It was a short and kind of heavy time in Rwanda and the last thing I did there was try to control my car sickness enough to be able to look out of the window and enjoy the landscape on the way to the border. Even the smaller border town of Gisenyi was paved and clean and I got my exit stamp in a bright, modern building. Then the paved road abruptly ended, the smell of raw sewage just as abruptly began, and in a tin roof shack smaller than the pile of garbage beside it, I got my entry stamp back into Congo. Welcome Home. 

Hell and High Water

Kinshasa is ridiculous in a lot of ways, but at the top of the list is traffic. Road works (increasing as the elections approach), narrow, unpaved or poorly paved roads, vehicles held together by tape breaking down in the middle of the road or incapable of absorbing any shock sustained at a speed quicker than a crawl, excessive motorcades, ineffective traffic police, the lack of street lights, traffic lights and any sort of rules and spontaneously road blocks in a city of six million do nothing to help cars move to their destination. I have gotten used to driving a half hour to the grocery story on a good day and grown to be unendingly thankful that I live and work within the same walls, but what happened to me on what I can safely say was my worst night in Kinshasa was more than I had ever anticipated.

In normal countries, rain causes people to drive more slowly. Things get a little backed up. The world makes sense. In Kinshasa, rain causes absolute bedlam. I should have stayed in on that stormy Wednesday, but the rain was letting up and it was my last chance to borrow my friend's warm weather gear for the hike I planned to take over the Easter holiday. Coming from my part of town, Kintambo Circle can make your night or crush your soul. This night things were pretty clogged up. As I had expected, my normal route was closed for construction so I inched my way toward the back route that would take me winding around schools and compounds and Lebanese restaurants before spitting me back out onto the main road. But as I got closer I saw that the police closed off all cars going that way and I could see why; what lay before me looked like a dysfunctional parking lot. In what are normally four 2 lane roads converging on a roundabout were dozens of cars in countless invented lanes facing all different directions. Not moving. I was directed down a shady side street going both away from where I came from and where I wanted to go. Seeing my desperation to get through, an officer motioned for me to roll down my window. Since it is unwise to do such a thing I turned down the only available road and hoped that I could turn around eventually and go home.

But this was not to be. It had taken me an hour to move 2 kilometers and it would be another hour of not moving before the road cleared up enough to make anything close to a U turn. At that point my friend who I was supposed to meet and had driven out to find me, abandoned his car in the cluster f*ck on the other side of the circle and was jogging in my direction. I waited until he reached me and together we meandered back to find his car. I eventually got to his house about 3 hours late where our other friends were still waiting with wine, cold dinner and hats, gloves and synthetic layer after synthetic layer of tops and bottoms.

Up on the top of Nyirogongo a week later I was by far the warmest most waterproofed among my hiking group. And I should have been. I went through hell and high water to get that fleece that hung to my knees and the rain pants that went up to my armpits. Hell and high water.

Sparkle and Lula

My apologies that I didn't send out the birth announcement sooner. Being a new hen, final exams for my master's course and a week in the bush made it all quite difficult to get back to you. 

The Birth.

Sadly we didn't get any incubator siblings. Due to all our power difficulties and the requisite failures of trying to do, well, most things in the Congo, we we lucky to get one. Presenting...Sparkle, The Miracle Chick!

We converted our water table into a brooder.

Being an only chick, Sparkle had the unfortunate habit  of peep-screaming at the top of his/hers (still unclear) lungs for days, crying of loneliness. I asked Papa Michel, one of the atelier at the school if he could find Sparkle a friend and the next day a tiny black and yellow chick was delivered to my door in a lightbulb box. Lula (named by the same flamboyant kindergarteners as Sparkle) and Sparkle became the best of friends. They grew up together. Fast. Too fast. 

I had to move them from my classroom where they became free range kindergarteners to my house. My once sweet abode may have smelled like a barn, but better they shit on my tile than on the class reading rug, no? They soon learned to follow me. They crept as close to the running shower as they dared, skittered underfoot while I baked bread in the kitchen and sat on my desk chair beside me (Sparkle) and shoulder (Lula) while I typed. 

We enjoyed our brief cohabitation together but all good things must end. Some carpenters built them a coop. They are honing their scratching skills and I am keeping my eyes out for hawks and genet cats.

And we all lived happily ever after. The Beginning.