volume 1: Africanizedsent: Thursday June 28, 2007

Hello:This e-mail comes as the first of what I hope will be at least somewhatly periodic postings from my journeys through the eastern realms of the African continent.  I cannot say how reliably I will be able to gain access to a speedy internet connection, but I will make an effort whenever possible.For those unclear or unfamiliar with the social contexts and purposes of my summertime absence from American soil, the following points will serve as clarification.

1. I am in Africa2. I am traveling for nearly 2 months3. I am traveling with 3 companions.  They are:

Paul Duda- fellow social studies educator at Von Steuben Metro Science Center High School. Ivan Rodriguez- also a fellow social studies educator at Von Steuben Metro Science Center

High School. Adrian Rodriguez- brother of fellow social studies educator mentioned above.  He will be along

on the journey for the first 3 weeks and will then have to depart since he has a job that doesn't empty itself of clients during the summer months.

With this dry outline of characters and setting, I shall make an effort to elaborate a narrative of our first set of experiences.  Our route to Africa, as provided by Virgin Atlantic airways, entailed a 9 hour layover in London which we decided to take full advantage of; as it turned out we may have taken too much advantage of our time.  After being deemed worthy of setting foot onto UK soil, we sped from Heathrow into central London around 10am with the promise of touristic exploits.  In addition, Ivan had made contact with an intrepid former Von student who is currently living in London, and with whom we arranged to meet and have lunch.     After a reunion at Paddington Station, we fulfilled the lunch plans and strolled through a gray drizzle past the domes and spires of British architectural iconography.  Upon entering the Tate Modern, we began to realize our jetlag and sleep deprivation and took a nap on the surprisingly comfortable concrete ramp at the museum's entrance.  Bidding farewell to our Von alumnus, we began to trek back towards the airport.  Unfortunately, our pace was too leisurely...and the tube had some unfortunate closures...and the security line was literally 2 hours long ...which resulted in our sprinting toward a locked terminal door in front of an idling plane (our plane).  The locked door was opened by a particularly strident representative of Virgin Atlantic.  She proceeded to entertain herself by abusing us verbally for a couple of minutes before gleefully announcing that we would have no choice but to fly standby on the following day's flight and incur a stiff penalty fee.  Her combination of self-righteous anger at our tardiness and her wicked delight in punishing and scolding us will henceforth be the only way I will be able to imagine Virgin Atlantic Airlines.     Faced with another 24 hours in London, we decided to find some corner of the airport to curl up and sleep the night.  This proved a bit problematic, as we were gently informed by various British functionaries that it "won't be possible for you to sleep here."  Luckily, we interpreted their declarations as polite encouragements to simply find a different "here" each time.  The final and very agreeable spot for overnight rejects was the airport "Prayer Room" where we rested until the following morning, only slightly interrupting and being interrupted by some occasional Mecca-facing Britons.  Although the Virgin Atlantic harpy had told us to "learn a lesson" from our previous day's malfeasance, the other agents explained that for standby flying, we cannot be booked until the last possible second and we were actually encouraged not to show up until that point. 

     So back into London we went, for more walking around, visiting of ancient fragments at the British Museum, and an odd and nerdy personal quest of my own.  In the sociology class that Ivan and I teach, we do a segment on the foundational philosophers of the social sciences.  Among these is British utilitarian Jeremy Bentham.  A titillating bit of trivia about Mr. Bentham is the fact that upon his death, as per his instructions, his body was preserved, clothed, and seated in a glass box to be on permanent display at University College London as a sort of secular relic.  This fact (and the bizarre photos that illustrate its veracity) are always entertaining to Von Steuben students in the midst of a rather dry and abstract lecture on the morals of government and social control.  So, in my extra hours in London, I poked about the UCL campus and asked people where I might find this strange specimen.  Finally, I was pointed in the right direction and came upon Mr. Bentham himself in his glass and wooden box, complete with period costume and a wax head (to make him more friendly and less creepy, I suppose).  I asked a perplexed security guard to take my smiling photo with the corpse which I will happily add to my lecture on utilitarian philosophy.     On our second evening in London, we rushed to our plane and- as Virgin Atlantic told us to do- we hustled rudely to the front of the security line to ensure punctuality.  Our flight to Nairobi passed mostly sleeplessly thanks to some very awake children.  Arrival in Nairobi was hectic once we spilled out into the main terminal.  The proliferation of smiling faces and outstretched hands wishing to do business became an instantly ubiquitous feature of our East African social landscape.  "Jambo!" "Where are you going my friend?"  "Where are you form?"  "Hakunamatata.  No problem" (Yes, they actually say that here).  These are mostly young men with friendly faces who represent some tangential arm of a tourism or safari agency.  They will, however, claim to represent whatever resource it is that you are seeking at the moment.  "Taxi?..Hotel?..Safari?..Trekking?"  The energy for this vague entrepreneurship is striking.    Our ride from the airport was pleasant and gave us a mini-tour of the outskirts of Nairobi, which included what our driver called a middle-class "Asian" neighborhood.  "Asians" here- as in England- refers to the Indo-Pakistani residents of the country.  We passed by the government ministries where "Men talk loudly and steal the people's money."  This early morning arrival in Nairobi could have afforded an opportunity for exploring the city, but instead our exhaustion caught up to us and we slept the day away, only finding time to explore Nairobi by night.  The city center of Kenya's capital is fairly neatly kept and infrastructurally sound.  The rest of the town spreads outwardly in a less structured way, loosing itself in unpaved roads and slums.  We were repeatedly reminded (in a friendly Kenyan way) that we should not wander off of the downtown beaten track and that thieves and murderers (indicated by way of a mimed knife to the neck) lurk in those sectors.     The following day consisted of boarding a southbound bus from Nairobi in order to cross into Tanzania and begin to approach the area surrounding Kilimanjaro.  We took what was decidedly a "white people's" bus, populated with Canadians, Germans, and even a pair of Icelanders.  Watching the countryside and the passing towns out of the windows of the bus was fascinating, showing us blurred snapshots of savannah, mountains, poverty, goat herders, and the occasional eagle.  The border crossing into Tanzania (which involved disembarking the bus and waiting in several lines) was hardly efficient, but nor was it unfriendly or contentious.  We finally (a seven hour trip) arrived in Moshi, Tanzania a beautiful town in the shadow of Kilimanjaro.  Its being "in the shadow" is strictly a literary indulgence since the mountain itself is not visible, permanently shrouded in clouds.  The town's surroundings are picturesque nonetheless, with the dry savannah of central Kenya having given way to the greener forested areas of northern Tanzania.  The town has two impressive mosques and even a Hindu temple, giving cues to its "Asian" poulation.  We spent last night here in a very comfortable hotel, had dinner at an "Indo-talian" restaurant, and chatted with other travelers, many of whom were Americans.  The plans for the next few days are to head southward to more remote areas where we might do some hiking between small villages, getting to know the countryside on its own terms.   

I don't know how all this will turn out or when exactly I will be writing again.  It's for that reason that I've composed such a mess of narrative in this one sending.  I hope it doesn't offend.  To all: please send me greetings and well wishes of your own.  Please forward to anyone who might be left off the list and tell people to check their bulk mail since this message may end up there.  At this point, I must exit the internet spot as we are about to catch a bus.  I hope this e-mail finds everyone well.  I am missing you all very much.  Write back soon and so will I.Yours,Nick

volume 2: Ishati lako lio hio?sent: Thursday July 05, 2007

Hello once again:     First, a friendly warning that this is a very lengthy e-mail.  Although I compose this message from the exact same sluggish computer in the same internet storefront in the same town as when last I wrote, I feel as though a good deal has transpired since then.  Since my last communique, the four of us have journeyed well off the beaten path of the Western tourist circuit, seeking to leave behind the enthused touting and overpriced scheming of the hopeful young men who swarmed the airports and bus stations during our first few days.     Leaving Moshi on Thursday by bus, we entered the region of Tanzania known as the Pare Mountains.  Our route east from Moshi took us first to the town of Same and then onto the smaller town of Mbaga.  Transportation itself became a fascinating attraction for us.  The bus terminal in Moshi is a chaotic swarm of brightly painted rust and diesel exhaust.  Although there are signs that seem to describe routes and schedules, these seem strictly decorative.  Around each heaving metal beast is a confused mixture of people selling, shouting, carrying, bargaining, boarding, disembarking, shoving boxes, bags, and bananas into dusty undercarriage compartments.  Somehow in this throng, you find the gentleman whose job it is to take your money, scribble a number down on a scrap of paper which he hands to you, and gesture vaguely past vendors toward the cloud of exhaust that is next leaving toward your desired destination.  Alternatively, he gestures toward a slab of concrete where a quieter, sedate crowd sits with piles of belongings and waits until they can be transformed into the frantic, shuffling bustle gathered around the other vehicles.     Once on the bus, we are usually lucky enough to get seats, but this is not always the case.  The aisles are overflowing with standing people- men, women with alertly silent babies slung to their bodies, old ladies wrinkled and hunched over with age, and many, many children, who seem able to find any free space of bus and occupy it without intrusion to other passengers.     The last leg of our bus trip to the Pare Mountains took place under cover of darkness and a light rain.  The road was unpaved and winding, with miniature mountains and valleys tossing our bodies violently against each other and (in Adrian's case) nearly out of open windows.  As the rain began to increase, the rear end of the bus (where we were seated) became noticeably less linear in its following of the front end of the bus.  This fishtailing came to a depressing halt when the bus slowed and its wheels began to spin ineffectually on a patch of road that had turned to mud.  At this point, a rumble of speech and a mood of resigned transition passed through our fellow passengers.     The tribally local Pare language- rather than the transnational Swahili- was now being heard almost exclusively.  We would soon become experts in the idiosyncratic greetings and utterances of this local tongue.  English, found in abundance in larger Tanzanian and Kenyan cities had disappeared almost completely, with some rare characters using their working knowledge to help us navigate our way through basic questions and confusions.

     Calmly and without complaint, all passengers exited the bus, seeming to know the drill from prior experience.  Night had fallen and dense rain forest flanked both sides of the road- one sloping steeply upward, the other a precarious cliff.  Upon exiting the bus onto the road and into the drizzle, a large contingent- mostly women- mounted their wares and trappings atop their heads and began to trudge purposefully forward along the road into the impenetrable darkness ahead of us, seeming to give up on the prospects of the bus ever moving; we did not find their choice comforting.  Out on the road by the weak glow of the bus headlights we watched an indecipherable series of discussions between the driver and various male passengers until a plan of action was mounted.  Grabbing a hoe, a few men took turns hacking away at mounds of dirt at the side of the road, breaking loose dry earth into a pile.  Then they would take turns with a shovel, heaving the loose dirt under the bus in front of and around the tires.  We helped by pointing our flashlights in the most helpful directions while these tasks were performed.  By way of smiling thumbs up, our contributions were appreciated.  Incredibly, this dirt-tossing method provided some sort of friction that was needed for the stuck back tires and the bus leapt forward triumphantly.  We all piled back on and five minutes down the road we encountered the contingent of walking women who had abandoned us to our fate earlier on.  Late in the evening, our full busload made it to Mbaga and the Tona Lodge, the spot that would be our base of operations for the next few days.     The Tona Lodge proved to be a very unique (and very affordable) place.  Situated on the side of the forested mountain in Mbaga village, it is a rustic but spacious lodging that is managed as the conduit for what might be called Culturally Responsible Eco-Tourism or Ecologically Friendly Cultural Tourism or some such soulless tag for what is a truly beautiful experience.  The place is managed by a kind of grandpa-esque intellectual guru named T. Kimbreweza, or Mr. Kim for short.  He is the very self-aware and thoughtful representative of this "new" kind of tourism, a self-styled antidote to the high prices and unnecessary luxuries of the safari circuit.  Early on, he sat down with us and explained the ethos of the place in very passionate but rational terms.  The idea is to create a tourist destination that is owned, operated, and for the benefit of more remote local communities rather than for the enrichment of large travel agencies or the coffers of the federal government.  At this point, Tona Lodge is engaged in exactly what it preaches, but we couldn't help but wonder whether or not this sort of project could withstand the cultural and economic forces that might eventually turn it into the cynically mounted ethnic parades or wildlife "escapes" that Western tourism's market forces seem to inevitably foster.     We had some non-Pare, non-Tanzanian company at the Tona Lodge in the form of a 10 student high school group from Scotland.  The students (and Paula, their geography teacher) were there as part of a program called World Challenge, a UK-based organization that coordinates adventurous third world service/tourism trips for high schoolers and their teachers.     Using Tona lodge as our base, we spent the next four days hiking the surrounding areas with helpful locals as our guides.  On one day trip, guides named Omari and Gertrude took us up the steep slopes, through the forests and up to a scenic mountain lagoon where cows and goats chewed grass peacefully nearby.  On every hike, we brought little lunches along with us which consisted of hard boiled eggs, little fried potatoes, and a local pancake-type bread which to me was very similar to Naan, the greasy flatbread one finds at Indian restaurants.     For our next three days, we mounted a more ambitious excursion which took us marching up and down narrow trails for six hours with our backpacks until we reached the village of Chome.  Our general trend in elevation was upward and we seemed to pass through and endless assortment of vegetative zones, at one moment surrounded by dense jungle, the next by dry scrub, soon after by pine trees and ferns, and then again by tall grasses erupting with the scents of perfumed flowers.  Along the way, our guides- Omari (again) and Msafiri- would equip us with knowledge of local language and plant life.  Adrian and I were both fighting colds, so to ease our offensive displays of coughing and

snot-spewing, we were instructed to chew on some bitter leaves that seemed to numb the throat and mouth.     Passing villagers along the trail was always an interesting experience.  Having assembled some of the basic Pare greetings, we assumed the hellos and how-are-yous could be exchanged simply.  Instead, as Msafiri and Omari tutored us, there was a great deal of nuance that we had to grasp each time.  For children, males (like Omari and Msafiri) and females who might be considered our peers, one could say "Yahako" or "Mambo."  If there were more than one of these type of characters, "Yahenyu" ought be said.  To males of any age "Evava" could be the greeting, and if a woman seemed old enough to be a mama or grandmama, then "Emcheko" was the ideal.  The Emcheko greeting proved the most fraught with confusion, firstly because if it was spoken to a woman who was too young for this sign of respect, it elicited embarrassed laughter from the recipient.  In addition, there is an odd subtext to the greeting even when issued properly.  Apparently it contains some subtle implication of inquiry to older women about the availability of their daughters and thus your own eligibility as a potential suitor.  Delighted smiles from various old ladies seemed to indicate positive (or perhaps just amused) reviews on this front.  Generally speaking, encounters with people along the trails were very positive, filled with smiles and laughter- regardless of the burdens of wood and wares that people were balancing on their heads.  Occasionally, groups of young boys (8-12 years of age) with machetes would cross our path and, before the ice was broken, eye us with a suspicious curiosity, glaring silently and quizzically at our foreign appearance and alien equipment (in these parts, Ivan and Adrian are as equally "White" as Paul and I).    Greetings would break this momentary tension and the hike would continue past the young laborers without incident.     On our way to Chome village, Msafiri called ahead to the village chairman to ask permission for us to camp there.  Cell phones are very common here; there is something surreal in trudging through a muddy jungle path, passing by goats, cows, and the most simple of mud huts and then see someone break out their shiny Nokia to dial up the next village.  Even the third world is now hinting to Ivan and me that it’s time to get a cell phone.     Once in Chome, we set up our tents in the courtyard of the village secondary school where we also got the chance to meet several of the teachers.  (I could only imagine if a group of travelers asked permission from Von Steuben's administration to camp in our school courtyard).   It was very interesting hearing the teachers talk about their jobs; they were not from this area, but were placed there by the government to address a teacher shortage.  They were (and seemed) all extremely young and were all a bit stressed by the challenge of being stationed out in the boonies for their first job.  Teachers teach 6 classes a day with between 40 to 80 students crammed into classrooms with only the most basic infrastructure of desks and chalk.     Leaving our schoolhouse campsite the following day, we set off for another massive hike up a mountain called Shengena, the second highest peak in the region (after Kilimanaro).  This walk took us up past expansive vistas that showed us the valleys and mountains that we had crossed earlier.  Although the living conditions of this region could only be described as simple, the land is abundantly fertile and green and all the livestock we saw seemed vigorous, healthy, and well-fed.  Reaching the top of the Shengena mountain, we signed a water-damaged notebook that served as a record of visitors to this remote spot.  No other American entries were to be found, but for some reason, an inordinate number of Swedes had scaled the hill.  On the way down the hill, while walking through some of the denser forest, we heard a grunting call issue from the treetops.  These were Colobus monkeys, we were told, and although we never saw them, we were able to hoot back and forth with them as we hiked.     Our route since then has been a return trip, hiking back to the Tona lodge, staying another night, catching crowded buses once more and eventually ending up back in Moshi, the larger town that will now serve as our base for an attempted conquest of Mount Kilimanjaro.  I must correct a description that I made in my last e-mail.  I said that the mountain was invisible from the town, and indeed it was and has been for most of our time here.  On Tuesday, however, in the afternoon, we were shocked to

look out from our hotel's balcony and see the massive snow-capped mountain in its entirety.  It was a fantastic sight.     Being in Moshi is decidedly different than the Pare Mountains.  The demeanor and dress of people here has been affected greatly by wider interaction with the rest of Tanzania and the rest of the world; men don't hold hands as much as they do in the countryside and women wear their hair in fashions that call for straighteners and extensions- in the mountains, nearly all women are clean cut with their round heads very tightly cropped.  People, although still friendly, are far more likely to be selling things or services.  I have to admit being somewhat depressed to be back in Moshi, coming face to face with the thankless task of choosing between various over-priced packages that will get us access to Kilimanjaro.  We have booked our little adventure and tomorrow will set out on a six to seven day trek that promises to take us to the snow-capped peak that we oohed and ahhed over from our balcony the other day.  It all seems very unrealistic at the moment, but reality will doubtlessly hit us soon in the form of altitude sickness and fatigue.  To all of you who've dropped a line to me- thanks, it's very much appreciated.  Keep letting me know how things are going and I'll get back at you all with more in about a week.  Happy Independence Day (we made sure to sing the Star Spangled Banner at dinner last night).  Wish us luck.Yours Truly,Nick

volume 3: Summitry & Plummetrysent: Sunday July 15, 2007

ANOTHER LONG E-MAILHowdy all:     Well, for the third time, I write you from the now very familiar confines of the Buffalo Hotel's Internet cafe in Moshi.  After taking a look back at my last e-mail, I seemed to end on a bit of a sour note.  I shouldn't leave the impression that getting ready to go to Kilimanjaro (or on safari, as we plan to do shortly) is a totally dismal process.  It's simply that a combination of sticker shock and unhappy resignation occurs when one finds that seven days of camping will cost you no less than 900 US dollars.  Astronomical park fees are a fact of touristic life here, but visitors and locals alike seem to wonder about where the money goes.  Tanzanians have more than once joked to us about the flow of funds into Swiss bank accounts under the name of government officials.     Once we got past our obligatory gouging, we could focus for seven full days on a monumental physical feat- the hike to the 5896 meter high summit of Kilimanjaro.  Kilimanjaro is the highest point in all of Africa, the tallest volcano in the world, and the holder of some other impressive statistics that I can't remember.  Although the mountain loomed large in the physical and mental landscape of the local Chagga and Maasai for many years, it wasn't until a German geologist organized an expedition in 1889 that climbing the mountain became a human exploit.  I suspect that whenever the idea of scaling Kilimanjaro was mentioned before this time, some local phrase translating to "Fuck that!" was the common response.  Since then, however, Tanzanians and foreigners have flocked to Kili to fulfill man's insatiable urge to sit on top of inhospitable rocks.     The setup for a hike up Kilimanjaro involves contracting with a licensed agency of some kind.  We arranged ours with a family operation run by the Mtui brothers- Jaspar and Freddy-who seemed amenable to the kind of trip that we wanted.  On any Kili trek, tourists will be accompanied by a veritable army of locals who are responsible for guiding, cooking, carrying, and otherwise catering to the whims and frailties of western trekkers.  The human scenery that this creates along the trails of the mountain is a little unpleasant.  In a mini-imperialist procession, a pasty crew of Germans (or

Americans, or Brits, or French, or Japanese, etc) will be carrying minimal day backpacks, but decked out in their REI best; high tech all-weather, all-terrain boots, sporty sunglasses, aluminum hiking sticks (that look to me like ski poles), and polyester, fleeces, and gore-tex being zipped and unzipped for varying degrees of covering and warmth.  Meanwhile, bounding ahead of the industrialized trekkers at an inhumanly brisk pace will be the legions of dark, skinny Tanzanians each heaving at least 20 kilos in a backpack and perhaps another 30 upon their heads in tubs, boxes, and burlap sacks.  The ugly expectation is that to scale Kilimanjaro, a Western tourist does not carry his own weight.  Instead, the fit and eager young men of the region compete with each other for jobs as porters, the entry-level position in the Kilimanjaro tourist industry.  Dressed in deteriorating second-hand gymshoes, obscure T-shirts, and dress slacks, the porters are there to provide varying degrees of comfort and ease to the tourist.  They rush ahead to the next campsite to set up tents, boil water, and cook food so that the fatigued and famished whiteys can collapse comfortably into their nightly surroundings.  In all cases, tents, food, propane, and campstoves are being toted up the mountain, but in some groups, additional extravagances like portable toilets and boxes of wine (spotted with the French group- no joke) are stacked above the sweating brows of the African proletariat.     We entered negotiations with the naive hope that we could "do things differently," that we could somehow trek without the ugly colonialist veneer that seemed so standard.  Our budgetary impulses also pushed us in this direction, as we wanted to limit the number of extra contractors assigned to us, thus cutting expenses.  Most of these negotiations were pushed forward by Adrian, whose energy for questioning and investigating far exceeded that of the rest of us.  We nicknamed him "Legwork" for his troubles.  To our credit, we did slice off a significant column of human resources by carrying our own bags (an average of 15 kilos a piece), bringing our own tents and sleeping bags, and requesting to do without extras like tables and chairs for mealtimes.  Our team ended up with one guide, one assistant guide, a cook, a waiter (the guy who sets up and cleans up the meals), and three porters.  Incredibly, this is considered a skeletal crew, as many other groups had teams of 15 or more.  Despite our pretensions to rugged egalitarianism, there is no doubt that we were still the weak and dependent visitors who owed our very survival on the mountain to the pain and sweat of people carrying way more weight than we were.  At the very least, we saved some money and looked a bit more self-sufficient as we passed by other groups with our big bags and scrambled in the dust setting up our own tents.     The majority of the team stayed in the background of our trek (partly because their English and our Swahili didn't grant us much to share).  The exceptions were the guide and the waiter.  Our guide was a fantastically stoic and patient 35 year old father of two named Beatus, nicknamed "Bear" by all who knew him.  Given his nickname, it ended up appropriate that he bore a strong resemblance to Chicago Bears head coach Lovey Smith.   Bear was of course minus the giant Motorola headset and he sported a Tampa Bay Buccaneers cap and an English soccer jersey instead of Bears gear.  Adrian argued that Bear more favored Dennis Haysbert (TV's President David Palmer from the Fox series 24), but this is a dispute best left unresolved.  The much younger Nuru, the waiter, became a familiar face at every teatime and mealtime, but he also became the default guide for Paul and me as the trek progressed.  More on that in a moment.     There are several routes available to ascend Kilimanjaro, each taking a different amount of time and being of varying degrees of difficulty.  We chose the 6 to 7 day (we ended up with 7) Machame route which was listed as "demanding" and it certainly made its share of demands on us.  Our least strenuous day of hiking involved 3 hours on foot.  Our most strenuous was close to 15 hours of walking.  Six hours of trekking was an average day.     A brief summary of the seven days, terrain-wise: The first day of the route up the mountain began as a slow walk through some very well-maintained trails sloping ever so gradually upward (1500 m) through rain forest.  The campsite that night was a fog drenched transitional zone between the rainforest and the "moorland" (short, dry shrubbery) that would dominate the next day.  By the third

day, vegetation became more sparse with only some odd cactus-like plants clinging to the rocky terrain.  Moving into the fourth and fifth days, the scenery is best described as a moonscape, or a mars-scape as we trudged in blinding sunlight up dry slopes of red and gray volcanic rocks, finally camping at an elevation of 4600 m. The apocalyptic first half of the sixth day brought us as close to polar conditions as I would like to venture - more on that later.  The seventh day was the day of deliverance wherein we descended, bounding, ears popping, past the meters of terrain that it took us four days to get past on the way up.     After the second day, looking back to view where we'd come from became a surreal experience as we were only able to see as far down as the bank of clouds above which the rest of the mountain towered.  Peering over this shimmering, interminable plane of mashed potatoes gave us the incredible feeling of being on another world, another planet, detached and dominant over the invisible forests and plains below.  The cottony sea was only broken in the distance by one other artifact- the bluish peak of Mount Meru, Kilimanjaro's smaller volcanic cousin.  If our glances downward provided us with a sense of accomplishment and oversight, looking upward always dwarfed our egos with awe and intimidation.  With every day that we moved up, the snowy and glaciated peak of the mountain loomed larger.  At first, the growing size of the peak was a comforting thing, because it was another measurable indication of our nearing our goal.  On the second day, in fact, just seeing it as big as it was gave us the false sense of being "almost there."  This was of course far from the case, and the snowy cliffs' apparent proximity teased us more with each passing day.  In addition, the closer the peak was to our campsite each night, the longer sunrise was delayed.  In equatorial Africa, dawn and dusk spring in and out of existence instantly.  On the mountain however, the massive blockage caused by the peak added a frustrating extra hour until the moment when our freezing bodies could bathe in the warmth of the sun.     I really can't overstate the two different worlds that exist on Kilimanjaro- the one when the sun is out and that when the sun has set.  During the day, we walked in T-shirts, sweating, sun-burning, but generally comfortable, stopping to eat and read in pleasant 70-80 degree weather.  After 6pm, when the sun made its sudden dip behind the horizon, an intense chill would grip the mountain.  This was only the first stage, however.  Soon, an evil chunk of the previously peaceful expanse of cloud cover would creep up the mountain and envelop our campsite, permeating us with a wretched dampness and bitter cold.  Our bedtimes came early as there was nothing productive to be done outside of our tents.  Once in the tents, we tried to stay warm.  On this front, I was the least successful.  Ivan, Paul, and Adrian had brought their sub-zero down sleeping bags.  I had hastily bought a sleeping bag before I left, but opted for one that was designed for slightly warmer nights (because I was going to..AFRICA!).  So, I had to improvise.  I would dress in all my layers of clothing, including long underwear, three pairs of socks, and my winter hat.  I also filled three water bottles with boiling water before I would go to sleep and insert them gingerly into the sleeping bag near my feet.  I even borrowed an empty rice sack from our porters to add a pathetic extra layer.  With these innovations I was able to keep warm enough to fall asleep and only be awakened at around 6 in the morning when the water bottles had lost their warmth.  I would then exit the tent and shiver while waiting for the rays of the sun finally creep over the ridge and touch me.      My complaints about cold nights pale in comparison to the physical trials undergone by one of my compatriots.  As early as the second day, Mount Kilimanjaro decided that one of its forgotten enemies in life was Ivan Rodriguez, and began to exert cruel vengeance upon him.  Early on, Ivan began to suffer the effects of altitude sickness; headaches, loss of appetite, diarrhea, and on the last day, a regular schedule of vomiting.  Not content with doing violence to Ivan's equilibrium, gag reflex, and bowels, on the descent, Kilimanjaro decided to afflict Ivan's respiratory system with a bout of severe allergies.  Ivan's degraded physical condition was noticeable to everyone.  Early on, it became clear that Paul and I had an inordinate degree of energy despite the rigors of the trail and oxygen deprivation.  Ivan theorized that "our people" in southern Poland must carry some genetic marker well

adapted to high altitudes.  Ivan, on the other hand, despite having a good degree of experience at high elevations, has a physiology that does not adjust well to these conditions (his father and brother, however, adjust well to high altitudes).  It was for this reason that we chose to add a seventh day to our schedule- to give Ivan more of a chance to acclimatize to the massive jumps in altitude that we had taken.  As Ivan would trek at a snail's pace ("Pole Pole" in Swahili), Paul and I would bolt ahead, singing songs to keep pace; this is when Nuru, our waiter, became our assistant guide.  I should point out that this mountaineering thing is totally new to me.  Although Ivan, Paul, and Adrian hiked the Himalayas all the way to Everest Base camp two years ago, my high-altitude experience is limited to some Andean spots last summer and the towering heights of Cricket Hill at Montrose and the lakefront in Chicago.  This being the case, I surprised myself and everyone at my body's ability to thrive and exert itself at high elevations.  Even for Paul and me, however, this physical self-confidence would crumble on our sixth day.     The schedule of hiking for the final day of ascent on Kilimanjaro seems to have been designed by the criminally insane.  Locked away, straight-jacketed in a padded cell, a sadistic madman was granted one final request before his execution- to be allowed to direct tourists along the final stages of a hike up the highest mountain in Africa.  The first step in this deranged itinerary involves waking up after about four hours of rest at 10:30 pm.  From there, the sleep-deprived expeditioners will march through the pitch of night for seven hours up 1200 meters of rocky paths to the mountain's crater rim at an altitude of 5600 meters.  With each step in this already disorienting nocturnal ascent, both oxygen levels and temperatures will drop precipitously.  Any water that they have brought with them to quench their thirst will freeze solid, leaving it inaccessible.  At about the time the hiking fools reach the rim of the crater, the sun will begin to rise.  They will begin walking on increasingly slippery and ice covered ground in order to traverse a series of glacial mounds, elevating slightly higher to the bitterly cold summit at Uhuru peak where they will stumble incoherently and attempt to take photos of their ludicrous accomplishment.  Immediately thereafter, they will descend rapidly, tumbling down steep slopes of gravel in order to arrive and crash at the campsite that they were awakened from less than 12 hours prior.     Yes, this was the promised agenda, and it was all the maddening glory that it promised to be.  As had become our custom, Paul and I pulled ahead of the rest of the group with Nuru as our guide.  About halfway up the slope, at around 3am, Paul and I started to get a woozy feeling, a lack of ability to focus.  Realizing this, we began to count our steps aloud in unison to stay alert.  But as we reached the crater rim, our consciousness became further compromised.  Our speed had rewarded us with the privilege of being the first group up that morning- the three of us, the only humans, for a brief moment, staring across pristine ice cliffs out to the creeping red glow of dawn on the top of Africa.  But this fevered pace had also plunged us headlong into a briefly severe bout of altitude sickness. For the duration of the time that we were actually atop the mountain, I can best describe the experience as a physical sensation like being both extremely drunk and having an extremely bad hangover at the same time.  My speech was slurred, my thought process incoherent, my locomotion unbalanced.  At the same time my headache pounded, my mouth was dry and I coughed till I dry heaved. On our descent through the gravelly ski slope, I fell down more times than I could count.  Still, for all its insanity, it was an experience I would not want to have missed.  For Ivan, it was the ultimate test of perseverance. Just fifteen minutes into our nighttime climb, Ivan began to vomit violently, but as Bear informed us, "throwing up?..no problem."  Matching a very "pole pole" pace with Bear, Ivan fell behind most of the other trekkers, stopping to vomit whenever Kilimanjaro demanded penance.  But through it all, he trudged triumphantly to the top of the crater rim and had his own dizzying photo op.  Adrian pulled ahead of Ivan in just enough time to ascend to Uhuru peak (where Paul and I had stumbled an hour before) with another assistant guide.  For all my sarcasm about the certifiable insanity of our schedule, the real reason for the late-night departure for the summit has to do with the amazing power of sunrise.  Once the sun's rays hit the peak of Kilimanjaro, the frozen glaciers become slippery with snowmelt,

making them dangerously unnavigable for anyone trying to walk across the rim of the mountain's top.     After a nap on summit day, we bid farewell to the gray and desolate high elevations and began to drop into the land of shrubbery again, and then into real trees.  On the same day that we witnessed the sunrise from a glacier's edge, we were camping that evening in the lush greenery of the rain forests.  The last day was a foggy, tired, and happy march to the gate of the park.  Celebrations back in Moshi were boisterous but brief as it was also time to bid farewell to Adrian, as he headed back toward Nairobi for his return flight.  "Legwork" will be missed, to be sure.  Nevertheless, the tender balance between brotherly love and brotherly hatred was probably at a good moment for the Rodriguezes to see each other on their separate ways.     The tail end of this e-mail (is there an end, you ask..) was actually composed from Arusha, a larger city than Moshi that is serving as our jumping-off point for our next big-ticket Tanzanian tourist item: a 5-day westward-bound safari.  Tomorrow morning we start our visits with the wild beasts of Ngorogoro Crater and the Serengeti.   Again, thanks for all the communication from home.  It's a comfort and a pleasure to get word from everyone.  I must run off and abandon this internet cafe to its closing time.  Hope all is well.Yours Truly,Nick

volume 4: Mammalian Megafaunasent: Wednesday July 25, 2007

Hi again:    Today, I write to you from Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda.  We have left Tanzania behind now for the foreseeable rest of our trip.  There will be plenty to report on Rwanda, but there's a good deal of seeing and doing to relate from our final legs of journey through the wild, wild west of Tanzania.     Our entry into the realm of the beasts began with our departure from Arusha.  There, we piled ourselves and our things into a militaristically sturdy olive green Toyota Land Cruiser with an open-able roof.  Toyota is, without competition, the king of the road here in Tanzania.  Roughly 80% of all vehicles seen bouncing and careening their way along the left side of Tanzanian highways, byways, and dirt roads proudly bear rusty and dusty Toyota lettering and logos along their hoods and tailgates.  Nissans hold a distant second place in the rankings with Mitsubishis, Isuzus, Suzukis, Scanias, Mercedes, Puegots, and Range Rovers appearing in smaller quantities.  An American auto has not been spotted yet on African roadways.     We contracted our safari with Jaspar, the same middleman who arranged our Kilimanjaro trek.  He set us up with an itinerary of 4 and a half days that took us through Lake Manyara, the Ngorogoro Crater, and Serengeti National Park with stays in campsites along the way (our tents once again serving as our lodging).  Our Land Cruiser was manned by the bony, soft-spoken, middle-aged Deu (short for Deugratis), our driver and wildlife guide for the safari.  Joining us also was Steven, a young, talkative Pare guy who would work as our "cooker" for the expedition.  Every day of animal viewing concluded with excellent meals; Steven's culinary skills were particularly impressive given the rustic conditions at camp.      The order of our activities at our wildlife destinations would usually consist in a late morning arrival at our campsite, an unloading and setting up of our tents and things, a light lunch and then a "game drive" until dusk when we would return to camp for a tasty and filling dinner.  During the game drives, we would stand up in our Land Cruiser with the roof raised open above us, holding onto the metal corssbars while Deu maneuvered the great Toyota along the grooves and humps of the park roads.  Deu's powers of multi-tasking allowed him to pilot the vehicle while simultaneously spotting

some speck in the distant trees whose genus and species he would declare before speeding toward it at just the right angle so we could enjoy it.     Our first day was spent at Lake Manyara, a smaller national park whose wildlife was an exciting intro to the region.  As we moved into savannah territory, the color of the dry grass, the horizontal shelves of the acacia trees, the circular configuration of the Maasai villages, and the herds of their Zebu cattle already seemed familiar to me.  From our first spotting of guinea fowl (which is probably for most people an uninspiring spotted wild chicken), I flashed immediately back to my childhood obsession with the animals of the African savannah.  With each sighting, the scenery immediately revived the glossy photos from my "Long African Day" book, the dioramas of taxidermy at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the endless parade of animal footage that had once glued my attention to channel 11.     At Manyara, the animal life started small; we encountered blue monkeys and vervet monkeys playing in spiny trees along a riverbank and Hornbills of various species lifting their heavy beaks in flight.  In massive cohabitation, we found baboons and Impalas staring us down as they ate, groomed, and ambled fearlessly around and across the roadway.  Awed as we were by this early showing of critters, the three of us gasped with the most fervor at our first elephant as he emerged from behind a tree at close range- sagging skin, tusks and majestic plodding gait.  Soon after we found ten of his compatriots who we happily gawked at for a while.  As we approached the shore of the lake, our attention was called to the muddy humps cresting in a pool- fat, happy, hippopatami.  A couple raised their heads to wiggle their tiny ears and reveal their massive snouts.  Not far from them, pairs of giraffes were engaged in some hilariously graceful neck-wrestling games.  Upon seeing our first warthog, we decided that despite bad reputation, he was an extremely charismatic animal.  We also caught a glimpse of the dik-dik, one of Africa's smallest antelopes.  Seeing other Land Cruisers sending up dust toward some point ahead, Deu hit the gas to join them.  Swarmed around a tree were the vehicles of tourists pointing their telephoto lenses toward a lazy lump of spots on a distant branch- a leopard had been spotted.     On the morning of our second day, our group of three became four as we were joined by Carmen, a German middle school teacher from Koblenz.  Carmen was originally to join us only for the rest of the safari she had booked, but in the end she decided to hitch her wagon to ours for the journey west into Rwanda, so she is with us here in Kigali even as I write this.     Our second day took us to the legendary Ngororogoro Crater, one of the largest calderas on the planet.  The vistas provided by the geography of the crater are truly fantastic.  Looking down as our truck drove into the crater, we could stare across the expansive plains below, spotting our first massive herds of zebra, wildebeest, Thomson's gazelle, and Cape buffalo.  The container effect of the crater walls made for the most impressive backdrop for animal viewing of all our places.  Once in the crater, things became even more interesting, as we spotted a group of lions lazing in the grass right next to the road.  Filling us with a sort of anticlimactic thrill was our close-up encounter with two cheetahs who appeared to be stealthily stalking a herd of gazelle.  In the end, their overly tentative patience never resulted in the bloody action of a hunt that we hoped we might see.  In general, the predators that we saw on safari were in various states of repose and rest rather than on display as the fearsome carnivores that we know them to be.  Elsewhere in the crater, we came upon the courtship display of a male ostrich.  His feathery dance proved effective as a nearby female immediately allowed him to mount her.  Their liaison was startlingly brief, however, since Ivan was unable to get the video function on his camera running before the event had already ended.  A speck of gray-brown in the far off distances was confirmed (with the help of Ivan's camera's impressive zoom) to be a rhinoceros.  Our evening campsite at the rim of the crater was among the most crowded (and coldest, due to its elevation), and we passed the evening conversing with other mzungu (white people, or foreigners).     En route to Serengeti from Ngororgoro, we made a quick stop at Olduvai Gorge, the paleontological excavation site made famous for several early hominid specimens unearthed there.  In one strata,

anthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey found proof of simultaneous habitation by Homo habilus and Austrolopithecus boisei.  Even older and more significant is a slab of fossilized volcanic ash that contains evocative footprints made by Austrololopithecus afarensis, the earliest of our hominid ancestors to show evidence of bipedalism.  Some of the bones were on display in a dinky little museum on the site, but more inspiration came from staring out across the gorge and imagining some of our earliest hairy ancestors making their first steps without using their hands or knuckles.       The last two days of our safari were spent in Serengeti, the largest of the game reserves in Tanzania.  In comparison to Manyara and Ngorogoro, the expanses of Serengeti were much drier, almost desert-like, and the animals, although spaced further apart from each other (and thus somehow less intimate), appeared in more impressive quantities, with herds dotting the landscape clear to the horizon.  Most prolific in this vein were the wildebeest, whose skittish, mooing multitudes took on almost insect-like proportions, their blind swarms milling about in infinite clusters.  Serengeti provided us with some great views of a mother lion with her cubs, big beefy herds of cape buffalo, an expansion of our antelope count (hartebeest, topi, and waterbuck), a splashy herd of zebra taking a swim in a river, and a spotting of a rock hyrax, the tiny, furry, and unlikely close relative of the elephant.  Along the way, Carmen provided us with some German names for these creatures, my favorite being die klippschliefer for the fuzzy hyrax.  Another highlight of Serengeti was the nighttime acoustics which included the weird barking of the zebra and the noise that Paul was certain was someone doing a silly impression of an elephant's trumpet- it was the real thing.     After emerging on the western end of Serengeti National Park on the fifth day of our wildlife safari, we caught a typically crowded bus to Mwanza, a sprawling town on the rocky southern shores of Lake Victoria.  Although it is allegedly Tanzania's second largest city, it definitely had a lack of hustle and bustle and an almost sleepy feel to its lakeside locale.  Being in this western part of Tanzania, Mwanza was also pleasantly free from any substantial tourism rackets and so had no touting from the hyperactive entrepreneurial underclass.  Nevertheless, it had an eccentric, dusty wild west energy of its own, one which I will attempt to faithfully portray in my next letter.  In the meantime, I feel I should get this animal-related segment out before I fall further behind.     At this very moment I am about to flee the internet terminal to join my fellow travelers who are relaxing at the swimming pool at the Hotel Milles Collines (which is no less than the real hotel depicted in the film Hotel Rwanda).  We are patronizing the Milles Collines for its pool only; we are staying at a place that is decidedly less luxurious- torn mosquito nets and no running water.  The pool should be a nice treat.  Border crossings and hotels are but the most minor and banal things to recount about our Rwandan experience so far.  I will muscle up another e-mail soon so Mwanza and Rwanda can receive their due.   As always, keep the news from home coming.  Hope all is well.Yours,Nick

volume 5: Kwanza Mwanzasent: Tue Jul 31, 2007

Well,     The last time I left off of our travel narrative, our team of four (myself, Ivan, Paul, and our new addition, Carmen) had reached Mwanza, Tanzania's dusty second city on the shores of Lake Victoria.  We stayed 2 nights there, enjoying a particularly odd mix of ghost town, port city, lakeside resort, and Tatooine bar scene from the first Star Wars film.  Upon our arrival at the bus depot adjacent to a large Coca Cola bottling plant, a deaf-mute barefoot derelict with a popsicle advanced toward us with arms outstretched in greeting.  He proceeded to hug me briefly before moving on to Paul, whom he also

attempted to embrace, but instead accidentally doused with a substantial helping of sticky orange drippage from his melted popsicle.  Paul managed a friendly thankyou to this odd initiation to the city.  Making our way to the city center, we passed by rows and rows of whitewashed concrete storefronts fronted by bulky pillars holding up balconies, many bearing the construction company's name (always Indian) and the vintage of the building's erection (often from the 1930s and 40s).  Something about these structures and the notable lack of street traffic gave Mwanza the ambience of an Old West town.  We secured accommodations at the Hotel Deluxe, a decaying poured concrete tower that seemed to dominate its sector of the city.  The Deluxe would prove a fascinating choice not for its architecture but because of the nighttime transformation of its front stoop and cafe-bar.  More on that later.     As we explored Mwanza more, we wandered into the hills of an upper class neighborhood overlooking the rocky shoreline of the lake.  We sat and had a drink at a posh hotel (patronized mainly by Indians) overlooking the bay.  At certain moments, the paved roads and wealthy estates on the hillside seemed as if they could have come from some Californian enclave of suburban comfort.  This sensation was dispelled once we strolled beyond the local cemetery.  There, ramshackle slums clung to the rocks that formed the foundations of the adjacent mansions.  Here we embarked on an odd adventure as children emerged from their shacks to show us some circuitous route through the rocks toward some destination that they thought we were looking for.  No linguistic ground was shared here, so we took the hike as a fun diversion.  Our wandering through this area was initiated by Carmen, whose Deutsche-centric guidebook claimed the presence of a German graveyard in amongst the rocks; the dead Germans remained undiscovered.     The next day Ivan, Paul, and I did more walking and decided to attend a late afternoon soccer match that we saw advertised at a field of dust flanked by crumbling cement bleachers that constituted the municipal stadium.  Taking the field were the young members of two very energetic local club teams, the Buhongwo and Supersport.  Watching the game and interacting with other local spectators was a fun way to get a taste of people's character and interests in Mwanza.  Buhongwo, better coordinated, better equipped (their uniforms were shinier) took the match 1 to zero.     A more bizarre window into the character of Mwanza was provided that evening once we had returned to our home base at the Hotel Deluxe.  Prior to this moment, we had commented to each other that for a large city, Mwanza certainly had no nighttime hustle or bustle to speak of.  Little did we realize that the ground floor of our own hotel was the epicenter of Mwanza's nightlife- such as it was. The outdoor front stoop of the hotel (I hesitate to use such a sophisticated word as veranda, patio, or foyer) had a mismatched huddle of plastic and metal furniture that was dimly illuminated overhead by the flickering of a fluorescent light.  Having eaten elsewhere, the four of us sat down to have a drink and relax.  As we looked through the dim light over our surroundings, an interesting assortment of characters in various states of inaction and inebriation became clear to us.  Caged behind the metal bars of his booth was a somewhat surly young bartender.  Pacing leisurely around were two portly waitresses, both of whom would periodically sit down to enjoy their own beers.  Just inside the hotel lobby were women in more makeup who seemed to be recruiting evening business from skinny men in button-up shirts.  Across the narrow street from the hotel were several clumps of individuals standing in a sort of anticipation.  They were young, expressive in conversation with each other, but not really doing anything in particular, waiting- in the way that people in small towns or blighted neighborhoods seem to do- for something to happen.  Meanwhile, white Toyotas that aspire to be taxis (cabdrivers seem to do very little business in Mwanza) would pull up, park awkwardly, open their doors to blast some outdated music, and then pull away again to repeat the process.     On the hotel stoop, another character soon caught our attention- clutching his club-shaped cane, draped in his red plaid tunic, a tall, shaven-headed, ankle-beaded, hoop-earlobed Maasai warrior strolled purposefully back and forth between the stoop and the hotel lobby.  Upon closer inspection we found that this tribalist wore an ID tag that showed that he was the hotel security guard.   As the evening progressed, the various aimless groups of people from across the street started to send

delegates into the hotel area.  One such ambassador startled us immensely.  Out of the darkenss burst a lesbianic dwarf dressed in a football jersey, suddenly standing at my side and shouting heartily in Swahili.  She appeared somewhat drunk and stepped forward with enthusiasm, her stubby arm outstretched for a handshake.  Grunting in what seemed like a jovially menacing tone, she grabbed my hand and shook it repeatedly with such vigor that she bumped our rickety metal table, spilling Ivan's recently purchased drink.  She then stepped backwards without apology and collapsed into a nearby plastic chair, legs dangling, as she looked out over the scene.  Just a few minutes later, a drunk bald woman stumbled from across the street and advanced toward our table, choosing to communicate to Carmen in slurred Swahili and slow motion gestures that she would like a drink.  Having somehow taken a seat on Carmen's lap, the woman then leaned clumsily across our table and grabbed at my drink, trying to steal a sip.  Together we prevented her attempted theft and were joined by the Maasai guard who appeared suddenly to help shoo her away without having to resort to using his club.  Perking up at the action, the butch dwarf hopped off her plastic perch and strutted toward us again, helping us in scolding the would-be thief by wagging her finger in angry disapproval as the bald woman retreated back into the darkness across the street.  Having had our fill of Mwanza's nightlife, we retired upstairs to our beds, but the sounds of carousal continued to be heard from the street below until dawn.     The next two days were lengthy days of travel.  First boarding a bus (which itself was loaded onto a ferry), we vehicle-hopped (into and out of various Toyota minivans) and village-hopped across the dusty terrain of Western Tanzania from Mwanza to Geita to Buselesele to Biharamulo (where we slept) to Lusuhunga and finally to the bridge at Rusomo Falls that would bring us officially out of Tanzania and into Rwanda.  The roads along this route were all dirt and quite bumpy, although we passed one segment that was under development, being built and paved by a Chinese construction company.  It was a bit surreal suddenly seeing Chinese guys walking around this remote area of Tanzania surveying a construction site.     This e-mail was a long time coming due to some technical slipups at an internet cafe a few days ago.  For that reason, my Rwandan stories will have to wait until next time.  At the moment I am in Cyangugu, a Rwandan town just across the border from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  More on everything Rwandan next time.  Hope everyone is doing well.  Keep dropping me e-mail whenever you can.Yours,Nick

volume 6: Rwandaisesent: Tue Aug 07, 2007

Hello once again:     At this moment I write to you from the town of Gisenyi, Rwanda, a town on the northern shore of the beautiful Lake Kivu.  When last I truncated my account of our exploits, the four of us had reached the Rwanda-Tanzania border at Rusumo Falls.  As we crossed the bridge, we readied ourselves for the inefficient steps and unfriendly faces that so often populate the desks and checkpoint booths of international border crossings.  But here at Rwanda's front door, we found not a single frowning bureaucrat, not a single camouflaged thug with heavy artillery, not even a line of unhappy migrants being kept waiting for spite or caprice.  Instead, we were greeted by a smiling man in a bright yellow dress shirt, whose processing of our documents was among the most painless and efficient that I had ever encountered in any comparable governmental process.  In addition to providing fast service and an ideal pricetag (there is no charge for a Rwandan tourist visa), the gentleman in the office also gave

us useful information about transport from the border to the capital.     Our border experience ended up being an appropriate allegory for a whole series of first impressions that we had of Rwanda and its people.  As we took our first minivan to Kigali, we engaged in conversation with several very friendly Rwandans, who were at least as friendly as the government official at the border, welcoming us and sharing translations of key phrases into the national language.  Swahili had been totally left behind in Tanzania as Kinyarwanda was now the language of choice.  As an African nation, Rwanda is unique in having an indigenous national language rather than the typical multitude of local tongues that usually leaves countries to conduct national business with an obvious regional bias (as in the case of Swahili) or in the European tones of their former imperial overlords.  Even with this advantage, the Rwandans were nonetheless subjected to the tutelage of the Belgians and thus French is the other official language.  In this aspect of our visit to Rwanda, the multilingual Carmen has proved invaluable; she is a French teacher back in Germany (and an English teacher).     As we passed through the mountainous Rwandan countryside (Rwanda is known as the "Land of a Thousand Hills") on our way to Kigali, we were struck repeatedly by the serene beauty and civility of everything we saw, from the peaceful cows dotting the pine-covered hills to the top-notch infrastructure showing itself in the smooth highways, drainage systems, and roadside signage.  It was in Kigali that we saw our first functionally obeyed African traffic light, bestowing order on the productive bustle of the capital city.  Even in Rwanda's largest city, our interactions with Rwandans continued to be friendly and earnest without exception.  People approached us with goodwill, without an agenda, with assistance and information.  We were at a complete loss in being able to square these human encounters, civic scenery and general ambiance with the inhuman bloodbath that we all knew the country to have been just thirteen years ago.  In 1994, the river that we watched flowing scenically beneath us as we crossed the border at Rusumo would have been clogged with the corpses of thousands of Rwandan citizens, while thousands more survivors would have marched above them across the bridge into Tanzania's refugee camps.  In 1994, the genteel commercial bustle of Kigali would have been a ghost town littered with the dead backed by a soundtrack of artillery fire from the advancing forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.  In 1994, many of the smiling faces we met could have been giving away the location of their doomed neighbors while many of the waving hands that passed us in the street could well have been gripping the blood-drenched handles of genocidal machetes.  None of this knowledge that we possessed made any sense to us.  Only intermittently did the lurking legacy of the genocide and its aftermath show itself to us during our time in Rwanda.  On one hand, there are numerous memorials dedicated to the nightmare of 1994 in a very self-conscious national effort toward "Unity and Reconciliation."  On the other hand, the fact that the entire country's citizenry was transformed into victims, perpetrators, or accomplices in a premeditated mass murder has produced logistical nightmares, psychic traumas, and simmering resentments that are brushed under the national carpet with potentially dangerous consequences for the future.     In Kigali, we stayed in a very dingy hotel that served us with the most basic of necessities.  To compensate, we dined once at a fine restaurant, swam (and dined) at the Hotel Milles Collines (the hotel, as I mentioned in another e-mail that is the real-life setting of the "Hotel Rwanda" story), and started every morning with the best coffee and best milk that we'd had yet in Africa at a very gourmet coffee house in the downtown convention center.  The city center itself was not all that expansive, but because of its hilly geography, we managed to confuse ourselves walking around during the first day and a half.  To get out to further flung corners of town, we were introduced to a very popular mode of Rwandan transport- the motorcycle taxi.  These are Japanese dirt bikes that are driven around by men with green vests and an extra helmet.  For less than a dollar, he gives you the helmet and you sit behind him on the bike and he takes you to your destination.  Our first moto-taxi ride also took us to our first official genocide memorial.  In a quieter section of Kigali stands a state-of-the art genocide museum that houses a series of very slick, very informative exhibits that clearly and objectively relate the historical narrative that led up to and followed the Rwandan genocide of 1994.  Other exhibits showed

us personal testimonials of survivors of the genocide and provided disturbingly tragic profiles of just a few of the many children who met gruesome deaths at the hands of their parents' neighbors.  In addition, another exhibit hall did an impressive overview of the messy history surrounding five other major genocidal episodes in world history (the German subjugation of the Hereros in Namibia, the Ottoman slaughter of Armenians in Turkey, the infamous project of the Nazi Holocaust, Pol Pot's purge in Cambodia, and the Serbian nationalist "cleansing" of the Balkans).  As social studies teachers, we prided ourselves on being somewhat well-informed on the topic of genocide, but there was so much that we were still shocked to learn (or at least be reminded of) as we paraded through this depressing overload of information.  I was again struck by the realization of how much international attention was on Rwanda on the eve of the genocide.  Rwanda's years since independence could never have been described as peaceful and there were violent purges and idiotic nationalisms that punctuated its history at various moments long before the early 90s.  In those earlier episodes, the upheavals of Rwandan society might have a chance at being described as "off the radar" of the rest of the world, as occurring in a "backwater" whose class warfare and ethnic strife was still in the confusing wake of its post-colonial awakening.  Yet it was in the early 90s, at the precise moment when Rwanda sat more directly under international scrutiny than it had ever before (there was a UN military presence, an internationally mediated peace process, global media coverage), that Rwanda was then allowed to engage in its most violent, most systematic, and most complete bloodletting while the world's leaders did rhetorical gymnastics to avoid any involvement.  A recognition of this failing runs bitterly through all the genocide memorializing that we've seen here in Rwanda, as it also seems to be the guilt-ridden impetus for a lot of the Western aid money that has flowed into Rwanda in the years since.     Two churches just outside of Kigali were our destinations for more genocide-related tourism (yes, an uncomfortable way to put it) on our second full day in the capital.  These were places that were meant to serve as safe havens for Tutsi citizens fleeing the rampage of genocidal carnage that was sweeping the country.  Instead, the death squads found their quarry and the churches were converted into houses of worship for the new cult of Hutu nationalism, their only sacrament being the spilling of Tutsi blood.  Both of the churches have been frozen in time and stocked with artifacts of their ugly past for the sake of national memory.  One of the churches contained piles and piles of clothing and personal items (including the eerie leaflets that constituted peoples ethnic identity cards) taken from the bodies of the victims slaughtered there.  The other, larger church sat with empty pews and an alter stained with human blood.  Overhead, the dark corrugated metal ceiling had been spattered with thousands of bullet-holes, the sunlight piercing through in constellations that resembled a clear night sky.  Underneath the church a dark, musty crypt had been dug, one side housing hundreds of caskets, each filled with the bones of at least eight victims. On the other side, we descended into the cellar to come face to face with shelves upon shelves lined with thousands of human skulls, each staring eyeless and smiling with a slightly different hint of the age and appearance of its original owner.     On our next day in Kigali, we were back at the gourmet cafe, enjoying our luxurious french press coffee and towering ice cold glasses of whole milk.   We were joined by a young American woman who was living in Kigali doing some legwork for an international aid organization planning to build a school for orphans.  She was full of interesting information about the political climate here in Rwanda and we listened attentively to learn more.  According to her, Rwanda is operating under the mostly benign dictatorship of Paul Kagame and his RPF government, but with some fascinating side effects.  Among the measures taken for the sake of "Unity and Reconciliation" mentioned in the genocide museum was the use of a "traditional" local council called a Gacaca.  According to our informant, these councils are a pragmatic but controversial solution to the problem of trying to efficiently charge, try, convict, and imprison all of the perpetrators of the genocide.  Unable to process this magnitude of criminality, the Gacaca is a ritual mandated by the government that communities must engage in according to a set pattern.  During these administrative ceremonies, the genocidal murderer or maimer, dressed in a pink prisoners' uniform, is stood before the community and compelled to confess his

crimes for the record and express regret and contrition.  Then the community is to officially forgive him and he is released from further obligations of punishment or penance.  There is no institutional allowance for the (very likely) possibility that A. the murderer is not actually contrite or B. that the victims' families do not want to grant him forgiveness.  This is where the dictatorship comes in.  No one is allowed to publicly express displeasure with the Gacaca process since at its conclusion, all parties are meant to have been "unified and reconciled."  Our interviewee at the cafe seemed convinced that this process has left some very deep resentments stewing among the victims and allowed some rather unreconstructed and unrepentant killers to return to society and plot their return to glory.  Indeed, most surprising to us was the fact that the racist ideology of Hutu nationalism still beats strong in the hearts of true believers in exile communities from Paris to Congo.  Our source told us that it is the military might (and undemocratic monopoly over politics) of Paul Kagame's RPF government that keeps the chauvinistic aspirations of these extremists from regrouping to start another civil war.       The dynamic here in Rwanda is thus still tense, though you wouldn't know it to look over the normal goings on in the capital city.  The official line is that the Hutu-Tutsi class/caste/ethnic (choose your preferred term) distinction is dead.  All are Rwandans now.  Yet, it is clear that the Tutsi expats who flowed into Rwanda after the genocide- many of whom grew up speaking English and Swahili, rather than French and Kinyarwanda, in their exile enclaves in Uganda and Tanzania- slipped into some rather privileged positions in society, commerce, government, and the military. Paul Kagame, whose awkward birdlike visage hangs in uncharismatic portraiture in every business in Rwanda, runs what is seen by some as a Tutsi government.  They are a minority.  The Hutu masses (an anachronism in the new Rwanda) are aware of this.  The ideologues are busy running psychotic bush camps in Congo or living large in Parisian mansions.  They think they deserve a comeback. Like every society, Rwanda has its droves of aimless young men who get drunk and look for trouble.  In 1994, they were whipped up into a murderous frenzy by the ideologues.  Whether such men (or their counterparts in the next generation) can ever be reactivated into the same kind of monsters is doubtful as the economic progress in Rwanda has been impressive.  Nonetheless, I know I will watch Rwanda with renewed interest now that I have seen something of what the stakes are like in real life.     There's still so much more to relate about Rwanda, but I feel like I've rambled enough in the politics and history department in this e-mail for now, so I will leave further musings until next time.  At the moment, I'm off to meet Paul and Ivan at the beach (yes, the beach) to go for a swim in Lake Kivu.  Write me with stuff from wherever you are.  Hope life is good.-Nick

volume 7: Rwanda continuessent: Sunday August 12, 2007

Howdy:     Due to some rather frustrating internet encounters of late, I have pretty much given up on this e-mail correspondence being anything resembling a "real-time" account of my trip.  The events being related to you in this letter will now have gathered over a week's worth of dust.  Borders have whizzed past us recently, having exited Rwanda once, spent a few days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, re-entered Rwanda, and then entered Uganda which is where I now sit composing these lines.  Hopefully, the intervening time between actual events and my reconstruction of them will not have blurred my memory but instead added the constructive benefits of hindsight and reflection.  When I last left off, I was plowing through our experiences of Kigali, but I had become distracted with political details of Rwandan recovery.     On our last day in the Rwandan capital, we were treated to a visit to an orphanage and school.  This

encounter was arranged thanks to Carmen, who had the contact information for the founder of a Catholic aid organization on the outskirts of Kigali.  This group had links to Carmen's home state in Germany , Rhineland-Pilatinate which carries on a sort of "sister country" thing with Rwanda .  Originally, Carmen entertained expectations that this relationship would grant her discounts on entry prices to national sites or at least a red carpet evening of champagne and caviar.  Neither came true, but the visit to the orphanage was a fine substitute.  The orphanage-school was a really nice complex on a hill, complete with cute classrooms, a basketball court, a foozball table, farmland, and a barn full of cows (whose milk is drunk and whose shit is used to harness methane for cooking gas).  Orphanages are needed not only to deal with the parentless survivors of the genocide, but also for those whose families have been depleted by AIDS.  Kids of both stripes populated the site we visited.     From Kigali, we moved south to Butare, a small town that houses several universities and a national museum.  Rwanda's relatively tiny size and good roads (many built by Strabag, a German company) meant that our travel times rarely exceeded three hours to get from town to town.  The campus of the national university was nice, and Carmen and I enjoyed a hefty lunch at the student canteen.   The national museum was very neat, but had a surreal quality about it because it was opened in 1990 and seems not to have been updated much since.  Thus, the exhibits survey the ethnography, geography, culture, and history of the country with some outdated stats and the absence of any reference to the genocide.  The anthropological stuff was interesting in any case as we got to see the various craft arts indigenous to the country, including a full-size reconstruction of a pre-colonial chief's hut that stood in the museum’s courtyard.  The woven straw floormats were perfect for napping while we waited for the first rainstorm of our entire trip to pass.     Very nearby Butare, at a place called Murambi, was the final genocide memorial that we visited.  Its rather graphic nature would also make it one of the most memorable.  In April of 1994, rumor spread amongst Tutsi civilians from across the Butare region that the technical institute under construction at Murambi could be sought as safe refuge.  In reality, this was a strategy of misinformation meant to lure victims to a single place so that the Interahmwe could more efficiently murder them.  After the genocide, as a gruesome memorial to the 45,000 murdered there, several thousand of the corpses were exhumed from their mass graves, placed on tables in the dorm rooms of the institute and treated with lime to preserve their bodies in a horror show that can now be visited.  The custodians of the sight (themselves visibly scarred at both emotional and physical levels- one with a bullet wound in his skull) walked us through the very creepy complex, to the simple barrack-like buildings that housed the bodies. Unlocking each door, we stepped into a brutal stench emitted by the preservative chemicals at work.  The visual sight was sickening in a different way, as the crisp-dry, whitish-gray bodies of former human beings were strewn across tables in contorted postures.  The custodian matter-of-factly pointed to the gashes in the bodies that showed where the fatal machete blows took the lives of small children.     The power of this spectacle was memorable, but it's tough to say how these types of sensory experiences affect one's mission of contemplating the lessons of the historical event.  To be at the location of a mass murder is spooky in itself, and to have a sort of macabre contest over which flavor of human remains (their clothes, their skulls, their corpses) will best seal the deal for future visitors is a weird project.  I'm not criticizing the good taste or bad taste of any of these memorials, and indeed I do feel more complete having visited them.  It's simply an interesting thing to have witnessed- the various ways of using the actual artifacts of the dead to enshrine the lessons inherent in their violent passing.    There was another very memorable element of the memorial that had a very clear political message.  As I mentioned in the previous e-mail, there was a trope of resentment running through the other memorials, aimed at the international community and its communal abandonment of Rwanda in its hour of need.  A far more robust bitterness is reserved for a particular member of the world community.  France carries a particularly bad reputation in Rwanda, as its money and its troops were employed in the direct aid of the genocidaire as they carried out their crimes against the Tutsi

citizenry.  At the memorial site in Murambi, a placard bitterly commemorates the spot that the French flag was flying as French troops secured the area for a safe corridor of escape for the Hutu militias after their crimes (operation Turquoise, in French military jargon).  An even darker placard a few yards away directed our attention to the mass graves beneath our feet and then announced with scathing irony that French soldiers had played a game of volleyball atop the very same piece of earth while they were stationed there.  While numerous world leaders have delivered somber, lip-biting apologies to Rwanda, France has remained distinctly aloof.  France 's foreign policy choice back in 1994 seems to have been a rather perverse manifestation of international loyalty to Francophonie.  While the Hutu extremists were proudly Francophone, their enemies in the Tutsi RPF had a large contingent of Anglophone expats who had grown up in Uganda and Tanzania .  Linguistic pride seems to have been the deciding factor in France 's choice to side with the genocidaire.  In the years since, the RPF government, still angry over the unrepentant nature of France 's position, has made some rather obvious steps toward de-Francophonizing the country, with English being added to the list of official languages.  Diplomatic relations between France and Rwanda are non-existent at the moment, though I caught a news brief that the foreign minister of Sarkozy's new French presidency just announced a desire to warm up their relations.     Once again, this letter has delved into the messy strands of politics and I will have to leave it at that for now, since I must run to catch a minibus to our next destination.  Our visit to rain forests, primates, and the DRC, next time on the African feed.  Take care.-Nick

volume 8: Monkey see, the D.R.C.sent: Friday August 17, 2007

Back again:     Our exit route through Rwanda took us through the beautiful Nyungwe National Park, a massive protectorate of Mountain Rain Forest teeming with monkeys and chimpanzees.  We did not get a chance to stalk chimps during our two day camping experience there, but we went on some beautiful hikes nonetheless, through dense stands of trees, past rolling waterfalls, and up hills taking us above even the tallest mahoganies.  From the high points on the trails, we were offered stunning views of the forest canopy, whose clumped treetops resembled big soft bunches of broccoli.  Our guides provided us with all manner of information on the flora that surrounded us, including various predatory plants that suffocate and murder other trees so that they can thrive.  The life cycle of a type of fichus tree was particularly fascinating.  Its seeds are somehow adapted to be very palatable to certain types of birds who perch in certain types of trees.  When these certain birds digest and defecate while sitting on their perch, they unwittingly plant the seed of this predatory fichus right at the foot of the host tree which it will, over the course of many years, creep up, overtake and kill, leaving a hollow shell in its wake.     Our campsite in the Nyungwe forest was really nice and we probably would have stayed longer if costs were not so high.  Rwanda seems to be catching on to the Tanzanian habit of overcharging for access to anything that is federally managed and insisting on paid guides for even the most basic of walks.  Nyungwe was also the first place that we actually cooked for ourselves while camping.  To achieve this feat, Paul unearthed some very savvy boy-scout engineering skills to improvise a complicated rig- using a log, a wire hanger, a backpack strap, and a can of corn- in order to suspend our "cooking pot" (a stainless steel milk canister) over our campfire.  In addition, concerned about the accumulation of water in our campfire area (it rained violently for several hours during our time in Nyungwe- the first substantial showers of any kind on our trip), Paul took another log and dug a

complex drainage system of canals to divert water away from our precious fire area.  Our camp-cooked meals (popcorn, boiled eggs, tea, soups, pastas, and rice) were a great success.     During our final hours in Nyungwe, Ivan and I went on a primate walk during which we trudged off the trail, delving deep into the forest in search of the Angolan Colobus Monkey (we are nowhere near Angola..).  These are lively black and white monkeys who are the favorite prey of the omnivorous chimps when they are in their meat-eating mood.  The park guides (two with AK-47s, the other with a machete) are able to predict where the monkeys will be by tracking the chimps by morning and knowing the route of escape that the Colobus will take.  So, in a bit of irony, as the Colobus flee from the Chimpanzee, they rush unwittingly (and without fear) into the arms of the Chimp's closest relatives.  It was pretty impressive to sit in the underbrush and see them, first from a distance and then watch them, tree by tree, advance toward us until they were directly in front of us and above us in a group of 20, bouncing from limb to limb in a delightful display of acrobatics.  As thrilling as this primatological experience was, and without detracting at all from the charisma of the Colobus monkey, I must say that a subsequent wildlife visit has somewhat overshadowed this one.  More on that later.  The route back through the bush brought us intimately close with a less friendly segment of wildlife- biting ants. We had encountered their kind before, but usually in small little bursts; they would march in an orderly line across our path and a few errant soldiers would somehow leap up our shins and announce their presence with a stinging bite or two.  This time, however, the fire ants had claimed an immense swath of forest floor as their territory, so as our guide instructed us, "We must run very quickly."  Following our guides, we frantically dashed through this zone of war with as much vigor as we could muster.  Unfortunately, this also meant falling down a couple of times and for Ivan getting whacked directly in the eye by a villainous tree branch.  Quick (and clumsy) though we might have been, ants still invaded every fold and nook of our clothing and began their purposeless nibbling.  Having cleared the ant-zone, all of us (guides included) began the humorous (in retrospect) dance that necessitated gasping in pain, shaking our limbs around violently, smacking our legs, taking off our clothes and whipping them against trees.       Our official (but not exactly final) exit from Rwandan soil occurred on the southern tip of Lake Kivu, a massive and beautiful body of water that straddles the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Our decision to enter la Republique Democratique du Congo (formerly Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo) was one that we took only after doing a bit of intelligence gathering from locals as we approached the border.  Congo-Kinshasa (its capital city is sometimes paired with the country name to distinguish it from its western neighbor, Congo-Brazzaville) is not really a functioning state, politically speaking.  Since 1996, the DRC has been embroiled in upheavals, including a civil war, which became a Pan-African conflict during which no fewer than nine nations sent their armies or their proxy militias into the resource-rich Congo to settle scores and shamelessly pillage the land of its riches.  Congo is alleged to be one of the richest countries in the world as far as natural resources are concerned.  These conflicts have claimed over 3 million lives, but seem to be little reported back home.  While the war is tentatively settled and Congo has a president (Joseph Kabila, the successor to his assassinated father, Laurent), he is only deemed legitimate in certain parts of the country.     Luckily for us, the area of the Congo that we would be entering (the Northeast) is one of the zones that is "stable" which means three things: firstly, that they recognize the Kabila government, secondly, that the general (or warlord, if you prefer) that controls that sector is managing things well, and thirdly that there is a major United Nations peacekeeping presence (mostly Indians) in the area.  On the fringes of this stability however, we learned (mostly after we left Congo) that there is still quite a bit of trouble running loose in the bush.  The Interahamwe (the genocidal Hutu militias from Rwanda) are just one of many demented groups who occasionally launch attacks across the mountains against their old enemies as well as duking it out with other militias.   We were told by another traveler that just a couple of weeks ago, the Rwandan military, assisted with the technical expertise of U.S. special

forces, swept over the Congo border and massacred the representatives of one of these bush militias.  Word on such events does not seep out of Congo easily.     Our route into Congo involved an early morning border crossing into Bukavu, at the southern shore of Lake Kivu, a mad dash to a departing northbound ferryboat, and an arrival in the city of Goma which would serve as our base of operations for a couple of very memorable adventures.  I will have to leave with that tease, as I am monopolizing a free internet portal at a hostel in Kampala at the moment, and I can feel the ire of other backpackers behind me.  Hope everyone is well.-Nick 

volume 9: King Kongo and Nyiragongosent: Sunday August 18, 2007

So, yes:     Rapidly on the heels of my previous communique comes yet more.  As but mere days remain for us here in Africa, I am trying my best to cobble together all the news that's fit to print from events yet unrelayed.  So, many may ask, why, praytell did you fools decide to wander into the failed state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo given the questionable security situation and the political instability.  Well, for Ivan, whose thirst for drama, trauma, and intrigue is a huge part of his desire to travel in the first place, it is precisely the miasma of disorder that made Congo such an alluring destination.  There was also the promise of two allegedly impressive nature visits available around Goma in the nearby Parc National des Virungas.    Even though Congo has had such a violent and unstable recent past, our first sampling of Congolese people was very orderly and friendly.  The border crossing was not quite as amiable as Rwanda (though this would be setting the bar rather high) but still pretty smooth.  Ivan had to pay a bribe to a "hygiene officer" for not having his yellow vaccination record.  Paying thirty dollars, we had our passports stamped with a seven day Congolese "visa."  We later learned that customs and immigration is one of those services that cannot be managed by the frail federal government, so each province with a border crossing issues its own fraudulent document and collects its fee which pretty much remains in the hands of the border guards themselves.  Our boat trip north on Lake Kivu was very pleasant, affording us sunshine on an open deck and placid views of passing scenery, including our first glimpse of the UN presence in the form of a passing camouflaged pontoon speedboat staffed by blue-helmeted soldiers. We would see much more of them in Goma as they have a massive encampment there and their land cruisers, pickups, and APVs- all painted white- were seen many times crawling down Congolese roadways.  The boat that we rode appeared to be a luxury class liner by Congolese measures since all of the other passengers bore outward signs of status and money; nice clothes, camcorders, and even laptop computers.  Our very brief sampling of the Congolese cast them with a slightly different feel than the Rwandans.  This may just have been my imagination, but to me there seemed to be a bigger contingent of heavier, big-boned people (men and women) walking the streets of Congo.  Average folks across East Africa fell into the category of short and skinny. The women in Goma seemed decked out more extravagantly than before, adopting a kind of "African queen" look with makeup, painted nails, lots of gold jewelry, and heaps of stylishly arranged kente cloth.  On board the boat, we had a fun conversation with some very jovial Congolese who enjoyed laughing heartily at Ivan because he is "Tobi"- which means fat.  One of these gentlemen might be accused of some hypocrisy given his own physique.  In most of the places we've traveled here, there is a distinct lack of any nuanced polite attempts to pretend that physical differences don't exist.  Instead, direct and vocal acknowledgment of physical differences is quite common, but doesn't seem to necessarily carry any judgment on character.  Ivan is often called the fat one, Paul has been called the short one, and all of us

are subjected to a constantly enthused chorus of "Mzungu!" (white person) every time we walk by a group of people, especially when they are children. This constant attention to our skin color makes us feel like celebrities.  We've often joked that when we return, we will be so accustomed to it that we will miss it, or that we ourselves will be inclined, when we see people of African descent in a crowd of whites, to shout "Negroes!" as a happy recognition of their unique novelty.     Our arrival in the lakeside port of Goma was a bit hectic as we were extorted for an extra 5 dollars a piece by the customs agents there; they are a different province and thus feel miffed when tourists have given their money to those characters at the other side of the lake.  Goma itself was a fascinating physical spectacle. In 2002, the volcano Nyiragongo erupted and spewed a lava flow across the entire city, coating the streets and burying buildings up to their first floor ceilings.  Today, the dried lava still remains as an added layer of street level, making the roads really just piles of pumice, leaving the buildings with funny "basements," and making the whole town a horribly dusty place.  This layer of mars-scape combines with the military presence and the absence of lawmakers to give Goma a surrealistic wildness.   Very quickly once in Congo, we contracted two more expensive excursions that we heard would be exciting.  The first was one that we originally thought we might try to do in Rwanda, but it was too pricey and overbooked.  This was a hike into the forested hills of the national park to track and visit the mountain gorillas.  Since long before they became the preferred hiding spot for a cornucopia of crazed militia groups, the mountains that straddle the borders of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda have held the world's highest concentration of the largest of the great apes.  Their numbers are definitely endangered, but all three countries (even the dysfunctional Congo) are committed to protecting what's left.  Carmen, Ivan, and I booked our visit with the apes, not really knowing what it would be like. Paul opted to avoid the pricetag and explore Goma while we communed with our relatives.     After an extremely bumpy ride in a 4 wheel drive uphill past villages filled with bananas and waving children, we arrived at a run-down camp that served as the Bukima entrance to the national park.  There were several men whose noble task it was to watch over the area, protect the apes within, and guide visitors through the experience. When we arrived, they were painting their berets with a toothbrush.  As mentioned previously, we had no idea what to expect from this visit- how we would find the apes, how far we would be from them, what they would do if they saw us, etc. I can, without exaggeration, say that the visit was so amazing so as to exceed any expectations we had and to rank among the greatest experiences of the trip and among the most unique in my life.     We had hiked into the forests of trees and bamboo for just under an hour when our main guide (again we were flanked by other men with rifles) stopped and told us that we were about to come upon the gorilla group and that our allotted hour for being with them was about to commence. To limit the possibility of disease transmission to the gorillas, visits are limited to an hour.  Just when he had completed telling us the rules for our conduct while visiting, from behind some bamboo, we heard the rumble of a massive grunt.  The source of this noise was unseen, but then suddenly a baby gorilla burst out from behind a tree and came up to us, less than a meter separating us. He leaned off of a branch and stared at us while the three of us cooed and grinned and oohed and ahhed like children.  The baby darted away into the bushes and our guide bade us follow, walking cautiously ahead through the bamboo.  A moment later, I stopped motionless in my tracks as I saw what was just three meters ahead of me.  I turned around to Ivan with what he later described as a panicked intensity and asked him "Do you see what's in front of us?!"  He hadn't yet, but in a moment he would be, as I was, engaging eye to eye with a massive silverback gorilla. He was sitting calmly, soft brown eyes meeting mine, with his huge jaw muscles flexing along the sides of his crested head.  It's hard to say what impressed us so much in that first viewing- the immensity of him, the power resting in his fur-covered musculature, the suddenness of his appearance, or the realization that he was right there, with no glass, bars, or intervention of any kind between us.  The silverback would continue to captivate us as he chewed on bamboo stalks, sighed heavily, and farted in ways so human-like.  We would get even closer, sitting

right in the same space with him, sharing in his sounds and smells.  He led us, creeping calmly on his knuckles to the other members of his group, which was comprised of two babies (including the one who first introduced us), two young black-back males, and a female.  At no point were they perturbed by our presence in any way. At certain points, we even had to scoot back from them to avoid touching them, so comfortable were they with strolling among us and brushing past us.  These six characters filled our hour with the best kind of entertainment, eating, walking, climbing, playing, and- in the case of the silverback at one terrifying moment- having an enraged tantrum and beating his chest in an outburst that Ivan was scared could have rolled toward him.  The intimacy of the whole thing was incredible and we could have easily spent several more hours with them in this way, if it were allowed.  Ivan was able to capture some great video that gets close to reliving the thrill of it all.    Returning to town, we got a brief chance to explore Goma by night, eating some very slowly served food at a street fest.  Our other nature excursion in the DRC happened the next day.  Paul joined on this one which involved a massive hike to the peak of the volcano Nyiragongo- the very one that had vomited its lava down upon Goma five years ago- and a night of camping at the rim of the active crater.  The hike to the top was strenuous (but at least it was just one day) and gave us a great geologic tour of the various vents, craters, and dried lava flows that swept the mountain.  Our campsite at the summit was a windswept, fog-drenched rockface that was polluted with sulfuric steam that induced coughing fits when we inhaled it.  Joining us for our night on the volcano were a couple of young college boys - Aidan from South Africa and Gareth from England.  Joining forces against the elements, we used their campstoves to cook up a communal stew of pasta, soup, and whatever else we had.  Very satisfying.  As evening came and fogs cleared, the view over the rim down into the crater became clear.  Gazing down the dark rocky walls of the crater, we began to discern an orange glow.  Soon, the full churning glory of the lava's cauldron was in full view. For at least an hour, the six of us drooled over the glowing, bubbling and spurting of liquid rock.  Very satisfying.  Our descent from Nyiragongo marked the beginning of a rather rapid exit from Congo.  The brevity of Congo’s bogus visas keeps people from really exploring the country in the way we might have wanted.     Getting back into Rwanda (another painless border procedure), we spent a few days lounging on the very comfortable beaches of Gisenyi. It was here that we also bid farewell to Carmen, our German traveling companion who had joined us since Serengetti.  I will have to leave things off here, as I am once again being booted off of a computer on the banks of the White Nile here in Uganda.  I will perhaps only write once more, since we will be in London on Tuesday and I will be in Chicago on Wednesday.  Take care and I'll see many of you soon.-Nick

volume 10: Odds, ends, and closuresent: Thursday, August 23, 2007

Alright, then:     My final installment of African correspondence is being composed from the safety and luxury of my apartment back in Chicago.  Yesterday afternoon, we made our safe and official return to the United States of America with one pleasant evening in the U.K. along the way.  The last two weeks of our trip were a very enjoyable trip through Uganda and back into Kenya, the itinerary of which I will relate here.  Before I do that, however, I noticed in my notebook that I have accumulated a number of hanging tidbits of observation that I had jotted down to myself, but never contextualized properly to send them on.  I decided that I will subject them to you now, assuming they have some enriching value, even if their narrative structure is lacking.

Topic: Cows     Resting in city streets, marching calmly in great herds, lumbering onto crowded flatbed trucks, cattle are a constant presence in East Africa.  A few are milk cows, whose cud chewing and black and white Holstein coats are not unlike roadside scenery in Wisconsin.  Little diary shops are all over, each small town having at least one spot where stainless steel canisters are filled and emptied with the fresh white fluid that is a staple of local diets (most noticeably in tea preparation).  The rest of the bovine population are various sorts of Zebu cattle (a skinny Indian variety with a funny hump) and the famous Ankore, a stately African domesticate whose improbably oversized horns would leave our Texas "longhorns" with an inferiority complex.  The status attached to these creatures has been a potent historical force in East African societies.  In Rwanda, it was the ownership of these beasts that initiated the now infamous caste distinction between the Tutsi (elites with cattle) and the Hutu (the rest).  In Tanzania and Kenya, the postcard nobility and tribal identity of the Maasai was built around their monopoly of cattle-raising- a status that they enforced by stealing or killing the herds of other tribes.  Even in Sudan, where the latest African genocide is happening, it was originally the Baggara nomads' search for grazing lands for their cattle that originally channeled their violent agenda toward the sedentary farming peoples of Darfur.  Given all of this messy cattle culture in East Africa, it is surprising that there is no horse culture.  In the two months that we were there, we saw not a single horse anywhere; the very occasional donkey and the herds of zebra on the savannah were the only equine experience we had.  Although beef is widely butchered at shops everywhere and consumed in some evening meals, it still seemed a rarer meat than that of the goat. Goats are found scurrying everywhere you go, whether skittishly flocking in herds, or being walked along the street on a leash by a young child like a hoofed and bleating family dog.

Topic: Music and Popular Culture     In much of East Africa, Compact Disc technology seems not to have penetrated very successfully.  Cassette tape decks are still widely encountered in cars, minivans, and restaurants.  This technological state of affairs has the odd affect of freezing musical tastes at some point during the mid to late 1990s when tapes gradually made their disappearance from the commercial music industry.  Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers, TLC, and En Vogue were heard at a rate not to be expected in 2007.  But by far the most popular voice on African tape decks is that of Canadian-American country star Shania Twain.  From Tanzania to Rwanda to Congo to Uganda, we have been repeatedly subjected to her, even spotting bootleg tapes for sale where she was mistakenly billed as Shaina Twine.  The cassette tape fixation dissolved whenever we entered an internet shop or a place with a radio or TV broadcast.  Having leapfrogged CDs to MP3 technology, teenage boys were seen huddled around the sounds and images of international hip hop and R & B, whether Americans like Eminem, Ludacris, Akon, or R. Kelly or French rappers like MC Solaar, or the now numerous representatives of African party music, much of which adopts or aspires to the bling, thuggery, and bouncing buttocks of the American rap video world.  On the transnational TV network, EATV (East African TV), there is a parade of American hip hop and R&B videos, but they seem to be of a marginal stripe, a catalogue of no-name artists with no airtime (at least not that I've ever encountered) in the USA.  Perhaps acquiring BET and MTV rejects are cheaper somehow for African networks.    One of the other pop subcultures that was very noticeable in East Africa was the Rastafari.  Young men with beaded jewelry and dreadlocks occupied particular niches in local economies; they would often be found running craft and curio shops, collecting money for minibuses, or working in the adventure sports tourism industry, their hippie-like, fun-loving attitude being well-fitted to the milieu.  They would always be referred to as "Rasta-man" or "Rasta-John" or "Rasta-Rick," depending on their name.  English Premier League Soccer is by far the predominant source of fanatic sports culture, as people clad themselves, their businesses, and their vehicles in the symbols (often bootleg or homemade) of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United.  The only other discernible streak

of internationally popular sports (although using the term "sports" is perhaps a stretch) came in the form of American "Professional" Wrestling.  The angrily contorted faces and oiled pectorals of the WWE graced posters, computer screens, and T-shirts all across East Africa.  It's always comforting to see how bad taste and bad acting is so universally appreciated.

Back to narrative:     So with those meanderings out of the way, I shall return to the final leg of our trip through Uganda.

"So, your friend is a nigger?"This was what the teenager in a baseball cap who was sitting in front of me on a bus inquired.  He was pointing to Paul. (For those who don't know him, Paul is solidly white and blond in appearance)."What?""Your friend, he is a nigger.""Why do you say that?""He is having a beard and looking intelligent."I did my best to explain to this young man that the term he employed has mostly negative connotations and that to my knowledge had never been expanded to encompass facial hair or brain power.  He still seemed quite satisfied that his appraisal of Paul (which he meant as some sort of compliment) was applied correctly.     Uganda in general was filled with very friendly people of good will and a lack of hustle or hassle.  The politics and press seemed freer and more stable than the other places we had visited.  While news in Rwanda was mostly a ventriloquism of the government's daily announcements, Ugandan newspapers were filled with investigations and attacks on politicians both foreign and domestic.  Our first stop was Kabale in the hilly forests of southwestern Uganda where we spent some time hiking around the nearby countryside with an English guy named John who was on holiday from his job as a teacher at an international school in Jordan.  Originally from Liverpool, John was a very well-traveled fellow in his late thirties with great stories and good advice.  From Kabale, Ivan, Paul and I headed to Lake Bunyoni where we camped for a few days, enjoying beautiful scenery and a very laid-back pace.  We swam in some very cold water, hiked up some attractive hills, and battled the counter-intuitive technology of the dugout canoe.  Only through Paul's brute strength and my use of the paddle as a tiller-rudder were we eventually able to get the canoe to obey our wishes.  Locals can somehow effortlessly guide their dugouts through the water with a minimum of coordinated strokes and no arguments.  On Lake Bunyoni, we also met a cadre of Israelis who shared their coffee, tea, and company with us.  They had come to Uganda on a very idealistic and ambitious notion of doing volunteer work, but on their own without an aid organization.  They had found a niche for themselves in the refugee slums of Kampala where they had started up a kind of organic school run by local teenagers for the younger children of the community.  They were a very cheerful and optimistic bunch.  We met up with them for dinner one evening later on again in Kampala where they had just had a horrible couple of days that included their being evicted from their apartment in the middle of the night, losing one of their wallets, and another of them falling into a latrine up to her waist.  In mocking response to their recent misery, they employed a very Israeli catchphrase: "It's not the Holocaust."     For our long bus ride away from Lake Bunyoni, we were joined by the Israelis and later by a Ugandan church group.  It was Sunday, so the church people burst into a beautifully captivating song that swallowed the entire bus with its spirit for nearly an hour.  Its basic melody sounded not too unlike Anglo-American gospel songs (lyrics in a local language, however), but the women handclapped and harmonized in a way that gave it a distinctly beautiful African feel.  Even three atheistic Americans and four secular Jews were swept up in the "Praise Jesus" moment.  Our second stop in Uganda was slightly to the north in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains.  Our experience there was very much like our first visit back in the Pare Mountains of Tanzania.  An affordable, community-based campsite

along the rapids of a mountain stream is run by locals so visitors can hike around the area without the inflationary and corrupting force of tour companies and the national government.  Here we camped again and went on a walk through the village, observing local craftspeople and storytellers.  The next day, we took a massive hike up and down a great hill and through the beautiful rain forest at its foot.  The "trails" that we took down were among the most slippery and precarious that we had taken on our trip.  Although no real danger lurked in their precarious nature, the trails were so muddy, slippery, and narrow that eventually we simply accepted that we would be falling and sliding for a great portion of our descent.     From the Rwenzoris, we headed east to the Ugandan capital.  Travels too far to the north are ill-advised as a demented militia of thugs and child soldiers called the Lord's Resistance Army is still somewhat active.  Kampala was a bit of a culture shock for us upon arrival since it was the largest city that we had entered since leaving Nairobi on the first day of our trip.  Skyscrapers, enormous crowds, traffic jams, and a cosmopolitan bustle surrounded us on all sides.  Indians were back in the picture for us, as they form a big piece of the merchant class in Kampala; they are also back in the picture for Ugandans since they have been trickling back into the country over the past twenty years, having originally been expelled and expropriated by Idi Amin.  We ended up really liking Kampala, partly because of its urban energy and also because of the consistently friendly helpfulness of everyone who helped us get around.  Even drunks who lurched toward you late at night would be only helpful, not causing strife or asking for money.  We explored a lot of the city's streets and wandered through the endless commercial labyrinth of the central Kampala market.  There we got lost among the most fascinating stalls and shops overflowing with sounds and smells- miles of merchants touting shoes, belts and fabrics, clanking metal machines making fresh peanut butter, metalworkers banging out pots and pans, and black people turned white with corn flour walking out of miller's shops.     Our final Ugandan activity happened in Jinja, at the source of the Nile River.  Here, we did one more thing for the list of "crazy things that foreigners do in Africa that makes Africans think they're crazy."  Whitewater rafting on the Nile River was on the agenda. Only Ivan had done this before (in Wisconsin) and I have to admit to having been a little skeptical about the logic of getting into an inflatable raft and purposefully aiming it for the most treacherous rapids on a fast moving body of water.  In the end, however, it really was a great thrill and we were tutored and watched over by a very competent rafter (a Ugandan Rasta guy named Moses) who made us feel very safe- even when our raft was being flipped upside down, and we were being thrown, sucked into the river, and churned into dizziness by the washing machine that grade 5 rapids create at their pit.  For this full day thrill-ride, we shared our raft with three guys from around the UK and two Dutch women.  As a team, we ended up being very successful rafters.  Success is taken to mean survival without injury while still flipping the raft over spectacular rapids that earn the thrill-seeker labels of "sweet" or "wicked."     From here, we bid farewell to Uganda and headed for Nairobi, our point of departure and the end point of the full circle that we had begun when we headed south two months ago.  This leg of travel was grueling, as the matatus (minibuses) were particularly cramped and the roads of western Kenya were particularly bad.  To break up this misery, we made a very memorable pit stop on our last day at Hell's Gate National Park.  At Hell's Gate, one can rent bicycles and bike across the park taking in the scenery of orange-dry cliffs and savanna.  It was very unique, being able to bike freely (with no guide) while zebra, gazelle, warthogs, and eland ran right past us on the road.  At the end of the bike ride was a gorge that offered us a peaceful hike that reminded me of Starved Rock State Park back in Illinois.  Arriving late on our last African day into a teeming Nairobi, we decided to indulge our road-weary appetites at the upscale, world-famous Carnivore restaurant on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.  The restaurant used to specialize in game meat, but now ostrich and crocodile are the only exotic cuts on offer.  The rest of the food was a cavalcade of charred steaks, chops, and roast delivered fresh from the flames on skewers until we could eat no more.  Although the food was great, I should have stopped earlier, because I actually ate so much meat that I made myself sick right after dinner.  A lesson in

gluttony, I suppose.     Our flight from Nairobi was smooth, as was our arrival in London.  We tubed our way from Heathrow to Greenwich where we spent the night at the home of our friend Olivier and his girlfriend Dorie.  Olivier is a young Frenchman who Paul and I had a great time traveling with last summer in Peru.  Dorie is originally Congolese but hasn't been there since childhood, having grown up in Belgium and ended up in Britain.  They work for Citigroup doing some corporate stuff (that we pretended to understand) in London's new financial district in Canary Wharf.  Their gracious hosting was well appreciated.     With a jetlagged, hassle-free homeland security welcome at O'Hare, our 2-month journey ended yesterday afternoon.  Thus also ends this series of correspondences.  I hope that they were sporadically entertaining enough to justify their constant and massive intrusion into your inboxes.  I'll be in touch soon in various other forms.  Thanks for putting up with all my journaling and thanks again for all the correspondence that you sent our way.  It always helped us along.Signing off from Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.- Nick