A New Record

I have reached a new personal “best”: An entire week without a shower!
I’d never been so dirty in my life! For the first couple days of bush camping, things were perfectly fine. But then suddenly, we got far enough North to where camels dotted the landscape instead of fertile fields and the roads became nothing short of horrible: So bumpy that you’d bounce a foot in the air from your seat and so dusty that you could hardly breathe. We have a buzzer in the truck to alert the driver if there is an emergency or if we need to stop for a wee. (One long buzz for an emergency, two short buzzes for a pee stop, and three short buzzes for a photo stop.) The roads were so bumpy that one of us hit the buzzer for a pee stop but got stuck on it so that the driver thought it was an emergency stop. He meant to brake slowly, but the bumps made it so that his foot slammed on the brake. It wouldn’t have been anything more than a sudden stop except Gary was standing at the back of the truck. He flew head first into the metal step locker and ended up with gashes on his head, arm, and leg. Poor Gary.


At some points, we couldn’t drive above 10km/hr because of the poor road conditions. Even if we were driving slowly, the dust would fly into the truck and just blanket us. Some seats were worse than others – dust circulation patterns or something - but if, for example, you had on a v-neck, you got an especially heinous dirt patch on your chest in the shape of a V from where the skin was exposed. Any books lying on the truck got so covered in dust that you couldn’t read the titles off them. Mike has some amazing pictures up on his blog that show just how dirty some of us got: http://mcottam.posterous.com/ .


My pictures just don’t do it justice the way his do. When you are that dirty, you just didn’t have a chance at getting clean with the usual baby-wipe shower. Normally, I use two. Even if I used a dozen I would still find dirt circles on my arms the next morning. Ew.


Apart from the crappy roads and utter dirtiness, it was actually an amazing few days! We only had 17 people with us so there was a lot of space on the truck and just more of an opportunity to talk to people you might not normally talk to. I only had to discreetly move to the other end of the truck once, when I could smell someone’s BO. (Normally, the wind blows through enough so that you don’t smell the people around you…) Good reading time on the truck too: I finished my first Murakami novel and am now on to Stephen King’s It. The best part was the food(!): Jambalaya, Cheeseburgers, Homemade Bread, Cheesy Pasta, and Steak-In-A-Can (SPAM). (Okay, for me, SPAM isn’t exciting, but everyone was excited for our first and only SPAM meal on the truck: SPAM steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy.) Surprisingly, a lot of people had never had SPAM and were really happy with it.


The bad roads didn’t last the entire time and by the time the truck arrived in Addis, we all looked normal enough – or at least not filthy. I was one of the first to have a nice, hot shower although it was pretty disgusting to see brown water going down the drain. All clean now and enjoying Addis Ababa! Next stop is Bahir Dar and then on to Lalibela, Axum, and Gondor!

Hakuna Matata!

View of the Rift Valley

Like in Tanzania, they speak Swahili in Kenya and you hear this a lot actually! Sometimes it can confusing, like when you are trying to bargain with a curio shopkeeper. He names a price. You name your price. He says “hakuna matata.” Umm… does that mean deal or no deal? (Didn’t make much sense to me but usually it meant there would be more negotiation.) Generally, I like Kenya. I didn’t see too much of it, but it’s definitely a place I’d come back to someday. Kenya, btw, is getting a late report because although we crossed in from Tanzania weeks ago, we did the gorilla loop through Uganda and Rwanda before coming back to see Lakes Nakuru and Naivasha. I thought it might be better to report on Kenya after seeing more of its sights. :)

Nairobi: So affectionately dubbed “Nairobbery”—by Lonely Planet among others—Nairobi was surprisingly wonderful! I think it’s my favorite African capital so far! It is super clean with a lot of nice buildings and nice people milling about them. Peering into the gate to the Kenyatta International Convention Center (a building famous for being architecturally ahead of its time), an armed guard beckoned to us. Scary! He apparently just wanted to chat with us and gave us tips about going inside. :) Because we were warned not to take anything of value into the city, I unfortunately didn’t have my camera on me. I would have liked to take pictures of the city and its sights – the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing memorial for example. Instead, I carried a bottle of water (not even my Nalgene because it is “an item of value”), popcorn, and toilet paper in my purse – a decoy in case I needed it. Turns out, I felt safer in Nairobi than I did in a lot of other African cities we’ve visited and escaped using local matatus (mah-TAH-toos; shared taxis) and buses unscathed.

Fun Rules: I happened upon the public library in Nairobi and while one of my companions searched for David Livingstone’s diary, I read the library rules posted on the wall. I obtained a copy because I particularly liked Rules 7 and 9:

7. LOST OR DAMAGED BOOKS “Books must be protected from rain, babies, and other hazards.” (Babies! Lol)
9. INFECTIOUS DISEASES “If borrowed [books] must not be returned if there is a case of infectious diseases in the home until the risk of infection has passed. Staff should always be informed.”

Karen: Only a few of us actually ventured into Nairobi because the truck was parked an hour outside of the city in Karen. Tons of overland trucks tend to park there because the risk of getting robbed or hijacked is just too great in Nairobi itself. A lot of people ended up visiting the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage and the Giraffe Centre in Karen. I elected not to and apparently missed out on placing a food pellet on my tongue and letting a giraffe swoop in and take it from my mouth. I’m okay with that. :)

Bowels: In Karen, I had one of the best meals I’ve had in all of Africa! Unfortunately, service was abysmal and so was the state of my bowels after. Seven of us ventured off to the Tokyo Restaurant. I was excited and the Asian owner even smiled at me as we walked in. I guess we were kindred in our Asian-ness or something. After ordering, the waiter asked if he could bring dishes out as they became ready. This made sense, we agreed. Mine came in a timely manner and was delicious! I got the dinner box which consisted of rice, salad, tempura, tuna and salmon sashimi, grilled octopus, fish, shrimp, beef, and chicken. For the others though, entrees came before appetizers and one girl’s soup that was supposed to have shrimp, chicken, beef, and other goods in it… just didn’t. She sent it back and received it reheated with one additional shrimp. She was mad, very very mad. Chalk it up to Africa though – you never quite get what you are expecting in a restaurant and service is often beyond terrible. I should have known better than to order and eat raw fish but I dearly missed Japanese food and I think my 13 trips to the toilet in a 24 hour period was worth it. Kind of. (I didn’t quite break the record of one of my truckmates: 22 in one day.) In terms of bowels in general, people have taken turns feeling poorly on the truck – perhaps it’s something in those Kenyan samosas we all like so much. I have recovered, others are on their way.


Nakuru and Its Lake: When we returned from Uganda, spirits were high because we all saved $50 by lying to the customs officials and telling them we’d only been in Uganda. (You are allowed to visit one other country on your visa and not have to pay again. We went to both Uganda and Rwanda. Our Rwanda stamps were quite obvious but we ended up not having to pay the recently-upped-to-$50-from-$25 visa fee!) There was nothing on the agenda for Nakuru except a pretty fantastic morning game drive in the Nakuru National Park. The elusive leopard remained elusive, but we had the best rhino sightings of the trip – 14 of them!


On the lake, there were tons of pink flamingoes, pelicans, and storks; around the park, there were a lot of antelope, buffalo, and other birds. At one point, we saw a male lion hanging out by himself – he kept looking out at the distance at something. We were about to drive away but then one of the vehicles got stuck and needed us to push headfirst into it into starting. In doing so, we saw what the lion saw – another male lion approaching! We thought there’d be a fight but instead, Lion A walked up to Lion B, nudged him affectionately, and the lay down beside him. Super cute! Lions are apparently lovers and not fighters and according to a postcard I read, mate 360 times a week! The day was really great except for our guide who was rubbish at being a guide. In one example, there was clearly some variety of stork outside and we asked the driver what kind of stork it was. He said it was a flamingo. (Not remotely possible…) We asked him what type of flamingo it was. He said “the main one.”

Stereotyping: I had lunch with two truckmates at a café in Nakuru. The owner (I think) walks up to me and says, “Do you speak Japanese?” I said no. He said “Oh, because I just bought a stereo for my car and the manual is in Japanese.” “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese.” …. Seriously!! The best/worst part is that he was a Middle Eastern/Arab looking man (complete with a kufiya) in Africa, stereotyping fellow-minority me. Food being the exception, have I mentioned my rule about not buying anything from anyone who addresses me with a “Ni Hao” or “Konnichiwa”?

Naivasha: Naivasha is known for its Crater Lake and Hell’s Gate National Park, but I didn’t visit either. To me, the crater lake didn’t look too impressive in pictures and people who went to Hell’s Gate decided to cycle instead of walk. 26k on a bike and paying $40-something to do it sounded miserable to me, no thank you! I think everyone had an awesome time though and maybe one day I’ll have a partner to walk through the park with :) Most everyone went to high tea at Elsamere afterwards as well. I didn’t do this either because I don’t know anything about Joy Adamson (tea was at her former estate) and paying $10 for cake I don’t really want seemed like a bad idea. I will perhaps read her book Born Free sometime but just in general, not fussed about high tea. I didn’t like Naivasha so much actually because I kept getting bitten by mosquitoes, and at the worst times: Twice on my body in the shower and once on my forehead while doing laundry. Hmpfh! It was cool though to see hippos roaming on the outskirts of camp at night – we had to have a lot of trust in the electric fencing though because apparently, people had died there in the past – crushed by hippo. The camp was also frequented by colobus monkeys. They are awesome:


Equator: We crossed the equator an uncertain number of times, anywhere from 4-8. We are sure we did it four times, but we may have crisscrossed it or something on some of the roads. We’re not sure if some of the zero degrees/equator signs were authentic, or just curio shop owners being crafty. Hmm…


So that was Kenya for me: Not getting robbed or crushed by a hippo, but suffering from opportunistic mosquitoes, loose bowels, and a Japanese face. All is good now though, hakuna matata! Currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and really loving it so far. :)

Uganda

I feel that I don't have too much to report on Uganda. It's neither my favorite nor my least favorite African country - not much to either rave or complain about. Some parts of the country are quite beautiful. Like Rwanda, there is green everywhere and very fertile lands, but unlike Rwanda, I wasn't so happy with the people here. More than in any other country you had people look at you, stick out their hand, and demand money or other things. Most of the time, it was "Give me money!" Once, when we were driving by in the truck, we heard a "Give me burger!" Demands came from adults and children alike. I think that if I never came back, I would not feel like I'm missing out. I don't mean to be harsh, but at this point, I've been lucky enough to see a lot of wonderful places that would definitely take priority over Uganda.

Ugandan Immigration: We crossed into Uganda from Kenya and everyone but our lone Irish girl had to pay $50, and for a stamp! Most borders that require payment have the decency to at least give you a sticker, but not Uganda. Hmpfh! We handed our passports and $50 in to our tour leader - the immigration officials didn't need to see us and didn't require us to fill out a form - they just wanted the cash. By contrast, when exiting, we had to fill out a form and get fingerprinted! I think this first crossing into Uganda was especially annoying because we were only transiting through to Rwanda - we had to pay another $50 when we re-entered.

Kabale and Kampala: We spent a couple nights in each of these cities, but nothing is particularly striking about either of them. What Is of note is the number of things you can get for 1000 UGS (Ugandan Shillings)! At current exchange rates - approximately $0.40 - you can get any of the following: goat kebab, chips (fries) with cabbage, matooke (cooked potatoes and plantains), a rolex (chapati rolled up with two eggs, tomato, onion, and cabbage), soda, three plain chapatis, ten tomatoes, 4 avocadoes, and an entire pineapple. The list is way more expansive than this, but I have first-hand experience with the aforementioned items. :)


Cricket: I had the "pleasure" of attending my first international cricket match--between Ghana and Nigeria--and in Kampala of all places. Admission was free and the entire spectating section consisted of the eleven of us there who came from the truck. We got front balcony seats at the Oasis club house and spent a very posh afternoon watching a Twenty-20 match. I got a nice explanation on the ways of cricketing beforehand, yet I still found myself bored beyond belief for most of the game! I admitted that baseball is boring too, but I still offended everyone when I said this was probably the most boring match I've ever been to. :) I'll give it another shot I think, once the memory of this match fades. To be fair, the end was rather exciting: (skip if you are unfamiliar with the rules of cricket...) Nigeria was looking good, on their way to a win... To stop them, Ghana needed to get four players out or prevent Nigeria from scoring a lot of runs. Ghana got three players out with one bowl left in the last over. Nigeria needed only four runs to win! At the last minute though, we found out that one of the Nigerian batters was injured. Game over - Nigeria didn't get their last bowl because of the lack of batter. So it goes...


Lake Bunyonyi: Lake Bunyonyi is located approximately 8km from the town of Kabale. I only know this because a few of us decided to walk from the Bunyonyi Overland Camp to meet the truck in town. The lake is either the deepest or second deepest in Africa and is really quite beautiful. Our campsite was situated on the water and I spent a good part of our free day there lounging on the dock. Fantastic! I also got to visit a school... Some of the kids were really adorable. We got to observe them learning letters and numbers and they also sang songs for us. In turn, we awkwardly taught them "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "I'm A Little Teapot." I like kids, but they are also kind of gross: A lot of them had horrible sounding coughs or snot running down their noses; the kids also had a knack for trying to touch you right after picking their noses. Gross! I remember thinking to myself, "Gah! I Just did laundry!"


On the whole, I wasn't too happy with our visit to the school because I felt like it was a big donation-getting factory. The kids are continually disrupted by visitors and the schpiel they give and while they were busy having their snack, the lead guy said "Now we can fill out donation forms." I was already planning to donate, but it just doesn't feel right to have someone impose a donation form on you and then judge you while you fill it out. You had the option of sponsoring a child at $40 a month - but none of us had that kind of money on us. We Did get information about sponsoring a child in the future - we have a bank account number.

The Source of the Nile: We crossed it twice on our Ugandan exploits and camped close to Jinga (where the source of the Nile is located) at the Nile River Explorers camp in neighborhing Bujagali Falls. A lot of people went rafting on the class III - class V rapids. Watching their video later, I'm so happy I didn't go! The rafts flipped on pretty much every rapid and I heard reports of people swallowing a lot of (probably shisto infected) water and having legitimate fears about drowning to death. No thank you! Instead of taking advantage of the "adventure capital of East Africa," I've spent much of my time here looking into travel beyond Africa and the Middle East. So excited!


Tomorrow, we leave Uganda and reenter Kenya. We have Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru coming up and then five nights of bush camping - no toilets and no showers. I think the next chance at Internet (and toilets and showers) will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Until next time!

Rwanda...

...a pretty magical place. Normally when you cross a border you can, for a while, say, "this looks just like the last country." But not with Rwanda. You cross the border and see incredibly beautiful scenery all around you. I really didn't expect to see green and pretty, pretty much everywhere. The people are really wonderful as well. You don't have the same peddling of goods or outright "give me money" demands like in Uganda. Instead, you get people who make you feel like you made their day just with a smile and a wave. Unfortunately, the truck was only in Rwanda for a few days, but they were wonderful.

You've already read about gorilla trekking. On to traditional healing! I saw that there was an ethno-botany tour on offer in Ruhengeri (Musanze) and thought it would be really interesting to meet with a healer and learn about traditional medicine in Rwanda. If I think of it as a traditional healing tour, it pretty much sucked. If, instead, I think of it as a community village walk, it was great! I walked with my guide Herbert through Musanze Town for about two hours to start. I got a lot of "Mzungu/Wazungu!!" (white person!) and kids who were super cute and very curious about me. (I also got a "numuKorea" which Herbert said was "not Wazungu, from Korea.") But think Constant Gardener when Tessa is walking through a village... almost every kid you pass is so excited to see you and shouts "How are you?! How are you?!") We happened to walk by a school and the teacher invited me to go say hello to the children. You open with "malaho" (how are you?), the children all respond in unison with "yego" (i'm fine). You continue with "amakulu" (what's the news?) and they respond with "namiza" (it's good.) (I may be butchering the spellings of these as my guide had problems with r's and l's...) Anyway, they all respond in unison! The cutest part was saying "Hello, How are you?" in English and getting this enthusiastic response from 15 kids of "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" So cute! When I left, all the kids took turns touching their fingers to my palm and saying "Bye, See you tomorrow!" Herbert got the teacher's number but this was apparently because he wanted to send his child there in a few months. I later met Herbert's wife, sister in law, son, and cousin's sister. I also found out that he paid "minimum one and maximum three cows" for his wife as dowry.

As for tradtional healing... It is supposedly passed on from generation to generation, but I'm pretty sure I met with a Western-educated doctor who focused more on natural healing instead of traditional healing. He promotes herbal remedies and a philosophy of "we are what we eat." His pharmacy is stocked with olive oil, sunflower oil, herbal tea, and miscellaneous piles of leaves. I didn't learn too much from him, unfortunately, as telling me that X herbal tea cures 30 different diseases isn't terribly helpful. I Did ask if this natural healing shop was in competition with the regular pharmacy across the street. Yes. Apparently, the Rwandan government subsidies 80% of the cost of drugs which provides a big incentive to locals. And! You don't really need a prescription for anything! I think this drug subsidization occurs in a lot of countries because in Tanzania, for instance, a girl on the truck got 10 Valium for 200 TSH (approximately 12 cents).

Musanze: Formerly Ruhengeri, Musanze is a pretty small town with not a whole lot to it. There is an ATM, a post office, and a market. There aren't a lot of souvenir shops and the ones that Do exist aren't very enterprising. For example, I was able to buy handmade cards, but no envelopes! And that's pretty much all I know about Musanze. I Did get to eat at the Vision 2020 restaurant that had an awesome one-pass buffet: Less than $3 for an awesome plate of rice, chips, cassava, yams, squash, peas, beans, and deep-fried shredded beef. Delicious! You might want to be embarassed by how high you've piled your plate, but then you see that the Africans have piled their plates twice as high! Potatoes are apparently very cheap here - 100 RWF for 1kg of potatoes. (~17 cents)

Genocide Memorial: No visit to Rwanda would be complete without a visit here. I don't know if one really enjoys a genocide memorial persay, but I am really glad I went. I was a bit apprehensive about going only because even just reading the Lonely Planet about the genocide almost brought me to tears. I was alive when this happened and at the time, had no idea what was going on... It was hard for me to really think about what was going on there. Before getting to Rwanda, I think I really only knew what the movie Hotel Rwanda had taught me. I think the part that was really disturbing was that some of the Interahamwe didn't just kill - they wanted their victims to suffer. They would, for example, hack off someone's hand or foot, come back hours later for another limb, then again for another limb, and then maybe kill the victim. The memorial itself takes you through the history of how colonization fueled animosity between the Hutus and Tutsis where little to none existed before, inciting events, the actual genocide, and the aftermath. There was also a section that covered other genocides that had occurred (Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, Balkans, etc.) and how some of the genocides have not been recognized by certain--or in some cases all--nations so that there's no justice for the victims. Currently, approximately 120,000 people sit in Rwandan jails for crimes of genocide, but slowly, perpetrators are being held accountable. We were actually in Arusha (Tanzania) when several people were being tried for their crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

So I think for a lot of people, myself included, the only thing known about Rwanda is that a violent genocide occurred there. There's really so much more to it though! A beautiful, fertile, and lush country with really lovely people. Rwanda has definitely been one of my favorite countries in Africa and I would be lucky to get to visit again.

(Updates about Uganda and Kenya are coming... we've done a quick loop through Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, and are now back to Uganda. Currently in Kampala on my way to my first ever cricket match! Next stop: Jinga! [The source of the Nile!])

King Kong in Rwanda

Like many tourists, our primary reason for visiting Rwanda was mountain gorilla trekking. You have to obtain a $500 permit months in advance, arrive at the gorilla trekking base camp by 7am the day of your trek (or you lose your permit), and then get split strictly into eight groups of eight. Some people can get permits the day of because of late people and because of a supposed large number of fat Americans who buy multi-day permits but then end up too unfit to continue trekking. You are also not allowed to visit the gorillas if you are sick because they are so humanlike that they can catch (but not recover from) our diseases. The population is estimated at around only 500 remaining gorillas...


Groups can trek anywhere from half an hour to eight hours to find their gorilla family. I picked a "medium" group and we lucked out - it only took us a little over an hour to find our 18-member family, the Amohoro. It certainly wasn't easy trekking as our guide had to machete hack a way for us through dense jungle, brush, and bush.


Sometimes you'd have to trust your weight on a recently hacked branch and hope you didn't fall. It was a bit wet and slippery too so I fell a bunch of times. One of the guides behind me kept having to pick me up - I took him down with me once, oops :) Definiely worth it though! That hour with the gorillas was probably one of the fastest hours of my life. Watching the big Silverback feed and scratch himself was quite fascinating, especially when he'd grunt away at the others. Apparently, the head Silverback (12+ years old and most dominant male) is the only one allowed to fornicate with the female members in the family. If the younger males want to, they have to go off and do it in hiding! The lead Silverback will eventually get challenged by a younger/stronger male in the family and then he will be forced to leave and eventually die alone :( The adult gorillas were definitely cool, but the 2 month and 3 month old babies in the family were my favorite!


One of them lolled around the ground a bunch, disappeared for a while, and then popped its head up behind a tree. It was like he wanted to play peek-a-boo! So adorable! The gorillas really are amazing creatures that I could watch and photograph for hours I think. It's crazy to think about how close we were able to get at some points - sometimes only a few feet away!