Photo Yumminess Vol. II

Welcome to the second round of the picture pages. About time, I know!

Captions for the following photographs:

1. Not child porn! The Umlanga Festival in Mbabane, Swaziland, wherein the King chooses a new wife from a selection of young virgins.
2. The crystalline waters of Paje, Zanzibar.
3. Children posing, Chizumulu Island, Malawi. African kids make for photographic perfection.
4. A family fishes in the shadows of Maputo, Mozambique.
5. A jacaranda tree in full bloom, looming ominously over a traditional village. Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe.
6. Courtyard with palm tree explosion, Stone Town, Zanzibar.
7. The kids of Chizumulu decide to give me a close shave. One machete is better than a Gillette Mach 3 any day. Malawi.
8. Marooned fishing boats, old harbour, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania.
9. Worthless! What 20USD gets you in Zimbabwe dollars. If you look closely you can see the date of expiry on the notes. Mutare, Zimbabwe.
10. Zebra ambling in the savannah, Hell's Gate National Park, Kenya.
11. Absolute mayhem: the minibus taxi rank, Kampala, Uganda.
12. Another day comes to a close, Lake Malawi.
13. Your not-so-distant ancestor, Parc National des Volcans, Rwanda.
14. Packing for an African safari? Don't forget your hubble telescope! Stupid tourists, Murchison Falls, Uganda.
15. Dhow on blue, Bazerutu Archipelago, Mozambique.
16. Riding in a taxi with an Aussie friend, Nairobi, Kenya.

Garbage Delight

Now Im not the one who'll say no to a bun
And I can always manage some jelly
If somebody gurgles, please eat my hamburgles
I try to make room in my belly
I seem, if they scream
Not to gag on ice cream
And with fudge I can choke down my fright
But nothing's enticing
Or even worth slicing
Compared to Garbage Delight.

This is an excerpt from a poem that my mother used to read to me when I was young. "Garbage Delight" denotes heaps and heaps of good food.

Those of you who know me well are aware that I have a profound love for all things culinary. On several occasions throughout the past six months, certain members of my family have put forth queries as to why I'd abstained from discussing the food in Africa to any degree. Today, the answer becomes clear: I had been planning to publish a list of my five best dining experiences on the continent as a whole, and for the sake of accuracy I was sworn to wait until my final week.

So without any further ado, I unveil to you the winners, counted up from fifth-best.

NUMBER 5
Meal: Springbok shank with red wine and rosemary jus
Location: Mama Africa's, Cape Town, RSA
Here I was, less than a week into my time in South Africa and already sinking my teeth into their national animal. The antelope meat was tender and succulent and the sauce divinely thick, ideal for being mopped up with some bread. I'd hardly expected to be eating this well on the Dark Continent.
What makes Mama Africa's special is that it's not just a restaurant - it's dinner theatre. After the meal is done, the lights are killed and the place fills with jugglers, musicians, singers, acrobats and mimes, and everyone gets gunned on Castle Lager. The party rages into the night, or at least it would have for us, had my friends and I not been sitting with a devoutly racist family of White South Africans. Their malicious, disparaging and shockingly audible comments to our Black waitress eventually sent us fleeing from the place in embarassment.

NUMBER 4
Meal: The Malawian Vegetarian Buffet
Location: Mayoka Village, Nkhata Bay, Malawi
Could it be that a fully vegetarian meal makes it into my top four?
Yes, it is so.In fact, I'll hazard that even the most seasoned flesh-addict would put his steak aside for a night for a chance to dig into this symphony of garden delights: deep fried cassava chips, spinach in peanut sauce, savoury red beans, curried sweet potato, okra and tomato stew, grilled eggplant and homemade mango chutney are all available, served in massive steaming cauldrons that line the bar. Remember boys, this is a buffet, so if eating a meal devoid of meat makes you nervous, just overcompensate and put back 5 kilos of the stuff.
Mayoka Village is just a hostel, by the way.

NUMBER 3
Meal: Mixed grilled seafood
Location: Forodhani Gardens, Stone Town, Zanzibar
By day, Forodhani is a park where Muslim women hang out in the shade and gossip. By night, it's a barbeque bonanza, where hundreds of pounds of sea delicacies are cooked up on smoking coal grills. The selection is unprecedented, and each table has at least 10 local guys hustling you to buy from them. Funny how they all claim that theirs is the freshest. For $10, I feasted on calamari, octopus, shark and tuna, with a side of chipati, hot sauce and beer. Seafood this cheap? Forodhani should be a no-brainer for the #1 spot. The sad reality is, however, that any leftover bits from the previous night go right back on the grill, and many tourists who eat here end up feeling dodgy afterwards.

NUMBER 2
Meal: A bologna sandwich
Location: Shoprite Supermarket, Kasane, Botswana
Under normal circumstances, it would be a pretty sad state of affairs if a bologna sandwich managed to snag the silver medal. So before you start feeling sorry for me, know this:
I had just completed my 8-day crossing of Zimbabwe. During that stint, the most appetizing meal I ate was a plate of rice with some chopped-up hot dog and salt, and on some days I was unable to find anything more than bananas and soda water. I was famished. More than that, I was craving something greasy and satisfying.
As I entered the door of the Shoprite - having walked 10km from the Zimbabwe border to get there - I was awestruck. After only seeing empty shelves for more than a week, the sight of a stocked supermarket make me feel like a pilgrim would upon arriving at his ashram after a long quest. I bought fresh bread, processed cream cheese, bologna, potato chips, lettuce and milk. Later, at my hotel, I made the mother of all hoagies, ate the whole damn thing, then spent the remains of the day lying in bed like a satiated lion, listening to the happy gurlges in the depths of my stomach.
Oh, and the milk: not 5m out of the grocery store, I cracked the seal and drank the whole litre in one go. It began to seep from my mouth and run down my shirt, causing the locals to stop and stare. I served them a peremptory scowl in return... I deserved this.

NUMBER 1
Meal: Meat, meat and more meat
Location: Carnivore Restaurant, Karen, Kenya
I suppose I was preordained to visit this place before I left Africa, and as I approached the front doors of the restaurant, I could practically sense its gravitational pull. At Carnivore, you sit around a table. In the centre of this table are two things: an assortment of sauces, and a flag on a stick. Raise the flag, and a battalion of waiters carrying giant skewers of meat descends upon you, hacking bountiful slices onto your plate with their pangas. Each man carries something different, and over the course of the evening you'll be served pork, lamb, beef fillet, chicken, turkey, sausage, liver, ostrich and crocodile. It's a true Brazilian churrascaria, done African style, and until you lower the flag, the meat keeps on coming.
One of the Canadian girls sitting at the table couldn't stop talking about how her favourite food was rice. Rice? What the Hell kind of favourite food is that? Can you imagine, sitting here with this meat extravaganza in front of you, rattling on about your preference for rice? God help the person who ever does that at my dinner table. Rice is for losers. And Koreans.

With a nip and a nibble
A drip and a dribble
Dollop a walloping bite
If you want to see grins all the way to my shins
Then give me some Garbage Delight.
Right now.
Please pass me the Garbage Delight.

Uganda, Alphabetically

My 16 days in Uganda are over. In this post, I offer a summary, with help from everyone's favourite 26 letters.

A for Aussies. I didn't meet too many of them in Africa, but in Uganda I met three extremely nice ones, and we ended up having a great time.
B for Boda Boda. The name given to the motorcycle taxis that whizz around cities and countryside alike, taking you to your destination in kamikaze fashion. Not for the faint of heart, because these guys drive like banshees and disobey most traffic laws.
C for Clean Clothes. I had them washed for the first time since Malawi, two months ago. In other news, no girls have talked to me since Malawi, two months ago.
D for Double. That's what Muzungus pay for nearly everything in Uganda.
E for Ebola Virus. My arrival in the country coincided with an outbreak of this nasty little ailment in the Western region, and even as I write this its spreading towards Kampala. Nothing like bleeding out of your ass and eyes!
F for Fluent English. Most Ugandans speak it, even out in the bush.
G for Giles Foden. The author of The Last King of Scotland, a semi-fictional novel about a Scottish doctor who becomes Idi Amin's personal physician and confidante. It was a pleasure reading this story while in the country, as it highlighted some of the more poignant characteristics of the people around me.
H for Hippos. Gotta love 'em. They're fat, they're slippery, they're loud, they're vegetarians, they kill people and when you pass by them on a Nile River cruise they grunt while staring at you with their googly eyes.
I for Idi Amin. Perhaps Africa's most despotic dictator, and he's had some stiff competition in that department. During his reign of terror, Amin slaughtered his own people, expelled all foreigners, renounced his nation's ties to the Commonwealth, and brought Uganda to its knees. Fortunately, he declared war on Tanzania - a war the Ugandans lost, and Amin was forced to flee to exile in Libya.
J for Jinja. Great place to whitewater raft. And to meet an army of tools, if one so wished.
K for Kampala. Churchill dubbed it "The Pearl of Africa" and it truly is a wonderful city.
L for Lake Bunyoni. This little gem is in the South of Uganda, and I spent my first few days there, swimming and piloting my rented dugout canoe. At one point, while paddling near an island, a local man beckoned me to the shore and asked me to take his mother to the local market on the opposite bank. I obliged, she planted herself in the bow, and off we went. She spoke no English, so she just sang in Bugandan for the trip's duration. Mike's Muzungu Boat Taxi Serivce.
M for Murchison Falls. The most powerful waterfall in the world, situated in the North where the Nile tumbles into Lake Albert. Impressive, and no casinos, therefore better than Niagara Falls.
N for Nile Special Lager. Beer. Enough said.
O for Omweso. A board game played in Uganda (and other parts of Africa, where it is known as bao), wherein players compete to win seeds from their competitor. I bought a beautiful carved wooden board to send home to myself. Someday I'll teach you lot how to play.
P for Plantlife. Uganda is painted in watercolor green from bottom to top.
Q for Qatar Airways. Bought a flight with them while I was here. C'mon, that counts!
R for Red Chilli Backpackers. My Ugandan home-away-from-home in Kampala.
S for Streetfood. I recommened goat brochettes, grilled corn on the cob, banana and cassava pancakes and chipatis stuffed with egg and avocado. The taste is enhanced, seemingly, when your snack is purchased through the window of a minibus.
T for The Source of the Nile River. You can see it in Jinja by paying 5000 UShs to walk up a road to where Lake Victoria starts to drain. Or, you can see it for free by cutting across a golf course and approaching from the opposite direction, though the guard with the massive gun will probably be very sore about it.
U for Ugandan People. Nice bunch.
V for Vindaloo. Had one of the mutton variety at a restaurant in Kampala and it was so hot, I nearly started to cry. But I gleaned the respect of my Aussie brethren.
W for Waragi. The local Ugandan firewater (gin-like and distilled from millet grain). We wanted to buy a bottle at the hostel, but it was 45000 UShs (25 dollars), so instead we paid one of the hostel cooks to take a boda boda to some private grog distributor. She came back with an old plastic jerry-can, half full of some mysterious liquid that smelled like jet fuel and made your eyes hurt when you smelled it. We were fully prepared to flush the stuff, but the hostel bartender had a sip and said it was decent. IT WAS AWFUL. Even the syrupy Fanta Orange couldn't mask the burn. Fortunately, none of us went blind.
X for ? I'm not bothered to even think of something for X.
Y for Yes, Friend! What the boda boda drivers yell at you on their way past.
Z for Zebu Cattle. Cows with astronomically large horns. Do a google image search. The Texans would be impressed.

To conclude, I'll just say that now I know my ABCs, and also that Uganda is excellent.

The White Nile

In Africa, they do everything BIG.

BIG animals.
BIG traffic jams.
BIG voices.
BIG tragedies.
BIG rivers.

The BIGGEST river, as a matter of fact, because inasmuch as the Nile River stretches 4132 miles from Lake Victoria in Uganda to the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt, it eclipses all other rivers of the world in length.

It's also an angry river. Right from its outset, the Nile rages and churns, down slopes and over waterfalls as it tumbles nearly 3000m on its way to the sea. There are hundreds of sets of rapids, some of them reaching "Class 6", which in whitewater terms basically means "try to paddle me and you're going to die". As a result, it was only paddled in its entirety by humans for the first time back in 2004.

So what does this mean for me? No, I had no plans to paddle the whole damn thing. That would have required a trip through the Sudan, which I've heard isn't all that nice at this time of year. Or any time of year. Luckily, there is another alternative: a one-day whitewater rafting trip at the very source of the White Nile, in the Ugandan town of Jinja.

I know that you'll all be expecting me to use a whole whack of descriptive language in order to convey the idea that my day out on the river was some intrepid, adrenaline-pumping experience that brought me to the verge of death and back. It wasn't. So I'll step out of character and just say that the rafting trip was fun. Fun, and a bit nerve-racking at times, because though the whitewater looks a bit scary to the onlooker standing on the shore, it looks downright terrifying when you're flying through it. There were 5 of us in the boat, plus guide, and for 7 hours we paddled until our triceps combusted, through the rocks and the waves and the impending doom. I must say we were a pretty decent team, too, because we were the only boat that didn't get flipped. With flipping comes the risk of being caught in an eddy, which can keep you under water for up to 20 seconds in places. Sounds frightening, though to be honest I was a bit crestfallen that I didn't end up getting tossed into the river once or twice. Would have made this blog post way more badass.

The point is that I had a great time, and would definitely be interested in trying it again... maybe next time in the Zambezi, where for added fun you have to contend with crocodiles.

Regrettably, the whole experience was nearly ruined by the high population of assholes that was permanently ensconced in the hostel in Jinja. Never in Africa - and only a handful of times in all my trips - have I been in a place with so many people that I didn't like.

The river itself is the culprit. With world-class rapids comes world-class rafters and kayakers - although that's just what they think they are, because in reality they're nothing but world-class wankers: young, testosterone-charged college dropouts who flock to Uganda from various corners of the 1st world to battle the river by day, and pickle their livers by night. You know the "Extreme" guys from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle? These were them, times a thousand.

And where there's smoke, there's fire. Or in this case, a more fitting analogy is "where there's muscle, there's tail". Yep, what would a party hostel be without an infestation of teeny-bopping young ladies who've probably told their parents they've gone to Africa to volunteer at a school, but are actually spending most of their time exchanging contaminated bodily fluids with the local studs?

It was like clockwork. Each day at 6PM, the boys would rock up at the bar, strutting and yeahbroing and highfiving each other after a hard-fought day out in the whitewater. Shortly thereafter, Little Miss Camel Toe and her brood of virile pigeons would arrive, and for the next 8 hours, the STD Festival would be in full swing.

Now I'm not trying to say that I've forgotten how to have fun, or even to deny that a little promiscuity isn't chicken soup for the teenage soul. What I am trying to say is that this was not exactly the convivial gathering I'd been looking for when I came to Jinja. Normally, my fellow African travelers have been interesting, sometimes even inspiring types, capable of holding a decent conversation, namely one that doesn't always revolve around the soporific topic of past drunken escapades. I HATED the people at this hostel. If you weren't a full-time kayaker or a moonlighting skank, you basically had no place there, and since the entire venue was little more than a bar and some dorm rooms, there was no retreat for those of us who weren't keen on confabulating with incompetent McFuckwits.

So I rafted, and then I left. I've called in the US Military to strafe the place with napalm, though they haven't gotten back to me yet.

Echoes of a Genocide

On April 6, 1994, in a tiny country in the heart of East Africa, all Hell suddenly broke loose.

At 8:20PM, there was an explosion at the Kigali International Airport. A plane had crashed, killing all the passengers inside, including Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. The aircraft had been shot down by a rocket.

Within an hour, a dark shadow befell the entire nation. Roadblocks were erected everywhere, manned by ordinary civilians armed with guns and machetes, who demanded to see ID cards from any passers-by. Meanwhile, just as people were settling into their beds for the night, a series of home invasions began to occur. Again, those responsible were plainclothes Rwandas with weapons.

Who were they? Members of the Interahamwe, an extremist militia whose named meant "Those Who Kill Together".
Their mission? To systematically exterminated every single Tutsi living in Rwanda.

During the month that followed, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis lost their lives. Many of them suffered unimaginably horrific deaths. The rest of the world, meanwhile, turned a blind eye.

The UN, who already had a small task force in Rwanda, proved its ineptitude beyond any reasonable doubt. Mission Commander Romeo Dallaire, who recognized what was happening, pleaded with his senior bureaucrats in New York for more troops to help curb the violence, but his cries fell on deaf ears and were only met with skepticism.

The Belgians, who lost 10 peacekeepers at the hands of the Interahamwe, pulled all their men out.

The French sent in a small army, though only to oversee the safe evacuation of all French nationals in the country.

The Americans, who were perhaps in the best position to help, spend the entire month arguing internally over whether or not "genocide" was a suitable term to apply to the atrocities. In the end, congress deemed that it was only "ethnic tension" and decided to do nothing. (Though to be fair, the Americans had just suffered a humiliating defeat in Somalia and weren't too keen on shipping men back to Africa).

So the Tutsis were left to die. And they probably all would have died, had it not been for the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel army of previously-exiled Tutsis led by Paul Kagame, who captured Kigali in May of '94 and put an end to the slaughter.

...

It's now 13 years later, and I am in Rwanda. What shocks me the most about the place is that, from my perspective, things seem pretty normal. There are stray goats, busy markets, honking horns, women selling mangoes, men yelling at the TV while watching football, and children playing with old tires. Nothing amiss there. But that said, it isn't hard to realize that many of these people have been through Hell. And to understand their plight a bit more, I made a pilgrimage to the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali.

The GMC was set up by the government and is meant to show the world what they missed seeing the first time. Admission is free. The visit starts with a video documentary that highlights the genocide from beginning to end. There were many grisly images, though for me what was more difficult to stomach were the interviews with Clinton and Annan - people who could have done something, but didn't. Boy, is hindsight ever 20/20.

Next, you have a chance to learn about the history of Rwanda up until the time of the genocide. You discover that "Hutu" and "Tutsi" do not have racial denotations; before the Belgians arrived in 1923, Rwanda had 18 tribal clans, and Hutu and Tutsi were terms used to describe one's socio-economic status within their own clan. By introducing identity cards, the Belgians consolidated Rwanda into two clans, and thus racially divided the nation, with the Tutsis becoming the rich minority. The Catholic Church, which had an active role in the country at the time, fully supported this new system. The seeds of genocide were planted by foreigners.

Soon, you reach the exhibition detailing the genocide itself. It is horrific. The Tutsis were not just killed. They were beaten. They were mutilated. They were crucified on trees. They were thrown into pits and stoned. They were drowned in septic tanks.
Women were raped by Hutu men who knowingly had HIV.
Husbands were forced to kill their own wives.
Children were murdered so that the next generation of Rwandans would be 100% Hutu.

At the GMC, you get to see all of this. There are silent photos of kids with gangrenous wounds, recorded interviews with Tutsis who had watched their loved ones get killed, and piles of rusty machetes used in the massacre.

In one room there are clothes on display, worn by the victims on the day they died. One of the t-shirts said "Ottawa Senators" on the front, and had a blood-stained slash across the chest. That shirt would have fit me when I was 5.

In another room you see the faces of the actual victims: over 1000 photos of people who had been killed, their innocent eyes staring at you as you try to comprehend the potential magnitude of the evil inherent to humans.

Still feel like more?
If at this point you haven't got the message, then it's the last room that truly puts your heart in a vise.

In this last room are photos of children. Life-sized photos, taken from when the kids were happy and full of life, before they were stolen from this world by monsters. Each photo has an inscription with the child's name, as well as a few other pertinent details. An example:

Mami MPINGANZIMA
Age: 12
Enjoyed: Chips with mayo
Favourite Song: The Beauty of Women
Last Words: "Mom, where can I run to?"
Cause of Death: Shot dead

Sadly, this kid was probably lucky. Here are a few more.

Patrick Gashugi SHIMIRWA
Age: 5
Favourite Sport: Riding his bike
Best Friend: Alliane, his sister
Behaviour: A quiet, well-behaved boy
CoD: Hacked with machete

Ariane UMUTONI
Age: 4
Favourite Food: Cake
Enjoyed: Singing and dancing
Behaviour: A neat little girl
CoD: Stabbed in her eyes

Irene UMOTONI and Uwamwezi UMUTONI
Relationship: Sisters
Favourite Toy: A doll they shared
Behaviour: Daddy's little girls
CoD: Grenade thrown into their shower

Fillette UWASI
Age: 2
Favourite Food: Rice and chips
Best friend: Her Dad
CoD: Smashed against a wall

Aurore KIRIZI
Age: 2
Behaviour: Very talkative
Favourite Drink: Cow's milk
Favourite Game: Hide and go seek
CoD: Burnt alive

To conclude, I'll go back to what I said earlier: Rwanda, now, is pretty normal. To the average tourist, there is hardly any difference between here and Tanzania or Malawi. But beneath the surface, Rwandans still have the scars from what happened. There are still women here who have HIV from being raped. There are still children here whose parents were killed. There are still men here who did the killing, and will have to live with it forever.

As will all the people who saw what was happening and ignored it.

The world really sucks sometimes.

$33 Beer

Boy, am I ever glad that I'm a Canadian. My country is excellent. We have no history of violence. There is no racial strife, no abject poverty. The crime rate is low, the health care generally good, and the people are nice. We're also not belligerent idiots on the world stage. Yep, suffice to say that Canada is A-1.

That said, there are many other countries on Earth that I wouldn't mind being from. It might be nice to be Norwegian. It sure would be swell to come from Holland. I'd even hazard to say that to be a New Zealander wouldn't be awful.

Bad sadly, there are also many countries that I'm positively ecstatic NOT to be from. Countries where civil wars leave thousands dead. Countries that get plundered by imperial Superpowers in the name of "freedom". Countries where the life expectancy barely exceeds 35. Which countries are these? Well, there are lots, but today we're going to keep it to one: The Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Congolese people haven't exactly had a lot to cheer about. Belgium began plundering their land in the 1800s, and King Leopold III treated the place like his own personal stomping ground.
Next came perennial asshole despot President Mabutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Waza Banda, whose name meant "the fearless warrior who will go from strength to strength leaving fire in his wake". A more suitable name might have been "the good-for-nothing klepto who spirited away all the country's money to spend on himself"; the man was a serious tool.
Congo is rich in prized natural resources such as gold, diamonds and rubber, and has therefore made some of its neighbouring countries rather jealous. After Mabutu's ousting by Laurent Kabila, there followed a great deal of political infighting, and 9 other African nations joined the fray, all looking for their own piece of the spoils. Sitting at the pole position was Robert Mugabe, who gained control of the Gecamines mineral deposit and pocketed himself a few hundred million. A civil war erupted in 1998, and over 3,000,000 Congolese lost their lives in the next 5 years.

These days things are on the mend, though there's still a lot of work to be done. Joseph Kabila won the presidency in 2005 after a series of democratic (?) elections, but rebels continue to cause problems in the Northeast. Most of the rebels are former Interahamwe, the Hutu militia that was responsible for the Rwandan genocide. Recent turmoil has produced a few million refugees, poorly timed because tourists were just beginning to trickle back into the country. These days, the only foreigners you're likely to find in the DR Congo are UN soldiers.

And me.

Well I'm sorry, but the lure of visiting the Congo was simply too great to resist. From Gisenyi in Rwanda, it's a short hop, skip and a jump to Goma on the Congo side, which makes for an easy day-trip. I took a moto-taxi to the border, paid for the visa, and walked in.

Was I ever nervous. But then again, having convoys of UN armoured vehicles pass you by can do that to you. I didn't enter the Congo to witness a humanitarian crisis first-hand though. My interest in the place was more geolicial than anything else, since Goma was buried by an eruption from the Nyiragongo volcano in 2002.

Aside from the fact that the roads were littered in pyroclastic material, Goma struck me as being pretty normal. That's impressive considering a civil war was taking place in the bush a few hours to the North. The town is a hive of activity, full of colourful people, minibuses and young men transporting petrol drums on wooden pushcarts that look like the predecessor of the American Chopper.

I walked around for a few hours - quickly, so as to appear as if I was on a mission and not to be disturbed. The trick worked a charm, and for the most part the Gomans ignored me, except for this one crippled guy who kept yelling "Whassssssup, my nig*a?????" whenever I passed. Even the Congo has comedians.

I exchanged a few USD for Congolese Francs, and used some to buy a wooden mask from a local artisan. Yes, the ubiquitous African mask... they're all over the continent, but if you're going to own one then it might as well be from the Congo, because this country is famous for them.

When I finally tired to walking, I escaped to one of the posh hotels that line the shores of Lake Kivu, and made directly for the bar. I ordered the biggest, frostiest beer in the cooler, and spent the next 90 minutes sitting at a table, sipping away and watching the sunlight as it danced on the water. I also took the time to read the 8x11" certificate you get when you go through Congolese immigration: a unique souvenir.

Now before you all start reading me the riot act, know this: under NO circumstances would I ever have ventured into the DRC if I hadn't been certain that things were safe. I've no desire to become the innocent victim of a crossfire, and I sought plenty of local information on the Rwandan side before entering.

I'm glad I went. When I arrived, the border official said "Karibu" (you are welcome), and it was an enjoyable experience from then on in. There is definitely an air of uncertainty about the place, but it's the same dark cloud that has been hanging over the Congolese people for more than 100 years. They really deserve better.

All told, the visa cost me $30 and the beer $3. Hence, $33 beer.

"It's not that democratic, it's barely a republic, but it is Congo." -The Lonely Planet

Gorillas In My Midst

Part of the reason that travel so enthralls me is that not every moment can be memorable. Some days just plain stink, and are totally unfit for the highlight reel.

Maybe you get stuck in a butt-ugly place.
Maybe you shell out a lot of money for an unforgettable activity which winds up being totally forgettable.
Maybe you decline to participate in an activity on account of being too tired, only to find out later that you missed out on having a blast.

Fortunately, it's the great moments - the ones where the highlight reel nearly runs out of tape - that make this business of solo travelling worthwhile. And for me, tracking the gorillas in Rwanda's Parc National des Volcans was perhaps one of the greatest moments yet.

A small helping of background info on mountain gorillas (Gorilla gorilla beringei):
-They can only be found on a small volcanic ridge that straddles Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo
-There are only 720 living specimens, making them one of the most endangered species in the world
-They share 97% of their biological make-up with humans (and 99% with my Gr.8 math teacher Mrs. Case)
-They live in groups consisting of one dominant male (the silverback), several females and their offspring
-They were made famous by the late scientist Dian Fossey, who was played by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas In The Mist
-To track the gorillas, you must purchase a permit from the country they reside in

Getting a permit is no easy task. There are only 108 available each day in the 3 countries combined, and given that the DR Congo is currently off-limits, that number is down to 72. They also come with a whopping 500 dollar ticket price, which is what I normally budget for one month of African travel. But some opportunities are too good to pass up.

I hardly slept the night before. At 6AM, I was picked up from my hotel in Ruhengeri and taken to the Park headquarters in Kiringi. The Park itself is gorgeous - 5 towering volcanoes covered in electric green vegetation.

At the HQ, tourists are divided into groups of 5-8 people, and each cluster of people visits one family of gorillas. I pulled some strings (meaning: got the Aussie girl I was hanging out with to bat her eyelashes at the group coordinator) and secured a chance to see the Hirwa family, which purportedly had many young gorillas. Then we set off.

It begins with a ride in a 4WD up the World's Worst Road to the base of the Muside volcano. Once there, you are met by your guide, as well as 2 soldiers from the Rwandan Army.

Perhaps I should account for the presence of the G.I. Joes: Gorillas, being extremely rare, are highly coveted on the international black market, and are therefore subject to illegal poaching. Poachers mean business. In 1999, 8 tourists and their guide caught some poachers in the act while tracking the gorillas in Uganda, and were subsequently kidnapped and murdered. Nowadays, no one hits the mountain without an armed escort.

And so the ascent begins. It can take up to 4 hours to reach the gorillas, though at this time of year they are fairly low, due to the snow at the summit. We reached them in 1 hour, and thank God for that, because the hike was no picnic. There is no path; you simply follow the guide as he slashes his way through the foliage with a machete, and to make matters worse you're slogging through foot-devouring mud filled with stinging nettles and army ants. But nothing Nature could throw at us was going to ruin this.

Finally, we arrived to within a few hundred feet. We received our final instructions ("Don't point at the gorillas or they might get nervous and kick your ass"), and then trudged through a last bit of bush and into a clearing.

[Insert words that may accurately describe the magnitude of my awe]. Fact is, there aren't any. Gorillas are one of the most majestic beasts on Earth, and here I was, seeing them in their own house.
My first sighting was of a female and her baby. Upon seeing us, the young one stood up, batted its chest, then promptly lost its balance and fell over backwards.

Then I saw HIM - the silverback. He was less than 6 feet away, sitting on a rock between a pair of palm trees, watching us with his crimson eyes. I fully expected him to roar, but instead he chose to roll on to his back, stick his feet in the air and sigh. "Bugger off, I'm tired."

For the next hour (because that's all you get), we all sat and watched gorilla TV. Gorillas are gentle and (thankfully) vegetarian creatures and are quite content to go about their routines despite the gallery of spectators. The females in the family spent their time munching away on bamboo shoots and wild celery. The young ones thrashed about, climbing trees, doing somersaults and generally causing a ruckus. The silverback, meanwhile, policed the area, charging us once to establish superiority, though all he did when he got close was rip a fart that was likely heard on the Congo side of the hill. I preferred that to the alternative of a physical encounter, because the old boy was 6ft tall and 200kg.

Then, in 2 minutes, the hour was up. Back down the muddy slopes, 500 dollars poorer but richer for the experience. In fact, having now visited them once, I'd pay twice that to do it again.

Just wait till you see the photos.