A day's drive from Arusha, an incident free border crossing to Kenya and massive gridlock traffic jam in a booming, bustling Nairobi, we found ourselves in the leafy suburb of Karen. Karen, named after Karen Blixen of 'Out of Africa' fame, is the last outpost of the Kenya Cowboys - white farmers of British decent. We were partially acquainted with Karen and its work-hard-play-hard residents before we arrived, having read David Bennun's highly amusing autobiography, 'Tick Bite Fever'; a large portion of which is devoted to his experiences of growing up in Karen in the 70s & early 80s. We both loved reading it during our long drive days across Tanzania. I particularly enjoyed it because there were striking similarities between the Kenya Cowboys and Queenslanders of my youth. Karen, itself, reminded me of the acreage-suburbs of outer Eastern Brisbane (Mt Cotton, Rochedale etc) of the 70s & 80s - before air-conditioning induced mass immigration of metro-'mexicans', costing Brisbane its sanity & identity.
We spent the next two days at an overland truck camp in Karen - enough time to stock up on essentials, replace the worn out flip-flops (thongs), put $50 worth of stuff into the Kenyan postal system (most likely never to be seen again) and visit an elephant orphanage and giraffe sanctuary.
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| Elephant Orphanage, Nairobi |
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| Baby elephant feeding itself |
The elephant orphanage rehabilitates young elephants, orphaned by poachers, angry farmers, vehicle accidents and plain bad luck, back to the wild. It is entirely self funded and hugely successful. In the interests of the rehabilitation program, the orphanage is open only one hour a day with only minimal passive contact with the animals. All in all we were pretty impressed. We never get bored of elephants. The giraffe sanctuary was quite a bit more interactive as giraffes are not affected by human interaction in the long term. In fact, giraffes are spectacularly easy to reintroduce to the wild as they are utterly impossible to domesticate. Zoe, in particular, enjoyed feeding the giraffes and had the favour returned when one planted a big sloppy kiss on her!
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| Zoe feeding a giraffe, Giraffe Sanctuary, Nairobi |
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| Up close. |
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| Uuuurgh |
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| Afterglow |
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| Warthogs are the giraffes' mates in the bush |
We found Nairobi to be the most pleasant and amenable city since Cape Town. The locals were polite and respectful and the place was clean and inexpensive. The only drawback was the traffic. We chose to avoid the four hour round trip to downtown which, incidentally was highly rated by some of our fellow-overlanders; not the filthy, crime ridden hell hole unfairly known colloquially as 'Nai-Robbery'.
Leaving Nairobi behind, we followed the Rift Valley escarpment northwest toward Uganda. We camped overnight outside Eldorat before crossing into Uganda. It was at the border that we were first confronted by (in great contrast to Kenya) what can only be described as the most acute cultural affliction of Mzugu Derangement Syndrome we've encountered in Africa thus far. Mzugu Derangement Syndrome is the psychological affliction which overcomes a seemingly sizable portion of African people in the presence of Mzugu (otherwise known as white fellas). It leads them to apparently believe that we are (without exception) fundamentally stupid, ignorant, gullible, blind, deaf, unco, lazy wastrels - yet, somehow and amazingly, incredibly rich and infinitely patient. They have a sense of entitlement which make Cargo Cultists look like Calvinists. The most annoying part is that they do themselves more damage than good, quite often blowing a deal by being cocky and/or transparently dishonest, and then looking shocked & victimised when they lose the deal.
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| Rift Valley |
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| Amusing sign at The Rift Valley |
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| Back in the Northern Hemisphere |
We've encountered serious silliness on this trip before but Ugandans took MDS to a new level. At the border the money changers demanded 23% commission to change $2000. We would have done it for 5% - a generous $100 profit (20 times the median daily wage in Uganda). But no, they had to play faux-arrogant brinkmanship until they pissed us off so badly that we would have preferred a deal with the devil.
We arrived in Kampala after a quick roadside lunch surrounded by well fed, well clothed kids loudly demanding "Mzugu, give me money!". While waiting in the local MTN service centre to buy a SIM and airtime, a local pushed in front of me, asked to buy a mobile phone then turned to me and demanded "Mzugu! White boy! Give me money for the phone!". Needless to say, he had enough money to pay for the mobile. Which he did.
Speaking of queue jumping: I've always wondered why, when watching the news for example, Africans queue so tightly that they press their groins against the backside of the person in front; so much so that the queue resembled a giant millipede or a particularly intimate conga line. It's because leaving a polite gap of, say, a foot between yourself and the person in front is apparently an invitation for someone of great self regard to push in. Equally odd is that the people who push in become instantly deaf as soon as they do it. It makes Italians look like models of Victorian manners.
We camped at Red Chilli backpackers, Kampala, for the night then left before sunrise for Kabale near the Rwandan border. From Kabale we crossed the Rwandan border (where the money changers once again were struck down with a convenient but ultimately self-defeating bout numerical illiteracy), the middle of the road, the language barrier and took the long route via Kigali with the expectation of visiting the Genocide Memorial. Unfortunately it was closed due to a public holiday so we drove straight through to Ruhengeri, staying at Fatima, a hostel known among overlanders as 'Primus & The Lord' (a boozy hostel run by the Catholic diocese, selling Primus beer - an African overlanders' favourite).
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| Rwandan Hills |
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| We dressed Falcon for July 4 |
The next morning we left early for our gorilla trek. After meeting our guide at the park entrance we drove for an hour then, accompanied by armed escort, trekked for another 2 hours into the bush; first through bamboo then into thick nettle jungle to an altitude of around 3000m.
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| Trekking through stinging nettle |
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| Lee with an unamused armed escort |
Here we stopped for a rest then continued perpendicular to the track, the armed escort using a machete to hack through the bush. Not long after, our guide announced that we were 2 minutes away from the family. Two more AK-47 wielding park rangers then quietly emerged from the bush, they'd been tracking the gorillas since dawn. We were about to come face to face with the largest family of gorillas in Rwanda, numbering 32.
Twenty yards on were two adolescent female gorillas quietly eating bush celery. Actual live, wild gorillas. It seemed almost surreal. They didn't really mind even though we were less than 7 yards away. Pushing further down the hill we encountered the main group - a silverback, surrounded by around twenty family members: males and females of all ages. There were two sets of twins - one pair two years old, the other two months old.
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| Mother breastfeeding her young |
Our presence was, quite visibly, intentionally ignored by the silverback but the younger family members took great interest in us. Keen to show off, they played and wrestled only a few yards away. Some would approach rapidly, rise to beat their chests then grab their ankles and backward roll down the slope for a quick, but comical, escape. Others would crawl up slowly and stare intently then quietly back away. Others were content to just peek through the bushes at us.
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| Tiny baby riding its mum |
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| Silverback being grumpy |
We watched the group's antics for about an hour then reluctantly meandered back down the mountain to the truck. The experience was worth every cent.
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| Zoe trying bush celery |
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| Back through the nettle |
The next day I caught a local bus with Mike, Alex and Danny to Lake Kivu on the DRC border. We went for a swim in the lake and grabbed a beer before heading back to Ruhengeri.
The day of our return to Uganda I turned 38. Zoe gave me a couple of nice bottles of SA wine and a nice card. The group sang an impromptu happy birthday in English and Dutch when I emerged for breakfast. Turning 38 in Rwanda is something I'd never envisaged.
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| My birthday present from Falcon: The world's worst fake scotch |
On route to Uganda, we visited the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. The memorial was very touching and well presented on an individual human level. We were both quite upset by the sheer barbaric brutality of the individual crimes. The scale of the mass murder was numbing. I did, however, find it to be a bit of a blame shifting exercise. The role of those who did it was minimised while the role of foreigners was magnified. There's no doubt the UN, the French and the Belgians did not help as they probably should have (they have historical form), but none of those groups put the machetes in the hands of the perpetrators and forced them to do what they did. The blame for the genesis of the problem was leveled solely at the Belgians who were alleged to have falsely identified the Hutus & Tutsis as two different ethnic groups and fanned hatred as part of a policy to divide & conquer. There is little doubt that the Belgians were vile colonial masters but it's not as if ethnic violence is absent from Africa. The other glaring problem with this theory is that it does not explain why the Hutus murdered thousands of Twa (Pygmy) people as well. There is no question of the ethnic difference of Twa people with their neighbours. Mention of their plight was strangely missing from the museum. I'd heard of this sort of thing before when on a tour of Auschwitz. Up until 1989 the Polish government refused to acknowledge the specific plight of Jews at Auschwitz, referring to all victims simply as 'patriots' in a vain attempt to hijack victimhood by viewing the atrocities through the warped prism of Marxist class struggle.
On a couple of levels, Rwanda was a pleasant surprise. The natural beauty of the countryside was quite breathtaking. Refreshingly, the people were generally helpful and pleasant; suffering low levels of MDS. The oddest cultural idiosyncrasy being the propensity to stare at Mzugu, sometimes for hours, as if watching is on a reality TV show. Rwandans also clearly took much greater pride in their daily lives than we'd seen elsewhere. In great contrast, Rwanda was very clean. The fields were well tended, the houses and yards well kept.
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| Crowds throng to watch Mzugu sitting in the back of a 4x4 for 30 minutes, Rwanda |
Back in Uganda we set up camp at Lake Bunyoni and settled in. Lake Bunyoni hadn't figured much on our itinerary so it came as a pleasant surprise. It rates as a highlight of our trip so far - a holiday within a holiday. The lake is the third deepest in the world, nestled in the crater of a giant extinct volcano. And the water is pleasantly cool and parasite free. It is surrounded by the high peaks of the crater rim which is covered in eucalyptus and beautiful farmland.
On our first morning, Zoe visited a local school and helped out with a lesson. She returned, exhausted, to the camp just in time for a boat trip and two hour trek to a Twa village. Having been thrown off their land in 1996 in one of those African "incidents" which barely raise an eyebrow among the Perpetually Outraged of the West, the Twa are exceptionally marginalised and dirt poor. They were very welcoming and entertained us with some very, very vigorous dancing. As is custom, we were obliged to join in and make total fools of ourselves. Word got around that we were walking through the neighbourhood so as we returned to the boat we were accosted by droves of little kids calling out "Mzugu! How are yooou!? Give me maaarney!"
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| Zoe teaching English |
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| Not quite but close |
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| Sing-a-long time |
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| Joe Cool |
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| Dancing with the Pygmys |
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| Elder having his photo taken - a very important event |
Super Rugby Grand Final day was upon us. The truck was scheduled for a two day drive back to Kampala, so Zoe, Danny, Heather and me sign off the truck to stay and watch the game. Conveniently there was a power cut so, cornered in desperation, I fed the beast that is MDS and paid the camp $10 to run the generator for the duration of the match. The upside was that we had cold beers for the afternoon. The super upside was that it was the best ten bucks I've ever spent. For those who've been on another planet, the Queensland Reds, a team I've supported for many years despite their appalling form, beat the Canterbury Crusaders in a tough and close match which kept us on the edge of our seats throughout. In celebration, we drank alot of beer and spent the afternoon swimming and diving off a thirty foot platform into Lake Bunyoni. I also gloated. Alot.
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| Jumping for joy in a Reds training singlet |
