Tuesday August 24, 2010 – Crossing to Rwanda and settling into MGVP

Tuesday August 24, 2010 – Crossing to Rwanda and settling into MGVP


Another beautiful morning with the birds singing as the sun comes up. Breakfast is fruit crepes – I can’t believe we are eating better here in deepest darkest African than we do at home, and then we gradually pack up our stuff for the return back to the mainland. Timo is getting a ride with us to Kisoro, and he’s pretty pleased about it. The local buses and taxis are not exactly as comfortable as the back of a private 4x4. Near enough to 11 the boat comes to pick us up and we have a pleasant 15 minute ride back to the dock – admiring the scenery and the birds along the way, and watching the locals paddle their heavy wooden dugout canoes carrying people and goods around the lake. Our vehicle is there safe and sound as we left it, so in we get for the short drive into Kabale where TImo has to check in with a friend, I need a bank, and we decide to do lunch at the local backpackers. They have a dining area up on the rooftop – with a shelter overhead and sofas with cushions in bright colours. It looks like Moroccan or North African. It also has what looks like a boat ladder to get top, so Sarah takes a bit of shoving and encouragement for the climb. We order and then I set off in search of the best exchange rate –I arrive back just in time for the food, and we lunch before starting the next stage of the journey to Kisoro and then the Rwandan border.
We backtrack on the road from Buhoma and most of it is lovely new tar – what a pleasure to drive on. The only trick is to notice the clusters of speed bumps entering and leaving more built up areas as they are brutal at high speed. The area just west of Kabale has flat fields with Holstein cattle and looks a bit like home, except for the crowned cranes sharing the pastures with them. There is a road project from Kabale to Kisoro and for most of the ride we are on brand new tar – winding up and down the increasingly hilly terrain. There are volcanic “pimples” – little conical hills that never grew up to be real volcanoes, and everything is terraced and planted although the dryness is readily apparent and the air is hazy with dust. Just before the Echuya Forest, as reserve of trees and high bamboo, we run out of tar and its back to the bumps and the incredible dust. It’s really evident in the forest, which should be moist and green. The vegetation for a while was totally coated in red dust, making it look like the Canadian forest in autumn. Only in the distance is the green colour visible. We eventually come to Kisoro, the road passing over the landing strip as we enter town. They have gates on either side that they lower if a plane is taking off or landing. Not the busiest airport I would expect. Kisoro has a single long strip of shops, restaurants, bars, craft shops, and small hotels. We stop at one to drop Timo off and rehydrate ourselves before filling up with diesel and the final stretch to the border. We pass Traveller’s Rest Hotel – here for decades and featured in the book about Dian Fossey Elizabeth and I both just read. Pieces of history, and set off down the last bit of bumpy dusty road to the border at Cyanika. It is obvious that we are in volcanic territory here as there are rough, irregular black rocks of lava everywhere. They are used to make formal mortared walls, informal stone piles as dividers, and the foundations of most of the houses. It’s funny to think that they would probably be worth money at home as unique building stone for fireplaces and such. But the fields are strewn with them – digging rocks is likely a daily pastime for anyone trying to build or farm here.
The last stretch of Uganda is a dusty road with shops on either side, and then we are at the border itself. Step 1 – go into a small round hut and show our passports, a man fills in lines in a large ledger book for each of us, and then I do the same for the vehicle at a second desk. We are given small torn pieces of white paper with initials on them that are our passes, and a slightly larger one as the gate pass for the car. Then we go to the immigration office and hand in our exit cards and our pieces of paper to get our passports stamped. Then to the gate, but the soldier there tells me I need to go to another building for police clearance. Off I go, into a fair sized almost empty building where the man watching TV turns out to be the police clearance officer. He checks my papers for the car, fills in more lines in a ledger book, and stamps a bunch of paperwork for me. I make some exclamation about the headlines on his newspaper, that the teachers and the students at Makerere are on strike – the teachers for more pay and the students for lower fees. The term has just started, or should have started. The policeman and I chat a bit, I tell him I am a professor in Canada, and he tells me I don’t look at all like a professor and that is a good thing as they are all – and he makes a scrunched up squinty face. Certainly glad I don’t fit into that category!
And finally through the gate, where I switch from the left to the right side of the road. We visit the immigration office for our stamps, I visit the customs office where some of the details of the car are written in a book, and then off we go.
And so we are in Rwanda. Back on paved roads, with people everywhere – walking along the road edges, walking on the road, bicycles, boda bodas (the drivers wear green numbered vests and have to wear helmets, and trucks and lorries. I use my horn regularly to clear a path wide enough to comfortably drive through (Sarah is in stitches over this as the horn goes Beep, beep beep beep beep in a descending tone every time I hit it – do it again mommy, do it again mommy). After about 20 minutes we pull into Ruhengeri, or Musenzi as is it now know, and then we are back at the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Program compound, home to Jan and beginning to feel like home away from home to me.
The compound is quite large with nice gardens, as small house out back where Jan lives, and a Ushaped building with a central covered verandah area and a garden in the middle. There is a lab, several offices, a library/boardroom, and the main living quarters with kitchen, dining area, lounge, bedrooms, and bathroom. Plus dogs – Jan’s Amah and Molly’s Boots (both puppies), Dan who is crippled and has a wheelchair to get around in, Chewie a somewhat unreliable Rottweiler type cross who is known to bite and guards to front of the compound, and Foxie who will fight to the death with Chewie and hence guards the back area of the compound, with a fence in between. We greet the guards, Leon the house manager, and the lab staff and veterinarians who are here. James, a British veterinary student is staying here working on cryptosporidia, a protozoal intestinal parasite of people, cattle, and gorillas. We unload, shower and bathe, fill the laundry basket with an obscene amount of incredibly dusty and filthy laundry, and relax and chat until dinner time – grilled cheese sandwiches, gin and tonic, and early to bed for everyone tonight. Mike Cranfield flies in from the US but arrives late – we’ll see him tomorrow.