Dark and Continent: Fit the Entirely Unexpected

Categories: Travel

Hi all,
Thought/hoped you'd heard the last from this particular source? Me too. Except… …I get back, spend a day or two waking up, then walk into the DFGF HQ in Chalk Farm. At which point Jo collars me – "We've just had someone drop out of the fund-raising cycle ride across Uganda - know anyone who is available at v short notice, cycles and can sort their visas and vaccinations in five days?”. That’ll be me, then. So I’m leaving Thursday, cycling through Uganda with a bunch of like-minded nutters and ending up back in the Muhabura hotel in Ruhengeri for another gorilla-viewing trip. Tough. I am however going light on the technology this time – just the one camera, Palm rather than Powerbook, and of course my bicycle.

I will be whimpering and blustering at people to raise sponsorship money for the trip’s cause: Mountain Gorilla conservation – so any and all individual and/or corporate offerings will be very much appreciated. Used notes though, please, or by transfer to the usual offshore accounts... As however it’s six days heavy cycling at altitude and that my entire training has consisted of sitting around in Congo, drinking beer and eating chips, I’ll only collect if, as and when I make it back…

all the best
Lance Armstrong (yeah, right).

Dark and Continent: Fit the Eighth: Kenya by Otter

Categories: Travel

Hi all,

And here’s the closing chapter in my travels, for the moment at least: A couple of days hanging around in Nairobi, meeting up with Greg and Jillian of the DFGF and I’m about ready to head off for a bit of the rough stuff – camping in the Maasai Mara and doing the game-spotting bit. In the meantime, I’ve given myself a taste of what’s to come, by spending a pre-breakfast morning in the Nairobi National Park, just on the outskirts of Nairobi itself. The park gives me a good sight of lion, zebra, giraffe, black rhino and rock hyrax, all set against the backdrop of Nairobi rush-hour smog. This last is spotted basking on a rock – about the size of a tubby normal mog, it is in fact the closest living relative to the elephant. While I’m lining up a shot, a random tourist bod wanders up, looks over my shoulder and exclaims, “Whaat’s thaat? A rat?”. My reply of, “No, an elephant”, did not play well, especially when I insisted.

I’d originally been looking for a cheapo truck’n’tent trip, until I started phoning around the posh travel companies to see what sort of deal they’d do, given the fall-off in tourism following recent events. After a bit of negotiation, I still end up on a camping trip, albeit in a camp with fixed tents, four-poster beds and, er, a personal butler. Roughing it never sounded so good.

Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the Eighth: Kenya by Otter"

Dark and Continent: Fit the Seventh: Rwanda by Okapi

Categories: Travel

A slightly belated hi from Goma...

My meetings and training in Goma – the Masterclass in the Mist – taking people from the basics of computers to digital video editing in three days – over, and I'm due to head back to Kigali early Saturday morning, with an early start needed, to get the low morning light for photos of the town and to do some hard bargaining in the market. This is the place to get real, proper, authentic, no-nonsense Congolese tribal masks, hopefully separated from their original owners in a dignified manner. Mission successful, so you and yours can look forward to being frightened in assorted dark corners of my house at some point. An early start? Means that a heavy evening on the town the night before is a absolute inevitability. This time it's with Henry (local DFGF chef-de-bureau) and John, an accountant pygmy. I think that's right – if he were a pygmy accountant, he'd probably be rather too specialised. The evening starts with a local celebration at the hotel, and they've laid on the local Ballet Culturelle – regional dancers, exuberantly and brilliantly showing off their tribal culture, costumes, co-ordination and quite astonishing grins. Then it's time to hit the town – and Henry is determined that I'm going to have some good stories to take back, so we bypass the slightly Western-sanitised compounds of Bobongo (Henry's take: Politicians, NGOs and mass murderers) and Coco Jambo (Henry: drugs and debauchery; Me: So why aren't we there?), bump up onto the steaming lava wasteland that was once downtown Goma, weave through an assortment of back alleys, where the half-collapsed upper stories of stone buildings protrude from the glistening black volcanic clinker, between the twisted mechano-spaghetti of melted steel roof beams and arrive at a gaudy blue lean-to that fills the gap between two not-quite collapsed buildings – I'm not quite sure which part of the ensemble is holding the others up. There's a bunch of vehicles and random hangers-on gathered around the rope-curtained door, beneath a whitewashed sign which sayeth, "Cap Sud". So this is it – the real Goma nightlife. It's crowded, loud and the dance floor is packed to the point of overflowing, personal space being a largely irrelevant concept. We grab a vacant table, introductions are made to various friends, relations and a large bottle of Primus. Look around: The ruins have a half-canopy of woven banana leaves, and tables of various shapes, sizes and degrees of decrepitude have been dropped in, not entirely at random. There is however a carefully laid dance floor, where that of the rest of the establishment is a layer of ash (volcanic – very few people seem to smoke here). The lights are well done and the sound system would seriously embarrass many London clubs. Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the Seventh: Rwanda by Okapi"

Dark and Continent: Fit the Fifth: Heart of Darkness

Categories: Travel

Hi all,

I have really, really been looking forward to using this title, but it had to wait until I got to Congo, although I suspect that Kurtz' despairing final cry of "The horror, the horror" would nowadays be something like, “les croissants, les croissants!”. That, at least, is what I thought before I got here. My flippancy has done Conrad a great disservice (and if anyone points out that he was writing about what is now Congo Brazzaville, rather than Congo Zaire, I’ll get very upset – so please don’t bugger up a half-decent narrative hook) – this is very much Frontiersville, Afrique: Goma is a town on the edge of everything, not least oblivion: much of it still under a cooling lava flow from last year’s eruption of Nyiragongo; there’s a cannibal rebel army advancing 400km to the North (and there I really wish I were joking) and the town is on a stage 2 volcano alert. After ‘safe’ – always a relative term hereabouts – the stages are, in loose translation:

1. be slightly afraid
2. be very afraid
3. run away, very fast
4. if you’re reading this you’re too close. About 100km too close...

The air is noticeably sulphurous – eyes stinging and a yellow-orange tint to the sunset. The streams of vapour that were wafting from the main crater of Nyiragongo as we drove down this afternoon have given way to billowing clouds of salmon-pink and green-tinged grey, lending a surreal and darkling overcast to the whole sky. As part of the reason I’m here is to help set up the new DFGF research centre, to replace the one that’s now under 10m or so of lava, I can see that there could be some regular work here. I’ve had less interesting consultancy gigs. I’ve also had far worse times in my life – I think that, like a good contrarian, I’ve done the heart of darkness bit on another continent, and there’s space here to rediscover a little perspective and priority, where Conrad found only spiritual decay and spiraling madness. This, in case you hadn’t gathered, is a tough place to live: practically every possible human and natural disaster has been or is being visited on this place, and yet there’s life above simple grinding existence, there’s real humour and there’s a getting on with whatever it takes to rebuild life and home, under any circumstance. Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the Fifth: Heart of Darkness"

Dark and Continent: FIt the Fourth: Crouching Gorilla, Hidden Leopard

Categories: Travel

So this is it: time to go see a gorilla or two. Before we get onto the main event, there’s something to confess: I have problem with Gorillas. Or with any species that hasn’t got the hang of evolving somewhere sustainable – here we have a species that has chosen to not only hang out in but to concentrate its entire gene pool into a single area that is chronically ecologically, politically, militarily and geologically unstable. And I’m here to help them? Give ‘em all Swiss citizenship I say – at least they’ll then simply die out through boredom. OK, so given that we’ll allow them a measure of mischance in their choice of ecosystem, I suppose I might as well take a wander along to see how they’re doing. This involves a 7am start at the ORTPN office – fortunately less than 100m from the Hotel, so even I make it on time. Not that I’d have had the choice, as Emmanuel was hammering on my door at 6:15 – I had to pretend that I’d had my shower and was engaged in meditative Zen snoring exercises to clear my mind for the day. Or whatever. ORTPN only allow a maximum of 6/8 people per day in to see each group, the main concerns being disruption of their normal behaviour patterns (those of the Gorillas, that is) and the accidental transmission of human diseases to the beasties. To judge from the appearance of the assembled company of gorilla wannabes, sartorial taste is excluded from the ‘bad influence’ section of the trekking agreement. It’s therefore fortunate that everyone else gets shovelled off to one or other of the other groups, whilst Emmanuel and myself are the sole supplicants to group 13 (being with DFGF has to have the odd perk or two). Along, that is, with three guides, two soldiers and an officer of the self-important, walkie-talkie toting type. All v friendly and helpful, but taking pics of the army guys politely refused – probably more on image touristique grounds than securité national. Continue reading "Dark and Continent: FIt the Fourth: Crouching Gorilla, Hidden Leopard"

Dark and Continent: Fit the Third: The Luck of 13

Categories: Travel

G’day, Rwanda is a compact bijou countryette by European standards, let alone those of Africa. Its total land area is only about 26k km2 – much of it vertical. I think that makes it smaller than Scotland. Whatever, it shouldn’t take more than about three hours to drive, as the crow flies, from any one side of the country to another. An African crow however, is a bird of a very different sort, so let’s allow a day or two if not traveling along one of the major arterial routes. Which we were, so it's only about 96km from Kigali to Ruhengeri, including a climb over a fairly respectable mountain range. The going time for the journey is an hour-and-a-halfish, which is Formula One pace by African standards. Vince is regarded as a ‘pace’ driver by the locals, both ex-pat and Rwandese, which is a little worrying. Turns out that he’s no more than mildly insane, just hates stopping. And guess who kept wanting to take photographs of the latest vista? In case you hadn’t already gathered, this is a stunningly beautiful country. Oh, and there’s a fuel crisis in most of Central Africa – the main pipeline from Mombasa, feeding S Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda & Burundi has fractured. So we’re into kilometre-long queues at filling stations, which makes the trip look increasingly unlikely. That’s until we discover that diesel is unaffected, and the Pajero drinks the stuff. Except that the only way to get to the diesel pumps is through the queues... So a local colleague is bribed to join the dawn chorus of the gasoline-dispossessed and turns up a while later with a full tank. And a full boot – he’s had the very good idea of also filling up a 20 litre jerrycan and sticking it in the back. That was until the top came off on the dirt road up to Vince’s. Now it’s bad enough following a smelly diesel – being sat inside a car that’s had it’s carpets saturated with the stuff promises to be a breakfast-bouncing experience. Nearly, but not quite – a housekeeper with Omo and determination is a wonderful thing – we simply had our nostrils reamed out by industrial detergent fumes. An improvement, at least. Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the Third: The Luck of 13"

Dark and Continent: Fit the Second: Green, Pleasant and Landed

Categories: Travel

Bonjour tout le monde!

Mais je crois que c'etait une pays Francophone et les gens ris en plus quand l'Harris s'atttempte a parler Français. Maintenant, je retourner a l'Anglais... Gawd, that was too much like hard work – fortunately most people here speak English at some level or other, particularly the Swedes, Germans, Danes and the other entirely unsuited pale Northern types who seem to make up an unfeasibly large proportion of the population of Kigali. Which goes a long way towards describing a country that is being almost entirely (re)built with the blood money of a guilty global community, which having entirely failed to intervene and prevent the internecine slaughter of a million people and the displacement of many more, is attempting to salve its conscience by sending a million-and-one NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) in to do whatever it is they do: generate acronyms for the most part – UNHCR, UNESCO, ICT, WHO, FAO, ICRC, MSF, AFACOD, POPOF, AIMPO, WI... And when the Rural Agriculture pour Protection de l’Environment came to town with their be-logo’d vehicles, they were nearly lynched before Vince was able to have a word in their collective ear.

Having literally run into my DFGF colleague Dan (minor bruising only) at Nairobi airport, we were picked up at Kigali by Vince, the DFGF Field Director. Fortunately he’s just done a good deal with a Danish supplier for a brand new Mitsubishi Pajero 4WD, so rather than being rattled through the countryside in some superannuated rustbucket, we’re trolling around in smugly air-conditioned comfort. Makes a change to see the things working for a living, rather than just tackling the rigors of the Surrey school run. About half the vehicles on the road seem to be in ubiquitous UN/NGO white, and there’s clearly a hierarchy of machismo going on – from the Danish human rights bods in their cheap Toyota pick-ups (really bad haircuts, guys...), to the UNHCR and MSF with their Landcruisers bristling with satcomms aerials, wombat bars (I haven’t the heart to tell them...) and river-crossing gear. As in Surrey, these huge vehicles are suspiciously clean and unscarred. Scurrilous gossip has it that most of the fighting in town is now between the dozen or so competing and frantically self-justifying NGOs that descend like harpies on anything vaguely resembling a cause. Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the Second: Green, Pleasant and Landed"

Dark and Continent: Fit the First: Ugandan Discussions

Categories: Travel

So this is it: It's a cold, wet Wednesday in January and I've packed my bag, having forcibly reminded myself not to pack thermals and fleeces, but go large on t-shirts, sun screen and Lomotil. And as long as I haven't mixed a random cat into it, I'm ready to go – a month in East and Central Africa beckons, so I reckon I'll just have to grin'n'bear it.

For those I haven't already bored to oblivion (hello, anyone out there?), the theory is that I'm going to do information agey things for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, to take a few pics and – lest I could forget – go play the very amateur Attenborough with some mountain gorillas. For the primate pedants amongst us, that's Gorilla gorilla berengei – the 600-strong remnant population of the Mountain Gorilla, the centenary of whose discovery by Europeans was commemorated last year. That's commemorated rather than celebrated, given that Capt. Rupert Berenger's approach to animal identification was very much of its time – he cheerfully shot a couple of them and had them dragged home for investigation over a cuppa. We don't do that any more – I hope.

First stop is Kampala for a few days, via Nairobi: to find out about the rollout of various telecoms services across Uganda and neighbouring states – the gorillas, bless 'em, hang around on the borderland between S Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), so anything that improves comms between different DFGF offices, field staff when mobile, the London HQ and the rest of the world can only be a good thing. It does look like Bwindi might get DSL before Hindhead. Amazing coincidence number 1: I discover that my friend Isabel is going to be out in Kampala on the same dates, running a workshop for local communications companies and regulators – everyone I need to talk to in one room at exactly the right time. And someone to go see the Kampala nightlife with. Which we did – I think – everything did get a little hazy...

Continue reading "Dark and Continent: Fit the First: Ugandan Discussions"

Dark and Continent: Introduction

Categories: Travel

A series of illuminated e-mail epistles delivered to the philistines during the course of wandering and working around Central and East Africa, January and February 2003. To be taken, for the most part, lightly. In the event of any digression between observed reality and the contents, please allow reality the final word.

The author takes no responsibility for the consequences should any person rely on this as any form of guide to travel or behaviour in the region, up to and including the contraction of embarrassing diseases, famine, war, hangover, imprisonment and/or deportation.