Jangano goes boating on Lake Malawi.
Another busy border crossing - Malawi to Mozambique
Camping wild under an Inselberg in Niassa Province, northern Mozambique
The hundred and twenty year old lighthouse on Goa island, off Ilha da Mocambique
Sunset over the Indian ocean, from Casa Heinrich
We have travelled a lot in East Africa and something we have seen a lot of are lakes. Some lakes we can even swim in, such as Lake Langano in Ethiopia, Lake Kivu in Rwanda and Tanganyika in Burundi and Tanzania. Otherwise, other lakes we’ve seen but not swum in, is Lake Nasser for the border of Sudan and Egypt, Lake Turkana in Kenya, the second biggest lake in the world which is Lake Victoria in Uganda and Lakes Albert, George and Edward also in Uganda. A few things I forgot to say about the lakes we swam in, was that Lake Tanganyika is the second deepest in the world and the longest in Africa. Lake Kivu has big gas bubbles that are poisonous and Lake Langano has fluoride in it.
What of the other chefs at the Jangano 5 star restaurant? Max and Jake have proven dab hands at fried eggs, popcorn and general tin opening duty. The three laatjies made a memorable and delicious meal in which they re-created kosheri, a favourite Egyptian dish of rice mixed with noodles. They did this by cunningly cooking some rice and yes, wait for it.... mixing it with 3 minute noodles. And Mands takes first prize for doing the most to ensure we don't go to bed feeling hungry every day. My speciality is a buffet supper which involves opening tins of humus, tuna, sweetcorn and anything else suitable, and artfully arranging it with some raw carrot and tomato. Decorated with herbs and spices it looks good and has become a favourite quick fix especially when firewood or gas or imagination are in short supply.
And one of our most upmarket meals was at the New Cactus restaurant in Kigali, Rwanda, when Robert treated us to excellent oven-baked pizzas!
Ben and Mands were clearly struggling to cope with the unexpected chills in the Western Desert below.
But quite what was going through Mands' head as she adopted the following attire to keep warm at over 3,000 metres in Ethiopia remains a mystery!
Not all Fashion Violations were circumstantial, and some were quite clearly premeditated. Take, for example, the bizarre decision of the entire Le B family to pluck purple flowers from the grounds of a hotel in Lalibela, put them behind their ears and then allow themselves to be photographed in such a pose. What WERE they thinking?!
If we were to award a prize for the most serious Fashion Violations of the trip, however, there's no doubt in anyone's mind who it would go to. For his persistent ability to mix and match the most unlikely combinations of clothes, and for the utter lack of self-consciousness with which he sports them, Little Max scoops all the prizes. Here, in one of his more imaginative ensembles (green sleeveless vest, blue boxers, long grey socks and charming cammo crocs), is Little Max, the undisputed King of Anti-Fashion in the Jangano team!
And as for me, well, I can only feel a sense of relief that the baton is now in the hands of someone else!
And the final prize arrived the next morning as we set off up river to a lake in the eastern section of the park when I spotted a lioness sitting regally on the opposite riverbank. And if I say so myself it was a pretty remarkable sighting at quite a distance (hence the lack of photos). With binoculars we realised there was another lion lounging lazily on the branch above her, and then two more in a tree to the left. We had missed the tree-climbing lions of Ishasha in south-west Uganda: this pride more than made up for it.
Tea estates near Kinihira
Tea fields under a heavy sky
Jambanja in the tea estates
Volcanos at dawn
The mighty silverback of the Amahoro group
The youngest of the Amahoro group
Nyaragongo volcano, smoking above Goma
Nicky, Mands and Jamilla yoga-ing on the shores of Lake Kivu.
Fishing boats at dawn on Lake Kivu
Carrying on from Ishasha (Uganda), we went to a campsite right next to three volcanoes. Muhavura was the biggest volcano; it was just like a normal volcano shape, like Kili. Not that interesting! The second biggest was called Sabinyo, which was pretty cool, because of its top; it was all jaggedy and it was interesting. The smallest had a cool name and it was the most interesting one of all, because you could see the crater and it had a flat top. It was called Gahinga.
Our campsite was called Mgahinga Community Campsite. It had chalets and dorms, so we didn’t put up our tents. Jake, little Max, Xander and I all slept in a dorm, while my mum and dad and Robert and Nicky slept in the chalets and Big Max slept on his own in one, because he had a cold. The important thing was that Mgahinga was a home to Mountain Gorillas. We didn’t get to see any, because most of them had gone into Rwanda over the top of the volcano. The feeling was still nice being close to them and their home. It was fantastic!
When I came to Rwanda for the first time in 1998, I arrived in a country completely defined by its recent bloody past: the signs of the genocide of 1994 were everywhere, from the bullet holes riddling lampposts and the parliament building to often blank and traumatised expressions on the faces of those I saw walking the streets of Kigali. Not to mention the legions of NGOs busy setting up shop to support the rebuilding and rehabilitation process. I was working with a newly assembled team of young Rwandans to develop a radio soap opera that would deal with reproductive health issues and would be broadcast on the BBC. The workshop participants included men and women, Tutsis and Hutus, English-speakers and French-speakers, former exiles and those who had been in Rwanda throughout the genocide. It was my first assignment as a freelance consultant after leaving my cosy research position at Reading University.
To say it was challenging would be an understatement. Not only was I grappling with the intensity of running, solo, a three week participatory workshop on research methods for communication projects, and getting to know and understand my colleagues, but I was on an extremely steep learning curve with respect to Rwanda itself. I read in-depth and factual accounts of the history of animosity between the two tribes, as well as Feargal Keane's more personalised account of witnessing the end of the three month genocide, and the tragic 'We are sorry to inform that that tomorrow we will all be killed'. I saw a hard-hitting new play written by an up- and-coming young Rwandan playwright, in which she used the image of the three stone cooking fire to represent the three tribes of Rwanda - the Hutus, the Tutsis and the Twa (forest-dwelling pygmies who make up about 1% of the population) - and to make the point that all three are needed to support and sustain the country as a whole. I also visited the genocide site at Ntarama that Gus has written about. But in 1998 the bodies had not yet been removed and interred or rearranged into neat rows of skulls and bones and clothes: they lay as they had fallen, still decomposing, scattered among the low benches of the church.
11 years on, it’s a sad but unsurprising fact that Rwanda is still defined largely by the big G - genocide - although to that has been added the other big G - gorrillas. But there are encouraging signs too. Kigali has been rebuilt and barely resembles the town I first saw. The radio soap opera, called Urunana (meaning 'hand in hand'), has been on air for more than 10 years and has won numerous awards. I have just had a cup of coffee with Narcisse Kalisa, now project manager, and one of the original workshop participants I trained. We talked of what has changed and what has remained unchanged. Of course things aren't perfect but Rwanda, of all the countries we have travelled through, seems determined to achieve a better and happier future for all its people.
But now in Central Africa the pull has caught me. At the moment we are
a week away from Harare if we drove straight there. But that will
become less and less. In southern Tanzania it will be two days drive.
Then in Beira it will be 9 hours drive to get home. And I have no
doubt that everybody will feel some sort of pull from Zim, and maybe
even the temptation to pop home for a bit to see everyone.
But that will have to wait as we head on south to Cape Town.
Well, we’ve seen it. Yesterday afternoon we visited Ntarama church, the site of one of the bigger atrocities during the Rwandan genocide (5,000 people killed in one day). After that we went to the Genocide Museum in Kigali. Between the two, we can truthfully say that we’ve had our fill of sobering genocide memoria.
It’s not for the faint-hearted, and we weren’t sure how the kids would handle it. But they’ve seen so much already on this trip that we felt they’d probably take it in their stride. And, for anyone living in Africa, the events of 1994 in Rwanda are an important lesson in what can happen when it all goes wrong. So we agreed to go together and, with hindsight, it was a good decision.
The Ntarama church is stark. The church stands as it did when it was attacked. The grenade holes in the wall haven’t been patched up, and the scorch marks on the floors are still clearly visible. At the back of the church, rows of shelving hold hundreds and hundreds of human skulls, salvaged from the church when, eventually, it was cleaned up. Many of the skulls bear the marks of the machetes that killed their owners. Along the sides of the church hang the clothes of those whose families never came to reclaim them (most likely because they didn’t survive to do so). At the front, on top of the original altar, several large coffins hold the bones of the dead. Beside them are piles of shoes, belts and handbags, and beyond that a heap of plastic plates and mugs, water containers and tin cans. For three days before the attack, the 5,000 people had sheltered in the church in unimaginable conditions. Only ten escaped the slaughter, two of whom we met as guides around the church.
It’s not a conventional tourist experience. But it wasn’t a conventional political happening either. The least we can do is ensure that we and our children learn from it.
I think they did. They were subdued, of course (although Little Max’s ability to make irreverent remarks at inappropriate moments remained undiminished!). The display of children in the Genocide Museum had a particular impact. They showed life-size photos of some 20 kids, with a brief description of what their favourite foods were, which football teams they supported and what they wanted to be when they grew up. And then, at the bottom, was a one-line description of how they died. You couldn’t fail to be moved and the boys really empathised with this.
I’m glad we took them. They’ve seen so much of Africa’s beauty, and they have such a gloriously untainted perception of the continent and it’s people (you should see the uninhibited way in which they smile and wave at passers-by). An occasional glimpse into Africa’s darker side can’t be a bad thing. Whether they choose to live in Africa or not once they’ve grown-up, it will always be a part of them. And they’ll need to have a balanced perspective if they’re ever to do their part in trying to make it a better place. Hopefully, impressions like this will help.
And this ox-pecker looks so cheeky, daring to sit on this buffalo's back.
