Kigali, 06 Mar 2007: Pink shirts in Rwanda
by Lianna
Crossing
the border in very heavy rainstorm - the roads snaking a sinuous path between
steep, cultivated hillsides, ordered by trees covered in vines, and dripping
with rain and condensation - the contrast with the brown savannah of Uganda
could not have been more stark. 
Rwanda was never meant to be a climbing highlight of the trip. It's a beautiful country with a chequered history, and we wanted to visit it, to experience it, so we planned it into our itinerary. We intended to drive through the country for two or three days on our journey round the west of Lake Victoria. We were to stop in Kigale and visit the Genocide Memorial, and those who wanted to could go and spend a day tracking gorillas up in the north-west of the country, near the DRC border.
And that was nearly how it all happened. Nearly.
We drove into Kigale, still with incredibly heavy rain beating down and creating
rivers of the flooded streets of the hilly city. We pitched up in a small
hotel, which once upon a time was probably quite nice, but now was run down
and 
dilapidated,
with icy running water in some of the rooms, some of the time, broken windows
and broken facilities. Using this as our base, we explored Kigale, which,
like the hotel, was once upon a time probably quite nice, but now shows the
scars of history, evident everywhere in the broken buildings, broken streets.
We visited the Genocide Memorial Museum, which tells stories of broken lives.
I won't tell you all about it. I'm sure you know the history. I'm sure you can imagine how horrific and harrowing a trip to this museum is. I can't imagine actually going through the stories the museum tells. I don't really want to.
Yet, despite, or more probably because of, their history, their experiences, their brokenness, there is an incredible optimism in the Rwandan people. Everything was broken, so everything is being fixed. They are, with the momentum of hope, healing every scar, literal and figurative, that the genocide has left. Everybody works hard. Every available inch of land is cultivated. Every minute is productive. And people are happy. We decided that we liked it so much we would stay longer than we'd planned.
Having been in touch with some incredibly helpful climbers in Rwanda, we had some information in crags and rock, along with topos for the few established routes on them, and we went in search of these.
Because it's quite a small country, we had the chance to drive and look at
a few of these before making our choice. We saw one amazing barrel-shaped
buttress with an enormous crack line bisecting it, which we discovered is
used as a test for the Rwandan Army. A man had to climb this line before being
allowed into the army, and the rank given to him
depended on the speed with which he climbed it!
It looked like a great crag and an awesome line, but we opted instead to
go and find Happy Valley, an extensive boulder field in the middle of the
country. It was at this point the group split. 7 of us went to track gorillas,
while BiRT drove off to go bouldering. First, we had to repack our bags a
little, so we pulled off the road into a big warehouse, to realise just a
little too late that this was a refugee camp for displaced Congolese from
the DRC. Within seconds we were surrounded, peoples friendly curiosity knowing
no bounds as they crowded the truck, flabbergasted that 20 white people travelling
in a red truck would randomly pull into their remote refugee camp, miles from
any tourist site, pack and repack a few bags,
then leave again. Can't blame them really.
We spent a little while chatting to people and kicking a football around
with the kids, but when the time came to leave, we really struggled. We were
so crowded by screaming playing cheerful kids that reversing out of the field
without hitting anyone was a serious test of Henry's skills. I was using diversion
tactics, shouting to the kids and then running away,
which got them all running after me as fast as they could, which worked for
just well enough for Henry to move a little each time!
The 7 of us watched the truck drive off, and began walking back down the road, feeling like pied pipers with literally hundreds of children accompanying us until we found a minibus to take us to Ruhengeri, from where we would travel to the National Parc de Volcans and track gorillas.
Gorilla tracking must top any list of trip highlights. There are 20-odd groups of gorillas living in the rainforests that straddle the Rwanda-DRC-Uganda borders, of which tourists are allowed to visit 9. It's a very carefully managed form of eco-tourism. Each group is visited by one set of tourists per day, and the visit is limited to 1 hour. The guides and trackers are highly trained, with extensive knowledge of the biology of these animals. They know the histories, personalities, interactions and behaviours of each individual. They understand their body language and their vocal communications.
Following a briefing in the morning, we were taken by our guide through the farms and villages of the area, before starting out ascent up through the thickest rainforest, cutting our path with machetes as we went. The guides are in constant communication with trackers who stay with the gorillas all day, from before they wake each morning to after they make their nests each evening. This way, we knew where to start looking for our group.
That hour spent with the gorillas passed in a flash. Sitting, watching, mere feet away from these animals, was simply mind-blowing. Listening to them communicate amongst themselves, but also with the trackers, watching the curious young ones as they played and tried to approach us to see what we were, looking into their eyes and seeing every bit of emotion and intelligence you'd expect to see in humans, trying to maintain the advised minimum distance of 7m from them, but not being able to because they come so close. Simply stunning.
Meanwhile though, the rest of them had not been having such a good time on BiRT.
Having a map that marked a minor dirt road as a main highway put BiRT on a track that was so poor that everyone wondered whether they'd ever see the other end of it. Turning around was impossible, so Henry just had to keep driving, inching forwards at snails pace to avoid the huge drop-off by the side of the road.
Eventually, reaching the town at the other end, to everyone's great relief,
they found that the boulders weren't so easy to find. They spent a couple
of days looking for them, sometimes on foot, sometimes driving on awful roads,
crossing bridges
that were nothing more than wooden poles stretched across rivers and streams;
everyone did get out of BiRT to jump up and down on these poles to test them
before driving the truck across. Once found, the boulders turned out to be
good, perhaps not good enough to spend days getting to them, but enjoyable
enough a bit of cranking.
Then, turning around on one of these nasty little roads, Henry managed to miss the road ever so slightly, and sink BiRTs axels deep into the mud. In the middle of nowhere, sunk too deeply to dig out, too precariously for sand mats to be of much use, and too remotely to have any hope of finding a vehicle big enough to tow BiRT out. Oops.
Leaving most people behind to dig and to manage the local population, Cat and Ru, having the best command of French, wandered off to find help. They eventually landed at a Rwandan prison where they spent an hour or so trying to arrange a tow. Trying to do this, in a foreign language, surrounded by men wearing pink shirts,the very visible mark of a genocide criminal, must have been incredibly difficult. But they did it and, returning with the army and the police, began the lengthy process of pulling the truck out. Our thanks to the Rwandan people here; without you, we might have been stuck for a very very long time!
Having heard about the predicament in a text message, we gorilla people went on a mission to find BiRT, to go and help, not easy when they didn't really know where they were themselves. This was one of those times that BiRT being as conspicuous as BiRT is came in handy, as we drove around the central regions of Rwanda, asking if anyone had seen a huge red truck. And they had. And we conveniently caught up with them about 10 minutes after they'd managed to extricate themselves from the deep mud, about 24 hours after sinking into it.
Time to head back to Kigale, to shower, and to celebrate a difficult and rough time, travelling through an amazing and unforgettable country that, despite all hassles of getting lost and stuck, still ranks as most people's favourite on the trip!
