avelog

Le francais: la langue d’amour, la langue du Burundi et du Rwanda. It’s been, by turns, very rewarding and completely embarassing to relearn French in Rwanda and Burundi. My accent has been commended numerous times, but my tongue freezes up whenever I hit a hole in my patchy vocabulary. And then I get all flustered and end up bungling all the long words and utterly confusing the target of this barrage of nonsense.

To sum up the past few weeks, I left Moshi, Tanzania on a 24 hour bus ride through Kenya to Kampala, Uganda. There, I spent a week and a half exploring the city on foot and spending altogether too much time in the internet cafe, trying to get some things sorted for university in September. I’ll need to make a final decision on that soon, after hearing about one last fellowship competition. Kampala was by far my favourite African city thus far. It was fairly clean, bustling, sunny and, after Moshi, very friendly. Since the economy is far less dependent on tourism than that of northern Tanzania, I was relieved not to be hassled at every corner. In Moshi, I had to be careful at whom I glanced, since they would immediately assume that they’d been given an opening through which to slip a ‘mister’ or a ‘mzungu’ or a ‘please’ or a ‘just one look’ or a ‘no pressure to buy’ or a ‘looking is free’ or a ‘give me money’.

My main form of transportation in Kampala was the motorbike taxi. It’s an exhilerating way to get around, if a bit harrowing. Some of the drivers seemed to think that I’d give them a tip for a wild ride or were trying to impress the mzungu. Either way, sidewalks, narrow alleys, oncoming traffic, and median barriers presented no problem in the all-out effort to get end-to-end as quickly as possible over the shortest distance necessary. Unfortunately, there’s not much to do in Kampala aside from watching the constant wheeling and drifting of massive Marabou storks on thermals high above the city. I was distraught to wake up and realize that I’d been there for a week and a half, my time in Africa slipping through my fingers. When one of my fellow travellers mentioned that she was heading to Kigali the next morning, I leapt at the opportunity, got up at 5:30am, bought my ticket, withdrew cash, and got to the bus, only to find out that her ticket had been sold to someone else (me?) and she had to scramble to find another bus down.

Nevertheless, we both made it to Kigali safely. The change in scenery was abrupt when crossing the border. Although the vegetation was much the same (banana trees, tea and coffee plantations, some eucalyptus), Rwanda, Pays des Milles Collines, is incredibly landscaped. Every inch of ground has been transformed into a vast garden, every hill perfectly rounded and terraced over decades of careful cultivation. Tea (?) plantations cover the flat valley floors between a multitude of verdant hills. Where there may have previously been rivers and streams, ordered networks of irrigation ditches and canals lace through the valleys, drawing all runoff into productive agricultural use. In my week and a half in Rwanda, I saw only two real rivers, both of which had been constrained and channeled by human endeavor. All other water runs through the irrigation system and is absorbed into the soil.

The Kigali bus and taxi park was bustling as we arrived in fading twilight. I made my first Rwandan friend on the bus, Faustin, a Congolese-born Rwandan who returned to Rwanda in 1995 during the re-integration of forty years of refugees. When my new travelling buddy, Amber, arrived on the later bus, we trudged over to a nearby hotel to set our minds to deciphering the French-African menu and crash for the night.

Early the next morning, Faustin and his ‘uncle’, Fidèle, came around to take us to the main genocide memorial centre and then to memorial services at the National Stadium. April 7th marks the day that the President’s plane was shot down while landing at Kigali, sparking the gruesome atrocities of 1994. The entire week is a national holiday dedicated to ceremonies and remembrances. The main ceremony at the National Stadium began just as the last light of day faded away. A candlelit procession of politicians and dignitaries filed around the track as ten thousand stood still in the stands. Songs were sung, speeches were made; sombre, mournful, looking to the past to learn for the future by the light of a bonfire. As survivors gave testimony of their experiences, wails and shrieks rose up from the crowd, women in hysterics having to be carried away by friends and medics to the counsellors standing by. Fidèle translated some of the more chilling cries: “They’re killing me! They’re killing me!”. Roméo Dallaire, Canadian commander of the UN mission in Rwanda during the genocide, was prominent in the interviews and footage projected on an inflatable screen at centrefield. As the crowd began to drift out, we decided it was best to leave ourselves. Testimonies continued on into the night.

The next few days were spent searching for food, hanging out at the lavish Western-style coffee shop in downtown Kigali, and sleeping at St. Paul’s mission hostel. The hostel was warm, welcoming, and sunny. We awoke Easter Sunday to joyous song radiating from the nearby chapel as well as the cathedral up the road; in striking but welcome contrast to the harrowing cries of the previous night.

Downtown Kigali was a shock after travelling through the rest of East Africa. Where Kampala was a bustling, organic, African metropolis, central Kigali was new, shiny, and sterile; the tsunami of guilt-driven development aid following the world’s criminal neglect was in great evidence; the beggars and street hawkers, such an integral thread in the African backdrop, pushed out of the city centre under Paul Kagame’s leadership.

A few days in Kigali was more than enough, so we hopped on a bus down to Butare in the south. Based out of another mission hostel, we visited the National Museum, purported to be the best in East Africa (much competition?), before cramming into a shared taxi for the short journey to Gikongoro, home of perhaps the most remarkable genocide memorial. What had formerly been a technical college, some distance out of town, sheltered thousands of Tutsis fleeing the carnage of 1994 before militants arrived to slaughter them all. Long and narrow buildings run in parallel lines along the edge of a hill, each door opening onto a frozen scene: bodies preserved with lime, shruken and white, frozen into poses of horror and terrifying death. Half-decayed, the stench is suffocating. As with all memorials in Rwanda, this one serves as a chilling reminder of the depths of human depravity when driven by suffering, paranoia, and propaganda. It is meant as a plea to visitors to never forget; to speak out against such horrors and take what action is within their power.

Ragged and dirty clothes gathered from the victims are stuffed into shelves in a big empty room. Signs mark the spots where French soldiers erected their flag mere weeks after the massacre, and where they played volleyball on the lumpy ground covering a mass grave. To say that the French have a bad name in Rwanda is a serious understatement. Rumours abound that Paul Kagame and his government are even considering a move to change the official national languages to Kinyarwanda and English, rather than French. The French army arrived towards the end of the genocide, during “Operation Turquoise”, ostensibly to protect refugees fleeing south, but by all official (and undoubtedly biased) accounts, acted to protect génocidaires and shore up the government in the face of the RPF’s advance from the north, led by Kagame.

Shaken, we wandered back along the road to the taxi rank, the memorial having fulfilled it’s purpose, sparking discussions about human motivation to kill, group pressures, and what kind of terrible mix of circumstance and opportunity may have driven the worst mass murder in world history. And why most of us are still oblivious to current crises, Darfur being the obvious example.

Feeling the need for a tiny bit of escapism, we grabbed a bus up to Kibuye, on the shores of beautiful, calm, and mist-enshrouded Lake Kivu. The lake forms a good part of the border between Rwanda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and is a popular spot in Rwanda’s young and sparse tourist industry. Two rain-sprinkled days spent wandering up into the sleepy town, swimming in the lake, and drinking a few beers while contemplating serenity, peace, tranquility, possibility.

DRC, the Congo, gets a bad rap on the world stage, and not without reason: it’s been engulphed in civil war for much of the past 50 years. Goma, just over the border from Rwanda, has been a haven of relative calm in the past few years, thanks in most part to the large UN and NGO presence. The major UN mission in DRC is based in Goma, along with large numbers of Congolese national army troops.

Amber’s Canadian friend works for the UN in Goma, and we had heard spectacular things about the volcano national park nearby, so we made a plan to cross over and convinced two fellow travellers that we’d met in Kibuye to come with. Goma, on the Congolese side, and Gisenyi, on the Rwandan side, are practically one city, but the crossing the border, the differences are marked. In 2002, Nyiragongo erupted, sending rivers of lava flowing 50 kilometres, killing several dozen and devastating large parts of Goma.

Amber’s friend drove to the border and picked us up in a UN truck, smoothing things over with the border guards. The city itself was bustling, but dreary and depressed. Five-year-old lava rock fills the streets near the border, and the government threw some crushed rock on top to create a terribly rough and potted driving surface. On one side street near the edge of the lava, some shopkeepers have opted to dig their storefronts out below the new ground level, while others have simply built new storefronts on the second floor. Everything is a dirty black and grey. The traffic police stand out in stark contrast with bright yellow uniforms and big yellow helmets emblazoned with a blue star.

After a meal of grilled fish, we arranged our permit for the volcano hike, had a rest, and headed to an NGO party. One of the stalwarts of the Goma NGO scene had taken a job in another strife-riven part of the world and was being given a big sendoff at the Goal compound, an Irish NGO with a bunch of different development objectives. NGO workers working in difficult places have a reputation for working very hard and letting loose in outrageous fashion when given the opportunity. Seems like a crazy life.

In the morning, Amber’s friend drove us an hour out of town to the ranger’s post at the base of the volcano. Our guard, armed with an automatic rifle, and three porters led us up the mountain, first through close, wet, lush jungle, and then along the frozen lava flow, which had crumbled as it cooled, turning to loose rock. Half-charred trees stood or lay in the scree, molten rock frozen in all sorts of swirls and flowing patterns. A thunderstorm closed in after a few hours, just as we were approaching an exposed ridge, lighting striking not far, dead trees falling in heavy wind and rain. We rested for a moment, the storm passing, before climbing another few hours.

We emerged above the clouds just as the last trees and shrubs disappeared, revealing an incredible view in every direction: Lake Kivu stretching out to the south, the dense jungle landscape of Congo to the west, the softly rounded hills of Rwanda to the east, and the northwest Rwandan volcanic mountains ringed with cloud.

As I reached the edge of the crater, I held my breath subconsciously. Standing on the bare and broken rock of the crater’s rim, I gaped down into the massive bowl. At least a hundred metres deep and several hundred across, a barren rock landscape immense and raw. Several distinct subcraters were evident, stepping down to a seething, boiling, powerful, glowing lake of lava tens of metres across. It was one of the most incredible things that I have ever seen, defying any description of which I am capable. We camped just below the crater rim on the side of the volcano, tents hugging close on a little shelf. In the dark of night, lighting storms played on the horizon in Rwanda and the Congo, while overhead the stars shone bright, competing with the red glow lighting up the thick column of smoke that poured from the volcano’s fiery mouth. John and I sat up by the charcoal fire, exchanging exclamations about the depth of feeling invoked while gazing into the maw of the brooding beast beneath us. The night was surreal, everything seemed magnified: every emotion, sound, light.

Descending the next day, renewed in spirit by what we had experienced, we sped down through the jungle. After showering and eating, we caught a bus and crossed back into Rwanda for the three hour journey to Kigali. The following day, I parted ways with my new friends (forged of fire?) and flew to neighbouring Burundi, a country that has experienced many of the same circumstances as Rwanda, and plenty of upheaval.

I will write again soon of Bujumbura and Burundi, but for the moment must go and eat something! I fly to South Africa on Sunday, April 22nd, heading to Cape Town for a few days before returning to Pretoria on the 28th and saying a final farewell to my former colleagues. I will return to Canada, hopefully, in the first week of May.

I will post photos as soon as possible, likely from Pretoria.

I’m in a bit of a surreal place at the moment. In the middle of Kampala, on its busiest street, I’ve come across a very modern internet cafe with new computers, fairly fast internet, headphones for Skype, and a great value and good food African buffet next door, all on the second floor of an office building. I think it’s all geared to the middle class office types here, so I’m the only white guy around. Kampala has been much much more relaxing than my last few days in Moshi, Tanzania.

I was going to call it ‘Kili: the untold story’, but then 48 hours’ wait doesn’t really warrant the title. I arrived back in Moshi, Tanzania yesterday afternoon, having summited Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro at 6:00am on March 22nd, 2007. It was a tough slog, but worth it in the end, I think.

Day 1 (1490m to 2980m, five hours)

My five climbing partners and I arrived at Machame gate around 11:00am, raring to go. Unfortunately, the guides and porters weren’t well organised at that point, so we only actually set off at 12:30pm. I was matched with two Dutch girls, two Dutch guys, and Portuguese guy. Day 1 was a fairly easy trek up a wide path at relatively low altitude through montane forest (quite similar in superficial appearance to many places in Canada). We started the day at 1490m and camped at 2980m. Pedro (the Portuguese guy) had an altimeter on his watch that consistently read about 135m less than the official measurement, but we never really figured out whether that was because it was miscalibrated. Kilimanjaro is almost always climbed with porters, guides, and cook, and so for the six of us, we had 15 porters, 2 guides, and a cook! I therefore only had to carry a small backpack with a few essentials (raingear, water, camera, lunch). The light load made the slow pace necessary for acclimatization even more excruciating.

Machame route is locally referred to as the ‘Whiskey route’, as opposed to Marangu route, the ‘Coca-Cola route’. Apparently this is both because Machame has no huts (tenting only), and because it’s considered more rugged and perhaps more physically demanding.

I nearly gave myself hypothermia by neglecting to put on my fleece upon arrival at Machame camp, as I had a bit of a wait for the others and the porters had yet to boil water for tea (which they did about five times a day!). Supper every night was some kind of cucumber soup with white bread, followed by starch (pasta or rice) and a vegetable sauce, often accompanied by fried chicken, and finished with fruit (usually papaya or watermelon). The amount of food and equipment that the porters carried up the mountain was fairly astounding. Our kit included a table for eating on, camp chairs, lots of food, a kitchen tent, four tents for the tourists, and a couple of the porters and guides, and an assortment of kit for the porters. I had booked through a different tour company than the others and had a significantly bigger tent to myself, so I traded with the Dutch guys and slid into my sleeping bag for a fitful sleep.

Day 2 (2980m to 3840m, through moorland)

Day 2 was quite similar to Day 1, although at higher altitude. We emerged from the last vestiges of forest and out into what they classify as alpine desert. This consisted of a few trees (mostly dead) among scrub and brush, with a fair number of wildflowers in yellow, red, and pink. We climbed from 2980m at Machame camp to 3840m at Shira camp. Some 750 years ago, Shira Peak, previously higher than Uhuru, collapsed to form a plateau on which we camped. The altitude was definitely starting to show, and although we were all going very slowly, plodding, one foot in front of the other, we were definitely short of breath. We stopped for lunch halfway, eating the usual boiled egg, mango juice, greasy sandwich (butter or deep-fried French toast), green orange, and stale muffin. At this point I witnessed what was to be a common sight: blatant littering on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. One of the porters from another group downslope walked up to the edge of a cliff, glanced up at me as I watched him, and then tossed an empty plastic bottle casually over the edge. Considering that the mountain is their livelihood, some of the porters had shockingly little respect for its pristine state.

Day 3 (3840m to 4630m to 3950m)

Day 3 was the real reason that a higher proportion of climbers from Machame route make it to the summit than from Marangu route. We climbed up to the Lava Tower (hilariously mislabeled the ‘lover tower’ in our itinerary) at 4630m before descending along a valley to camp at 3950m. The extra acclimatization afforded by this temporary ascent provide the body much better odds of surviving the final ascent. Scrub turned to barren rock with lichen and the occasional tuft of hardy grass. No trees whatsoever.

Around midday, just before reaching the Lava Tower, we passed an enormous camp, with a flag labeled ‘Tusker Trail’, about twenty two-person tents, a couple of mess tents, a couple of kitchen tents, portable toilets, and dozens of porters. Awed by the size of the operation and a little bit jealous of the luxury, we continued trudging up the barren rocky slope, stopping for lunch in the shadow of the Lava Tower. The tower is a jumble of lava rock jutting up from the side of the mountain about 40m in diameter and 50m high. By this time I had a pretty solid headache and some nausea from the altitude.

After one of the other guides took his charge climbing up the side of the tower, I asked the same of one of our guides. He gave me a bit of a dirty look, but consented, and we scrambled up the the side for a disappointingly misty view. Somehow, the exertion from the climb cleared my headache and nausea. By the time we had descended to discover that the others had left to get a head start on us, I was ready to bound down the mountain to camp, uninhibited by the slow precautionary pace required when ascending.

After passing the others and temporarily losing my way in the never-ending cloud, I paused for a few minutes, sitting on the top of a huge rock overlooking the valley through which we were descending, and contemplating the meaning of life. With the descent, we were again surrounded by scrub and brush, with some pretty interesting looking plants (I’ll post photos of the giant lobelia later!). By the time we got into camp after six hours of hiking, everyone was quite exhausted, and all one of the others retired to their tents for some rest. The Barranco Wall loomed over us, a steep cliff face up which we would be climbing for the first hour and a half the next morning.

Somehow, the Tusker Trail crew had managed to uproot their entire camp and move it to Barranco in the time it had taken us to descend from the Lava Tower. Noticing that a number of Canadians were listed in that group in the registration book, I wandered over after snacking on the usual post-climb burnt popcorn and freshly roasted peanuts.

Tusker Trail turned out to be an climbing outfit owned by a South African man who had married a Canadian woman (at one time a client). They had been hired to run a charity climb for a group of Canadians, sponsoring CARE Canada. I chatted with a dozen or so of the climbers, an assortment of men and women mostly in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, from a variety of professions. They were taking ten days to climb, with maximal acclimatization, and would be camping inside the crater in between afternoon and morning summit attempts. They also had a number of side activities planned, including an introduction to technical climbing on the Barranco Wall the following morning.

After another dinner of soup, pasta, sauce, and fruit, we headed for bed for another fitful sleep at high altitude, some sickness of different sorts affecting each of us.

Day 4 (3950m to 4550m)

Day 4 dawned crisp and clear, frost covering the tents and the cold air nipping at our toes and fingers. After tea, coffee, white bread, fried eggs, and sausages, huddled around the table, we set off again for our climb up the Barranco Wall. We spent the entire time playing a trivia game among the six of us, shouting things out to eachother up and down the cliff, which definitely helped to pass the difficult slog more quickly. We also passed some of the guides from the Tusker Trail who were setting up the ropes for the morning’s lesson.

The day was all up and down, winding across rocky ridges and steep-sided valleys. After pausing for lunch on a rocky slope dotted with long-drop toilets, we finally made a steady ascent through shale and scree. Emerging into bright sunlight above the cloud cover, we climbed one last rust-coloured cliff face, exhausted and sick, to pause at our last camp before the summit attempt. Strong wind swept across the mountainside, ripping at our tents which were huddled in the lee of a short cliff.

Dazed and exhausted, we crawled into our sleeping bags for a few short hours of rest, interrupted by dinner, before awaking at 11:00pm to prepare for the midnight summit attempt. The first of our group vomited after dinner, and nobody could stomach much food. None of us could sleep, and we lay in our tents in a stupor. I took a few minutes to make a short journal entry about my physical state in case something went wrong, chronicling my nausea, headache, earache, shortness of breath, resting heart rate of 90bpm (normally down around 60bpm), dizziness, confusion, fever, and various aches.

I dozed off a couple of times, waking up suddenly in a cold sweat, feeling like I was suffocating because I had begun hyperventilating in my sleep. Visiting the toilet (four times in a few hours!) was like trying to piss in a hurricane, as the gale force winds whipped up through cracks in the rock-and-concrete walls of the cisterns.

Day 5 (4550m to 5895m to 3100m, summit night)

We awoke at 11:00pm, hot water brought to our tent doors by a couple of porters. We had been given some coca leaf tea, bought over Ebay from South America by a London trio of climbers, and apparently the perfect thing to ward off altitude sickness, although potentially illegal.

I put on nearly all the clothes that I had brought travelling, layering two pairs of underwear beneath hiking pants, shorts, and rainpants on my lower body, and thermal underwear, two t-shirts, light sweater, fleece, and raincoat on my upper body. I had borrowed a Windstopper ski mask and an extra pair of gloves from the guides and pulled the hood of my raincoat over my head to block out some of the wind.

Trekking poles in hand, our head torches the only thing to light the way, we set off through the darkness, up along a rocky ridge, following one guide (no light for him!!) and followed by a second guide and a porter who was substituting as a third. Passing a lonely stretcher lying in wait on the side of the mountain, we started climbing an endless scree slope, loose rock treacherous underfoot, uncertain of what lay beyond the short reach of our torches. One foot in front of the other for hours on end, grey rock or gaping darkness in every direction. I fell in behind one of the Dutch girls, who was showing signs of serious dizziness and exhaustion. Every few steps her leg would hesitate and she would teeter to one side, sometimes slipping, sometimes stumbling. A couple of times, I reached out to steady her so that she wouldn’t fall down the mountain. Concentrating on her struggles, I was able to put my own severe nausea out of my mind.

After three hours, it seemed touch-and-go whether some of the group would make it to the summit, altitude sickness and exhaustion slowing us down. The lead guide split us into two groups, taking Pedro and I ahead and leaving the other four to more slowly make their way up. The three of us set off again, determined to make it to the summit to witness a glorious sunrise from the top. Two more hours climbing and Pedro and I were near collapse. Pedro struggled ahead of me as I concentrated on planting my hiking poles solidly in the loose rock and driving my body upwards. I felt like vomiting, worse when we rested, and concentrated on keeping my mostly-empty stomach in check. Up, up, and up, one foot and then the next, poles striking the rock, push with the arms, next foot, push, again, again.

Out of the darkness a cliff of ice appeared suddenly, the edge of a glacier, heralding the last stretch before reaching Stella Point (5685m). Our guide pushed relentlessly onwards and we saw distant points of light swaying up the mountain from Marangu route, intersecting with ours at Stella Point. Ice and snow replaced rock underfoot, and we kept trudging, less steep, but seemingly endless, towards the unseen peak. Every time that we thought we could make out our destination through the darkness, it turned into yet another small ridge masquerading as a peak.

A red glow appeared in the eastern horizon, illuminating a landscape of cloud, rock, and snow stretching out to the horizon. Finally, through the dim pre-dawn light, the welcome sight of camera flashes marked the peak, where exhilerated, frozen climbers were busy capturing their moment of triumph in front of the Uhuru Peak sign.

We had finally arrived, waiting our turn in the freezing wind to take our obligatory sign photos. My fingers were close to frostbite and I took some time to warm them up after fumbling my camera out of the relative safety of my fleece pocket. Pedro and I were elated, hugging and exchanging high-fives, taking photos of everything, etc. We witnessed a brilliant sunrise, fields of billowing, changing cloud stretching out below us; orange, red and yellow reflecting off the ice and snow around us. Kilimanjaro’s glaciers spread around us, sculpted by the wind.

The cold becoming too much, we started back down through the snow, passing some of the other climbers from Machame route who were still struggling up towards the peak, encouraging them, assuring them that it wasn’t much farther. The rest of our group was valiantly struggling up, having dealt with vomiting, severe headache, and dizziness. They arrived at the summit only an hour behind us, managing six for six. On our way back down the scree slope, it seems impossible that we had climbed it, and certainly beneficial to have done so in the dark so that we had no idea how long it really was.

Slipping and sliding down for three hours, my knees ached, and my feet were really hurting by the time I got back to camp and collapsed into my tent, nine and a half hours after having left. I closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, and fell into another fitful sleep for a couple of hours. The porters again woke us at 11:00am for some lunch, before we had to pack up and head down the mountain for another three hours to Mweka camp. The descent was extremely slow, the guide telling me that I looked like a disabled drunk (or something like that) because of the extent to which I was relying on my hiking poles rather than my tired legs.

We finally arrived at camp, feeling a tiny bit energized in the denser air, had dinner, chatted with other climbers about the challenges of the previous 36 hours, and retired for a much more restful sleep than we’d had in four days.

Day 6 (3100m to 1980m)

Day 6 was a walk in the park, quite literally. We were back down on Kili’s forested slopes and the path was wide and well-maintained. After taking some group photos with all the guides and porters, announcing their tips, and enjoying the ensuing song and dance, we rapidly made our way down for two hours to Mweka gate, where our certificates of accomplishment awaited. While all six of our group had made it to the summit, only 8 of 12 in a UK charity group and 0 of 3 in the London coca-leaf-tea group had summited.

I discovered yesterday that, tragically, a 65-year old member of the CARE Canada/Tusker Trail climbing group succumbed to altitude sickness and died while being evacuated during the summit attempt. The group leaders and guides from that venture seemed very capable and professional, but despite the use of emergency oxygen, he could not be saved. This is a stark reminder, if one were needed, that Kili is a challenging, dangerous and potentially fatal beast; one which should not be taken lightly. Climbers of all ages and fitness levels need to be very careful, and make sure not to push themselves beyond their limits, especially with respect to altitude.

Next

Now I rest for a couple of days in Moshi before taking a bus to Uganda.

I just got back from my Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, and Lake Manyara safari, successfulling completing my goal of seeing leopards and cheetahs in Africa. The group I joined up with for the safari was comprised of 12 medical students doing electives at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre. They were very warm and welcoming, even though 8 were German and didn’t speak English very frequently.

We stopped at Lake Manyara first, and vast lake on the edge of the Rift Valley, with lush forest bordering it, and making up 60% of a National Park filled with zebras, giraffes, hippos, elephants, etc. After camping for the night, we made the long drive to the Serengeti, passing along the rim of the Ngorogoro Crater, the largest caldera (volcanic crater) in the world. In the Serengeti, we saw massive herds of wildebeest and zebras, paused in their annual migration to care for newborns and for the new mothers to recover their strength. We camped in the middle of the Serengeti, at a small wooded campsite, lions roaring in the night.

After sleeping, we went on a dawn game drive without much luck, although we did stop at a massive hippo pool in a stream, where at least a hundred hippos were submerged and crocodiles were sunning themselves on the rocks in the background. On the way out of the Serengeti, our drivers (in three jeeps) got a call about a leopard spotting, and we took a detour to check out the gorgeous creature resting in a tree, looking absolutely relaxed, its front legs dangling down from the branch and swaying in time to its breathing.

We spent the night camping on the rim of the crater, and three of us were up having late night beers and chatting under the stars when a buffalo wandered up through the darkness, munching away and staring at us. Considering that the buffalo is the second most aggressive animal apart from the hippo, we decided to back away slowly and observe it at a dashable distance from the concrete eating enclosure. The following morning we descended steeply into the crater and drove around for several hours observing the amazing volume of life in the crater: cheetahs, lions, rhinos, hippos, elephants, plenty of gazelles, wildebeest, buffalos, etc. Having met my twin goals of seeing a leopard and a cheetah in the wild, we drove back to Moshi, which lies in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Tomorrow I will join two Dutch people to climb Kili in six days, hoping that I don’t get altitude sickness. I’ve heard widely varying accounts about the proportion of people that successfully summit the mountain. Some say as little as 40% of climbers make it to the top. I’ll let you know in six days’ time!

Well, Internet Explorer at this internet place in Dar es Salaam messed up my blog entry from last night, and deleted all but the first sentence.

I arrived in Dar today and was happily surprised to be greeted by two complete strangers holding a sign with my name on it. Apparently, the inquiries that my Rob-replacement short-term roommate, Marcus, had made with his friends in Tanzania had finally panned out, and a friend of a friend of a friend came to meet me with his friend. They drove me around to a bank and got me a SIM card and all they wanted was a cola in return, which I happily provided. The backpackers where I’m staying is full tomorrow night, so I’ll probably head south to a smaller town outside of Dar. I’m told it’s lovely, cheap, right on the ocean, and easy to get to.

First impressions of Tanzania: We flew in through low cloud, billowing and spiraling upward in mountains of grey and white. Low grass fires dotted the landscape, presumably set by farmers to burn off stubble, creating a faint haze that melted into the grey-blue ocean horizon to the east. The land around Dar was mostly small, planted fields, interspersed with patches of bush and low trees.

After passing through customs and meeting two new friends, Mohamed and Frank, both in their second-to-last years of electronic engineering, they took me past a bank (thankfully the atm took MC), and got me a SIM card before dropping me at the Q-Bar (slash hotel and backpackers) and promising to call me on Saturday to go out on the town if I’m still around.

Dar is dusty and at first glance seems half-built. We did not pass through the city centre, so I’ll be able to give impressions of that in the coming days, but the part that we did come through was lively; ten times more lively than South Africa! It sounded like it was market day of sorts, and there were people and bicycle carts crossing to and fro through the snaking, dusty traffic, drivers all too pleased to stop and let someone in.

So far, I have my four-bedroom dorm at the Q-Bar all to myself. I’m hoping some others move in tonight to help with meeting people, but I’ve already started making friends over beers.

I have a new cell number in Tanzania: +255 784 459 115, just in case anyone really really needs to get ahold of me.