The North

This past weekend I went to visit Musanze in the north, just in time because cabin fever was setting in. Marvin is a Marylander who has been in Rwanda for nearly a year working for a community health nonprofit called CCHIP. I met him when he was on campus a couple of times for a project to install rain barrels here to increase the water supply, and he invited Laura and me to come visit.  So we drove with Marvin in his NGO’s Land Rover to Musanze, Laura bouncing around in the back with the Rwandan contractor for the water project and a couple of hitchhikers, two women with a young baby.

The town, known as Ruhengeri until recently, is the closest to Volcanoes National Park, the home of the world-famous mountain gorilla. Many tourists use it as a jumping off point for gorilla tracking in the park. I just finished reading a biography of Dian Fossey, the renowned and eccentric gorilla primatologist who was murdered in 1985 at her research center. Dian became famous because of her extensive research on the gorillas’ social patterns, collecting more data and getting much closer to the animals than anyone had before. The book and film Gorillas in the Mist give her own account of her work and her extraordinary relationships with the gorillas. Accompanying her gorilla studies, Dian became known for her grit and tenacity in the wilderness as well as her quick temper, especially surrounding the protection of her gorillas and their habitat from poachers and encroaching cattle farmers. She was known to intimidate, interrogate, and sometimes torture those who would do harm. Although she and the locals did not have a good relationship, the Rwandan government came to understand that the gorillas are an important resource of international investment and tourist income, and Dian Fossey deserves the bulk of the credit for protecting these animals for many years. Her murder remains a mystery, but she had many enemies, and those who knew her were not surprised to hear about her fate.

My own trip to Musanze did not involve gorillas. Gorilla tracking costs hundreds of dollars and must be scheduled way in advance, owing to the scant number of visitors permissible (something like 60 per day). What I did do was see the NGO where Marvin works, go out to dinner, meet a couple of other NGO and Peace Corps workers, and finally go out dancing for the first time since arriving in Rwanda. The place had a bar, a dance floor and a pool table under a tin roof in a courtyard. It was just crowed enough, and we had a great time. I learned that all my lindy hop hip practice has paid off: Rwandan boys/men think I’m a good dancer!

On Saturday, we piled back into the Land Rover en route to Gisenyi, the tiny lakeside town in northwest Rwanda. There was a party hosted by a Swedish woman involved in the apparently lucrative business of extracting methane gas from the lake* and her English husband, who has recently gotten involved with a project refurbishing and selling bicycles to Rwandans. Their back yard was this crazily well-tended garden and patio, and just beyond, a staircase led down through a white metal gate to the very edge of the lake. At first, I felt out of my element in this place of luxury, where everyone seemed to be speaking French, but after awhile I began talking with the other young people and having a good time. I watched the fishing boats go out on the lake, three long narrow boats abreast held together with logs. From the boats extended long arching poles which I think held the fish nets, and the fishermen chanted as they rowed. As the sun went down and the stars peeked out, the boats stationed themselves on the lake and lit their lanterns. Later in the night, a few of us went lake swimming in the moonlight, clamoring precariously over slippery rocks.

Overall, a fun, eventful weekend, but sadly I’ve started the week feeling rather sick with some kind of virus. I’m kind of congested and headachy and fatigued. I tried and failed to take a nap today, but I am drinking weird gross electrolyte salts that really have no excuse for not being flavor-disguised as Gatorade.



*It turns out that if they do not extract the subterranean gas, there is some danger of the carbon dioxide there bubbling to the surface all at once one day, known as a limnic eruption, and killing the whole lakeside population by asphyxiation.  it happened in Cameroon in 1984 and 1986.  Natasha insisted it was highly unlikely at Lake Kivu anytime in the next couple of hundred years without some serious seismic activity.  Currently the gas has about half as much pressure as the water on top of it, but you never know; seismic activity isn't so hard to come by.