Arie Meets the Abayudaya

In the 1930s, a Jewish man named David Solomon was in Uganda working on various development projects for the British authorities. In 1937, he was sent to the town of Mbale, four hours outside of Kampala, to build a pumping station. One day while at work he saw a group of Ugandan guys wearing white robes and head coverings watching him carefully. He asked them what they wanted and they told him that they had heard he was a Jew, and they wanted to meet him because they were Jews. At first he thought it was some sort of joke, but then they showed him a Torah and described their religious practices. Solomon had encountered the Abayudaya, a community of Jews living in eastern Uganda.

I wanted to encounter them too (I have a history of encounters with unlikely Jews), so on Friday morning I took a boda to the Kampala bus station (pictured) to get a bus to Mbale. Mbale is a town in eastern Uganda and its history is tied in with that of the Abayudaya (which means, roughly, "People of Judah").

British and French missionaries arrived in Uganda in force in the 1880s. Semei Kakungulu, a politician and the hero of our story, converted to Christianity and led Christian forces to victory in the war against Arab ivory and slave traders from the north in the 1890s. Having risen to prominence, he married two of the king's daughters (there was an intervening divorce) and led the Buganda kingdom to a number of military victories, subduing various other tribes. In 1894, when Uganda was declared a British protectorate, England gave Kakungulu substantial control over the Ugandan military and he brought much of the country under their control. In gratitude, they appointed him governor of the eastern province.

I arrived at the bus station at 10am. Various people asked me where I was going and I said Mbale and they pointed me towards a corner, where a tiny ragged-looking bus was loading. The conductor asked for 20,000 shillings ($10), and I decided to wait for the next one. Sure enough, a shiny new blue bus pulled in and started to load for Mbale (15,000). I asked when it was leaving and they assured me that it was leaving right now. Those familiar with Africa know that this was a lie. I knew too, but I got on. We sat for an hour while the bus loaded. The vendors just say what they're selling, they don't hiss (the Rwandan way), although they're allowed to walk onto the bus to wave water bottles and portable radios at you. They're not very aggressive. (I forgot a toothbrush and toothpaste, but was able to buy a set from a vendor.) The ride itself was three and a half hours because there wasn't much traffic. We stopped a few times for food, to let people off, and once for a bathroom break (a large row of bushes). Pictured is some chicken that a roadside vendor was selling.

We pulled into Mbale at about 2:30. It's a really cute little town -- two main streets that intersect at a small clocktower, some side streets. Mbale was founded by Kakungulu. It lies at the base of Mount Elgon, a large ridge that towers over the town -- a striking sight. Mbale grew quickly and is now the third-largest city in Uganda (population: 75,000). I went straight to a hotel, the Mt. Elgon View Hotel (there's no view but the rooms are nice), checked in, and had some food.

Kakungulu was not satisfied with the post of Governor of the eastern province. Other parts of the country were governed by kings, and he wanted to be made King of the east. The British balked, but he declared himself King anyway. There was some conflict, and finally he gave up politics in disgust and returned to Mbale to devote himself to religion.

Lunch for me was Indian food at Nurali Café -- decent food. Not bad. The staff of my hotel were familiar with the Abayudaya and got me a taxi. It was about a half-hour drive, including a search for gas (most places were out).

When Kakungulu returned to Mbale angry with the British, he fell into the cult followers of a guy named Malaki, who preached biblical literalism and forbade his followers to eat pork, allowed polygamy (reasoning that Abraham did so), and forbade all medicine and medical practice. The Malakites' refusal to allow vaccinations led to Malaki's exile after a plague swept the region.

Kakungulu remained with the Malakites for a while, but he spent long periods meditating on the Old Testament. In 1919 he announced that all the commandments of Moses were binding and circumcised his sons. The Malakites responded that only Jews followed all the commandments of Moses, and Kakungulu responded, "Then we will be Jewish!"

The paving stopped about a third of the way to the Abayudaya and the road wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. I wasn't sure we were going in the right way until I saw a sign for Semei Kakungulu High School with a Jewish star on it. Finally we drove up to Nabugoye Hill, which houses the largest of the six synagogues that exist today.

Kakungulu and his followers adhered to the Torah to the best of its abilities -- for instance, they slaughtered meat in a kosher way and followed Succot and Passover. But with no guidance except the Torah, the Abayudaya had practices that didn't exactly mesh with contemporary Judaism. They sacrificed animals, baptized children, allowed polygamy, and forbade any use of medicine. Anyone caught violating the rules of Shabbat was severely punished. Their place of worship was called the Jewish Church. In 1926 he met two Jews in Kampala who came to Mbale and lived with the community for six months teaching them about modern Judaism. When he died, in 1928, there were more than two thousand Abayudaya. (He died of either malaria or tetanus after refusing medical treatment.) David Solomon came in ten years later. The Abayudaya went through difficult years following the death of Kakungulu, culminating in persecution under Idi Amin. Today they number about one thousand.

At the top of Nabugoye Hill were a number of small buildings. This is the first one I noticed -- the Shalom Internet Café. I didn't see anything I immediately identified as a synagogue, though I did notice the Semei Kakungulu High School with a Jewish star painted on it. There were a number of children playing in the area and most of them were wearing yarmulkes. Many waved and some shouted "Shabbat shalom!"

The taxi drove on a short winding path to a brand new building overlooking the valley. I paid the driver and walked in, noting the Mezuzah on the wall, and was greeted by a friendly Ugandan woman named Rachel who invited me to sit down and have a drink. I had reached the Abayudaya guest house, a building built for the express purpose of housing western Jews who come to visit. There I met a number of other members of the community and was continuously surprised by the biblical names -- Isaac, Samson, Moses, Israel, etc.

It was almost Shabbat, so the rabbi was off preparing for services, but I was told that I was welcome to photograph the synagogue before Shabbat began. I didn't recognize the synagogue at first -- from the back it looks like an ordinary building, but when I went to the front I knew I was in the right place. Again, there were a lot of kids playing outside the synagogue and they were very excited to see me. I took photos of one kid and showed him the photo on the camera and he got very excited and got all the others to run over, so I spent a while doing that. I guess there aren't a lot of mirrors here, and they don't get to see themselves much.

The inside was what you might expect. There was a small podium at the front, assorted chairs, and a few fluorescent lights. At the back was an ark for the Torahs. The morning of the day I arrived, a rabbi from Arizona had delivered another Torah -- the synagogue's fifth. The intention is to spread them to the other synagogues in the region.

They also have several shelves of prayer books that I assume were donated used by various synagogues. In the corner was a menorah balanced on a battery. Many of the windows were broken, which was just as well because there was no air conditioning.

As I waited and played with the kids, people started to assemble for Shabbat. I had expected to be the only white person there, but that was inaccurate. There were more mzungu than Ugandans. Several of the groups were from synagogues in the United States, some traveling with their rabbis. There were also a few Israelis who were camping nearby and a couple of other travelers like me who had just heard about the community and decided to stop by.

Just before sunset, the Rabbi showed up. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, son and grandson of past community leaders, went to rabbinical school in Los Angeles and Israel, returned to his community, and finished the process of modernizing the customs and observations. He was trained in the conservative tradition.

The service itself was fairly standard Shabbat fare and I recognized some of the melodies. It was tri-lingual -- English, Luganda, and Hebrew. The songs lasted much longer than they would in the United States, I think that's a Ugandan thing. The rabbi's sermon was about the importance of doing things that are extraordinary -- he emphasized how extraordinary it was for the white people here to have come all the way from various places.

The Rabbi believes that the Abayudaya would benefit most from integration with the mainstream Jewish community. Partially for this reason, he and the Abayudaya generally are extremely welcoming toward visitors.

The Abayudaya are not recognized as Jews by most orthodox sects. However, the people of one of the villages, Putti, are in the process of formal orthodox conversion to Judaism. They intend to make aliyah (move to Israel).

After services, Rabbi Gershom invited all the white people in attendance to stay until Sunday, when there were three weddings scheduled and also the annual music festival. I had planned on going back on Saturday morning, but how could I miss all that? I went back to Mbale, had some food, and went back to my hotel. My room had a balcony, so I took a couple of night photographs of the town.

The next morning I went into town, got some money out of the bank (long ATM line) and went to the market. I hadn't brought enough clothing for three days, but shirts were a dollar each and socks fifty cents, so that wasn't a problem. Newly outfitted, I had lunch at the Landmark Inn and went back to the Abayudaya community. Incidentally, Mbale has few internet cafés, but it does have an internet phone booth -- the first I've seen in Uganda. Five cents/minute for calls to the United States.

Saturday afternoon with the Abayudaya was very interesting. Much of the community gathered in a circle outside the synagogue and the Rabbi led a discussion about the week's Torah portion. The portion concerned the elevation of Joseph from slave in Egypt to high official, and the Rabbi questioned the community as to whether Joseph could be considered a good person given that ten years passed and he did not let his parents know he was alive. After a very sophisticated discussion (much of which was in Luganda and had to be translated), one of the visiting rabbis suggested that Joseph understood that if he sent word to his parents of his elevation, his brothers (having tried to kill him) would flee and there would be no Jewish people.

On a boda ride back from the community into Mbale, we suddenly came upon an enormous group of Ugandans in some sort of parade. The kids were very excited, waving their arms and screaming. We pulled over to the side of the road as they passed, and all that could reach me gave me high fives. I later found out that this was part of a circumcision ritual (tribal, not Jewish). Circumcision is mandatory in many tribes, and from the description I've heard it's a rather brutal process. In this region it's a rite of passage into adulthood and only performed once every two years. Some people feel so strongly about it that they will circumcise corpses rather than allow a body to be buried uncircumcised.

The real fun was Sunday. The first of the three weddings was scheduled for 9am, so I arrived at 8:30. The people there were already hard at work cooking -- here's some matoke getting steamed. It won't surprise anyone familiar with this country to hear that the first wedding started at 12:15pm -- apparently the bride couldn't get her make-up right. At the first wedding the groom was one of the rabbis from another community -- I'm told he was seventy years old. The bride was in her early twenties. The other two couples were much closer in age. The ceremonies were fairly standard -- a Ketubah ("where did you get the Ketubah?" "PDF."), a Chuppah, the groom smashed a glass under his foot, we sang "Simcha Tov, Mazel Tov". The women did a strange sort of ululating scream. The weddings were fairly short and were done by 3pm, including lunch. I left as they were setting up for the music festival. One odd thing was that the brides looked very unhappy -- I'm told that it's customary in this region for the woman not to smile, or else people think that she is a prostitute. The guests, though, were extremely excited -- lots of shouting, dancing, screaming, etc.

To make sure I got back on time, I had stopped in at the Elgon Flyer bus office on Saturday -- I heard that they were clean, uncrowded, and driven safely. They assured me that the bus left at 5pm on Sundays, and that getting there at 4:40pm would be fine. I showed up at the bus park at 4pm to find that the bus had already left. A man explained that there was a big crowd trying to get back to Kampala -- sure enough, a big crowd was standing there. He told me that I should get on the next bus that came in. The next bus came in and the crowd mobbed the door. The driver let five or six people on and then it left. Not being willing to elbow people in the face meant that I wasn't getting on.

Fortunately for me, a man came up to me and we got to talking. When the next bus came in, he said "Mzungu, I will get you on the bus." As they were loading, he pulled over someone who must have been an official and they talked briefly. The official said "Mzungu, you have 15,000 shillings?" I held up a bill and he waved me onto the bus -- Gateway Bus Company.

The bus ride was fine. It was a little crowded, but the driver drove safely. There were a lot of chickens on the bus. At my feet were two with their feet tied together so they couldn't move. Apparently eastern Uganda is known for its chickens, so lots of people bring a couple home after a visit. A few minutes into the ride, I felt something nudging my leg. It turned out that a third chicken had gotten lonely and wanted to come play with these two. I lifted my foot and she walked over.

The two who were tied up weren't any fun, I guess, so then she came over to me and started nuzzling my leg. Then she discovered my bag, and apparently the handle is the perfect size for a chicken head rest. She went most of the ride snuggled against my leg with her head happily tugged into the handle. Most of the chickens were pretty quiet except when it was time to get off the bus -- you carry a chicken by its feet, and they squawk and flap a lot.

And that was my visit to the Abayudaya. We got back around 9pm, I had a quick dinner and went to bed. The end.

Incidentally, many Abayudaya, along with a local Muslim community and a local Christian community, grow coffee that's sold by a company called Mirembe Kawomera ("Delicious Peace").

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Ugh

The LRA's statement that it would not respond to the government's attack on their camp was apparently false. Starting with a massacre in a church, the LRA has killed more than two hundred people in Congo over the last week. The LRA issued an official denial. It's not clear how Congo will respond, nor is it clear what the LRA hopes to accomplish and how mass murder will achieve those goals.

Arie Goes to Rwanda: Arie Leaves Rwanda

This is from my trip to Rwanda. You might want to start at the beginning.

After leaving the Murambi genocide memorial, I took the moto back up to the Gikongoro bus station and took a share taxi back to the Butare station, where I took a moto to the Hotel Ibis -- allegedly the best restaurant in town. It was some sort of white person magnet -- I saw more white people sitting outside that place during lunch than I had seen my whole time in Rwanda. Lunch was good. The Ibis was in the center of Butare town, so I looked around a bit -- if Rwanda had horses, Butare would only have one. It's apparently the intellectual capital of Rwanda, hosting the National University, a seminary, the Institution of Scientific Research, and other institutions. After lunch I went to the National Museum, but I really wasn't in a mood to appreciate it. On the way I stopped at an internet café and reserved a ticket on Rwandair's flight from Kigali to Kampala the next morning. (That's not Butare in the photo, but I really like how the sky came out. All the photos in this entry are from the bus ride back.)

I walked back to the bus station and bought a ticket on the Onatracom bus to Kigali. The bus being late, I ended up waiting for more than an hour. I had thought I would sit and read a bit, but my skin made me too much of a curiosity. Lots of people wanted to talk to me, but few spoke English and my French is limited to simple things like "where is the museum?" and "I do not speak French." One kid translated for a few other people, mostly requests for money. (Something about Rwanda is that people asked me for money all the time. Not necessarily beggars, just random people on the street.)

One Rwandan man came over and explained to me in very bad English that I looked like Rambo. I didn't understand him at first because Rwandans don't generally distinguish between L and R, so I thought he was saying "lamb bone" or something, but then he said "Viet Nam Rambo" and mimed a machine gun and I got it. Then in what I hope was a misunderstanding he started saying "I love you" and gesturing for me to kiss him. A bunch of guys had gathered around, and he started saying it more and more forcefully. My technique to diffuse tension in Uganda (saying "Obama!") didn't work. Instead, I continued smiling broadly and arranged a few bottlecaps into a little soccer goal, and got them to play some bottlecap soccer. That did it.

The bus finally showed up. It was almost empty, but I was relieved to be on my way back and in a safe mode of transport. Wrong. The driver was apparently psychotic -- I still cannot believe how fast we were driving. The roads are narrow and very hilly, with sharp turns, and are uphill or downhill the whole way. The uphill speed was limited by the weight of the bus. The downhill speed was not limited in any way. A few times we went so fast that I'm pretty sure I felt myself get heavier.

Much to my surprise, we made it back to Kigali safely and we didn't kill anyone on the way (although two people had to dive out of the way as we barreled down the road). I tried to have dinner at a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet but it had closed a long time ago. I grabbed a quick dinner and laid down in my hotel room and watched Cool Runnings and tried not to think about my day.

I had arranged for a taxi driver to meet me at 5:30 the next morning and I wasn't surprised at all when he knocked on my door at 5:15. At the airport, Rwandair didn't have my reservation, but it didn't matter because there were plenty of seats on the plane. The plane itself was a little propeller plane, four seats to a row, maybe eight rows. The pilots were white guys, and the plane didn't say Rwandair -- it said "Air Services Company". I guess they subcontract. The flight was fine, much less swooping than I expected for a plane that size. There were maybe five or six passengers. Rwandair breakfast is surprisingly nice -- a little box with a croissant, roll, sweet brownie thing, and yogurt.

I think the guy at Ugandan immigration tried to trick me into admitting that I wasn't planning to leave Uganda. He asked me how long I was staying and I said three weeks. He saw that I had spent a few months in Uganda already, and we got to chatting about my trip to Rwanda, and then he said something like "you must be glad to be home, and now you can stay and you don't have to travel anymore." I said "no, I will be leaving in three weeks" and he grunted and stamped my passport and handed it back.

Unexpectedly, not much traffic between Entebbe and Kampala.

So that was my trip to Rwanda. The highlight was definitely the gorillas. Rwanda's an amazing country to have experienced such horror so recently and to have bounced back so completely. Excellent infrastructure, friendly people, good food. Gorillas, too. And of course everywhere you go is gorgeous. If I spoke more French, I'd be tempted to live in Kigali rather than Kampala.

The Murambi Genocide Memorial

This is the second entry about my trip to Rwanda. You may want to start at the beginning.

This entry is very disturbing and has photos of corpses. Don't read it unless you're prepared to see them (Mom, you should skip this one). Instead, you can read about my journey home (coming soon).

My last day in Rwanda. I decided to go see the Murambi Memorial, which is in the southwest part of the country. I woke up early again, around 6:30, and was surprised to find that Kigali was almost deserted. The streets of Kampala are packed the moment the sun rises, but I guess people sleep later in Kigali. I couldn't find a place for breakfast until seven.

I decided to try Atraco Bus, went to the station and bought a ticket to Butare. The bus started empty, but we picked up a full load at Nyabugogo Bus Station. The drive was fine until a boy down the row started vomiting. Also his mother, sitting next to me, kept spitting into a plastic bag (and plastic bags are illegal in Rwanda -- they seize them at the airport). That was pleasant. I insisted on having the window wide open so I could breathe fresh air, and that caused some friction with other passengers, who apparently wanted to breathe horrible vomit air. The window stayed open.

Butare was about two hours away -- it took a little longer than that because we stopped in a number of small towns to pick up and discharge passengers. Finally we arrived and I hopped out. The taxi park was basically a big dirt field with a bunch of minibuses in it.

Outside of Kigali, not many people speak English. A lot of people were curious about why there was a white dude standing around. I wandered a bit asking for the taxi to Gikongoro before I found someone whose English was good enough to correct my pronunciation -- it's "ji-KONG-or-o", it turns out. He showed me which minibus to take and suggested it would be slow, but I wasn't in a hurry. When the share taxi was half-full, we started out, driving to another dirt lot behind a gas station where a bunch more share taxis were waiting. We all climbed out and into another one and we were off.

It was about a thirty minute ride in this one to the Gikongoro. The Gikongoro bus station was a bit nicer, with a big fence around it, though the town is much smaller. Outside of the bus station I took a boda to the Murambi Memorial. It was about a mile or two downhill on a dirt road. At the memorial, I took the driver's number so I could call him when I was done.

When I walked up to the memorial, a woman wordlessly came out to meet me and gestured for me to follow. We walked around the new museum building to the older technical college buildings behind it. She unlocked a room and gestured for me to enter.

Inside were two large tables. Spread out on the tables were dozens of corpses that had been soaked in lye to preserve them. The lye had leached out all the color, so the corpses were a dull matte white. The air was still. The sour smell of lye pervaded the room. An angry wasp was buzzing in the corner.

Murambi used to be a technical school. In 1994, when the genocide started, Tutsis in the region fled to the local church. The bishop and the mayor met with them and told them that they would be safe in Murambi, where troops that were stationed in the region would protect them. Tens of thousands of Tutsis went to the school and barricaded themselves in.

The government immediately cut the water and power and the soldiers disappeared. The people tried to defend themselves with stones, but after a few days without water they were too weak to hold out. The militias overran the school and killed fifty thousand people, most of whom were buried in mass graves surrounding the school.

After the genocide, some of the bodies that had been buried here were exhumed. The clothing was removed and the bodies were soaked in lye. The lye leached the water out of the tissue but preserved the skeletons and much of the rest of the bodies. The effect was to dry them out and preserve them. The rooms of the college are filled with the preserved corpses.

I wasn't going to take photos. I wasn't even really going to do anything except stand there horrified. But as I stood in the room, the woman gestured toward my camera. I looked at her and she gestured more forcefully. In retrospect, I guess it makes sense -- they did this so it would be seen. Anyway, thinking about them as photographic subjects was easier than thinking about them as people.

Most of the corpses were adults, but some were children. In many cases the cause of death was clear: Many of the skulls had large gashes in them. Some of the ribcages had what were probably machete wounds. Others looked like they had been killed with masu, which are clubs studded with nails. A few of the children were missing large pieces of their skulls.

I staggered out of the room and the woman nodded at me and led me to the next room, which she unlocked. The layout was similar, two large tables covered in preserved corpses. More of these were children. Most were naked, but some of them were wearing shreds of clothing. I'm not sure if they were preserved and then dressed again, or if the clothing survived the preservation process.

The involvement of the pastor in the massacre at Murambi is typical of what happened across the country. Church officials in Rwanda mostly supported the genocide. One famous story involves two thousand refugees who had taken shelter at a hospital in Mugonero. They heard that the hospital would be attacked the next day, and seven pastors wrote a letter to the president of their local church, Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, which said:

How are you! We wish you to be strong in all these problems we are facing. We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. We therefore request you to intervene on our behalf and talk with the Mayor. We believe that, with the help of God who entrusted you the leadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your intervention will be highly appreciated, the same way as the Jews were saved by Esther. We give honour to you.

Ntakirutimana replied, "There is nothing I can do for you. All you can do is prepare to die, for your time has come."

Rwandans all over the country sought sanctuary in churches, and all over the country they were killed. More Tutsis were killed in churches than anywhere else. In some churches so many people were gathered that the militias had to spread the killings over many days, cutting the victims' Achilles tendons so they couldn't run away in the interim. Several church officials were brought up on war crimes charges.

A man walked over and took the job of unlocking the doors for me. He led me to four more rooms similar to the first two. Although the preservation process changed the form of their bodies, their personhood wasn't suppressed or concealed. There was more than just skull and bones, and in the flesh that was left you could clearly see the shape of the face, the expression frozen in death. And there were little touches of humanity. One of the bodies was still wearing a rosary; she held it in her hand as she died.

The lye had left most of the bodies bald, though a few here and there still had a little hair left.

Most of the victims of the genocide were bludgeoned to death or were cut with machetes or bashed with clubs. The militias generally tortured their victims before killing them, often amputating limbs one at a time. Soldiers began offering to shoot Tutsis in the head for a price, to spare them the torture. Many who could afford it accepted.

After the sixth room, the guide led me to the second building. The first room had on one side a table with preserved corpses, but on the other was a different layout. One side of the table was covered in a very large pile of bones. I think they were femurs -- they were fairly large and regular. The other side was covered in skulls. As with the bodies, the fatal wounds were often obvious. He indicated that the rest of the rooms were similar to the ones before, and he wasn't inclined to show them to me. I didn't argue.

Churches were not the only places where people failed to find sanctuary. In hospitals, doctors killed their colleagues, patients, and refugees as they arrived. Some of the most horrible massacres were in maternity wards, where people fled thinking that no one would kill newborn babies. Schoolchildren ran to their schools only to be killed by their teachers. The chairman of a human rights organization was charged with complicity in the murder of twelve thousand people.

The guide then led me into a large room with bookshelves full of clothing and explained that it was the clothing of the victims. Then we went out back. The museum had markers to show the spot where the French flag had been planted, and this sign indicated the spot where the French soldiers played "volley". I was a bit confused because France didn't send troops in until two months after the massacres here and I didn't realize they reached this far south.

Then he led me to the mass graves. As with everywhere in Rwanda, the scenery here was beautiful. This was probably the most incongruous experience I've ever had -- looking at a mass grave with beautiful rolling hills fading into the mist beyond it, listening to the sounds of children laughing and playing. After, he led me to room with a guest book and donation jar.

When the RPF took over Rwanda and stopped the genocide, they had to shoot all the dogs. They had developed a taste for human flesh.

This picture shows one of the mass graves after excavation. Across the country, Rwanda exhumed the bodies and reburied them in consecrated graves.

Article XIII of the Rwandan Constitution provides that "Revisionism, negationism and trivialisation of genocide are punishable by the law." In other words, it is illegal to question the government's version of the facts. I'm not sure what to make of that.

Articles LXXVI and LXXXII require that thirty percent of Rwanda's parliament and senate be female. It was felt by the drafters that women would not allow similar atrocities to occur again. Rwanda recently became the first country in history to elect a parliament that's more than fifty percent female.

I called my driver and sat to wait. The guide asked if I could wait while my moto took him to grab lunch, and of course I didn't mind, but then another visitor showed up and he had to abandon his lunch plans.

The rest of my trip to Butare is coming soon.

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Arie Goes Gorilla Trekking

This is from day three of my trip to Rwanda. You might want to start at the beginning or read about how I got here.

I woke up early, which was good because the driver was at the hotel to pick me up at 6:15. Dry toast for breakfast. He drove me to the Rwandan tourism office at Kinigi, which is near the border of Volcanoes National Park. Very dramatic, with the volcanoes encircling us. There were a lot of white people there, mostly to do other treks -- golden monkeys, Dian Fossey's grave, etc. Mostly Europeans -- the U.S. economic trouble has really hurt gorilla trekking.

There was this display that shows shoes twenty feet away from a gorilla -- you're never supposed to get closer than that. That's for your protection, sure, but also for the gorillas -- they can catch most human diseases. See below for whether we followed that rule (no). Also, they ask that if you're sick you not go (you get the permit fee back). Gorillas have died from diseases caught from tourists.

Baby gorillas are tiny little puffballs for the first four or five months, until they learn to walk. They're "infants" until they're three, then juveniles until six, then sub-adults until eight. An adult male is a "blackback" when young, but at a certain age they start to develop the characteristic silver saddle-shaped fur patch on their backs and are then known as "silverbacks".

We had two guides, a younger one and an older one. They insisted on referring to each other as "silverback" and "blackback", but really it was barely funny the first time. We were assigned to the Sabyinyo Group, one of the five gorilla families that are habituated to humans. Sabyinyo allegedly means "teeth" -- the top of the Sabyinyo volcano is broken off, unlike the others. The guides gave us instructions -- basically, don't get too close, if a gorilla approaches you don't make eye contact and back away slowly, if one attacks just sit down and don't fight, that sort of thing. Apparently one of the babies in the group likes to play with tourists' clothing.

So while we were drinking coffee and learning about not fighting the gorillas, a team of trackers was already on the mountain looking for the gorillas. The trackers set out early, find the gorillas, and then radio our guides to tell them where to enter the park. We piled into vehicles and drove to the base of the volcano.

The drive was not smooth. The road to the volcano was the worst road I've ever been on -- unpaved and the potholes were so big that the 4WD safari vehicle got stuck a few times. It winds through various farms and there were little kids waving and chasing us around, as usual. One kid herded some goats at us but we were faster.

Finally we arrive at the base of the volcano. Waiting for us are three guys with AK-47s. They keep them on hand in case they have to scare off forest elephants and forest buffalo, and probably also to shoot poachers. I take a moment to field a phone call, we grab hiking sticks, and we start walking. I wondered if maybe the armed guys were also there to deal with rebels -- the top of Sabyinyo Volcano is the border with Congo (and Uganda) and we're about ten miles from where the rebels are active. But there isn't much danger -- Rwanda is probably backing the rebels (Rwanda denies it), and anyway the rebels aren't really interested in harassing gorilla trekkers. And three random guys with AK-47s probably can't handle a heavily armed rebel force that's spent the last five years living and fighting in the jungle. No, I think they're for elephants.

After a bit we come to this large rock wall. It's apparently goes all the way around the park, even where the park becomes the Virungas National Park in Congo and Mgahinga Gorilla Park and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda. This way the gorillas don't climb down (mostly) and domesticated animals don't go up. The guides talk on the radio a bit to find out where the trackers are and then we walk along the rock wall for a while (that is, we walk on farmland), hurrying when we walk past beehives, and then we climb over and we're in the rainforest.

It's dark in there. The guides have machetes and they cut a path through the plants for us. They stop periodically to point out various plants -- I get to taste eucalyptus (eh) and some other plants. One of the guides keeps impersonating gorillas -- screaming and grunting and destroying trees. I feel bad for the trees. The guides also tell us about the different noises that gorillas make -- grunts when they're happy, screams when they're angry, and proceed to demonstrate.

After hiking for a while, we come to a little clearing where the trackers and their armed escort are waiting. The gorillas are just ahead, and you can't bring food or anything interesting, so we all drop our packs (I had no pack so I dropped my jacket and Clif bars) and our walking sticks.

And then we walk twenty or thirty more feet and there's a little black fuzzy ball in the distance. The guide tells us to stop walking, and I think, "this is it?" And then I notice the enormous silverback gorilla sitting ten feet away from us. We all see him at once, and the silverback appears nonplussed as a phalanx of camera lenses emerge. In fact, he ignores us. As if we're not there, he snacks on some leaves and then turns and ambles away.

We follow. This silverback is named Guhonda, which means the chest beating that gorillas stereotypically do (I didn't see this at all), and he's head of the Sabyinyo family. Our guides keep making grunting noises, but Guhonda ignores them and us and just keeps walking. We keep following.

A gorilla walks on all four limbs, but its hands are curled back so its weight rests on its knuckles. Strange to see. Like all great apes except humans, the arms are longer than the legs. Gorillas are very strong, but they're peaceful -- they move slowly (although they can run quite fast) and aren't generally aggressive.

Guhonda stopped to eat a lot -- gorillas basically have to eat most of the time. It's tough to be five hundred pounds when your diet is leaves -- silverbacks have to eat about seventy-five pounds of leaves each day. He kept stopping to eat, we kept stopping to watch him eat, it was win-win. Gorillas eat mostly leaves and bark and shoots, but they sometimes eat ants and fruit. They don't seem to eat lizards -- for reasons unknown, gorillas have an inborn fear of lizards, even little ones like chameleons.

Someone asked me if they bathe and if they smell bad. I didn't notice any special odor, though there were a lot of unfamiliar scents in the jungle. Gorillas don't bathe because they don't like water -- they won't cross even a small stream unless there's a bridge over it, and Dian Fossey noticed that they're unhappy when it rains. Of course, it rains most days, so that keeps them somewhat clean.

As we followed Guhonda through the forest, we sometimes saw other gorillas through the trees. They seemed to be generally cohesive, each gorilla doing its own thing but aware of the others. Sometimes one of them would want to pass us, and the guides would quickly get us out of the way. A mother gorilla with a baby on her back passed by a few inches from me.

After winding through the forest a bit, we come upon some other gorillas. Soon there are a bunch of them together -- a mother with a baby, a few females, an adolescent male, and Guhonda sitting there watching the whole group as they eat and groom. Gorillas can be identified by their noses -- they're unique, like fingerprints.

The whole thing seemed strangely human. We heard a little sad crying noise, and from behind us a tiny baby gorilla looking very distraught came ambling through. The baby was six months old, barely old enough to walk. We got out of the way as his mother walked up, and the baby saw her and ran to her arms and his sad noises turned to happy ones. It was very sweet. She took him to what I guess is a tasty bush and he stood on her belly and tried to climb the trees to eat their leaves, sometimes falling out.

These gorillas are mountain gorillas, a subspecies of the Eastern Gorilla. Their technical name is Gorilla berengei berengei, named after Robert von Beringe, the first European to see one (and the first European to kill one). King Albert I of Belgium was persuaded to establish a park by a naturalist who wanted to study them. But the most famous gorilla watcher has to be Dian Fossey, thanks to her book and movie Gorillas in the Mist. This is where Fossey lived, and Rwanda plays her up to tourists as much as they can -- they offer treks to her grave, there are signs about her work, that sort of thing. It's all a little ironic given that Fossey was opposed to allowing tourists to visit the gorillas.

After twenty years of living in the hills, Fossey was stabbed to death up here in the mountains. The standard explanation is that she was killed by poachers because of her strong anti-poaching stance, but there's fairly strong evidence that she was in fact killed because she was an obstacle to gorilla tourism.

Anyway, Guhonda didn't do much once the family was together -- basically he sat still for a while, then laid down. I think maybe the gorilla version of Maslow's Hierarchy is pretty shallow: food, family, sleep, the end. Most of the other gorillas were more active -- there was some grooming and some fighting. The fight was between an adolescent male and what I think was one of the older males. Lots of biting. A gorilla has very sharp teeth and in extreme situations can kill another gorilla, but these were just playing.

The gorillas were very peaceful considering how close we were. But at one point we were so enthralled with watching two of them that we didn't notice a third approaching us from the side. Getting in a gorilla's way is a good way to start a fight. He (she?) lifted his arms, made an angry noise, and came at me in what I think was meant to be a threatening way. The guides quickly jumped between us and made gorilla noises until it calmed down. The only other incident was when one member of the group set up a tripod and one of the gorillas tried to grab it. The guides did the same thing and the gorilla backed off.

There aren't many mountain gorillas left in the world -- they're classified as critically endangered. They don't breed in captivity, so the ones in this region are the only stable population. Unfortunately, poaching is a big problem. In Rwanda and Uganda they're not generally hunted, but in certain Congolese cultures gorilla meat is highly desired -- apparently serving it at a wedding is a status symbol. Having a gorilla in a cage in your house is also desirable for some reason. And gorillas often get caught in snares set by poachers to catch other animals (silverbacks can untangle and remove a rope snare that catches a member of their family, but they cannot remove wire snares). Park veterinarians generally intercede if gorillas are injured or sick only if it's due to humanity -- a tourist gives a gorilla influenza or one gets caught in a wire snare.

Conservationists were a bit worried when rebels in Congo seized the Virungas National Park, but I hear that this has worked out well for the gorillas. Although tourists are staying away, rebel leader Laurent Nkunda has apparently given orders that the gorillas are to be protected. Some of the Congolese park staff has apparently been able to continue monitoring the gorillas and keeping them healthy, although many have fled. One person told me that the Congolese military was involved in poaching and charcoal smuggling (a major cause of habitat destruction), so the gorillas are actually safer under rebel control.

You only get to spend an hour with the gorillas -- I guess they need some alone time. The guides led us away from the family, hacking a new path through the forest to a clearing where our stuff was waiting (not the same clearing -- we had gone pretty far, ambling after the gorillas for an hour, so the trackers moved our things). As we were walking out, the rain started -- perfect timing, really.

On the way out, we passed a gorilla nest. Gorillas sleep in these nests and make new ones each night. They don't share except infants and their mothers. They can't really reuse them because they don't have set territories -- gorillas wander the mountains each day and aren't attached to any particular area. They'll fight to defend their families but not their land.

The rain made the drive back even worse than the drive in. The roads were so bad when muddied that the little children who chased our car were able to catch it, and the guide had to open the door and swat them away. We arrived back at the tourism office to receive official certificates that say we visited the gorillas, I have no idea why. They misspelled my name.

Chimpanzees are our nearest relatives, but
gorillas are close. We all have a common ancestor, but gorillas split off about seven million years ago, slightly earlier than chimpanzees. I spoke to someone who had done several gorilla autopsies and he said that once you have the fur off, gorillas look just like people, except with longer arms and slightly odd ribcages.

I went back to my hotel, had lunch, looked at my photos, and then tried to find where to get the Onatracom bus. Lonely Planet says buy tickets at the petrol station, which is very helpful because there are only about ten petrol stations in town (and no one in town knew -- one moto driver, when I said "Onatracom", took me to what might have been a youth hostel). Finally I bought a ticket for the Virunga Express bus, a minibus. To my surprise, it was also driven slowly and carefully. As expected, I was the only white guy on the bus, and the people around me were fascinated with the maps of Rwanda. Back in Kigali, I had dinner at Chez Robert, one of the fanciest restaurants in town. Overpriced and boring.

So that was gorilla trekking. A great experience for me, and Rwanda doesn't seem to mind -- painted on the wall of my hotel was a mural that read, "Given Peace, Gorillas Bring Currency". As for the gorillas, it's hard to say. They don't seem to care that much about having people follow them around. I guess they're at increased risk of contracting our exciting diseases. On the other hand, without the thousands of dollars per day that trekking brings in, I'm not sure Rwanda would be that into protecting them. Not an ideal situation, but it appears to be sustainable, at least in the short term.

You might want to read about my next day in Rwanda, at the Murambi genocide memorial.