Victoria to Victoria

(This is the last section directly on my trip to Uganda. In the next 24 hours, photos will be added for all sections of the Uganda trip!)

Following relaxation at Byoona Amagara so complete that my DNA began to unwind, we had to once again saddle up and get out of Dodge. After settling up with the friendly staff at Byoona Amagara (which, apparently, is Ugandan for “We will take every last shilling you possess”) we loaded our gear into a motorboat and headed back to Rutinda. While the canoeing option was still available, it had a few drawbacks – firstly, the price was the same as the motorboat for five people, and secondly, we’d have to once again combine our sizeable interest in flatwater transportation with our minimal interest in gardening… spades do not excellent paddles make. Besides… the motorboat allowed me to feel the wind whipping through my sunburn, which is about as pleasant as ironing your feet.

Once at Rutinda, it was a simple cab ride back to Kabale, where we were to catch the 10:00am Horizon bus back to Kampala. This seemingly non-complex procedure was, as you should be able to gather by now with regards to my travel, needleslly complicated. Ronnie – who is, to be fair, generally quite a good organizer – insisted that we be dropped off at the Horizon Bus yard, where the man he had spoken to on the phone insisted we need to meet him. The cab driver, on the other hand, was almost equally adament that we needed to be dropped off some 900 meters further up the road. Ronnie, being the one with the money and the louder voice, won and we were dropped at the yard.Naturally, the cabbie had been right.

To be fair to Ronnie, he had been told to meet at the yard. Further still, it is a very common occurance in Africa that the cab driver/motorcycle taxi rider/fellow who follows you asking for money says they know something, then stops to ask every passer-by on the street whether or not this is, in fact, still Uganda that we’re in and would they happen to know where the bus station/bank machine/north is. Besides, it was a pleasant morning, we had plenty of time, and having lazed around for 3 days, we could probably use the walk.

I, on the other hand, was down to 3 US dollar bills and a Nile Special beer bottle cap, which had the cominbed purchasing power to be able to buy me one ninth of a loaf of bread. Thus, while the others breakfasted on egg rolled in chapati, I discovered that ATMs in Kabale, Uganda don’t open until 9:30am… and when they do, they don’t accept the Cirrus network… and when both of those conditions are met, the bank machine suddenly shuts down as you reach to put your card in, and stubbornly refuses to yield any money, no mattter how hard you punch the wall or yell at the buttons. On the plus side, a friendly man armed with an AK-47 escorts you out of the booth, so you know at least someone is paying attention to  you.

Somehow, at 9:55, the ATM right beside the bus (which I had initially tried before walking the kilometer back into the town centre) decided to work right before I left. I celebrated by cheerily cursing the immediate queue of 12 people in front of me, all of whom had brought their 23 closest friend’s bankcards, and stared at the dizzying array of numberpad buttons like they’d only just been introduced to the numeric system. After bemusedly pushing buttons in a haphazard fashion, they would shake their head, remove their card, replace and try again. Eventually, sheer persistence paid off and each person departed clutching a stack of notes thicker than a hockey puck. The Ugandan shilling isn’t worth an awful lot, so it takes a lot of ‘em to get something.

I scrambled onto the bus shortly before it decided to leave without me, and settled in for the ride back to Kampala. I had agreed with the ticket seller shortly after boarding that we would be permitted to stop at the Equator markers en route. Considering that the bus routinely stopped for bathroom breaks in fiels, the purchasing of goat meat on sticks and police checks every 50 meters, it didn’t strike me as unusual that they should accede to my request… especially when I hinted that I may be willing to financially compensenate them for the loss of time.

Of course, when we got within a few kms of the Equator, the driver decided that stopping would be impossible, since we were “way behind schedule” and “it wasn’t allowed”. I attempted to point out that every bus in Africa I’d ever ridden was so far behind schedule as to be nearly back on schedule, provided you ignored the date, but this fell on deaf ears. Of all the people with authority I’ve met, it just had to be the only one who wouldn’t take a bribe was the only one I needed to. So I had to sulk and grumble in my chair as I watched the equator monuments go whizzing by out the window.

Back in Kampala, we returned yet again to Kampala Backpackers, where we were to stay our final night in Uganda. We checked in, Ronnie and I went and got tickets for the following day on Kampala Coach (bringing the total number of bus lines used on this tour alone to five: Bobby Shuttles, Scandanavia Express, Gateway Buslines, Horizon Buslines and Kampala Coach) and then retired early to our respective rooms.

The next day was a freebie until our 2:30pm departure from downtown Kampala – Ronnie was off, under the watchful eye of Becky, to bungee jump into the Nile. I considered this, but decided that I had neither the money nor the inclination to hurtle myself from a tower into turbid waters below, while on Ugandan safety standards. MaryLou and Cliff decided to shop Kampala. I considered this, but … no, no I didn’t. That left me on my own with a few options: try to catch a minibus-taxi to and from the Equator monument, some 75km away; visit the UNESCO World Heritage Sight of the Kasubi tombs with its ambitiously priced 10 000Ush entrance fee; or take a bodaboda (motorcycle taxi) to Ggaba, a fishing port on the famed Lake Victoria, with the added advantage of having a nearby geocache.

For those of you who saw the magic word ‘geocache’, you guessed right!!

So boda-boda I did, and found myself walking along the busy waterfront of Ggaba. There were piles and PILES of driftwood, neatly stacked and ready to be made into useful things like palettes and floorboards and ‘genuine ebony carvings’. I also found a number of gentlemen following me along as I ducked in and out of piles of stinking fish and swarms of massive marabou storks (ugliest. bird. ever.). I suppose it was a little unique for them to have tourists – especially ones who were clearly white. Thus it was that I found myself at the end of a pier, talking to Dee and George about various things. This includes (honestly): the largest countries in the world by size, population, population density and quality of life; why I should start a family; my brother Cliff who worked for Kamapala Police (okay, so I was little nervous); and – again, honestly – the current Chinese practice of growing rice on the moon which was to be ended by the “thieving Americans”.

Curiosity regarding the waterfront of Lake Victoria more satisified than I ever could have predicted, I dipped my running-shoe clad toe into the murky, billharzia-happy waters, snapped a quick photograph, and then took off for Backpackers, where no one tried to convince me of astrological agriculture… which, honestly, was kind of disappointing.

Canoeing in Christmas

(This is the 3rd part of my recent trip to Uganda… depending on how long-winded I am here, it may be the last… or they may be one more. You’ll have to read to find out!!)

We returned to the Golden Monkeys hostel in Kisoro an exhausted, but happy, bunch. We had seen – and perhaps more lingeringly, smelled – mountain gorillas from a change-of-shorts-requiring distance. The odour of a mountain gorillas is difficult to describe. If you’ve ever stood around the outside edge of a huddle of football players shortly after they’ve beaten St. F-X in a rainy playoff game in, say, early November – you’ll at least know roughly where to start. Add to that earthy-smelling undertones and, for some strange reason, vanilla yoghurt, and you’ll be close.

The gorillas, who we weren’t allowed photgraph using flash photography (it washes out their complexion, or something) had been co-operative. At one point, they sat directly in the middle of the only sun-soaked clearing in all of Bwindi, allowing the aperture enough light to function. At another, Posho the gorilla was close enough to actually see the outline of my heart as it enthusiastically bounched from throat to stomach and back 400 times a minute.

Our expenditures in Bwindi – which, we were repeatedly assured, were essential to the continued survival of the gorillas – were rewarded not only with the unrivaled opportunity to see the big apes firsthand, but also with a cardboard certificate, celebrating, I suppose, that we were able to survive the hike out of the gorge in which the gorillas had chosen to lunch that day.

The combination of the bus-trip and the hike and the financial outlay of about two month’s rent had left the group of us pretty exhausted. With the next day being the 24th, it was time to head to our Christmas Retreat. We had decided to stay at Byoona Amagara a bout a week earlier, and I had called to make reservations. I was a little startled to find that they had booked out of dorms, cottages, twin dorms and geodomes – but they did have space available in their special “Holiday Room” for only 150% of the price of the regular dorm. Would we be interested? Since 150% in this case meant 15 000 Uganda Shillings a night (roughly $7.50), I felt that would be fine.

We were tenatively excited about our vacation from our vacation. I mean, come on, HOLIDAY room. Further adding to the sense of excitement was that I would be canoeing to my Christmas lodgings. For a lad who has spent the sum total of his Christmas past in either Southern or Northern Ontario, this was a novel prospect. Hike a kilometer in chest-deep snow to get to the cottage? Yes. Spend Christmas running around the backyard in pajamas, a snowsuit and boots so sturdy they could support a family of four? Yes. Be chased by a raven over a semi-frozen streambed while my sisters decided between them who got my computer? Absolutely. But water in a non-frozen state on December 24th was decidedly surreal.

Lake Bunyoni – on which Itambira Island, home of Byoona Amagara, was situated – is reputed by locals to be about 2000 meters deep. Considering that we were at an elevation of about 1850 meters while on Itambira Island this struck me as somewhat unlikely. However, since each lake in Africa has its own unique method of killing you – billharzia, crocodiles, tilapia, enraged hippos, spears thrown by locals who assumed you were a very large, pale fish – I was not particularly ready to put myself to the test to find out.

From the dock at Rutinda, we arranged for a canoe to Itambira Island. MaryLou, Cliff and I were in one boat, and Ronnie and Becky in the other. Since MaryLou and I both feel we are among the world’s best paddlers, we were happy to grab a paddle to pitch in. Imagine my surprise, then, when the paddle turned out to be what I would chartiably describe as a large, wooden garden spade. The canoe itself was known as a dug-out, and while there was no sign of Lou Pinella, it did seem like a hollowed-out tree trunk with bales of hay for seats. This, I suppose, is because that’s precisely what it was.

We docked at Byoona, and were met by George who happily deposited MaryLou, Cliff and I in … a dorm. This seemed weird to me, since we had a holiday room lined up, but whatever. We were all pretty beat, so we took a nap before really figuring out what was up.

Some time in the not-too-distant future, I was awoken by what I can only describe as a shrill, Harpie-like screech originating outside the door of the dorm. Another guest – who, I should point out, I would later learn to love but at that precise moment, I wished only for her to be smited for the unholy noise she was making – was mildly irked that we were in what was apparently a dorm reserved for her. We were quickly ushered to our appropriate Holiday Room, which turned out to be the side-room off of the resort’s small library. While lacking in features such as ‘lights’, ‘mosquito nets’ and ‘anything to make the price hike worthwhile’,  I was still happy. We would be using candles for light, and the wooden construction was very reminiscent of my grandma’s cottage in Bala, Ontario.

We were to spend from the 24th to the 27th at Byoona, and it was mostly quite relaxing. I discovered that the lake was free of all death-causing items, and that it’s depth – while still unlikely to be 2000m – was at least 10m, since I couldn’t get to the bottom right off of the dock. I discovered that not everyone else feels Scrabble is a religion, one worthily defended by threatening gestures and shakes of the fists. I discovered that 15 US Peace Corps volunteers can be simulataneously wonderful human beings and the most irritating force to walk the planet since Will Ferrell (seriously… how do people find him funny?)

The Peace Corps were actually worthy of a whole separate blog post, but I’ll summarize by saying that they had all left their work sites without authorization, had been discovered to have done so through the slip of a fellow worker, and were thus all being threatened with either deportation or execution. From the amount of hand-wringing and wailing, I can’t exactly remember. It was unfortunate that I met them all at such a difficult time, since they almost all seemed like friendly and outgoing people – some, indeed, of the very highest caliber – and that began to shine through over the next 24 hours, before they scampered off to Kampala to recieve a tongue lashing from the country co-ordinator.

As for me… I celebrated Christmas Eve underneath a crystal-clear and cool night sky, looking at the stars, and thinking of my friends and family back home. (Yes, I thought of you, specfically.) Christmas dinner was locally caught crayfish in a masala sauce, over rice, with a cheese chapatti-pizza and a side of stomach flu. For Christmas, I gave a new geocache to the island (since the old one had disappeared without ever getting a find) and received a subsequent first-to-find, when I managed to find the cache I had rehidden for the owner, oh, two minutes earlier.

It was, in short, basically a Muskokan summer for Christmas. I went swimming in a cool, but not cold, lake; I wandered around the forest; I played Euchre and Scrabble and debated whether or not I really should have another beer (the answer was never really in doubt, sadly). The only thing that would have made it more perfect was having my family there… but as Dad says, you can’t have everything.

At least, not until I headed home… a mere 8 days after Christmas.

Men of the Mountains: Gorilla Tracking in Uganda

(My trip to Uganda will be spun out over the next 2-3 posts in order to save time, and provide me with convienient writing lengths. Photos will also go up for this, and back a post, tomorrow, I imagine.)

So when you last left me – or I last left you, as the case may be – I had just rediscovered the potentially negative effects of exposing your body directly to the sun for a period of time best measured in decades. The immediate fall-out, of course, is that my range of motion became limited to whatever I was able to do without bending any joints in my legs, arms or neck. This allowed me to sleep standing up and to stand outside of the stream of the shower, whimpering at the thought of stepping into either cold or hot water. The longer term fallout – and that is the appropriate word, in this case – is that my body looks like it was used for director nuclear testing. My peeled, flaked and hung in a manner that made children run screaming from the room and strong men stare in unabashed horror. And that was before I rolled up my sleeves to show them my shoulders.

This kind of total immobility isn’t a problem if, say, you’re embarking on an Indiana Jones marathon or serving as a judge at the ICTR (*zing* … I jest, I jest), but it does hamper your efforts a little if you’re about to get up before the sun and take an overcrowded and hot bus to the very southwestern corner of the country to hike through a forest noted for its thickness of foliage in search of a creature capable of ripping off your arms and beating you to death with them. This, naturally, is what I was about to do.

Gorilla tracking in Africa is the kind of thing that you only get to do if certain conditions are right. First of all, you need to be able to find a permit. This is, in and of itself, a challenging task. They are often booked up months in advance by very large tour companies and then sold off to their intrepid adventurers… who are likely to be helicoptor’d in while sipping on Cristal and munching boiled snails or something. If you’re a student who decided to go to Uganda some time in early December, who then left in mid-December, your odds of getting a permit are about the same as Mats Sundin re-signing with the Leafs Fidel Castro challenging Robert Stanfield to a ‘winner-takes-all’ boxing match (Tagline: Let’s get ready to Sttttuummmbbble!) In spite of that, Ronnie – the brave, charismatic and dashing lad who runs the White House (and is a new reader to the blog) – managed to find us five permits, on the same day for the Nkuringo entrance to Bwindi.

We left Kampala for Kabale early on the morning of the 22nd with Gateway Bus, who manifested the Christmas spirit by charging us double their normal price. The ride itself featured a number of gorgeous vistas, but the most stunning were yet to come. At Kabale, a fairly run-of-the-mill Ugandan town, we hired a very large van to convey the five of us (Ronnie, Rivers, Becky, MaryLou and Cliff, for those keeping score at home) to Kisoro, which was to be our take-off point the following morning. The drive to Kisoro, though, was incredible. After twisting and turning through terraced red hills, layered with crops at regular intervals, we came hurting around the corner of the road to see in front of us three rising peaks, looking for all the world like a series of French party-hat accents. (Demonstration: ^^^) The first one was much bigger than the other two. It, according to our driver, is part of the Virunga volcano chain where three countries – Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda – have their borders meet at the peak. The view was complemented by shafts of sunlight pinching through the clouds to bathe sections of the hills in a particularly active light.

There was a bit of an exciting moment in one small village nestled in the hills when one of the back windows of the van came loose, and the driver pulled over to repair it. The young lads of the town – many of whom had already been enjoying the diverting pleasures of alcohol – began to size up us, and more directly, our luggage. A few made general motions towards the direction of the trunk, but Cliff – who grew up in Uganda before moving to Tanzania to be a professional breakdancer – threatened to “kill them” if they came any closer. Since Cliff’s arms look like they swallowed rocks, this advice was taken to heart, and the troublemakers ambled off. Meanwhile, the four whites happily looked around at all the friendly people and wondered why Cliff was muttering and what the single finger he raised towards them as we drove off meant.

Further adding to the sense of intrigue was the somewhat sobering sight of row upon row upon row of white tents, emblazoned with the letters UN in a field close to Kisoro. This was the home of about 2000 refugees from the Congo, under the care of the United Nations, while fighting and poverty tore their country apart. And here we were… off to spend $500 US to look at some big monkeys.

Thankfully, guilt passes quickly when you realize that a) you’re already in Africa, working for people who’ve suffered and b) you remember that you’re off to see REALLY big monkeys. (My psychologist tells me that being flip is my way of dealing with complex emotions. He also reminds me that he’s non-existant, and that somehow I owe him $300.) We arrived in Kisoro just as it was getting dark, and checked into the Golden Monkeys hostel. It’s quite possible that it’s only because I’d been spending much of the previous few days either on a bus or actively trying not to be drowned in white water, but I was thrilled to find a nice, clean room with a warm shower and prepared meals. Golden Monkeys was run by a very nice lady, who got us a driver to take us into Bwindi the next day, and who had the kitchen rustle us up dinner of our choice.

Way too early the next morning, we roused ourselves and stumbled bleary-eyed into the waiting taxi. Up and into the hills we went again, passing through groves of thick trees and bamboo forest that seemed like promising wildlife hideouts. When we arrived, sun glaring down, at the Park Headquarters at Nkuringo, we were met by Caleb, who was to be our guide for the day. He ensured we had enough water, saying something jocular like “If you don’t have at least two liters, we leave you on the side for the buzzards to pick at!!” and off we went around 8:45am. It was a reasonably long hike just to get to the edge of Bwindi – about 1.5 hours, mostly downhill. This, of course, weighed heavily on my mind since I knew full-well it would be a much LONGER hike back up… but that was for later. We eventually hit a point atop one crest, where Caleb made radio contact with the trackers who’d been sent out earlier, and pointed us straight downcliff to the forest’s edge.

Through a combination of stumbling, falling, tripping, finding myself accidentally upright before falling again and occasionally skipping, I came bouncing to a halt at the bottom of the hill, followed closely by the rest of the group. We picked our way into the forest for about 20 meters, before Caleb shushed us. The trackers materialized from the bush and invited us to put down our packs, and drink our fill of water, since we were going to go in to see the gorillas now. We listened to the safety advice carefully… not least because it consisted entirely of “If one charges you, duck down and avert your gaze.” It’s hard to get bored during a sentence like that, especially considering its brevity. “What,” I queried somewhat tremulously, “should we do if they don’t stop charging?” Caleb laughed and said that he would be up a tree, and consider shouting down some ideas at that point.

We began our trek through the thick tangle, with the guides hacking away with machetes. About 10 seconds after we started, I realized that we were already AT the gorillas. A male, jet-black, was lying on his back intensely interested in the nutritional content of a stick he was gnawing on. He was maybe 5 meters away.

What followed was an incredible hour of chasing – literally, albeit slowly – a group of about 12-16 gorillas through the underbrush. We gasped as the alpha male, a MASSIVE silverback named Safari, ambled towards our group. We cooed and giggled as a tiny baby bounced its head off of the ground. I panicked in blind terror as I realized that I was being tailed by one, and I had ended up as the last one in the group. When the animal DID begin to charge me (and when I say charge, that’s what my adreniline will tell you happened… even if my sober memory gently reminds me that “amble” may have been a better word), I remembered the advice, and went to duck and back away and tripped over a root. catching my foot in it. “Great,” I thought. “Here I am, remembering the damned advice and unable to follow it because my hiking boots have chosen THIS moment to consumate their crush on a hanging vine.” Thankfully, the gorilla stopped in its approach and simply looked at me, likely wondering something along the lines of “How on earth are they in charge of protecting us?”

That gorilla – Posho, I discovered his name was later – was about the coolest animal Ive ever met. He followed us a bit longer, before taking a shortcut and plopping himself down in a tree about 1-2 meters from the group. He was in no rush, and the last 15 minutes of our allotted hour were spent in contemplation of each other. By the time we left, I felt that the next time I was in Bwindi, I could look Posho up and he’d be happy to see me and remind me how if it wasn’t for him being a nice guy, I’d be in the hospital with a case of “being trampled upon by a gorilla”.

We hiked back up the ridge, and a few hours and a few million uphill gasping steps later, we were in the car on our way back to Kisoro.

In DeNile

You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to use that blog title for a post.

In any case… get ready for the fastest 15 minutes in Interweb history. Normally a post takes me about 30-40 minutes to write, craft, edit and pimp… but this one is coming at you on the minimal internet time I can afford.

I should have known better than to expect African public transport to run smoother than liquid linoleum. Foolish me. It started off badly enough… in Arusha, the private company shuttle that we hired to pick us up and take us to Nairobi didn’t remember to collect MaryLou, Cliff and myself from the White House. A few phone calls, and THAT was rectified… but we still rolled into Nairobi about three hours behind schedule, meaning that we were going to miss our bus to Kampala. Right?

Wrong! The bus to Kampala was supposed to depart at 9:00pm. We didn’t arrive until 9:45pm, but that didn’t matter, because the bus didn’t leave until 2:45 in the blinkin’ morning!! Apparently it decided to ‘break down’ or something. Thus, of course, delayed us getting into Kampala.

 The ride itself wasn’t too bad… as long as you ignore the fact that the seat of my chair wasn’t permanently attached to the back of it, meaning that I’d slide around every time we hit a rut, stone, bump, pothole or stray goat. This happened approximately every 7.5 seconds. That makes for a VERY long construction-slowed, traffic-congested, dirt-road meandering 15 hour trek from city to city.

What was kind of interesting was that the coldest I’ve been  – possibly in my life, excepting the time I went camping in -40 C and had to thaw the dish soap over the fire – was on this bus at night. I was in shorts and a t-shirt, the windows were stuck open, and the whipping night air ensured my core temperature was about the same as a double-scoop of pistachio. Where in Africa was this, you ask? About as we were crossing the Equator. This recently won International First Place in the Irony of AllTime competition.

We finally checked in to our hostel in Kampala a mere 30 hours after we left Arusha, all but 5 of those hours spent in a bus or shuttle along dirt roads. My spine now resembles a haunted tree, complete with cracks.

The hostel, bless their hearts, had been waiting for us to arrive for HOURS and were just about to sell our gorilla permits. Hessie – wherever you are (actually… Im at Backpackers now… so about 4 doors down) thanks highly. We confirmed we were still chasing the big hairies, and then also had the hostel book a rafting trip down the Nile with Nile River Explorers.

At least… that’s what we thought. After the 6:30am wakeup to get on the bus to the nearby Nile, we discovered we were actually booked with Nalubale, the SISTER company of NRE. Not that it mattered… they were running the same itineary for the same price from the same building. All it meant was that we were in the much more noticeable giant yellow raft, instead of the red ones.

Ruben – our New Zealand bred leader – convinced the five of us (Rivers, Ronnie, Becky, MaryLou and Cliff) – that there was nothing to be afraid of… aside from the potential of being eaten by Nile Crocs, the 4 Grade Five rapids we’d be tackling and … well… that was it, but we didn’t really need a third.

 The day on the water was incredible. We flipped multiple names, successfully nailed a 16-ft waterfall by sliding down a rock-shelf in the middle of it, and generally had an insanely good time. My personal aversion to sunscreen has meant that my body currently resembles a cross between a radish, a boiled lobster and the sun but whatever. Who needs full motion anyways?

 After our rafting experience was complete, we got a free night’s stay at a campsite overlooking the Nile at Bujagali Falls (don’t have time to look up the spelling to see if I got it right). This, while incredible in itself, was enhanced by the fact that the local beer is Nile Special.. which I drank overlooking the Nile. How cool is that?!

 And that wasn’t even the best part… the campsite had, at some point, employed a genius who designed open-fronted showers that were closed on the sides and back, but open to the wilds at the front… overlooking the Nile that tumbled towards Egypt at the bottom of the cliffs on which they were built. Thus it was that Ronnie, Becky and I all watched the sun set over the Nile from (separate) showers – an added bonus, being my first in 60 hours.

 We were all pretty exhausted, so after a few beers at the campsite bar and a screening of the $45US video of yourselves doing the rafting that you can buy (…we did…) we crashed. Hard.

Of course… I woke up in the middle of the night to a skittering, scritching, squeaking noise that turned out to be giant rats Becky had seen climbing my mosquito net earlier that night. Uganda is just full of fun surprises like that.

This morning – we’re on the 21st, for those keeping track - we awoke, and wandered out into the locals foodstalls to buy ourselves chapati breakfast. Chapati is an Indian bread, similar to a savoury pancake. I had two – one stuffed with a banana and honey, and one with a veggie omlette. Total cost for both? About 75 US cents. Traveller’s Diarrhea comes free as well.

 We caught a private hire (taxi) back to Kampala from Jinja (where we were based) and then organized – rather haphazardly – our bus trip to Kisoro, which we’ll use as a gorilla tracking base starting tomorrow … whenever we arrive.

 We also used the time in Kampala to check out a 250-year old turtle and find a geocache… my first in Uganda!

Ack. Out of time. Sorry I didn’t include the story about the three naked wom

10 Things to do in Uganda

Today, after having forsaken sleep, nutrition and friends for the last three to four weeks, I have new life.

This morning we rendered the judgement in the case of The Prosecutor v. Protais Zigiranyirazo. This was the case that made my job necessary, that gave me my chance to come to Africa and that sucked pretty well every last remaining calorie of energy from my page-turning fingers.

For the crimes of Genocide and Extermination as a Crime Against Humanity, Zigiranyirazo was given 20, 20 and 15 years of imprisonment, to be served concurrently. He was found guilty of genocide for participation in a joint criminal enterprise (JCE) during an attack on Kesho Hill, a Tutsi safe-spot in 1994, that killed somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1000 people. He also was found to have aided and abetted genocide through his provision of support and encouragement to individuals manning a roadblock near his residence who were checking ID papers for the purpose of slaughtering Tutsi. On the same facts regarding Kesho Hill, but with a different mens rea, he was found guilty of Extermination for his participation in a JCE.

In court -where I was sitting today, fully robed, in an intenational genocide court, yes ladies, I’m single – Zigiranyirazo acted mostly stone-faced, until called to stand in the witness box to receive his sentence. Then, I can’t be sure, but it seemed to me that his manner deflated.

Of course… no one really noticed any of this, because the judgement of the de facto leader of the genocide -  Colonol Theoneste Bagosora – was rendered about 30 minutes after ours. They didn’t so much steal my thunder as pilfer the entire weather pattern and then kidnap Brian Hill.

Zigiranyirazo, interestingly, has been linked to the murder of Dian Fossey, best known from the film Gorillas in the Mist. And wouldn’t you know that his past (alleged) misdeeds are my immediate future.

I will not know the fate of Bagosora until the news comes out, however, since by the time you read this, I will already be on a bus along with Mary Lou and her new Tanzanian boyfriend Cliff, en route to Nairobi, Kenya before linking up with Ronnie and Becky to travel to Kampala, Uganda. Our plans are still somewhat fluid, as befits someone with the last name Rivers, but there’s already a few things lined up that I’m sure have my sister Ali in twitching jealousy fits and my poor mother left to once again question my instincts for self-preservation.

Thus…

10 Things to do in Uganda

1. Gorilla Tracking

I received an excited phone call on Tuesday around 4:00pm from Ronnie, who informed me that he’d been able to track down FIVE hard-to-find permits that will allow us to visit silverback mountain gorillas in their natural habitat in the southwest of Uganda. While he didn’t specify in our brief conversation, I’m fairly certain that we will be visiting the incredibly named Bwindi Impenitrible Forest. (*Note: Having Googled the ‘spelling’ you see there, I was shocked to discover my OWN blog as the first hit. Apparently this a word I have very firm ideas on how to spell… ideas that none of Messrs. Webster, Oxford or Dictionarydotcom agree with. The correct title of the park is Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.)

While some of you may be wondering what on God’s green earth could compel me to spend $500 to spend some time with hairy, scratching, smelling, grunting, ravenous humanoids… I note that I spend approximately that much to fly back to Ontario to spend time with my brother, which isn’t all that different. Of course… with Tom, I get to spend as much time as it takes to beat him in a game of golf (To date: I have emerged victorious in one game out of the fourteen or so we’ve played. I think he may be slightly better than me…) With the gorillas, however, my $500 hard-earned US dollars get me one rigidly timed hour.

It matters not. This is likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’m very very excited about it.

2. White-Water Rafting on the Nile

The last time I white-watered anything was this summer when I threw my half-naked body through what I’m sure was glacial meltwater in order to enjoy the thrill of going through “a hole in the rock”. Prior to that it was when I got tossed from a canoe with Gillian Hewson while attempting to shoot very tame rapids in a canoe while I still called SJK home.

Thus, clearly, it makes sense to go into a raft that will tackle FIVE Class V rapids. Sample names of the rapids include – and I kid you not – “Widow Maker,” “Blade Runner,” “The Dead Dutchman,” “Ribcage” and “Hair of the Dog.” We do a 30-km stretch of the river – with a safety boat on hand and multiple fully trained first aid professionals, all of whom I plan to never be forced to meet - before returning for a BBQ.

3. Kibale National Park

Monkeys are awesome. Full stop. Thus being in the same country as the park with the world’s highest concentration of primate life is also awesome. That’s just logic. While you can go on a chimpanzee-tracking trip, I may take a pass as a concession to the gorillas. Then again, I may say “t’heck with it” and simply plan on living in Karl’s 1979 Lincoln Continental automobile trunk for the rest of the year. Even if I take a pass on the chimps, I’ll still head to the park and do some hiking to see the animals and enjoy the forest.

4. Boat Trip on Lake Victoria

Source of the Nile? Check. Massive diversity of aquacious species? Check. Ridiculously massive inland African lake? Check. Named after the city where I live when I’m back in Canada? Umm… sure. In short, I just want to be able to spend a little bit of time on one of the most famous lakes in the world.

5. Geocaching in Kampala

The seat of Ugandan Government and the home of what I expect to be my first geocache in Uganda. While there’s a variety of them available across the country, many of which I will try to collect over the duration of my stay, there are few that offer as much of a guarantee as one cache that has been found within the last month and has been around a while. This will mean I can check four different countries off of my geocaching map from this trip – England, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. If I can squeeze one in in Kenya, so much the better.

I will also, hopefully, find time to visit the government buildings and the Kabaka Tombs, about which I know absolutely nothing.

6. Murchison Falls

While Wikipedia didn’t confirm them as “the world’s most powerful waterfall”, which is what I kind of thought, it did provide this scientific gem:

“At the top of Murchison Falls, the Nile forces its way through a seven metre gap in the rocks and tumbles 43 metres down, then flows westward into Lake Albert. The outlet of Lake Victoria sends around 300 cubic metres per second (11,000 ft³/s) of water over the falls, squeezed into a gorge less than ten metres (30 ft) wide.”

In other words… the washrooms there have a very long line.

7. Bus Trip to … ?

There are a few geocaches that seem to be in the middle of nowhere. As a result, I will probably use one of them as a goal in my efforts to explore real Uganda by taking a bus through more rural parts of the country. However, I will likely work on avoiding the northern parts, since there’s, y’know, rebel bases, airstrikes and general civil shenanigans. Basically… the Star Wars scenes where they’re on the moon of Endor, but with fewer Ewoks.

8. Stradle the Equator

This particular exercise has one major advantage that all the others don’t: it’s free. While I have no doubts that there are plans in the work to begin charging travellers a “Latititude Crossing Fee” – hell, the US economy could use the cash injection – so far, this particular exercise is mostly cost-free. All I need to do is find a bus that crosses the line and have them let me off.

9. … attend a wedding?!

Ronnie – who apparently is a better organizer than I am – has been meticulously tracking down cheap/free accomodation for us through the CouchSurfing website. One of the fellows who’s agreed to take us in is actually getting married while we’re in town. Thus, for the cost of buying ourselves Arab robes, we’re invited to his wedding. Apparently Ugandan weddings are, traditionally, “off the hook”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but my guess is that I’ll not be able to remember enough about the wedding to relay my findings.

10. Yet to be Determined…

I’ll be in Uganda from about the 19th to the 30th, needing to be back in Arusha to check out of the Tribunal on the 31st, and bus to Dar Es Salaam on the 1st to catch my plane on the 2nd. Who knows what’ll come up that I’ll deem worthy of a few hours, a few dollars or a few years off the end of my life?

Right – well – this may be all you from me for some time, depending on internet access in Uganda. If it is, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Random seasonal greetings as well to those who celebrate things other than fat men in red suits, mass commercialism and Baby Jesus.

I’m looking at you Karl.

Where the Heck is Rivers?

I’m sure the vast majority of you are wondering… what in the name of Zar4on happened to Rivers? He’d been so consistent this time! Blogging every 2 or 3 days, responding to emails, generally confirming his existence to the rest of the world as opposed to being the shy, retiring violet that he normally is…

Work happened. Not that long ago, a certain really Elder McNutt (*zing*)made a snarky-type comment questioning if I was actually doing any work, or just spending the majority of my time insulating Tanzania from the global economic crisis. This despite the fact that when I wasn’t off chasing monkeys or enjoying malted beverages, I tended to work chunks of most weekends, and kick around at the office until 7:30pm or so.

Ah… the good ol’ relaxing days. Ever since Simon Bikindi was found guilty, my workload has increased by a factor of incalculable. This is because we will be rendering another judgement – that of Protais Zigiranyirazo – on Thursday. Since much of the team for Zigi was also on the team for Bikindi, much of our focus had been on Simon Says. At least, until the day of his judgement.

Since then, I’ve averaged 12 hours a day at work, peaking at 14 one memorable/immolation-inducing day. In the same way that computer screens left on for too long may occasionally burn an after-image permanently into the display, my pupils now contain the English Transcript of 11 October 2005 in miniature writing, much like that Chinese-rice-text. I have had the same lunch four days in a row because it’s closest to the Tribunal, which saves time… but I know they take a long time to prepare it, which means I actually get a break.

All that said, of course, I really wouldn’t have it any other way. I like to think that I thrive on work – and being worked as hard as this means that either I’ve managed to carry my weight so far, or that they’re very very desperate. (*Note to all firms reading this as part of their applicant research: the former is undoubtedly both true and an understatement. I’m actually the only reason this judgement is going to be done on time. I’ve been called a “better spoken Barack Obama”. I just had to be modest for the legions of fans. They expect it. Fame can be tough, you know.)

Delusional grandeur aside, I love the fact that I’m in the game here. It’s been fascinating work, and the team I’m doing it with is either matching or exceeding me in hour-for-hour work, and is always supportive. And, once again, I’ll get to be in court when a judgement is rendered.

The fact that I’ve worked on two judgements right at their conclusion is incredibly fortunate. Both of these cases began more than two years ago, and it’s just good fortune I arrived at this specific time. (Well… not entirely good fortune. I was hired to do this particular work because they knew it’d be a crunch. But it was fortunate that I applied for this particular time.)

Somehow, in all of this, I managed to find time to celebrate turning 24. I’ve ticked one year closer to the magical quarter-century mark, and yet still feel approximately half of that age. This is probably not aided by my incredible sister Ali, who sent me a birthday card reminding me (among other things) that I at one point dressed up as Sauruman, using a tattered white facecloth as a beard. She also pointed out that at one point, during a Savage Garden song, I made my hand into a Scouts salute and rocked out, AC/DC style. Of course… she did things quite similar to this, but that’s beside the point.

In order to celebrate my birthday, I did what any other North American would do. I went to an auto-parts store that, at night, doubles as a chicken BBQ and feasted on half a chicken with chips and spicy Indian salads. I then went to the hostel where I stayed on my first night, and enjoyed a shandy on their rooftop bar. If you don’t know what a shandy is, it’s the vilest, most alcoholic and manly drink you can have. A single sip of it turns your hair 60% more Mr. T-related and increases the dimple in your chin by the depth of a twoonie. You also develop a taste for hunting and fixing/breaking things. In short… it’s a lager mixed with a Sprite. Grrrrr!!

Following one or two of those badboys, I upped stakes and went to Via Via, a local nightclub. I lasted about 40 minutes, before I was invited to leave by security. What egregious offence had I committed? Well… with shandy running through my veins, I angrily took a swing at a man who had nudged my right shoulder with his beverage, and who then turned out to be the Vice-President of Kenya. He went down like a swath of British Columbian old-growth.

…. okay okay, it was for having smuggled in a bottle of Finnish licorice alcohol I’d been given as a gift from Kaisu, one of the greatest people on the world, who happens to be Finnsh. So I went home and answered Facebook wall posts instead. What will those crazy birthday kids do next?

The African Atmosphere

One of my long-time readers – also known as my mother – suggested a post discussing what the city here is like a couple of weeks ago, and this is a perfect time for it. I’ve had nothing particularly exciting happen that needs immediate chronicling, I still don’t have the energy to write an academic-type post on the history of the ICTR (still coming soon!) and I’ve not seen the outside world in weeks as 12 hour days and working weekends and holidays has become the norm. This is mostly because the judgement that I’m aiding in drafting – Protais Zigiranyirazo – is being rendered in a mere week and two days, and there’s always more to do.

So… what’s different about Tanzania?

First of all, it’s very very hard to get good coverage of the Maple Leafs. I’ve been trying. I’m forced to settle for Damien Cox’s ‘The Spin’ blog which is quite good, but not as extensive as my normal perusal of the websites of TSN, Sportsnet, the NHL, the Maple Leafs, the Hockey News, the Sporting News, SI.com, Yahoo! Sports and Jeff mocking me/them.

Beyond that, there are a few other minor things. The best way, probably, is walk you through a day in my life. Thus…

7:00 am: Alarm on my 29000Tsh cell phone goes off. This cell phone is exactly my type – it has zero features. It deals with calls and text messages, and has an alarm clock and a very basic calculator. It is refilled with cash by walking onto the street and looking for someone wearing a bright blue apron, who sells phone credit out of a stack of cardboard cards. There are more phone credit salespeople in Arusha than bureaucrats in Ottawa. It’s perplexing. Especially considering that a 10 000 Tsh phone card costs 10 000 Tsh. How much profit can these poor sellers actually be making?

7:03 am: Wander blearily from my new room (actually a room! not just a curtained off section of hallway!) to the washroom. Sit on the floor underneath the tap protruding from the wall, since the shower function is currently set to “do not work”. Remove slimed-over portion of soap from murky puddle of water where cleaning lady has carefully placed it for disintegration, after removing from my dry and clean hiding place. Warsh.

 

7:45 am: Collect Shelton and (before she left suddenly for family reasons) Lindsey and wander up to work. We walk for about 18 minutes. The streets are already fairly busy, since there’s a lot of people who depend on every minute of the day for money. Young men pulling large wooden carts, laden with things from used clothes to stacks of firewood are not uncommon. They tend to be unhappy if you try to sit on the cart for a free ride. There are also children everywhere, clad in VERY warm-looking uniforms. One local school uses forest green knit sweaters as a key part of uniform, raising the approximate temperature of the child wearing it to that of a steel-melting kiln. There are also people selling slices of freshly cut pineapple, local ‘artists’ hawking canvasses with paintings and newspaper boys everywhere. Just very recently I have been shown a shortcut through a palm-tree filled chunk of town. It winds between wood and metal shacks, caked with mud, housing local families. It’s a very pretty, but very poor part of the town.

Most of what I walk through is the richer part, but there are vast sections of Arusha that are filled with little more than concrete/wood shacks, about 30 square ft. that house entire families. It’s not exactly The Beaches.

8:05 : Continue through town. When I first got here I was like a fresh steak in a pirhana tank… I drew immediate attention. Now, with my UN badge hanging from a blue strap around my neck, the tourist-hawks know better than to waste their time trying to sell me safaris, Masaai knives or paintings. Every now and then, though, one gives it a shot. There is a key Swahili phrase that gets you out of this:

“Hapana, asante, kaka… na isha hapa.”

It means “No, thanks, brother… I live here.” At this point, of course, they rattle off about 57 high-speed Swahili words, none of which I recognize. Usually I just smile and wave and that seems to make them happy. Tanzanians refer to each other in a very familial sense – kaka is brother (appropriate, yes?), dada is sister (confusing, yes?) and mama is mother (hooray!).

In order to win serious points with Tanzanians, a bit of Swahili goes a long way. If asked…

Mambo? … you say “Poa.”

Habari?  … you say “Nzuri.”

Jambo? … you say “Sijambo.”

Shikamoo? … you say “Maharaba”

The first two are actual greetings used between Africans. Mambo is the equivalant of “Sup?” and Habari the equivalent of “How are you?”. Jambo is used for tourists, and the response given basically means “I’ve been hear long enough to know how to respond.” They’ll usually then upgrade to Mambo or Habari. You’d better know the answer, or you’re easy prey for their wares. Shikamoo – pronounced “SHIK-a-moe” – is used to greet elders, for whom you have respect. Shelton and I got Shikamoo’d the other day and nearly killed ourselves.

8:10 am : The sky is already baking blue and usually Mt. Meru is standing out in the near distance, above the Tribunal. It’s unusually ‘sharp’ for a mountain – the contours are crisp, the colours are clear and the mountain occasionally has tufts of white cloud surrounding its peak like a bald man’s last attempt at a fringe. It’s a wonderful, spectacular mountain. The sweat from the already 25 degree heat, though, makes you really wish you were on top of it where it’s a wee bit cooler.

8:15 am : Arrive at the Arusha International Conference Centre, home of the UN-ICTR.  Beep as I go through the metal detector, but be happily waved through by security anyways. Occasionally I don’t beep… and this is because the metal detector is turned off.

8:20 am : Arrive at office. Read news, check e-mail, complain bitterly about the Maple Leafs until around 8:35. If the Leafs won (unlikely, at best) I print off the lead story, and pin it to my wall. I started on the 1st of November, and as of today – a month and a bit later – I have 6 stories. I also have a drawing of a Maple Leafs logo I was mailed by Katie Ross and a team schedule with a lot of “Loss” written beside the dates. My office also features a bottle of Glenfiddich and a bottle of Malibu hidden behind a binder that says “Glen’s Files” for late-night celebrations, when I’ve been working until 8:00 or 9:00. My Obama bumper sticker above my monitor, a Doonesbury comic I was emailedby Brad and a Sarah Palin debate flowchart from Angela complete the personal touches. There’s about 60 pages of looseleaf pinned, stapled, tossed and placed around my office… all of which are vitally important, many of which are confidential, and none of which can be found within 3 hours of beginning to look for them.

9:45 am: First phone call to my supervisor, Maggie, regarding the day’s work.

9:47 am : Second phone call to my supervisor, Maggie, regarding the day’s work.

9:52 am : Third phone call to my supervisor, Maggie, regarding the day’s work.

9:54 am : Maggie not answering phone. Not sure why.

11:30 am : Quick email to Shelton planning lunch.

12:30 pm : Leave, generally with Shelton and Andrea Clarke, for lunch. There are a variety of places we go. Masaai Cafe and Via Via are the two we use when feeling like Western-style and Western-priced food. Immigration Cafe and City Centre Cafe are the options for when we want Tanzanian fare. The Tanzanian stuff tends to be a bit blander… but much much cheaper. Lunch at Immigration Cafe costs me 2300 Tsh ($2.30) and I get brown rice, green banana stew, steamed spinach, ‘beef’, sauces and an orange Fanta. Tanzanian food tends in the direction of simple and cheap, but it’s pretty good.

1:15 pm : Return from lunch (unless dining at Masaai Cafe… in which case, receive drinks ordered at 12:35 pm).

5: 30 pm (pre-November 15) : Leave to go home.

5: 30 pm (post-November 15) : Look at clock, sigh, remember when I used to go home at 5:30, and buckle in for a few more hours. This story ends here, really. Back to the old version…

6: 00 pm : Walk home. Pass the roundabout near the New Arusha Hotel. The only way to cross is to go halfway when there’s a brief break in traffic, stand in the middle of the road, then go the rest of the way when there’s a brief break in traffic. Basically, walking in Arusha is like playing a game of Frogger. It’s basically assumed that anyone with a car has worked harder, has money, and is therefore higher status than a walker or a bicycler. Same again bikes-to-pedestrians. In Africa, and this from my Kenyan friend Andrew, money really talks.

6:05 pm : On the way down Fire Rd., where the White House is located, there are women cooking maize over small fires, and selling the cobs with warm corn for a handful of coins. I tried this once, and while enjoyable, have yet to get the moxie to pull it off again. Tanzanians on the way home tend to be very friendly. Most will will acknowledge you, some will ask for money and others will just ask how you are. It’s a definitely friendly culture. For this, we can thank Julius Nyerere – the former President – who instilled a serious sense of family in the country.

6:18 pm : Arrive at White House. Beside White House is a small store selling mostly expired products. However between the road and the houses/store there is a ditch, about 3-4 feet deep and about 3-4 feet wide. To get something from the store, you need to walk across a concrete slab placed across the ditch to the barred window of the store, and order from there. On one side of you is a broken leg, and on the other a telescoped spine. Using Expired Store after consuming alcohol may be hazardous to your health.

6:30 pm onwards: Relax at the house, maybe beat everyone else in Monopoly, eat the dinner prepared by the house cook (either ugali or rice, soup and some vegetables in sauce, usually) and watch a movie on my laptop/read a book/play some cards. Pass out, exhausted, and prepare for the next day.

11:59 pm : Wake up, with the mosquito net hanging askew, and freak out at the golf-ball sized bite on my angle.