Gorilla Tracking

February 17-18, 2011

Something I’ve learned from my time in Rwanda is that the best stories don’t necessarily have a definitive beginning or end, but rather, they go in a circle, they are continuous. So, that being said, I am going to start what will probably be my longest and most exciting blog post of the month at the end, and by the time it’s over, you’ll have the whole story, and you can decide how to read it:

We arrived back from the northern province to the village and lugged our backpacks (and new purchases) to our guesthouse, where we proceeded to collapse. It’s exhausting, waking up before the sun to track mountain gorillas, and despite fantastic meals and wonderful beds to sleep in, physical exhaustion can triumph, and we didn’t fight it. However, a little over an hour after returning, it was time for the weekly village activity. Every other Friday night, this means a dance party in the dining hall. Of course, I had to go, and a bunch of the other volunteers joined me, despite our inability to form sentences due to being so tired. We walked up to the dining hall and the music was playing, but no one was dancing. And these kids are great dancers. So, we clearly took it upon ourselves to liven things up and get the dance party started. I’m sure the kids had a laugh watching us dance around, but it did the trick; eventually, most of them joined us and we had an amazing time, laughing and dancing. I left early because I’m waking up tomorrow at 5:30 (again, for the second day in a row) to do Muchaka Muchaka! which is the weekly run around the village led by the security guards. On my walk back to the guesthouse, I found myself reflecting on all the unbelievable things that have happened to me in the past three weeks, especially in the last day and a half. Rwanda is so alive and its people have so much joy to share. As the music from the dining hall began to fade in the distance behind me, and the sounds of the frogs and birds who live across from our guesthouse began to overpower the boom of the speaker system, I began to think of how to best relay to all of you one of the most incredible and unforgettable experiences of my lifetime.

I’ve had some crazy adventures while in Rwanda, and in Israel, but none quite like the last 36 hours of my life. Rwanda’s most (and only, really) famous tourist attraction is its mountain gorillas, the only gorillas in the world still living in their natural habitat where humans can visit them. Our adventure began Thursday afternoon when Thousand Hills Expeditions (the travel company who plans trips to the gorilla park; there are only 50 gorilla tracking permits sold a day, so the company buys them in advance for groups like ours) came to the village to pick us up in Land Cruisers. These were very nice, cushioned and well-kept Land Cruisers (they had seatbelts. This is major for any vehicle in Rwanda; most don't) and I was quite excited to spend four hours sitting in one. We left the village after lunch time and drove north. Our driver, Hussein, was awesome. He told us he spent a few years in Israel, so his Hebrew and his English are excellent. Any time we had a question about what we were passing, or if we could possibly stop for bathroom break, Hussein was always able to answer our questions or pull over so we could stretch our legs, run to the bathroom or change money from dollars to francs. As we drove through the hills of Rwanda, children came running up to the car. They don’t usually ask for money (never in the isolated provinces, but in Kigali there are a lot of beggars, many of whom are children), but they just want to see us, to see the Muzungu. Rwandans love seeing Western people in their country. I’m not sure if it’s because of our skin or our language or simply where we come from, but we get a lot of “USA! We love USA” followed by a thumbs-up, or simply waving and screaming “Hello, teacher. Good morning teacher!” (all the kids call us “teacher,” probably because we are Muzungu).

We made a few stops (Nakumatt, naturally, for necessary snack items – I got a diet coke that the woman opened for me to put a straw in and it exploded all over her, me and the entire counter – and some scenic viewpoints to take photos) and passed coffee plantations, corn fields, rice paddies and sugarcane. Everywhere was green, rolling hills, land being farmed (anyone working in the fields either waved or came running to see us pass by in our trucks) and women walking on the sides of the road, babies tied to their backs and baskets balanced on their heads. Eventually, we reached the Gorilla Nest Lodge, where we were greeted with hand towels and ginger tea. The lodge itself was gorgeous; grass-thatched roofs, African art, sprawling landscapes and one of Rwanda’s few (if only) golf courses. We were handed dinner menus after checking in and placed our dinner orders (dinner was a four-course ordeal) and then the concierge asked us when we wanted our dinner. We said whenever it was ready, but they corrected us by asking when we wanted to have our dinner because whenever we wanted it, it would be ready. We decided on 7:30 and therefore had time to put our things in our guesthouses (each room was its own guesthouse, complete with a porch, flowers and plants and a view) and take much needed showers. It started to pour a little while before dinner, so several lodge employees delivered umbrellas to our rooms and told us that there was a surprise performance in the main house. We went to go check it out: a group of traditional African dancers was performing, along with drummers and singers, in the lobby! The staff had set up couches and giant armchairs for us to sit and watch the show. The performers were unbelievable, and at the end, they invited us to dance with them, and they even tried to teach us some steps! Once our dance debut ended, we were all sweating and laughing so hard it was difficult to breathe, and it was time for dinner.

We had a delicious meal and after a short while of hanging out in the main house, it was time for bed. The next morning at 5:30, our wakeup call came in the form of someone knocking on our door (they knock on your door to wake you up instead of calling your room) and saying “Good morning, this is your wake up call. Please get up. Thank you.” Easily the most polite wakeup call ever. We put on our tracking gear (jeans, sneakers, and long sleeve shirts) and headed to breakfast, which was also fantastic (I had coffee – real coffee – for the first time all month, and an omelet. So tasty). By 7 AM, we were back in the Land Cruisers, on our way to Volcanoes National Park in Kinigi. Volcanoes National Park is where the gorilla tracking offices are, so it was there that we met our guide, Oliver, and he told us about the family we would be tracking.

Since there were nine of us, we had to split into two groups (only eight trackers in a group, plus a guide, an armed guard and porters). There are fifteen gorilla families living in the mountains of northern Rwanda, so each group tracks a different family and hikes a different path. In my group, there were four Year Coursers (me and three other girls) and four tourists, all of whom came to Rwanda solely to see the gorillas. Our group, other than us, included a British couple, Ian and Annabelle, a woman named Caroline who is originally from Zimbabwe but now lives in London, and a man named Burkhard from Germany (he’s almost 70 and has been traveling through Africa for the past 3 months. Rwanda is his final destination before returning home). Oliver briefed us about our gorilla family. We tracked the Umubano family. In Kinyarwanda, Umubano means “friendship.” This family has an interesting history, which earned it its name:

Years ago, there was one chief silverback gorilla of the family, and when he died, there was an ongoing power struggle between the two male gorillas next in line to be the leader. They fought for some time and then split up, either realizing that the mountains are big enough for both of them or simply out of frustration. After some time, the two reconciled and they are now one family; the male gorillas share wife gorillas and they all live together with the babies. It is one big family that remains whole due to friendship, to umubano.

After meeting Oliver and learning about the Umubano family, we left tracking headquarters and drove to the mountains where we would begin our hike. This was a crazy drive; the road that leads from the main town (i.e. the two restaurants, one bar and a few homes and shops) to the mountain is not paved, not dirt, but rocks. Huge, bumpy rocks. This made for an adventurous drive, but Hussein, my main man, go us there without a scratch. At the starting point we met up with our group and our porters, who ended up saving my life several times on the hike up and down the mountain. First, we were given walking sticks (mine was about as big as I am) and we walked through daisy fields to the foot of the mountain. Daisies are grown in Rwanda and then dried in the sun because their dried centers are used as a natural insecticide. After weaving our way through the fields of flowers, we reached the foot of the mountain. I made the grave mistake of looking up: all I saw were trees, branches, and a straight incline to the top. Immediately, the porters took out machetes and used a walking stick to clear us a path and make foot stairs in the side of the mountain. The ascent was, to say the least, difficult, but it was short. The porters were jumping (literally jumping… on the side of a mountain) from the front of the group to the back, clearing our path, taking people by the elbows to lift them up and over obstacles like fallen trees and tangled braches. Half an hour later, after the porters had to hoist me up at least three times by my shoulders, we had reached our family. We had to leave most of our things (except cameras and video recorders) with the porters, at least 100 meters from the gorillas; they can’t be around any food or water we were carrying because they would probably smell my protein bar and want it (I would tell them it tastes like sand and not to bother, to stick to their grass and leaves, but chances are good they wouldn’t exactly listen).

We moved slowly and quietly into the trees, and all of a sudden, we heard a tree fall. In it was Mr. Charles, the head of the Umubano family and a silverback, who looks like he weighs about five hundred pounds, loves to eat his tall grasses, and, of course, fart. No, I am not joking, you have not laughed sufficiently until you are within two feet of a farting gorilla (please excuse the bathroom humor, but this is all very true). We tracked Mr. Charles for a while and then moved down the mountain to find a wife gorilla (a Mrs. Gorilla, as I started calling them) and two of the babies. One of them is only six months old, and crawled right in front of my feet! The babies were playing, hanging in the trees, running after one another. I wanted to take one home, they were so adorable, but a) we aren’t allowed to touch the gorillas (the oils on human hands are dangerous to them) and b) I wouldn’t exactly be able to bring him back through customs to Israel, and then to New Jersey, so logistically, it wouldn’t work.

Every group spends an hour with their gorilla family, and I think I took about two hundred pictures and several video clips; watching them in their natural habitat, going about their daily business of eating, playing, sleeping (and in Mr. Charles’ case, farting), was unbelievable. It is recommended to stay at least 7 meters away from the gorillas, but because our family was particularly friendly (hence Umubano) they came quite close to us, and a few times, the guards told us to move back. At one point, there was a baby hanging above my head and ended up breaking the branch on which he was hanging and fell about four feet from me. He then scurried down the mountain, looking for his playmate, and probably his mom, Mrs. Gorilla. They are so much like humans – they have opposable thumbs, which allows them to peel their tall grass (looks like celery) and eat it like string cheese, they communicate with one another (grunting, mostly, and the guards grunt back at them to either attract them or tell them to move further away), they stay in families with organized hierarchy, and many of their mannerisms and behaviors seem human. It was a surreal experience, getting so close to them, no fence or barrier like at a zoo, watching them live their daily lives, interact with one another, and at times, stop and stare at us.

The hike back down was very short because we were tracking the Umubano downhill, so we only had to hike a short ways to the bottom and back through the daisy fields. At the end, we said goodbye to our porters, bought t-shirts (very necessary) and received certificates of finishing our gorilla trek. After snapping a few final photos and thanking Oliver profusely, we piled back into our Land Cruiser with Hussein. Near the National Park offices, we had spotted a craft store, and since we finished our hike early, we asked Hussein if he could take us back there for a short while. He agreed, and so we drove back to the gorilla tracking base and across the parking lot is the artisan shop. Clearly, it is strategically placed; at least fifty tourists and their guides pass through every single day going gorilla tracking, so they always have customers. The store was beautiful, covered in colorful baskets, gorilla and elephant statues and art, African masks and fabrics. The best part, however, was in the back of the store. Behind the shop, the women who make the baskets were sitting and working, their children playing on their laps as they started and finished baskets and placemats. These women are quite famous in Rwanda, and around the world. After the genocide, Rwanda was 70% female, so women took on roles (previously dominated by men) of reviving the government and economy. A small group of women took up basket weaving and created a business; they now export their baskets to Macy’s in America and have an estimate yearly revenue of $1.5 million. Whenever a basket is sold via Macy’s, the Rwandan women make about $9 per basket (it’s sold for almost $50) and in Rwanda, each one costs about $6.50. Meeting these women and watching them work was incredible; I told them I had bought some of their work in America and now I’ve been living in Rwanda for a few weeks and I love what they do. Hussein was translating for me (none spoke French, only Kinyarwanda) and he also told them that we are volunteering in a children’s village in the eastern province. Upon hearing this, their faces lit up; they loved that we weren’t just in Rwanda to buy some baskets and visit the gorillas, but that we are living and working here (and we happened to go on vacation for a day). Having the opportunity to sit and talk to them, and take a few pictures, really made the day even more perfect.

After our short shopping trip, we went back to the lodge. On our way, we passed a Rwandan wedding party! The bride was in the middle of the procession, covered by a colorful umbrella and was, it looked to me, wearing a crown with beads on it. We tried to follow them, but it looked like they were heading to a nearby field for the ceremony, and they were moving a bit more slowly than our car. When we arrived back at the lodge, more towels and tea, and lunch menus, were waiting. Eventually, the second group returned, we took our final luxurious showers, packed our bags and headed to the main house for lunch, which was another three-course extravaganza. We said “Morakoze chane” (thank you very much) to all the hotel staff and packed into the Land Cruisers one last time. On our way back, we stopped at Nakumatt, of course, and arrived in the village before dinner time. Exhausted, sweaty and laden with our newest acquisitions, we made it back to the guesthouse where challah and guacamole (and the rest of our friends) were waiting for us to welcome Shabbat.

If you go back to the beginning of this post, I think you’ll find we’ve come full circle. Gorilla tracking was an incredible experience, one I know I will never forget. I’m learning that the world is a huge and sometimes crazy place, and there is no other place in it quite like Rwanda. Not just for its gorillas, which are amazing and awe-inspiring, but also for its people, like the group of ladies making baskets who have turned themselves into international businesswomen and the children who scream “We love USA!,” for its culture, as I witnessed in watching the wedding procession, for its warmth and kindness and genuine spirit. The gorillas are one more reminder, for me, that Rwanda is full of life and beauty and wonder, full of opportunities and experiences that can’t be found elsewhere.

Believe it or not, this post has taken me quite a while to finish. It’s now 7:30 on Saturday morning and I’ve been awake for two hours. I did Muchaka Muchaka (run run) with my village family and the security guards this morning at 6; the kids all chant, sing and scream in Kinyarwanda as we run, clapping along to the pace (I was able to do this… the singing, not so much) which makes the time pass. We run all through the village, up and down its hills, and finish at the dining hall for breakfast. I cut out before making it up the hill to the school and then back down to the dining hall because I took one look at the incline and my knees pretty much gave out. After hiking yesterday, and hiking again today (we leave for the rice paddies in an hour) my body needs somewhat of a break.

I’m going to go take a short rest and then get ready for the rice paddies – onto the next adventure!

Lots of love and umubano from Rwanda,
Elana