Home for the holidays

As much as I thought I was prepared to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Africa, I’ve realized over the past few days that there really is no place like home for the holidays. Al Stillman certainly had it right when he wrote those lyrics over fifty years ago – “Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays, ’cause no matter how far away you roam, if you want to be happy in a million ways, for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.” There really is nothing that can compare to taking time to celebrate the holidays at home with family and friends. I hope everyone else feels as wonderfully happy (in a million ways) and truly thankful as I do this holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Unexpected plans

When I woke up this morning, I never thought that seven hours later I’d be sitting at a tropical resort in the middle of the Tanzanian savannah. And yet here I am, sitting in a breezy, open restaurant, surrounded by beautiful purple, orange and pink flowers and cacti, sipping on “passion juice” (which I can only assume is made from passion fruit), listening to exotic birds that occasionally land on the patio next to me, gazing at Mount Kilimanjaro in the not-so-far distance. The scene is a little different than the uncomfortable, stuffy, dirty airport terminal where I thought I would spend my day. But when I was forced out of the Kilimanjaro airport upon arrival and given the option of walking back in by a different door or finding somewhere else to pass the time, I decided to explore. And so here I am at the Kia Lodge, just one kilometer and a world away from the airport, actually enjoying the ten hours that I'm having to wait before catching my next flight to Dar es Salaam.

Turkey dinner

Last night we celebrated Christmas one more time before everyone left for the holidays.

This time, though, we had a more traditional Christmas dinner – turkey (imported from South Africa), stuffing (with mix imported from the U.S.), mashed potatoes, gravy (imported from the U.S.), cranberry sauce (also imported from the U.S.), green beans, salad, apple crisp, chocolate cake (from a box imported from the U.S.) and oatmeal cookies (with mix imported from the U.S.). I don’t think I realized until just now how much of that meal was imported from elsewhere in the world. It may seem ridiculous, but none of those items could have been made (except, maybe, the gravy and oatmeal cookies) without importing certain items via a friend at the U.S. embassy.

Certainly some imported items can be found in Rwanda without having connections to the embassy, but most often they’re incredibly expensive. For example, a small bottle of Listerine mouthwash sells for almost $30 and a can of tuna is around $4. However, even shopping for items that are locally produced or imported for more reasonable costs is an experience. Fresh fruit and produce are certainly the easiest; there’s always someone walking down the road with a basket full of mangos or bananas or pineapples on their head, and the market is full of people selling all kinds of vegetables. Shopping for other food items, though, is something of a game. There are certain items that you can only find at BCK, certain ones that should be bought at City Market, and certain things that are best from La Galette. Still there are other items that require even more creative shopping. For example, the orphanage in Kimihurura takes orders for bagels on Thursday afternoons, one of the supermarkets receives shipments of Philadelphia cream cheese every few weeks, and numerous smaller shops occasionally have other specialty items. So a shopping trip for groceries is more like a game of hide and seek around the city.

I feel like I should also comment on the fact that it seems like I’ve been writing about food a lot lately, with Thanksgiving dinner, my Christmas dinner and this turkey dinner. I’ve been writing a lot about the food itself, which is certainly exciting as a change from the usual Rwandan cuisine, but the significance of these dinners is more related to the gathering of friends and the feeling of home. In a country where the weather is constantly sunny and over eighty degrees and where many holiday traditions are absent, it would be easy to miss the comfort and excitement of the Christmas season, but thankfully gathering and celebrating with good friends make the holiday season much more real.

Lunch with Ben Affleck

At lunch today, I ran into Ben Affleck. Yes, the actor Ben Affleck, from ‘Good Will Hunting’ and ‘Dogma’ and whatever other movies. According to the ever-reliable ‘New Times’, he was in town “explore investment opportunities for future business engagements.” Supposedly he’s interested in investing in “entertainment, value addition in agriculture and education,” so he was at Bourbon Café, where I was having lunch with friends, for a meeting with one of the government ministers. Life in Kigali is so random sometimes.

Trouble in the DRC

Most of the time, I pay little attention to email from the U.S. Embassy, but I received one today that caught my attention:

The U.S. Embassy hereby informs American citizens in Rwanda that all non-essential travel to the province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be deferred until further notice. The Travel Warning issued by Embassy Kinshasa dated April 24, 2007 remains in effect for the DRC.

According to media reports, as well as information provided by the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) and the U.S. Embassy representative in Goma, the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) stepped up military action against General Laurent Nkunda and his forces, using helicopter gunships and heavy artillery in the area of Mushake on December 4. Nkunda loyalists are moving from Kabati and Kilolirwe towards Kichanda and further north. Movements of forces on both sides, build-up of government troops, and continued clashes are expected. Numerous civilians are fleeing the region."

AFN football

Thanks to the fact that someone must have forgotten to disconnect the Armed Forces Network (AFN) from the house some of my friends just moved into, I just watched a real, live, American football game. I may not be a big fan of the Cowboys or the Lions (or, really, professional football in general, for that matter), but I was thrilled to have the chance to watch a game. Since the games will be on every week, I think we might have a new Sunday night tradition.

Puppy

After dinner last night, we had plans to go out to a new club in Kigali. We drove out to the area of town where we had been told it was and found out that the opening had been postponed until the next weekend. Just as we were about to turn back onto the main road to head back home, we saw a little puppy dodging cars in the middle of the road. Terrified that she’d be hit by a car (and knowing that even if she wasn’t hit by a car, she didn’t have much of a future on the streets of Kigali), we decided to pick her up and take her home. We brought her back to the house, where we gave her some leftover fried chicken, bathed her and then spent quite a while picking ticks and fleas off of her. Apparently it was all a little much for her, because as soon as we finished, she fell fast asleep and slept through the entire night. So now we (that's a collective "we" since the puppy isn't living at my house and it's still not clear where she'll be living when) have a sweet puppy to play with and take care of.

Christmas dinner

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the supermarket to shop for groceries to cook a Southern dinner for about a dozen of my good friends who were coming over to celebrate Christmas in Kigali. Most of what I planned to make was easy and familiar recipes, but trying to find the right ingredients in Kigali is always a little bit of a challenge. (For example, it’s impossible to find cheddar cheese, brown sugar, sour cream, vanilla extract and who knows what else.) Thankfully I was able to find most of what I needed for dinner – including four whole chickens imported from Burundi.

Now, as many times as I’ve eaten fried chicken, I have to confess that I’ve never actually fixed it, so I was a little nervous. I didn't want to disappoint, but somehow, before long, we had stoves and ovens full of food, including more than enough flour-coated chicken and a big pot of oil. I forgot to take a picture before everyone started filling their plates, but I think everything still looks pretty good.With a decorated Christmas tree, Santa hats, Christmas music, and mistletoe, not to mention lots of good company, it really felt like Christmas.After dinner we exchanged gifts and finished up the night with a "family portrait" of all of us in our hats. It was really a perfect celebration of the holidays together.

Thunderstorm

This morning, something incredible happened. I woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm. Of course the sound of rain is nothing new since it’s been raining almost daily since September, but until recently, it only rained in the afternoons. Even now that it's started raining some mornings, I realized today that as often and as hard as it rains, there's never any thunder. It's just the opposite of home, where it seems that any time it pours rain, there's thunder to go with it. I never thought that waking up to a thunderstorm would be such a comfort. Plus, it was much easier to be lazy and sleep in with a thunderstorm outside than if it were sunny with the birds, chickens and dogs making noise in the street.

Des Mille Collines Rally

This weekend, one of my friends participated in Des Mille Collines Rally, one of the largest rally races in Rwanda. The race covers approximately 350 kilometers over two days time, and the cars race at speeds as high as 140 to 150 kilometers per hour on the roads in rural Rwanda. Four of us followed the race around Rwanda to take pictures and give moral support. We left early in the morning from the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
On Saturday, we headed east from Kigali to the Akagera region of the country, and on Sunday, the race went west into the Ruhengeri region. The race went through some really rural areas of Rwanda, so we were able to see a lot of towns and villages and a lot of the countryside that we would never see otherwise. The ride was bumpy, but beautiful.
Since the race is divided into sections, we were only able to see about half of it. We would skip a section in order to drive to the next one and set up, watch that section, skip the next one to drive to a new location, watch that section, etc. My "official" role of the weekend was photographer, so at every stop, I had to find the best place to set up the camera and take pictures of my friend's car.

Watching the race was pretty interesting, but what was probably more fun was watching the crowds that came out to see the race. Since the race was literally on roads, it passed right through villages like this one, so it was easy for people to gather and watch.
As you can imagine, rally racing in Rwanda isn't the safest of sports, but thankfully, there were no serious accidents this weekend and we had a great time.

Gisenyi

On Friday night, after work, we hopped on a bus out of Kigali and headed northwest to Gisenyi, a small town on the northern coast of Lake Kivu, just on this side of the border with the DRC. It was about a three hour drive to Gisenyi, so since we left late, it was dark for most of the ride. However, we were lucky that there was a full moon, so we could still see the outline of the volcanoes and the landscape around us. Perhaps the most incredible view, though, was of Nyiragongo, an active volcano just across the border in the DRC.While in Gisenyi, we were truly on vacation. There's not much to do in the town, so we spent the weekend laying on the beach, swimming in the lake, enjoying good food at the Kivu Sun Hotel, reading, listening to music and just generally relaxing. As hard as it was while we were on the beach to believe that we were still in Rwanda (and just a few kilometers from the civil war in the DRC), there were plenty of reminders throughout the weekend of just where we were and what was going on around us. Probably the reminder was the collection of the military boats we spotted out on the lake, practicing border patrol exercises.
As we left Gisenyi to drive back to Kigali via Ruhengeri, we also passed through the areas of the country that had been affected recently by serious flooding. Although the waters in this picture may not look particularly bad, there are still several buildings and a lot of valuable cropland that are underwater in some of these towns.
Perhaps the most stark reminder was a transit center that we passed just outside Gisenyi. This camp is run by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and houses refugees who have recently escaped from the DRC.

Umuganda in Gikongoro

This afternoon, at approximately two o'clock, a government representative came to the project and told our administration department that we needed to send employees to Gikongoro for umuganda (a day of community service that takes place on the last Saturday of every month). This might be reasonable and almost logical if Gikongoro were a neighborhood nearby and if umuganda were in a week, except that neither of those facts are true. Gikongoro is three hours away in the southwest of Rwanda, and umuganda is tomorrow morning at eight o'clock! So we have had to arrange transport and find volunteers from each department to leave this afternoon to spend the night and most of the day tomorrow in Gikongoro. And yet no one except the expats seems particularly surprised or confused by this. I don't think I'll ever understand how an entire country can function on a system where everything is organized and executed at the very last minute.

Thanksgiving

Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, green beans, carrots, salad, cranberry sauce, sweet corn casserole, broccoli, dressing, rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate cake – it was almost like a real Thanksgiving tonight in Kigali!

Although a buffet dinner with over a hundred people (most of them strangers) under a huge tent in the driveway of a random building in Kigali isn’t what I usually think of when I think of Thanksgiving, the evening was surprisingly comforting and relaxing. It was so nice, after a full day of work and a busy week, to celebrate something so familiar and reassuring with the friends who have basically become my family here. Although nothing can top a Thanksgiving at home, this one wasn't bad at all.

Silvia

I made a new friend today at work. Her name is Silvia and she’s about six years old. There are always a few children running around the clinic while their parents are in the waiting room or with a nurse. But Silvia was different than most. When she saw me, instead of standing paralyzed with confusion or turning and running in fear, she walked straight up to my desk with a big smile on her face. One of the nurses made introductions for us since neither of us spoke the other’s language, and I found out she is the daughter of one of the project’s community workers. Since I couldn’t take a break from work, I gave her a colored pen and some paper to draw, and she stood at my desk for a while. But I could tell she wanted something else. It didn’t take long to realize she wanted to wear the sunglasses which I had been wearing on top of my head. Before long, she was wandering all around the clinic with my enormous sunglasses on her face. I’m pretty sure everyone got a good laugh out of the situation.

Joint Parliamentary Assembly

Members of African, Caribbean, Pacific and European parliaments are in Kigali this week for the 14th Joint Parliamentary Assembly. The assembly is a week-long plenary session that happens twice a year that was originally set up by the Contonou Agreement to “improve standards of living and economic development in the ACP countries and to establish close cooperation between these countries and the European Union.” This afternoon I had the opportunity to attend one of the sessions that focused on the fight against impunity and on victims’ access to justice. The session was headed by Denis Polisi (vice president of the Rwandan parliament) and Johan van Hecke (member of the European Parliament) and included speakers from a number of organizations. The topics that were addressed included a victim’s perspective on the need for justice, the International Criminal Court, the concept of universal jurisdiction, the role of non-governmental organizations in investigation and prosecution of serious international crimes, and the role of parliamentarians in strengthening the fight against impunity. The session was really interesting and the entire set up of the conference was quite impressive. There were even headsets for each person with immediate translations of the discussion in English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch.

Later in the afternoon, the parliamentarians split into groups to visit three projects in Kigali that had been selected to represent various field such as HIV/AIDS and gacaca. We were honored that Projet San Francisco was chosen as the HIV/AIDS site to be visited. Approximately thirty parliamentarians came to tour our clinical trials research site and hear presentations from the supervisors of each of our departments. The supervisors were so nervous about giving their presentations in English (the vast majority of them are francophone), but they did wonderfully. They presented the project well and were able to answer some difficult questions. At the end of the visit, the parliamentarians gave the project a very good review. The next day, I was even told that the director of HIV/AIDS for the Rwandan government had been praising and promoting PSF on the radio all morning, another sign that the parliamentarian visit went well.

One week of food

This morning I received an email from one of my graduate school professors. Attached to it was a presentation entitled 'Thanksgiving 2007: Equity, Social Justice, Hope', which I have copied below. Each photograph shows a different family, pictured with their weekly allowance of food. Above each picture is the name of the family, the country in which they live and the amount they spend on food for one week. As we take time this week to give thanks for everything we have, I thought this was an important message to share. (Note: all of the pictures were taken from 'Hungry Planet: What the World Eats' by Peter Menzel and Faith d'Aluisio.)

Germany
The Melander family of Bargteheide
375.39 euros or $500.07United States of America

The Revis family of North Carolina
$341.98

Japan
The Ukita family of Kodaira City
37,699 yen or $317.25

Italy
The Manzo family of Sicily
214.36 euros or $260.11

Mexico
The Casales family of Cuernavaca
1,862.78 pesos or $189.09

Poland
The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeziorna
582.48 zlotys or $151.27

Egypt
The Ahmed family of Cairo
387.85 Egyptian pounds or $68.53

Ecuador
The Ayme family of Tingo
$31.55

Bhutan
The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village
224.93 ngultrum or $5.03

Chad
The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
685 CFA francs or $1.23

Kigali's 100th year celebration

This year marks the 100th year of Kigali's existence so the city is celebrating all year long. There are signs of the celebration throughout the city. Several billboards boast of Kigali's 100 years and, in one of the busiest roundabouts in the city, there is even a large, lighted sign that says "KIGALI 100" in blue, yellow and green (the colors of the Rwandan flag). Apparently the celebration came to a peak this weekend, with a praade and concert at the national stadium on Saturday afternoon. On that same day, there was an article published in The New Times, the English language newspaper in Kigali, that concluded with the following idyllic toast to the city.

"So here's to Kigali, a floating buoy amidst the green frozen rolling waves. Here's to the moto rides along the sweeping dips between Remera and Kacyiru, as the sun is setting, when the stare of the city makes moments feel like hours. Here's to the early damp morning, when the air is cool and here's to the milk buyers, who peddle their goods on the back of their bicycles, still, serene and handsome. A truly beautiful city, and a truly beautiful future. Let us kiss it today and care for it as it should be loved."

Internet trouble

The internet has not been very good lately. It’s slow and the connection comes and goes. I assumed the problem was related to the connection at work, which is the source for our internet connection at home. However, I recently learned that this is not the case. The internet is just bad right now, not just in my building, not just in my neighborhood, not just on the hill on which I live. It’s bad in all of Kigali and, for that matter, in all of Rwanda. Apparently no one in the country has good internet right now and no one knows when it will improve.

In the streets of Kigali

I thought I should share just a few random vignettes from my walks around the streets of Kigali over the past week…

A group of about eight men walk in a single-file line down the street, one after another, each with at least one piece of furniture. But the furniture is not in a cart or on a vehicle; it is carefully balanced on each man’s head. The first man has a full sofa. The second has a coffee table on his head and a smaller table in each arm. Another balances the frame of a bed while yet another has the mattress. They walk both carefully and carelessly – careful to balance their loads and yet careless to the idea that they might be doing anything out of the ordinary – down the street. Yet there are no houses on this road so there is no way to tell how long they have been walking or how long they will continue to walk with their household of furniture on their heads.

I glanced behind me and saw pink, pink with a capital ‘P’, not pale pink or hot pink. I saw a true Pepto-Bismol pink. I only glanced for a second, but I could see that behind me there were four men wearing pink shirts and pink pants. There is only one category of people who wear all pink in Rwanda. The four men behind me were prisoners. They walked in pairs, two in the front and two behind. Yet I hadn’t noticed a guard with them. And they weren’t restrained in any way. I was surprised, but I couldn’t turn and stare. After all, no one else in the street seemed concerned. Yet there they were, perhaps two or three meters behind me, four prisoners walking down a main street of Kigali. It wasn’t until I turned down the alley to my house that I was able to take a closer look. At this point I noticed the khaki-clad guard walking behind the four men. I know he was there to keep them in line on their journey, but all five of them seemed a bit lethargic. I wondered where they had come from and how long they had been walking. I could tell they were heading toward the prison, but I still don’t know where they had been.

As I walked up the alley toward the main road on my way to work, there was a young man with a broom. He was sweeping. He was sweeping the dirt alley between my house and the road. Let me repeat myself, he was sweeping the dirt alley. I’ll probably never know why, but it was a puzzling sight to see someone sweeping a dirt path.

There is a small field on the left as I walk to work where the children play soccer every morning and every afternoon. One morning, however, the children were not there and in their place, there were three men. They swung their arms back and forth in almost perfect rhythm, each holding a long handle with a sharp blade on the end. As each arm whooshed through the air, shreds of grass flew in every direction. I wondered how long it would take them to cut the entire “soccer field.” Back and forth their arms swung in the morning sun as the shreds of grass rained down on me in the street below.

Banana leaf mat

Today was the first time since I arrived in Rwanda that I've gone shopping for something other than groceries or other practicalities. I was out looking for a gift for a friend whose birthday is tomorrow, and I ended up buying something for myself as well - a large (appx. 4 feet in diameter), round, woven mat made out of banana leaves. It may sound odd, but we have several smaller ones in the office that we use like bulletin boards, and I think they're great. So now I have a huge banana leaf mat that easily holds all the picture I brought with me. I suppose it's a silly thing to write about, but I'm really excited to have something to decorate at least one of the bare walls of my room!

Mount Bisoke

On Saturday afternoon, one of my friends and I caught a bus to Ruhengeri, a town about two hours northwest of Kigali, to visit the Parc National des Volcans. The national park is just along the borders with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, and it is home to the Virungas, which Dian Fossey described as a collection of "great, old volcanoes towering up almost 15,000 feet, and nearly covered with rich, green rainforest." Our goal was to climb Mount Bisoke, an inactive volcano with a crater lake at the summit, half of which is in Rwanda and the other half of which is in the DRC.

On Sunday morning, we arose about 5:45 in the morning, had breakfast at the guesthouse where we stayed for the night and headed out to the local ORTPN (Office Rwandais du Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux) office to pick up our guide. When we arrived at the office, it was just before 7:00 a.m. and the view back toward the rest of Rwanda was incredible since the mist was still settled over the "land of a thousand hills."
From the ORTPN office, it was about a half hour drive down a bumpy, dirt road to the start of the trail up Bisoke. Throughout our drive, we could see the volcano getting closer and closer. When we finally arrived, we could look back down the road and see three of the other peaks, (from left to right) Sabinyo, Gahinga and Muhabura.
It was at the point that we met the rest of our crew. In addition to my friend and I and the guide we had met at ORTPN, we were joined by three Rwandan soldiers (armed with AK-47s, of course) and a porter who carried our guide's backpack. We hiked up a small path through the fields before we arrived at the edge of the forest. There we climbed over a rock wall that's meant to keep the buffalo from entering the fields and village. We hiked through the jungle for about forty-five minutes on trail that was decent and not too difficult. Then we reached a point where the trail splits. One path went down to the gravesite of Dian Fossey (the woman who lived in these mountains with the gorillas until she was murdered in 1985), and the other continued up the mountain to the crater lake.
It was at this point that the trek turned difficult. The path narrowed significantly, became even muddier than it was at the start and turned straight up the side of the volcano. Apparently switchbacks haven't really caught on in Rwanda, so the trail became much more of a climb than a hike. At points we were having to step up over a meter at a time over rocks or roots or whatever else was in the path. Some were so high that the porter had to help pull me up because I couldn't step up high enough on my own. Not only was the climb difficult, but we were also dealing with a significantly higher altitude than we're used to in Kigali. Kigali is at 1540 meters, our starting point at the base of Bisoke was 2960 meters, and we were climbing to 3711 meters at the top of Bisoke. I'm not exaggerating to say that it was the hardest hike I've ever done in my life.

The views along the trail were incredible, though. Behind us, we could see across the valley and into the distance of Rwanda. We could also see the other peaks of the Virungas, especially Mount Karasimbi, on either side of us.
As we climbed, the clouds came and went and we passed through several different levels of vegetation. When we finally reached sub-alpine vegetation and felt the colder wind, we knew we were getting close to the top. About three or three and a half hours after starting our hike, we arrived at the top. I don't think I've ever been so relieved to reach a destination.
The clouds had rolled in over the valley, so we couldn't see much behind us in Rwanda, but the view over the crater lake was perfectly clear. Not only was the view amazing, but it was incredible to think that literally just across the lake (the background in the next several pictures) is the DRC.

After taking a few pictures, we decided to sit down for a rest and a snack, but almost as soon as we did, the clouds started to roll in. Within a few minutes, a thick cloud had settled over the lake and over us.
It was only a few seconds longer before it started raining. We put on our rain jackets but didn't think much of it until it started to thunder and hail. Immediately we grabbed our bags and started down the trail. However, with the cloud and the rain, the muddy path was even more slippery than it was on the way up, so we had to be careful and couldn't go very quickly. Plus, the wind was so strong that the hail was blowing straight in our faces. It was miserable, but I couldn't help but laugh. The storm had come out of absolutely nowhere.

After several minutes, the storm passed and the sun came out again, but we were soaked and covered in mud. Plus there had been so much rain that the entire trail down the mountain was muddy and slick. The hike down was just as challenging and strenuous as the one up, but in a completely different way. It was a constant struggle to find a solid place to step and a constant strain on our leg muscles and even our arm muscles (to hold hiking sticks and trees and each other). We all slipped and fell several times as the rain came and went.

Just about the time I started to think we were getting closer to the bottom, the soldiers who were in front came back and stopped everyone. They started speaking to our guide in hushed Kinyarwanda, and then he started speaking to someone over a radio. The soldiers went ahead again, and our guide finally told us that there was a single, male buffalo ahead in the trail. Buffalo are a serious danger, and they are more likely to be angered and charge when they are alone. After a few minutes, one of the soldiers ordered us to go back on the trail, back up the steep, slippery trail we had just come down. We went back and stood just off the trail waiting with the guide, porter and one of the soldiers for further instructions. After a few more minutes, we realized the buffalo wasn't going to move and we were going to have to go off the trail and through the forest to get around it. Seeing as how we were in the middle of a dense, uninhabited rainforest, that was no simple instruction. But we had no other option, so we left one soldier behind to keep an eye on the buffalo and the other six of us set out. One soldier went in the front with a machete to try to clear a path; our guide followed him to clear out more vegetation; the porter was next and I think the guide gave him the task of making sure I didn't fall, because he held my arm the entire way; Taylor followed me and the other soldier was behind him. It was quite the trek - clearing bushes and trees and vines, hiking over wet plants and leaves, climbing over ditches and dropoffs, avoiding (unsuccessfully) stinging nettles, and trying to be quiet all the while, lest we attract attention from the buffalo.

When we finally met back up with the trail, we were wet, muddy, stinging (from the nettles) and absolutely exhausted. I had already quit trusting my leg muscles much earlier, but at that point, I felt like I was completely done for the day.
After a short break, we continued down the trail. Soon, though, another cloud moved in and it started raining again. Since there were more buffalo ahead and the storm impaired our vision to where we wouldn't be able to see them until we were dangerously close, we eventually cut off the main trail down a smaller one that would lead us out of the forest faster. I didn't realize that once we made it out of the forest we would still have to hike through the fields to reach the main road. I don't think I've ever been so tired in my life.

I was so thankful to be able to sit down when we finally made it back to the car. We drove back to the ORTPN office to change into dry clothes and then went to the bus station in town. We bought our tickets and then found a restaurant nearby where we had a typical meal of brochettes and frites, as well as some hot tea to warm us up a little. Before long, we were back on the bus and, a couple hours later, back in Kigali.