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Friday, July 30, 2010

Off we go on Safari






On Friday, July 23rd we spent the morning at the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide.   There was a very nice and very thorough presentation by several different departments of the commission.  It was very informative.   The fight against genocide is ongoing - there are many people who fled to Congo who would like to come back and finish what they started.  Many perpetrators are living next door to victims.  Approximately 60% of the population shows signs of post traumatic stress disorder, and countless others are traumatized.   The commission works hard to ensure that there is not a flare up of genocide or genocidal massacres again.

After lunch we headed off to go to Akagera Game park, on the east side of the country, next to the border with Tanzania.   The trip was fairly long, longer than | cared to be on a bus, and we had our first dreadful taste of what travel through mountainous terrain with no guard rails is like.  Not good.  The lodge itself was fantastic, a very welcome change from the horror that is the Centre St. Paul, where we are staying in Kigali.   I might have mentioned earlier that it is just appalling.   Our room at the lodge was big and clean,and it had a proper bathroom inside it, which was clean, and it had a bathtub and shower that worked, and which even had both hot and cold water.  And did I mention that it was clean?

We arrived fairly late so we only had time to go to dinner and then go to bed to be ready for our safari the next day.

The safari was fantastic.  We saw zebras and elephants and hippos, antelopes, cape buffalo, giraffes, all sorts of birds, and one dead eland.  No lions though.  Apparently there might only be one lioness in the park, and she has not been seen for years.

The safari took twelve hours.  We had an unfortunate interlude with a swarm of tsetse flies. I was surprised to discover that they can fly as fast as a bus can travel on bumpy ground.  We had to shut the windows and kill the ones that were in the bus: they bite hard!  Driving around with the windows closed turned the bus into a little easy bake oven.  And Linda and I did not have lunch: we had ordered vegan sandwiches, but we got ham and cheese.  Lucky we had Larabars with us, and nuts and apricots.  It was a long day and I have fantastic photos. Charles took many of the pictures for me, which was kind of him.   I hope to be able to post the photos shortly.




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