Travels in the Danger Zone ....

After the whole gorilla experience .... I was pretty much giddy as a school girl and ready for any adventure that came my way ..... so my driver Amin and I decided to set off westwards to Gisenyi on the banks of Lake Kivu .... one of the "exploding" lakes ... (ie gassy and volcanic) ... but apparently quite the resort town of Rwanda

The journey across the Rwandan countryside was stunning .... green forest-covered hills giving way to lush heavy more tropical and exotic surroundings .... and i really started to feel i was travelling into real and proper deepest darkest (at least Central) Africa ....

We drove through village after village ... all amazingly with electricity lines ... but apparently no water ... and so sadly an all too common sight along the way were little kids (anything from 3 years old) ferrying bright yellow jerrycans of precious water .... even more worryingly - I saw them dipping their containers into muddy puddles and holes after the rains ... trying to cut down on the hassles of water-portering .... however my driver was phlegmatic - That's the life of an African child he said .... but i couldn't help gasping every time we saw some child struggling with bundles on their heads and insisted on shouting out of the window - Go to school! .... Amin stolidly refused to give any of them a lift .... and made several comments in terse french to the effect of bloody bleeding heart limousine liberals...


We finally got to Lake Kivu later that afternoon .... and it was stunning ... a beautiful beach with warm blue water .... and after 7 days of extreme grubbiness - I'd decided to splash out and stay at a very smart hotel (I'd been dreaming about a hot shower all week) .... I gulped down the welcome cocktail as the list of things to do was read out to me ... A massage? Perhaps some shopping? Jacuzzi? Swimming Pool? What was a girl to do?

No no I said brightly .... I want to cross the border into Congo and see Goma .... Amin looked incredulous ....

All along the route to Gisenyi - I had been remembering the Gourevitch book and its account of how both genuine Hutu refugees and genocidaires alike fled in 1994 along the same roads that we had taken all the way into Goma ... and the ensuing appalling chaos and mess of the refugee camps which had essentially sheltered and protected some of the worst criminals of the genocide .... I'd noticed that had been much more of an army presence in the area - known to still harbour some Hutu Power ideology .... and we'd passed a few remnants of the refugee camps - which looked still pretty miserable (although now it wasn't clear whether the residents were fleeing the wars in Congo or leftovers from the genocide) ....

Plus there was the small matter of the active volcano in Goma ... that had iced the post-genocide disaster cake by erupting in 2002 destroying much of the city ... not to mention the years of civil wars and conflict post-Mobutu ..... it seemed to me like a perfect day trip .....

Amin was reluctant to take the car over the border and so we walked through the barriers .... but nothing prepared me for the difference 5 minutes can make .... Almost immediately as we crossed into Congo - it just felt more dangerous .... my sense of unease was not made much better by the fact that there were no taxis by the border .... just dodgy looking men on motorbikes lavisciously offering me a lift - to nowhere very nice ....

I dispatched Amin on one of the bikes to fetch a taxi from the town centre whilst i waited for him at the border post ... there were people around so it seemed reasonable ... and I relaxed when I saw a couple of UN armoured cars trundling up (perhaps that should have been a cue to worry?!) ...... so I sidled along next to the UN troops .... to find out they were from the Punjab!

As I stood there - several of the Punjabi troops were being propositioned by a few Congolese ladies of the night/day .... just picture an African Full Metal Jacket with Sardarji soldiers ... (Meesta, meesta - me love you long time ...... Arre yaar - vaat we get for 10 rupees ... and so on ...).

However it became evident that the soldiers were actually more bewildered by or interested in what an solo Indian female was doing randomly at the border .... the jiggling Congolese girls were getting nowhere with them despite their best efforts .... and so their pimp started to get huffy and strode over to me - his gun very prominently displayed in his belt .... "This is my patch bitch - who you working for and how much?" he demanded .... I decided the only way to deal with this was to go on the offensive ... and so drew myself up, fixed him with an icy stare and delivered in my poshest BBC accent the line I've always wanted to say - "No sex please - I'm British" .... but predictably it was sadly lost on the pimp and the punjabis ....

Thankfully before I got myself into any more trouble - Amin arrived with the taxi ... and we set off to the volcano .... driving through Goma town - packed with throngs of people on the streets hawking anything and everything from umbrellas to squawking chickens with barely an inch of roadside to spare .... but perpetually shrouded in volcanic dust with half of it drowned in solidified lava ..... the darkness just added to the feeling that, despite the continual presence of UN troops, Goma is a city where danger lurks just around the corner .... markedly different from the safety and relative calm of Rwanda ....


We got to the Nyarigongo volcano (background in the pic above) and started climbing .... but quite frankly - the black dried lava looked pretty much the same after half an hour as it did after one hour - and it didn't look as though it would be any different until quite a long way up .... the dust was thickening and the sun was starting to set .... which made me even more nervous .... Goma at night wasn't where i wanted to stay and party ....

We scurried back to the border - where predictably the taxi driver tried to fleece us for some exorbitant price ..... but I was prepared for this - I'd just finished reading the memoirs of a South African journalist Jacques Pauw and the memoirs of Blaine Harden - ex Washington Post and one of the first uber-Africa correspondents .... both of which were littered with stories of the lack of Congolese scruples, the constant bribery and endemic cheating ... and I was ready for the challenge .... I bargained like a demon and thinking I'd done myself and my mum proud - I flounced back across the border... only to find that i'd massively overpaid for both my passport stamp/visa and for the taxi .... I guess I'm not that much of an old Africa hand yet ...