Reviewing my photos towards the end of five weeks in Rwanda/Goma/Bujumbura, I realised that I had accumulated quite a number of entertaining shop signs and the like. Rather than put them into a word-less blog (after all, isn’t my erstwhile profession paid by the word?), I thought I’d accompany them with a précis of some of the delightful quirks I’ve encountered in day-to-day life in this part of the world. (For those of an eagle-eyed persuasion, I had better confess upfront that most of the photographs came from Bujumbura, but most of the quirks are based on my experiences [View Full Entry]

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Life or death. It was as simple as that. In 1932, the Belgian colonial authorities confirmed the divisions they were already using to their advantage in the population of Ruanda-Urundi by differentiating the “haves” and the “have-nots”, the old “divide-and-conquer” chapter of colonial governance. The result, for each person, was irrevocably set out in his or her identity card, and this assessment would apply to his or her successors ad infinitum. The words “Hutu” and “Tutsi” derive from the names of the peoples who colonis [View Full Entry]

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[My apologies for the previous, incomplete entry. Telecoms were playing up in the southwest corner of Rwanda where I was loading this at the weekend, and clearly some of the text and the photos in the original suffered. Sorry for adding to your inboxes!] Only an hour or so after I’d arrived, I was scribbling delightedly in my diary, “Oh, I love Bujumbura!” Mind you, as I rapidly admitted to myself, it doesn’t take much. I’d found myself in the most charming, centrally-located and funky hotel, the Saga Residence, with an imaginatively-designed semi-sunke [View Full Entry]

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I’m going to do something I haven’t done before. I’m going to take you with me on my travels. Yes, I thought you might like to join me as I take the bus from Huye (formerly Butare, Rwanda’s erstwhile colonial capital and still the country’s intellectual capital) in the south of the country, over the border and into Burundi, to spend a few days in its fabulously-named capital, Bujumbura. Since arriving in Rwanda three weeks’ ago, I’ve talked to a number of people who have confirmed that Burundi is now stable. All rebel groups have ceased fighting, [View Full Entry]

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I broke a promise. Well, the lawyer that still lives somewhere deep inside me (despite my best endeavours to the contrary) would rather say that, actually, I have refined my approach to this particular promise and, while, yes, I did break the existing promise as then phrased, I can now re-cast it more intelligently. Semantics. Sorry, Mum. I walked across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday to stay overnight in the provincial capital of Goma. My promise had been that I would not travel to any country or any part of any country in respect of which [View Full Entry]

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I saw gorillas today. As close to me, from my seat at the bar, as the barman is now, with the silverback about as far away as the TV on the other side of the bar. And they were the most unfazed wildlife I’ve ever encountered, ignoring us even when the guides spoke in low voices. The youngster nearest me watched me change the battery in my camera at one point, but that was one of the very few times I saw any indication that they were even aware of our presence. But I get ahead of myself. I knew three [View Full Entry]

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Bush television. Watching Damara hornbills scrape at the sand and through the leaf litter in their patient search for insects. One dozily flies over my shoulder, so close I could feel the air displaced by its wings, to clatter noisily into the window behind me with a hornbill’s seemingly typical fascination for their image reflected in glass. How often did I look out of the windows at the Cheetah Conservation Fund to see yellow-billed hornbills berating their reflections? Or the half-dozen porcupine coming in for their multi-coloured evening repast at Porcupine Camp, just beyond Ka [View Full Entry]

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Gabriel arrived at camp looking exhausted, but with adrenalin still clearly pumping. He briefly confirmed what Femke had already radio-ed in. The two of them had spent the night with a newly-identified pride of lion and wanted to collar the “matriarch” lioness as part of their research into large predator interactions. Anne-Lise - somehow, despite the early hour, already bright-eyed and chicly turned out, albeit in a practical bush manner (as you might expect of the French in Africa) - went off to prepare her drug and dart supplies with Louis’s help, while Gabriel made san [View Full Entry]

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Sitting here in Windhoek, listening to jazz on the radio and watching the dying rays of the sun on the hills of Avis, our three weeks and 6,200 km round northern Namibia and north-western Botswana seems a very long time ago, although we got back less a fortnight ago. I’ve been procrastinating about blog-writing, initially on the basis that I needed to sort out (and, ideally, rationalise) my 1,000+ photos, but latterly without such a good excuse though many distractions. The muses have not, I hope, abandoned me; I’ve simply been delaying summoning them to my assistance, caught up [View Full Entry]

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Back into the warm comfort of my other life. Where the sky is blue and the sun shines all day long… at least at this time of year. Where the worry about my mother’s health is softened by distance. Where solving the latest problem with my house can be delegated or postponed for another six months. (I won’t thank myself then, but there’s little option now). Where I don’t have bills to pay, or errands to run. Where I can sit out on the stoep in the daytime and read my book, or chat on the phone in the evening, watching [View Full Entry]

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