No Stopping for Lions (14 page)

At four o'clock, the official departure time, we settle onto the Hilltop's terrace with a supply of newspapers and magazines and wait for the
Liemba
to sail out of the harbour. We've almost given up when, just before eight, she appears low in the water around the point and makes her slow, glorious way across the bay. As a breeze picks up and the evening settles, she sails off into the dark red sunset.

Meals at the Hilltop are always interesting. Most of the guests appear to be civil servants and aid officials who walk importantly about, attend meetings and sit down to government-sponsored buffets in the colonial-style restaurant. These are sober affairs though, as the hotel is teetotal due to the religion of the owners. A few other tourists pass through and sometimes we sit talking with them over coffee. One young Belgian couple is overlanding like us, but in the opposite direction. When Neil asks about the condition of the roads in Uganda the girl pales and whispers something to her partner, who has better English.

'Oh,' he says, ‘the roads are drivable, but my girlfriend is still shaken by what we came upon on the road which passes by a corner of the Queen Elizabeth National Park.' It appears there was a tumult of people blocking the way, noticeably distressed but strangely quiet. As he edged his vehicle past slowly they could see on the road blood, torn clothing, a leg with a shoe still on it. A policeman waved them on but not before explaining that a labourer, a member of a work team that was repairing the road, had been taken by a lone male lion some hours before. The other men had run away in fear, and the lion had dragged the bulk of his meal off into the undergrowth but had then left it there for reasons unknown and disappeared into the bush as silently as he'd arrived.

It's six days since we first checked in and the Hilltop Hotel can't believe that we're finally leaving. They haven't made out our bill just in case we tell them, as we have every day since arriving, that we want to stay one more day. But here we are packed up and ready to go. The staff have washed the Troopy and filled it with diesel, and we're handed a boxed lunch as a goodbye gesture. Then, as we're about to drive off, they warn us one last time of the dangers we can expect when travelling in Rwanda.

We had thought hard and long about visiting Rwanda. We'd read as much as we could find on its current status and our first inclination had been to leave it off the itinerary. Apart from the safety issue, there wasn't anything or any place that we really wanted to see there, or not enough to put ourselves at risk for anyway. We had no real desire to witness the misery left by the genocide in 1994, and we knew that roaming bands of displaced militia ambushed tourists from time to time and still carried out acts of great cruelty against innocent villagers in outlying areas. Perhaps we were lulled into a false sense of security by the success of our progress to date, but as we drew closer and saw on the map that there is a great shortcut to Uganda's south-west through Rwanda we began to think ‘What the heck, let's take that route. We'll stick to the main road and see a little of the country as well as saving a day or two's driving.' By the time we got to Kigoma the decision had been made and we were now looking forward to seeing a little of this troubled country.

Despite the terrible road we make good time. There aren't so many villages now but we pass a number of huge, sterile refugee camps behind razor-wire fences. We pull over for lunch in a forest and are immediately overcome by flies. Not tsetses but some other sort of insistent gadfly with sticky inclinations and designs on our chicken sandwiches. Although we haven't seen another vehicle for hours, now a mini bus comes bumping past and the occupants wave and laugh among themselves at these crazy
wazungus
trying to eat lunch under a blanket of dust and flies.

Buoyed by our progress to this point we decide to push on into Rwanda and aim for Kigali, the capital. Thirty kilometres or so before the border we pick up a hitchhiker, Gerry, an African American who's been travelling around Central and East Africa for over a year. He's tall and thin and dressed like a local, and I think he might be a fugitive from justice back home. Neil thinks that he's probably just a fugitive from his mother, a gospel-singing missionary. Softly spoken at first, Gerry's accent becomes more hokey as he gets more deeply involved in discussions with Neil about George Bush, Iraq, the Rwandan genocide and how being black in a black country has its disadvantages. Still on the Tanzanian side we are stopped at a roadblock and approached by police. They suggest that we might like an armed escort to the border as bandits have been active on the next section of road, but Gerry whispers
no, not any more
. We decline the offer and drive off, Neil muttering that the only bandits around here are the police who are less concerned for our safety than making a buck in their self-appointed role as security escorts.

The border post straddles the Kagera River at Rusumo Falls. These impressive falls plunge down a steep, deep ravine and carry a huge volume of water even at this dry time of year, and I want to get a better look. So while Gerry chats to acquaintances at immigration and Neil goes over the Troopy's
carnet
with the Rwandan authorities, I walk back to the bridge, guidebook in hand. This bridge reads prominently in recent history as it was across its uneven planks that hundreds of thousands of refugees fled from the Rwandan genocide. In one 24-hour period alone it's estimated that 250 000 people crossed while below them massacred bodies tossed and tumbled over the falls.

Before we drop Gerry off at a cheap doss house on the outskirts of Kigali he gives us tips about the city, which is just as well because it's night-time and we're driving with no maps, no street lights and no idea where we're going. We're also driving on the right-hand side of the road but our headlights are positioned for left-hand driving, so we blind on-coming traffic and they beep and flash their lights constantly. We don't know where we are or where we want to be and we're regretting our earlier decision to push on to Kigali. Just as we were warned, the city is very hilly and the roads winding; none of them seems to go in a straight line so we end up going through the same roundabout several times, in different directions. The GPS has thrown its hands in the air and Neil and I are both privately starting to worry whether we'll ever find our way out of the roundabout, let alone locate a hotel. Optimistically we stop at an ATM to withdraw cash and a young man there whom Neil gets talking to kindly drives to a hotel with us following in the Troopy. The feeling of relief when we turn a corner and see the grand entrance gates to the Hôtel des Mille Collines is great. I would have checked in even if it was the most expensive place in Africa, and Neil says afterwards that he was prepared to take the presidential suite if that was the only room available. The hotel doesn't quite match up to its entrance but it serves us well. We have dinner by the pool, jostling for elbowroom with NGO personnel, journalists and well-dressed, importantlooking Africans. It is only weeks later that we're told that the Mille Collines is
the
Hotel Rwanda.

The next day we head for the Ugandan border, and the countryside surrounding the road is breathtaking: steep green hills and narrow fertile valleys, both totally covered by a network of farmed terraces and fields. In the muddy riverbeds we see men, covered in mud themselves, panning for gold, and we remember that Gerry had told us this was becoming a huge environmental and health problem in Rwanda as the gold-diggers use mercury and arsenic in the processing. There are bananas and cabbages, rice fields and tea plantations, and everywhere people look to be doing something. Everyone waves and when we stop to take photos I'm surrounded by hopeful subjects in no time, young boys with slow smiles. I can sense a prevailing feeling of incomprehension but there is no sign of the troubled young souls who apparently wandered the streets just a few years ago, lost and afraid in a world they no longer understood. It's impossible for us to comprehend the horror that many of these people must have lived through, the fear and loss, then disbelief at surviving a world gone mad. From what I can see now, driving along this main road, there's a sense of purpose, of moving on. People are picking tea, hoeing terraces and planting vegetables, and we pass through a big market town which is jumping with activity. I see optimism, but an underlying sadness in many eyes as well. There's evidence of international aid wherever we look; every project we pass is proudly signed as aid-funded and any other vehicle on the road not carrying tourists belongs to an overseas aid agency. The rest of the world has picked up the pieces, but the Rwandans are slowly putting them together again.

In contrast, Uganda feels relaxed and comfortable, and the pace is slower. Perhaps it's the proliferation of gum trees, a legacy of some well-meaning agencies in the past who thought that eucalypts would quickly cover the hills stripped bare for firewood. Or it could be that we're driving on the left-hand side again and signs are in English. Whatever it is, we immediately feel that we're in familiar territory.

Our first stop, Kabale, proves to be more than just another scruffy African town and it gives us our first taste of Ugandan hospitality. The lovely smiling gentleman behind the counter at the Uganda Wildlife Authority office takes many minutes to explain directions and road conditions to our next destination, and comes outside to wave us goodbye when we leave him. But that's nothing compared with the proprietor of a bookshop who, unable to supply us with a map, takes us under his wing. He leaves his store unattended and leads us around all the other shops in Kabale where we might be able to purchase one. He's very disappointed when no one can provide the map we need and apologises profusely. We drive on to Lake Bunyonyi and choose a place on the shore to stay until our first bookings in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest start in three days' time. The lake is very beautiful, surrounded by terraced green hills and dotted with green islands. These have also been planted with eucalypts, and one particular island has Australian wattles, melaleucas and Norfolk pines as well.

The first afternoon there are a few big drops of rain, nothing more than a sun-shower. The temperature drops but we put this down to the altitude. The second afternoon brings our first true afternoon downpour. Lasting for fifteen minutes or so, it greys out the sky and silences the birds. Then it stops as quickly as it began and the goats start to bleat, the birds resume chirping and the lake's surface settles to mirror a blue sky once again. There's a small village, a homestead really, on the hill behind us which is populated only by women — who have been abandoned by their husbands or run away from dreadful marriages — and their children. These women built and decorated all the houses themselves and reputedly allow just one man in, someone they've employed to do any heavy labour. Every morning the ladies can be seen bent over the gardens, weeding and gossiping, and every afternoon disjointed rehearsals of ‘Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' drift down from their church.

It's Sunday and we sit on the terrace with other travellers discussing what we've seen and what we've heard. Stories of overcrowded orphanages in Rwanda, murdered national park rangers in the Congo and bodies by the road in Uganda. From the ladies in the church drifts their slow sad song and when they reach the line ‘So I chose freedom' all of us on the terrace, even the staff, stop and fall silent, so moving is this simple reminder of hope and injustice and the ongoing menaces of the region.

Neil and I have long discussions about the position that the average black African finds himself in, and more specifically, how we feel about their situation. I'm acutely aware of the disparity as we drive along in our fancy car jammed full of clothes and food and consumer goods, dispensing waves like royalty and leaving a dust trail so thick that pedestrians are forced off the road. I'm embarrassed when we pass people in the rain, moving through life soaked to the skin, while we debate whether we want to give a lift to someone who might leave a puddle on the floor. But I drive right past all the time back home; I don't feel responsible for anyone there. I have no problem being called
ma'am
in a shop in Sydney, but feel uncomfortable with being addressed as
mummy
here. Both are terms of respect, so am I being over sensitive? I say no, because at home if I met another person in the street, I wouldn't expect to be called
ma'am
.

Neil looks at it with an academic eye. Realistically, he says he sees no reason for whites now to feel guilt for the sins of their forefathers or angst for anyone who might be living in circumstances different to their own. He's right of course, but not all of us have the advantage of experience here. His argument is one borne of an acceptance of the situation, for as a young boy he would have been desensitised by the attitudes of the adults at that time. There's also a degree of anger in his assessment, a feeling of opportunity lost. He only ever lived in a white British Africa and it's obvious to him that now in those countries the fundamentals of roads, education and health are in poor shape. He's had a glimpse of what could have been, and is disappointed and blameful because it's been lost. We find it hard to reach common ground and argue this topic endlessly.

We've sat at dinner and had to listen to a middle-aged white male talk loudly about ‘these bastards running the country' and ‘the lazy nig-nogs' on his farm; presumably the waiter who has just carried out an intelligent conversation with him is not only invisible but also deaf. However, it seems to me that this type of racism is dying out and the children of those who practised it in the past come from an altogether different place. I can't think of a single young white African we've come across on this trip who's spoken disparagingly to or about black Africans, and at last there seems to be an acceptance that the biggest difference between black and white is a cultural one. Neil suggests that this attitude occurs only because young whites have learnt to be politically correct, but I'm convinced it's more than that. The ones who have chosen to stay in Zambia, Zimbabwe or South Africa are living in a different world, certainly an imperfect one, where cronyism and corruption live alongside another kind of racism, but it's their world. As one young white girl in South Africa said to us, ‘Sure we have big problems, but we're all part of the solution.'

We set out on a minor route that passes through the eastern sector of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. What a name! It conjures up failed expeditions and dark forbidden secrets, and throws down a challenge to those brave enough to breach its boundary. The road is narrow and winding, and the scenery spectacular. We stop to take photos of the border line between cleared, terraced farm lands and the dense green rainforest of the national park; a more obvious sign of human needs fighting against human ideals would be hard to find. First a family of olive baboons, the alpha male with a long, flowing coat and all of them huge and skittish, crosses the road, then later a troupe of blue monkeys follows suit. Neil has to stop the car to let a beautiful giant green chameleon with pointed horns and the most dramatic, curled tail creep cautiously across.

A short, sharp downpour in the afternoon causes us to pull over and sit it out, and we have to concede that from now on these rains will be a daily occurrence and camping is out. A relieved smile crosses Neil's face.