Nyungwe Forest Day

Mar 22nd

The rain has stopped although its grey and the cloud is low. Tiga’s not coming with us; she’s been round Nyungwe before and is saving a second visit until her mum comes to see her in the summer. And she’s bogged down in exam marking, too. So Marisa and I are picked up promptly at a quarter to seven in a rickety old matata, and set off to Gacerenda. The scenery continues to be beautiful; deep, deep valleys, mostly terraced, and plenty of trees. Little houses, some perched on astonishingly steep slopes, but overall the countryside looks poorer than around Gitarama. At Kigeme we pick up Anne-Miek, and then at Gacerenda, Mans, Cathie and Elson, and Antonia and two friends. Cathie did her main VSO placement at Gacerenda, so she’s been catching up with old friends all Friday.

At Gacerenda we come into the main Rwandan tea growing country. Bright green bushes, waist high, planted so closely together that there’s no chance of weeds growing through between the bushes. Some are on terraces, but most are on these incredibly steep slopes. Unfortunately it’s difficult to get photos as the bus is moving too fast; then when we ask the driver to stop he does so in a ridiculous place with power pylons blocking the view. No matter; Marisa and I have agreed we need to come back to this part of Rwanda before our tours of duty finish. We’ll get all the photos we need on that occasion!

All down one particularly steep raving there’s a trail of twisted metal where a big lorry came off the road one night. The driver, of course, was killed. The locals came out to loot whatever they could from the wreckage, and found several barrels of oil. Inside the oil, so the story goes, were masses of semi-precious stones being smuggled out of the Congo. Nobody knows exactly how true the story is, but in terms of the Congo, and smuggling, and all manner of underhand dealing, you can’t rule out anything. And certainly there’s enough mangled lorry to remind you that this is a dangerous road even in broad daylight!

We pass another village called Kihemba and suddenly we’re in the forest and the landscape changes completely. Nobody lives in the forest; there are no fields at all. There are hills and hills covered in jungle, like waves in the sea, receding into the far distance. From the highest ridge we know we’re looking into another new country, Burundi, which has a National Forest Park adjoining Nyungwe. To the right we get occasional glimpses of Lake Kivu and, in the far distance, its far shore which is yet another country, Congo. This means that for me, in a few weeks, I’ve been able to look into all the countries which border Rwanda!

We cross the Nile – Congo watershed again, and it starts to rain. Suddenly there are monkeys all around us in the bushes next to the road. They’re black and white mountain monkeys. Mostly they’re shy about having their pictures taken, and all I get are telephoto shots. But one specimen jumps up on the matata, perches on the wing mirror and is about to come inside. We yell at the driver (who is cowering, terrified down in his seat) to wind up the bloody window! But this is a clapped out bus; the window handle has come off and is lying somewhere in a pile of other bus bits on his dashboard. It seems to take a lifetime for him to find the bit and wind up the window far enough to keep the monkey out. The reason for all this fuss is that these monkeys might well be carrying rabies, and while for us volunteers the worst thing would be to need an extra jab of protection, for the matata driver a bite or scratch could well be fatal. It’s not like this at Longleat……..

We get to the official park entrance and spend an hour booking in and arguing over the park fee. In Nyungwe, although the main road to Cyangugu goes right through the middle of the park, you’re not allowed to stop anywhere and get out and walk. You can only stop at the official centre and do some of their marked trails. The forest has lots of Rwandan soldiers in it; they are here to prevent infiltration of rebels from Burundi, and if they heard or saw random people in the forest they would probably shoot first and ask questions later. So unfortunately we have to do this thing the official way.

To get the reduced rate entry fee we have to show a Rwandan visa. But, of course, most of us haven’t been given our visas yet. And even though at Akagera we were easily able to show then that we were, indeed, working in the country and not tourists, here they play everything by the book. So it costs us 28,000 Francs to go round for a two hour walk. That is extortionate, but they have the monopoly and there’s no gainsaying them. Nyungwe is inaccessible and only gets an average of ten visitors a day. We had an entire day’s worth in our group alone. They really do need to get more tourist-friendly here. It feels almost as if they’d rather we didn’t come at all, yet their jobs depend on increasing the throughput of visitors. It turns out that Yves, our guide, knows Mans when he was district officer for his region. Yves was a secondary school English teacher, but the job of forest guide paid better so he took it. Turns out he also knows Cécille, the guide I had round Akagera. Small country, Rwanda…..!

Mans has been here before; he’s not interested in one of the normal walks and wants to do the elephant swamp walk. This is bad news for me; I have to hire wellies from the guides at extra cost. But eventually we get started. The trees and vegetation are everything I dreamed of. It’s virgin forest on a massive scale. It’s the largest remaining mountain forest in Africa. This isn’t tropical jungle; sweltering and teeming with insects etc. It’s cold, damp, squelchy and with a conspicuous absence of much wildlife. There’s the odd butterfly and centipede, and a flashy touraco in the trees. But compared to Akagera there’s nothing doing. Partly this is our own fault; the women are chattering on and on all the time. We see some leopard poo, which we all duly photograph, and the guide is knowledgeable about some of the trees and their uses. This one has roots which were used as an abortifacient. This one, when it flowers, is noxious and forest villages used to move away to avoid it. Many of the trees are being strangled by vines, and hereby we come on to the topic of elephants.

There used to be many forest elephants here, smaller than the savannah beasts but big enough. They were gradually hunted or poached to extinction; the last one killed by poachers in 1999. (Its skull is mounted on the wall at the park headquarters). The elephants used to eat the vines and creepers as part of their diet, and this allowed to forest giant trees to flourish. So now there is a plan, within five years, to reintroduce forest elephants imported from Cameroon, and try to re-establish the balance between plants and animals. It will be wonderful if it works, but they will still have the problem of poachers. Nyungwe was only officially made a national park in about 1999, so there’s a lot of remedial work still to be done to restore its ecosystem. It’s the last remnant of what was once continuous forest all down the side of the rift valley and covering the whole of the mountainous part of Rwanda, and the rate of clearance has been so rapid in the 20th century that they have had to create the National Park or it would all have gone by about AD2050. (It remains to be seen how the current rapid population growth will affect the Park).

Eventually we reach the swamp itself. This is a vast basin and the most fearsome swamp I’ve ever seen. It is notorious because it is so deep that elephants used to be caught and drowned in it. Mere people would have stood no chance. The centre of it is absolutely inaccessible even today. Our path winds down hundreds of fet from the level of the main road to the edge of the swamp, then crosses one corner of the swamp on a boardwalk.

Unfortunately, at the start of the boardwalk is one section o slippery that it’s almost impassible. So I manage to not just fall off the log path, but fall ion my side right in the swamp. I come up covered in mud all down one side. Fortunately my camera seems unhurt, just my pride! Mans also comes off the logs, but not so spectacularly. Must be because we both have a high centre of gravity!

So I’m dripping mud for the rest of the day; we eat our sarnies on a bench surrounded by elephant grass, then climb back up to the main road, across lots of flimsy log bridges, as another rainstorm approached. The thunder’s crackling across the ridge beyond us, and we barely make it to the road and our bus before the heavens open.

All the way back to the Park entrance we’re passing landslides which partially block the road, and the tarmac has long since broken up into potholes and puddles. This road urgently needs a lot of work doing on it or it will become unusable. At the park entrance we drop of our guide and head for home. It’s still raining so there’s no chance to take more photos.

Back at Gikongoro we shower and I try to wash out some of my clothes; can’t do much about my trousers because they’re the only pair I have. Some of the mud brushes off, and no doubt I’ll be able to get them cleaner tomorrow morning, but I look pretty scruffy! Downhill again to Tiga’s house to meet Soraya, who’se stopped off on her way home from Kigali. Tiga’s cooked us an amazing meal, really beautiful. I’ve brought the rest of my birthday balloons and table confetti, so we make it a second birthday party and reunion meal (since Polly has gone back to England, we’re only missing Épi out of our six people). It’s a really brilliant evening, and we stay up till late.

Soraya’s sleeping with us at Samira’s house, and once again we scramble up the hill from Tiga’s as it starts spitting with rain. We can smell when we approach the prison, but the puddles in an unlit, muddy, rutted lane make it a tiresome journey. It’s more or less full moon tonight, and just occasionally it peeps out between the rain clouds and the whole landscape of mountains and valleys takes on a dreamy look. As Tiga says, in terms of a place to be living and working it’s just unbeatable. It’s considerably cooler even than Gitarama, and without all the bustle of my town. Gitarama feels like living on a human anthill, with constant noise, movement, bustle. Here it’s quiet and just beautiful.

Don’t let that Fool you; barely a mile away is one of the grimmest genocide memorials in Rwana where thousands of people were herded into secondary school “for their safety”, and then murdered. Their mummified bodies are still on display as a grisly reminder that the events of 1994 really did happen.

Best thing about today – the evening meal with Tiga and Soraya.Worst thing about today – falling into the swamp; the sheer cost of the excursion. Nyungwe was good, but not nearly as good as Akagera.