Travels in the past

I can feel the circles beneath my eyes sinking deeper and darker. I won't go into the reasons for my recent long hours and lack of sleep, as those reasons are less Mozambique-related than geek-related, and I prefer to keep geekery out of this family-oriented blog. (Though I will mention I've spent the past two hours copying out long strings of hexadecimals from registry keys - because I just googled the keys I worked on and discovered, via www.windowsitlibrary.com, that "The keys can't be read by human beings". I knew Mozambique had changed me, but I didn't realise how much. Probably no one else will be surprised, though.)

Suffice it to say that anything exciting that happened to me in the past ten days or so shouldn't be mentioned on a social occasion, except when immediate solitude is required. So, I resort to past events for this post.

Erik's comment on my previous post reminded me of the best news I've had for weeks, which is that my friend Yerevan Laura, formerly Quelimane Laura (so called to distinguish her from American Laura, the HR manager here), will henceforth be Luanda Laura - having moved to Angola last week to take up a job there. Laura, bemvindo em África mais uma vez, and I'm looking forward to meeting you in Namibia or Botswana or any of the other interesting places that lie between us, next time you need a break.

Alexa with Laura in her Yerevan incarnation. Garni, Armenia, Christmas Eve, 2006.

Laura will recall Simon Norfolk, a long-time resident of Maputo, who after returning here from his first trip to Luanda first wanted to place a papal kiss on the airport tarmac and then to call on the mayor of Maputo to apologise for all the horrible things he'd said about this place for years. I am sure Laura will handle the place rather better: she will at least mix well with all the strong women Simon mentioned.

I just sent Laura a welcome message, which reminded me that she had asked about my visit in February to yet another of her previous locations, Rwanda. She's not the only person I know who missed out on hearing about that trip, so I'll post a quick report here. (In fact it will be mostly copied from the only email I sent which contained any mention of what I was up to in Rwanda. Apologies to those who have seen it before - but I've neglected the hexadecimals for too long already, and I don't have time to write a fresh piece.)

One of the headwaters of the Nile.

I took all these photos on the one day on which I was able to travel outside Kigali. I found a good, professional tour agency very easily, but wasn't able to access any money in my Mozambican account from Kigali, so was limited to the cash I had with me. I hired a car and driver, Gilles, and we drove for about three hours to get to Gisenye, in the west of the country, where the border with DR Congo meets Lake Kivu.

The Rwanda-Congo border post. You may observe how tense things are. When Gilles drove me there, I thought he'd taken me to a market - lots of women with buckets of vegetables on their heads and men pushing bikes with huge bundles attached, going to and fro. It took a while to notice the rope stretched across the road and the Rwandan flag. It's a border which the locals cross because they can get a better price for their produce, or their purchases, on the other side. I felt reasonably sure, though, that if a muzungu started walking around curiously with a camera, I'd have the place about my ears, so I stayed in
the car. The town in the background of the photo is Goma (DR Congo), which was affected by a volcanic eruption a couple of years back.

Lunch hour in Gisenye.

On the way back from Gisenye we heard on the BBC an item about renewed fighting in DR Congo near Goma, during the preceding couple of weeks. Gilles and I were, to say the least, nonplussed. We'd seen no evidence of particularly high tension - plenty of soldiers in Gisenye district, but all of them out on training runs or waving vehicles through checkpoints with no apparent concern for anything other than roadworthiness. We passed a refugee camp - lots of long white permanent-looking tents with "U.N." in tall black letters - which looked very well-ordered, certainly with no obvious signs of a recent influx.

Maize drying in a town on the road to Gisenye.

In three different towns we passed Gacaca courts in session - these are part of a traditional justice system which was revived after the genocide to deal with the huge numbers of perpetrators. They take place in the open air. The first one I thought was some kind of festa or official reception, with everyone dressed up to the nines, until Gilles pointed out the prisoners in distinctive pink uniforms. Thirteen years ago, it happened, and they are still trying the accused - an indication of how many people are implicated.

I must cut short this post now, if I'm to post at all this week. Other details about Rwanda - and past travels in general - will emerge in other dull weeks.