Three Countries, One Man (all at the same time!)

So, by some stroke of crazy, we made the decision to climb another Volcano. Yesterday morning, bright and shiny, our group set out to tackle the second tallest of the three Virunga's in Uganda: Sabinyo. Although Sabinyo isn't technically as tall as Muhavura (3700m vs 4100m), what it lacks in size it makes up for in difficulty. That is right, Sabinyo is harder.



As you must understand, Sabinyo gets the name 'Old Man's Tooth' for an obvious reason: it's many peaks. As a result, to climb to the highest point on Sabinyo requires the taming of three individual, increasingly higher peaks. Each peak is seperated from the proceeding one by a small descent and an increasingly vertical climb - such that come the third, you are litterally climbing rickety ladders nailed into the cliff face. These ladders have clearly been hued out of the native trees on the mountain, because as is their nature, they are curvy and twisted as alpine vegetation tends to be. Not that I don't trust the craftmanship of UWA officials at high elevations, but some of the wrungs did have the tendency to pull away or snap come pressure and weight. Ah.



Now the bad news is that in my own way of guarenteeing good weather, I left my camera at the bottom. The good news is that the weather was fantastic, and everyone else brought theirs. When we reached the tallest of the peaks we could see clear out across the world. As I have alluded to, the highest point on Sabinyo also marks avery interesting boundary location. It is the exact spot where the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda meet - such that while I was trying to spot the active crater at Goma, I was illegally crossing a lot of borders. It is funny to mention that the bounderies are so accurate, that upon reaching the top and stumbling breathlessly into what would be Rwanda, our British friend Richard's phone recieved a inviting text saying "Welcome to Rwanda".



What followed was a bunch of silly pictures of everyone trying to be everywhere at once. Although I did not have my camera up there, I will make an attempt to steal a few later for the purpose of your viewing pleasure. I have no pictures to account for the nice weather, but I did pick up a sunburn if you are skeptical and need proof. The walk down was nice, if uneventful, and left everyone in a fairly good mood. I do have to say though, post mountain, that Muhavura is harder. The amount of sheer will power needed to climb Muhavura to the top, made it one of the hardest things I've ever done. Good try Sabinyo, nice attempt.





It is funny the type of things you fixate on while climbing though. For this paticular mountain I had altered the words to a song called 'Mansion of Misery', by unceremoniously editing Mountain into the title. However, I think the quote that was most predominant in my head was a gem from the second Jurassic Park move (Jurassic Park quotes seem to be becoming a running theme in this trip, much to my pleasure):

"Remember that chap about twenty years ago? I forget his name. Climbed Everest without any oxygen, came down nearly dead. When they asked him, they said why did you go up there to die? He said I didn't, I went up there to live. "

I have said before that mountain climbing is an enigma. This quote gives the gist of it. Although I didn't climb anything near to Everest, the effect is the same. The day after you can't imagine having spent your time anywhere else.

Other than that, everything has been fairly tame on the Africa front. About a week ago we walked out to lake Mutunda and were able to go swimming. I don't know if it is the elevation, but I could have placed this lake anywhere in Canada (ignoring the view). The water was beautiful, and the weather perfect. Although we were told that the lake didn't have Bilharzia, I'll have to keep my head up for any symptoms.

I guess the final piece of news is that a group of vets from Spain have rolled into town about a week back. There mission has been to set up spots where the local people can bring their cows, sheep and goats from deworming, as well as their dogs for the snip-snip. All to willing to help, Jess and I showed up at a field near our site one morning to get our hands dirty. What we weren't expecting, however, was for the vets to be delayed indefintiely that day. As a result, needles and other devices were put in our hands and we were sent to work.



Being the trained vet I am, I was immediatley in my element. Drench in hand, Jess and I quickly set to work on the goats and sheep. I guess the best way to describe the situation was organized chaos. As we worked to shove the stuff down the animal's throats, the children would already be off and running to jump and leap on the next group to get treated. Our arrival to a specific herd was punctuated by the bleeting of child-crushed animals, as a government official tried to record names at our torrid pace.



Once we had eliminated the smaller animals, we loaded up our needles of ivermec and stalked the real game. I was previously unaware to how savage deworming could be, but it really boils down to a lot of stabbing with big needles. As five or six local men draped themselves over the cows, we would do the honours of plungeing the syringes into the neck. Although the little cows often fell to their fate, more than a few times the big bulls would't stand for it and ran across the field full gait, with locals in tow like some bizarre trophy.

Later that day as I was walking home from a market, I was hailed down, and asked where I (the vet from spain) would be working the next day. It felt nice to be recognized as something other than a white person, but the irony was that I had no idea where the vets would be. Luckily, some thinking on the feet allowed me to tell the guy to listen to the radio! Saved.

That. That was a good day.

I think I have you all caught up, and must now leave (the internet place is closing). Tomorrow we are heading up to Bwindi for a few days, and then when we get back it'll be time to do some teaching in the schools. I think we are being joined shortly by two more Swedish volunteers; it is always nice to have some new faces.

Hope all is well, be good.

Much Love,

Sean

Fun fact: Congo was always my favourite location on the risk board, and I would secure it at all costs. I liked the name. Congo!Con GO! connnn goooo.

Africa is Where the 80's Came to Die

Although Jessica may have been the one who said it, I don't disagree with the statement.

Thursday was another day spent in town, and since we weren't supposed to go back into the field until Friday, we had the chance to hang around for the much acclaimed Kisoro market day. Market day is a biweekly event where merchants stream across the border from Congo in multitudes to try and sell all their crap for higher prices in Uganda.

The market itself is located on the far edge of town, and when in full swing, becomes a maze of people selling all sorts of crap like you couldn't believe. You know all those good will donations that you are making back in North America? Well, they're selling them here to anyone with a pulse and a roaming eye for irrelevance. I eluded to the local dress code in a previous post, and in particular to the prevalence of neon windbreakers. Well it appears that as we have started cleaning the 80's clothing out of our deepest, darkest storage areas, impoverished Africans are selling them to slightly less impoverished Africans to keep the decade alive - a mere 30 years later.



Tacky bowling shirts, tees from Superbowl twenty through thirty five and fine dress apparel are handily available - one traveler even managed to get his hands on an oversize 'Mountain Search and Rescue jacket" right from the heart of the United States. When I first got here and walked through the less transitory markets, I wondered how some of this stuff got here, but this market took it to a whole other level.

Meanwhile, back in the forest... Even though Wednesday was Darja's day to go into the woods, she was sick, and as a result unable to make it. We hadn't planned to be up there as we figured she would go, and went into Kisoro Tuesday night, resulting in none of us entering the woods with the standard tracker, ranger, and field assistant. It is no surprise then that they saw no less than 39 monkeys, 10 water buffalo, a viper, a rare three horned chameleon and a full grown silver back gorilla that had come up from the Congo. Conversely, Friday morning we saw about eight monkeys in 4 hours. Ha, ha, ha.



Thursday night was a lively affair, featuring us going to a local 'restaurant' where we got some of the best pork ever. Pig around here is pretty rare and as a result there isn't a lot of game in town. There is one place however that cooks a pig a day (if they can get it), and by god they do it right. We went at about three, on our way to market, and reserved five kilos to be shared among the six of us (2 Brits, our Slovenian coworker, and a Swede along with Jess and myself). At eight, we came back for the feast. They spend the majority of the afternoon smoking the pig, and then when it is time to eat, they quickly boil then fry it. The end result is some of the best pork I've ever tasted.

Served on a large metal tray, the food is brought out among a greasy array of potatoes and cabbage and requires you dig into the plate with your hands as if it were some kind of medieval feast. When we combined this with the altitude and strong Ugandan beer, it was the precursor to a great, but messy, night. After food we headed to one of the local div-, er, clubs and rounded out our night with more beer and dancing. Unfortunately we paid for this the next morning. As we needed to get back up to the park for 7:30, our punishment was bodha bodhas at dawn.

Now my first bodha bodha ride was less than savory, and featured me getting both slapped by a local and falling off (not related incidents) - but at least that time it was downhill, I wasn't slightly hungover or awake at an ungodly hour. True to form, about ten minutes into the cold morning ride my bodha's tire got a puncture. Right? RIGHT? Unfortunately for Jessica, it meant I had to share hers and I think it may have been the worst ride of her life. She was already a wreck and I think this ride was the finisher - by the time we hit the woods she was a zombie.

After the field, and an afternoon of sorta sleeping, we actually decided to head back into town. Although this meant another ride on those hellish motorcycle taxis, it went a lot smoother. Since it was mostly down hill, and I seemed to have lucked into getting a big one, the ride was smooth and uneventful. Furthermore, I picked up this horrid pseudo-backpack that has the footy player Ronaldo on it - making the carrying of my stuff on the bike a dream.

Friday was another sloppy evening, as it was a party to say goodbye to one of the long time volunteers here. I mentioned briefly before that there was a Swede. Sam, who had been volunteering here for seven months, was helping to set up a micro loan program for local start up projects. Seven months is a long time, very impressive.

Jess and I tried to get up for the boda bodas again, but as 6:30 came and went, the idea of riding up the hill to spend 5 hours in the forest became less and less appealing. As a result I was sent out to essentially tell the taxis to bugger off (with a little cash incentive to make parting easier). I do believe that we will try again tonight to make the trip up, although I do find it rather hard to ever get enthused for bumpy, uncomfortable motor cycle torture. It is a special kind of rape, because once they're done assaulting you, they have the gall to ask for money.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean