Bob in Rwanda!

Traditional Rwandan house


Bob arrived last Saturday and we've been pretty busy seeing the sites.
Bob's post follows:
We passed this house last week on a hike to a waterfall in the foothills of Bisoke, one of the six extinct Virunga volcanoes. Jan tells me that when she visited Rwanda in 1985 on a side trip to meet Diane Fossey and to see the Mountain Gorillas, houses like this one were still commonly seen in rural areas. These days they are scarce, at least in this fine condition, replaced by more conventional (to western eyes) structures made of brick or adobe-like block and mortared over, with metal roofs. The next two pictures were taken on the same walk. Coming down from the waterfall, we stepped along narrow paths within the patchwork of small cultivated fields that cover the foothills, hills, mountains and valleys (here, right up to the very edge of the Volcanoes National Park boundary) of, virtually, the entire country. Just remarkable. The soil here in the north and west, I am told, is rich and up to three feet deep in the valleys. It is the product of thousands of years of erosion of the volcanic rock and the decay of the lush vegetation that blanketed the area. Near the pictured house, we met a young woman in the terraced mounded rows of a potato field just harvested, using a hoe to prepare the ground for the next crop. Because so much of the land here is hilly and mountainous, and there are so many mouths to feed, these Rwandans have perfected the art of growing their food in these hand cultivated terraces. I have not seen a one horse, mule, or tractor in this country.



Contemplating volcanoes.
This is me, staring dumbly at extinct volcanoes. The picture doesn't show it well, but between this spot and the volcanoes, the land drops off several hundred feet; almost every square foot of it in cultivation.

Walking through the farm fields. That's Jan and two friends.


Nyiragongo with steam plume.
This Virunga chain volcano is in the DRC (Democratice Republic of Congo) and is active. The city of Goma was evacuated in 2002 when Nyiragongo erupted and killed 50 people. The glow of the lava pool is visible above the peak against the night sky.


Boys hamming it up near Rugongo Lake.
These guys and four or five others came over to look at us and we took some pictures. They had a good time of it, and so did we.

Rosamond Carr's home ("Mugongo") at Imbabaze in the Rwandan foothills of Karisimbe, the tallest of the Virunga volcanoes at 4507 meters (what is that, about 14,500 feet?). For fifty years she lived here and managed a flower plantation. In 1967 Dian Fossey, forced to leave the Congo and her Mountain Gorilla study, contacted Carr about setting up a base for continuing her gorilla work from Carr's plantation. They remained friends until Fossey's death in 1985. (Carr and her home show up in the movie "Gorillas in the Mist"). In 1994 Rosamond Carr established an orphanage here for victims of the genocide. She died two or three years ago and is buried in her flower garden. Her memoir "Land of a Thousand Hills" is very interesting reading. Jan and I had a lovely lunch and chat with the couple who now run the orphanage and whom Jan became familiar through her work here. (This is Jan, chiming in on Bob's post - I'm a new member of the Board of Directors for the Foundation now running Imbabazi, the orphanage Roz Carr started when she adopted over 100 children orphaned by the genocide. Those kids still live at Imbabazi.)

Gardens at Mugongo.
Beautiful place.