Saturday afternoon, I am sitting at home, well positioned to look out the window onto the tree that sits right next to our wall. Half an hour ago some kids climbed it up, ready to jump into our garden. Now Gemma and I take turns in housesitting. She wants to cut the tree, I dont really, not that it is particularly pretty, just for principles.
At least now I have some time to blog again.
Some of you knew about my special 20ies birthday ritual - never spend them at home. And i almost succeded, only spent one in Berlin, I think it was the 22. New decade, new ritual, its called the birthday week(s). Introduced by my dear friend Liz when she turned 30, we spent a whole week spoiling ourselves on Zanzibar at the time. Now, this is the documentation of the 32 b-day week.

It started off with the Irish Community St. Paricks Day Ball at the Serena Hotel. Last year I missed it cause I had to work the next day and there is no point in going to an Irish party and not getting drunk, right? This year, since my b-day fell in a Friday we all celebrated together, me, the irish and Dafne, the fellow B-day girl.

Iam waiting for a friend to send me her pictures with the whole crazy dress parade. Meanwhile, a photo of me and Liliana.



















The next day, I had people over for coffee and cake. I got up early and flicked through my receipes. Iam not that much of a baking person, but I do have some hidden treasures scribbled down. And then for fun wanted to try out something new. Music loud, kitchen covered in flour I baked away happily. But when it was time to put the doughs into the oven, it remained cold. Of course, I remembered then that a couple of weeks ago, when I wanted to turn the oven off, it wouldnt and I had to unplug it. The mental note never materialsed into action and so the thing was never repaired. Nothing to worry about, carefully i carried the two bowls over to the neighbours, two guys, wanting to be helpful but unfortunately a little helpless in the kitchen. Didnt know how to work their oven. Now, slight panic. Called the other neighbours, out of the house shopping for their party that night. And then got lucky with the last one. An hour and a half to go. Phew. Cakes turned out delicious, neighbours got their share, too.

all is well that ends well, sitting in the shade on a very sunny post-birthday-afternoonNach dem ganzen Backdrama sitzen hier wir hier nun ganz gemuetlich im Schatten

Me and Steve, good to have a photography nerd friend (you said it yourself!) when you have just bought a new kick ass digitial camera.

Saturday neighbours party, was followed by a dinner in Kigalis best new restaurant "Select", a lazy sunday afternoon and one of the best theatre plays i have seen here in Rwanda. Adapted from a south african play about two political prisoners performed by a rwandan and congolese.

Birthday week was completed with my fourth "Happy Birthday Anja Fischer" cake Monday morning in the office  and two outings, one to

Mt. Kabuye with my friend Steve and the other one to Lake Ruhondo in the Northwest, my favourite area in Rwanda. its the rainy season now. Well, its seems its always raining season here nowadays. So, no surprise that it was overcast when we started towards the mountain. We only had a very rough idea where we were going, so gladly excepted local help when we parked the car in the parking lot of a small public adminstration building. Our entourage was made of 4 guys, the youngest about 9-10, all in flip flops, wellies or simply barefoot. The higher up we went the colder an foggy it got. By the time we reached the top I had put on my raincoat and hat whereas the boys were freezing and shivering in their t-shirts. So we just had a short food break in the forest, unfortunately without any view. This photo was taken on the way back.
Mit dem Wetter hatten wir nicht so viel Glück auf dem Weg zum Gipfel von Mt. Kabuye. Es war ziemlich neblig und regnerisch, vor allem auf dem Rückweg, hier auf dem Foto. Dementsprechend schlecht war auch die Aussicht, aber es war dennoch ein guter Trip!













Whereas we took a well trodden path on the way up, we were led down on the backside of the mountain, no path whatsoever, steep as hell. All to see a cave, which was a little creepy. It started to rain and it became more and more slippy. The red earth turns into something thick butter-like, expect to slide. And so we did. We were wet from top to toe and trousers were covered in red mud. I had already decided and announced to Steve that all that stuff will have to come off in the car and that we might be stopped a litle more often by the police who have been lining the roads on our way up from Kigali. Luckily for all of us I had forgotten my sweaty yoga gear in the back of the car again from a couple of days back. Better stinky than wet and dirty!

A week later, the weather was a little better, at least until we got back into the car to go home when it started to piss down like it only does in the tropics. The word was that there is a beautifully situated church on one of the hills overlooking Lake Ruhondo, up in the north towards the vulcanoes.
Ich wollte schon eine ganze Weile mal zu dieser Kirche, die so eine schoene Aussicht ueber den Ruhondo See hat, im Nordwesten in Richtung der Vulkane. Und so brach ich mit ein paar Freunden auf zu einem kleinen Spaziergang, nichts im Vergleich zu der Bergwanderung der Woche zuvor!


The walk was a little less heavy than up Mt. Kabuye, we made plenty of breaks on the way down to the lake and up again. Here during one of them, with Ashani and Nicks legs in the back.


One more down, many more to come!

I think when your own blog is writing a comment to you to get your act together and feed it again (thanks Laura) the time has finally come to get some fresh and maybe not so fresh anymore news out there. (scroll down i smuggled in an entry before the last one for my birthday).

And news there are.  After I came back from Indonesia – uh yes, for those of you who dont know, i was there on mission for 6 weeks, some visual impressions under the link more pictures) – i found myself homeless as my old roomie Andrew followed his heart to Sudan. So last week I moved again into a very lovely house.

I instantly felt at home, easy cause it was furnished and quite cosy but also it has this summer holiday cottage feeling to it, lots of light and very hot as about 10 am the sun starts to peek around the corner of the veranda and then follows its course until the very end of the day when it sets right opposite my garden chair. 

I am in fact witnessing my first dry season in Rwanda, last year we skipped it. The lawn has turned greyish and the veranda and floor inside the house are constantly covered in a fine layer of dust. Some of the sandy roads in the neighbourhood have turned into something that feels like you are on water when you drive through. For Moto drivers like me this has advantages as well as disadvantages. Of course I dont have to worry about these terrestrial rainfalls that already have surprised me a couple of times in the past but then my body processes a considerable amount of red soil that enters through mouth, ears and eyes, i wash my hair almost every day and the bath tub turns red.

Speaking of bath tub, this house has a pump which means no more bucket showers, hurray! On the other hand we have been suffering more electricity cuts than usual lately. It is to be suspected that this is due to the same reason why the internet gets cut all the time, we spend more time stuck in traffic or looking for parking, fancy new places like restaurants and supermarkets open: Kigali is growing...fast. I was gone for 2 months and noticed it immediately, blocked streets and more and more white people walking around. Problem with urban growing in Kigali is mainly limited space in between these hills and it will be interesting how this will be dealt with.

Sunday after the church - view from my house

But back to my house. Its in the same neighbourhood as the last one and there is plenty of friendly people around in walking distance. It is a shared house and currently I live with two girls from Uganda and India who I kind of inherited but who will be leaving soon. So from about October the new crew will be complete with another Ugandan girl and one from the UK. At least until December I will then be enjoying stable living conditions after months of being a guest, traveling or staying in hotel rooms. That should give me the time to think what is going to happen next year.

 Maybe yoga will also help, at least something I can do with a still broken toe!

The new chez moi

The end of February saw our first and last big Barbeque at the house. The smell of the best garlic sausages from the German supermarket slash butchery and the easy laughter of our lovely guests filled the sunny Saturday afternoon air...ah, life is sweet with a brochette in one hand and a cool, ehm, tonic in the other. 

As a host you dont want to get wasted too fast and too early. Very wise decision as guests continued to pile in until Midnight. 10 hours of socialising -  that must have been the longest barbeque ever. Luckily we originally overestimated people's appetite as usual which came in handy in the end so we grilled away happily through the night. 

A week later it was bye-bye chez Liz et moi and the Kiyovu neighbourhood and hello Kimihurura and Andrew. Positive and optimistic as I am I saw the bright sight of it and forgot about our perfect old home immediately. My window runs along the whole side of the room and for the first time i know the time of day when I wake up. My old window was totally covered with plants which, you know, was nice and mysterious especially from the outside but hey, daylight flooding the room got its own charme. The living room's door opens to the veranda where in beween trees, the gate...and the car... I can spot the other side of the hill.  

Howard, our recently bewidowed and slighly misled cock, his day starts at around 3 in the morning, adds a homely and farmy touch to it. So, yes, I love my new chez moi, at least in the dry season, and when my toe isn't broken. Slightly different from our Kiyovu city centre house accessibilty in Kimihurua is much more of an issue as few roads are paved which means hard work for a little Moto like mine and no taxis outside the house. Why didnt I buy a car again? On the other hand its got a lot more of  a neighbourhoody touch, you pop out to the shops or go for a walk in the area and it also means friends around so crippled me got lifts to work in the morning for a while. All in all, I cant complain and ever since Andrew took pity on me a made him and me a nice sturdy massage table life is all good where the 1000 hills are.

King of the Bongo

tea plantation in Nyungwe forest

One of our New Year Resolutions was to get out of Kigali more often - said and done - we, Joy, Alex and me, set off to Nyungwe National Park last weekend. Someone said to me before I came to Rwanda that in every direction from Kigali one would reach a border in more or less 2 hours and so far this held true. To get to the southwestern part of the country however, its actually quite a bit longer, 5 hours to Cyangugu, at the southern tip of Lake Kivu and the congolese border, and just a little less to our destination: the biggest stretch of rain forest in East Africa famous for its incredible biodiversity and lots of little kings of the bongo. In fact, to see the monkeys you didn't even have to leave the car - unless you wanted to take pictures. The road leads straight through the forest and the little beasts hang out at the roadside, seems they like either cars or their smell. Can't be people as they are not habituated.



Unfortunately nothing in Rwanda comes for free so entry to the park and a 1 hour stroll through the forest cost us about $50 and somehow we didn't feel like going back the next day for another walk and pay again. I would have also prefered to just walk around, smell, see for myself but nope, not even that. Our friendly guide was right there for us, helping to stretch a circle walk of half an hour to an hour by stopping at every plant and tree with their latin names right at hand.



That's how excited Joy and me were!










I am scrolling up and down the pictures to find one that could kind of show it all but its quite hard, to you they'd probably look like pictures from any god damn forest. And somehow we have more of the tea plantation where we went the next day anyway. Over night we stayed in a little lodge where they made a little camp fire just for us. That was nice - only the guitar was missing - and so the evening passed with each of us starring into the fire wrapped in our own thoughts.


"wenn die Nase juckt, dann juckt se!" oder "Frau am Abgrund"













Joy and Alex in the tea plantation

Meanwhile in Kigali life has become quite busy as we are running up to our big meeting beginning of Feb. The rain still hasn't stopped even though it was supposed to be the shorter rainy season - I think the long one starts in February... and our roof isnt't waterproof, its still dripping right on Liz' bed and that does not make her happy!! But getting it investigated or even repaired turns out to be a neverending story with which I am not going to bore you. What else can I tell you, yes, I finally made up my mind and bought a moto. On the road again? Not quite as I got the gaz/oil mix wrong and for the moment its nicely parked in front of my house and wouldn't start...but Liz is also going to buy a car...nice!
So maybe more on new road adventures the next time round!

Gorillas in the rain

A new entry on the day of St. Nicolas (Nikolausi) who has taken the trouble to make his way even to the country of the 1000 hills. But this is not what I want to share with you as obviously what you see on the left is not St. Nicolas but the silverback (le vieux la) of group 13 up in the mountains of the Virunga National Park. The silverback is the leading male in any given group and has - surprise surprise - a silver back, please marvel at the silver chest as well. Apparently all male get that some time but not every one has his own group. Like back in the old days they still fight for their women and for power among themselves and the loser has to go.


But otherwise they are really peaceful as you see here with the youngest member of the group. She is about 2 months old and still a bit scared hence hides in mummy's arms. It was amazing how close we got to them, about 2m, and still how normal they proceeded with their daily routine which comprises eating, playing, eating, sleeping, shagging (nope, we didn't get to see it but according to the guards they normally don't mind visitors at all) , eating and so on. They told us that they eat up to 30kg of green stuff, they are 100% vegetarian, and that really takes up most of their time. More or less quite an easy and cheerful way of life, I certainly wouldn't mind.
But then there wasn't just the gorillas but also the jungle and the walk itself was again a little adventure although we resisted the temptation to walk 4 hours (and 3 back) to the furthest, biggest and most popular group. We thought 1h of mud up to your knees and stingy plants was just about fine. But honestly, it was well worth it - apart from our annoying guard - the smell, the sounds and the views...ok ok, it was quite foggy and rainy, but still.

And hey, who am I to complain, at least my shoes remained intact and I had dry feet. Unlike Alexandra who borrowed boots from a friend and lost both soles half way up - I totally could have died on this mountain, suffocating from eating and laughing so hard at the same time as I was walking right behind her and saw her soles go flop, flop, flop. Alex, by the way, I share my office with temporalily as she was relocated from Kinshasa during the election in the DR Congo.


I just realised going through the pictures that many are, hmm, how do you say 'flu' in english, I mean, not THE flu but when they are not sharp? And we have tons of the old guy. But thats ok, he was quite impressive showing us also every now and then who was the boss by standing up and running towards us to scare us away or just beating his chest.


All in all we spent about an hour with them and if it didn't cost so much I would love to go and see them again. Maybe not with 8 people again and having to shoot 1000s of pictures but really just to observe a bit more in peace.
To say goodbye the silverback sat there quite majestically as if he wanted to indicate that the audience was over...and so it was.













To finish, pictures from Lake Muhazi, about an hour eastwards from Kigali, an ideal place for lazy sundays and parties the saturday night before. Even the president has a house here!







And one from Laura, who I just bought my first original piece of art from. Its called "lick"- see and judge for yourselves!

















And hey, the last one I just found, its from a party at Laura's that was supposed to be a Halloween party aka Congo theme aka whatever you felt like. (Katrin, Liz, Andrea, Laura)

Dance on the volcano

On the route from Kigali to Gisenyi
- Unterwegs von Kigali nach Gisenyi -

I had quite an exciting week with lots of travelling and actually right now I would just love to loll on the sofa and be lazy but I thought I could just as well use our new wireless connection at home and provide you with stories on my latest adventure.
It took me to Goma in the Democratic Republic Congo. Goma is the twin city of Gisenyi on the Rwandan side on the northern tip of lake Kivu and probably - if at all - mostly known for its volcano eruption in 2002. There are loads of volcanos in the area but Nyiragongo (3800 m) is the only one still active, so whats more obvious than climbing it and spending a night at the top? Specially since the timing was incredible as on Friday about 4 hours before we left I finally released my remaing personal belongs out of Rwandan customs. Properly equipped this should be a piece of cake!

I was positively surprised by public transport or rather by my stomach coping with it but I was in good company of my flatmate Andrea, her friend Sara and Bruno - a friend of a friend... well, you know. We arrived safely, spent a night in Gisenyi where Joseph and Mailan joined us. The next morning I first set eye on lake Kivu of which I had already heard so much and which earns Rwanda the name of the African Switzerland ( does this work in English - Ruandische Schweiz?).

...for those of you who don't believe it...

Das Hotel Kivu Sun mit Blick auf den See

At the border we met up with Maneza and Mareile who completed our group and we crossed it without any hassle. Rwandan order can be a real bliss but even on the congolese side it was real smooth. First it continued that way after the border with nice villas and wide roads but the real change came downtown Goma and with it the realisation how clean and organised Kigali is. The whole atmosphere was more rough, street kids roaming around and generally a bit more of the chaos one expects from this continent. The only picture I took was from this boy with his fabulous wooden bike. In Rwanda they are not allowed and if you had seen any of them speeding down the hill you would understand why. But here they seemed to be quite popular.

After sorting out water, food and our permits we started just before midday, praying it would not rain although our taximan was indicating otherwise. After hooking up with three other people we were quite a large congregation, 11 bazungus with 6 porters and 2 armed guards. If we could believe their judgement it would take us about 5 hours to reach the crater and as we were all in good spirit so we did. The first bit lead us trough thick jungle like forest, birds were chatting away happily and it was easy to walk.



We warmed up with our congolese escort quickly and even got the guards to smile during our first break. Every now and then the clouds gave way to impressive views to the top.




But the sun faded soon and the vegetation changed. We were now walking on lava which was quite difficult - like on Brightons pebble just uphill.

Turning around and looking at the opening plateau with the Rwandan hills on the horizon I had to pinch myself a number of times. What was lying before me was part of the mysterous Congo, the heart of darkness. But in fact it didn't feel like it all, I was just on yet another hike.


It was about half way into our trip that our taxi driver's forecast became reality and it started to rain. Hastily we prepared for the rather hopeless undertaking to keep our stuff dry. It was only a matter of time that everything would be wet. Unpleasant memories of hours walking, putting up tents in the rain and having to get into wet clothes in the morning came up. But for the moment the only thing that counted was moving on and automatically putting one foot in front of the other.
And if you think a volcano in the Congo was the last place on earth where you could use your Hindi then think again. Lulled in my thoughts I suddenly heard noise erupting in front of me. A hord of Indian Blue Helmets from the Congos MONUC mission returned from their expedition to the top in full military gear (although it crossed my mind briefly that this could have also been some kind of punishment). As they set eye on us they got their cameras out immediately and went absolutely crazy: ek foto, ek foto. I stood there thunderstruck already feeling two pairs of arms flung around me - nevermind the rain or the luggage we were carrying - the scene was so absurd. Finally their boss had enough and shouted at them properly and so they let go of us.

Not long after that we arrived at some huts where the porters usually spend the night. The summit only another 30 minutes away. Sheltered from wind and rain but not from the cold we gathered round to make a little fire. Slowly slowly the sky cleared up and finally it stopped raining. We went out, inhaled the fresh air and the most fantastic view. We saw the lake, most of the other volcanos and the valley underneath.

Here is the proof, I was up there. Behind me is Karisimbi, the

highest volcano (4500 m) in the area.
- kurz vor dem Gipfel mit Ruandas hoechstem Vulkan im Hintergrund -

By now temperatures had dropped significantly and everybody was wet to the bones. Afraid that it could rain again we went on to the summit, the path now requiring real climbing skills. Finally arriving at the crater was fantastic, the wind blew hard in my face and I looked about 600 m down into a bubbling red lava lake.

© Bruno Versailles (thats his real name, no joke)

As you can see thick white smoke came up and sulfur stung our eyes. We set up the tents on the windier side of the summit and came back just to sit and look at the lava as you would sit on the beach, listening to the soothing sound of waves. If it just hadn't been so cold and windy.

© thanks to Bruno again

The night was freezing and no one slept much. The wind kept penetrating the side of the tent and so we cuddled up in there, unfortunately that was less romantic than it might sound. Luckily it didn't rain!

We got up early, unfortunately the crater was full of smoke and we didn't see the lava again. We went downhill in about half the time it took us to come up and we all agreed that it had been worthwile. Back in Kigali I was absolutely shattered, might have suffered a sunstroke or something and still am in need for sleep.