Barely more than 50 people a day are allowed to see Rwanda's mountain gorillas. Peter Cunninghamis one of the lucky few to catch a glimpse
WE FLY FROM Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, to Mwanza, on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, and onwards, in a small aircraft in which we are the only passengers, to Kigali, Rwanda's capital.
Flying over the Akagera river, steep green hills loom out of the mist and the terrain beneath us unfolds in squares of bright cultivation. This is Rwanda, land of a thousand hills in the heart of Africa, and home to the mountain gorillas.
The gorillas can be found on the sides of the densely forested volcanoes that straddle the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They number just over 700 and are found nowhere else. These unique animals, with whom we share 99 per cent of our DNA, live in family structures and follow behavioural patterns that are uncannily similar to those of humans.
Kigali, at 1,500m above sea level, is a city in a bowl of hills. It is almost on the equator, but its elevation makes the weather all year round like Rome in balmy June.
Our guesthouse is in Kiyovu, a leafy residential district in which the presidential palace, embassies and many expats' houses are located. Barefoot women sway by with loads on their heads, and men holding machetes stare from their squats by the roadside. At 6.30pm each evening, night falls in a moment.
It is noon on Sunday when we set out by jeep for the volcanoes and the gorillas. We drive for more than two hours on a road that lips and curls across the rims of switchback hills.
Every square metre, from valley floor to mountain peak, is cultivated with sugar cane, maize and bananas. Rwanda evokes in visitors Garden of Eden-type wonder. The valley of Lake Mahazi is as beautiful as Killarney, without the rain.
We sense the energy and raw logic of a frontier town as we drive through Ruhengeri, a city in Musanze district, in the North Province, which lies near Lake Bulera and Volcanoes National Park.
People crowd up and down the uneven streets. Dingy bars, such as the Silverback, with their peeling paint signs and dim interiors, are straight out of a scene from the Californian gold rush. We are heading for Sabyinyo Silverback Lodge, a new hotel built in the hills above Ruhengeri at 2,500m.
The lodge is a community-owned project, run by an international hotel-management outfit. The road cuts through cleared jungle, up a boulder-strewn track that makes the jeep lurch crazily. It's only mid-afternoon, but light is fading as we climb into the mist. This is where the last group of the planet's most endangered primates have found their final refuge.
Our jeep comes to a halt at the foot of steep steps where Rosetta, a tall young woman dressed in what looks like a ball gown, welcomes us. The climb to the lodge is a stiff one, the thin oxygen like a weight on the chest.
Guests at Silverback Lodge stay in roomy cottages. It's sharply cool, as the stone floors of our cottage confirm, and damp - towels and bedsheets defy efforts to keep them dry in the mist.
We have an early dinner with Nigel, the somewhat whimsical white Kenyan manager of the lodge. Nobody really feels like drinking the cheap box wine on offer, which is probably just as well, as the electricity goes off at 10.30pm, and we must be up the next day at 5am.
In the morning a light rain is coming down, and it's still dark as we eat a quick breakfast. Then we get into rain gear, strap on leggings and pitch down the crazy stone track in the jeep. It's not yet 6am as we curve around the volcano, but the roads are already thronged with people.
We arrive at the Volcanoes National Park headquarters and are assigned to François, a low-set guide of 50 with the quick eyes of a jungle scout.
Rwanda's mountain gorillas leaped into the news in 1978, when CBS's main bulletin led with the death at the hands of poachers of Digit, a young silverback - or mature male - gorilla. Dian Fossey, the American zoologist who had discovered and nurtured Digit, became instantly famous. Media researchers scrambled to find out exactly where Rwanda was.
Fossey made the mountain gorillas famous for her conservation efforts, but she arguably also became a formidable obstacle to the structured development of the gorillas and their habitat. Fossey was found murdered in her house near Ruhengeri at the end of December 1985.
François once worked for Fossey, and he gives a quick briefing before we are off in the steady rain, hiking up between the potato drills of small farms where tiny children emerge from mud and wattle huts to stare at us.
Fifty-two people a day are permitted to visit Rwanda's mountain gorillas, a privilege for which they each pay $500 (about €330). The gorillas lead the list of Rwanda's tourist attractions by a country mile.
As we scramble over the forest's perimeter wall, François tells us about the gorilla group we're hoping to encounter. The dominant silverback is Agasheya; he has 12 females, one of whom had a baby less than two weeks ago. Gorillas are vegetarians and feed mainly on bamboo and wild celery, a diet that allows them to drink little water.
Silverbacks gain domination of family groups through naked aggression and physical superiority. The gestation period for a female gorilla is nine months, and they breastfeed their offspring for up to four years. Mountain gorillas, which have a life expectancy of 50 years, are particularly susceptible to respiratory infections; tourists with colds are not allowed to visit.
We hike upwards for an hour. It's as dim as dusk, but the canopy keeps us dry. Three soldiers with AK-47s flank our group, protecting us against wild buffalo and poachers.
On the Congo side over the last ten years over 120 rangers have been killed in the line of duty, but here in Rwanda no such incidents have recently occured.
François halts and holds his hand up. Then he stoops forward, grunting and coughing gently. Ten metres away, lying on his back, his legs crossed, is Agasheya. It's a good life up here, it seems, although a livid red scar on Agasheya's neck is evidence of a recent scrap with another male, probably over rights to a female.
Two of the silverback's offspring, aged two and five, twirl and cavort on hanging vines above the patriarch. The older juvenile gazes at his reflection in a mountain stream, then, when his sibling comes to have a look, too, he pushes the youngster's face into it.
In a clearing beside Agasheya sits the wife with her newborn baby. She shields him from us, coughing a warning to keep our distance. But as she gets used to our presence, and allows us to get within a few paces, she relaxes, and the newest born, one of the closest links mankind has to his primordial past, pushes his head up from his mother's breast to have a look. His chest is hairless, his ears pink. His mother scratches her chin, then sighs lovingly.
The rain falls gently. She tucks him back to her breast. It's all good up here on a Monday morning on the side of the volcanoes.
The rest of the Rwandan story
Rwanda's nine million people live in a country the size of Munster. It is shockingly poor - per capita income $250 (€165) a year - and hopelessly overpopulated. Life expectancy for men is 38 years, for women 40. All the world's aid vehicles are here, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Clinton Foundation.
Yet in Mediterranean-like Kigali a stylish, confident Rwandese middle class is emerging. Rwanda, with few natural resources, aspires to become the information- technology capital of east Africa and is striving valiantly to achieve this goal. Behind such aspirations, however, lies Rwanda's grisly public secret. Fourteen years ago this country redefined the meaning of genocide.
Rwanda was originally inhabited by the Twa, Stone Age pygmy forest dwellers. Two thousand years ago Bantu farmers from the other side of the Congo Basin began to arrive. They were called Hutu. A thousand years later a second migratory wave spilled out of northeastern Africa. They were pastoralists, and their wealth was measured in cattle. They were the Tutsi. Over the following centuries the tall, thin-framed Tutsi became the economic overlords of the stocky Hutu.
The Germans, who ruled Rwanda through the Tutsis, departed abruptly in 1918; the League of Nations presented the country to Belgium as a consolation prize for the first World War. In 1932 the Belgians decided to formalise the ethnic composition of Rwanda by issuing identity cards to everyone on the basis of Hutu or Tutsi. During this time the more numerous Hutus resented the economic superiority of the Tutsis.
In 1959 thousands of Tutsis were killed during a brief Hutu uprising. Prior to independence, in 1962, the Belgians handed power to the majority Hutus. Tutsis fled the newly independent country and took refuge mainly in Uganda, Congo and Tanzania.
After the assassination of Rwanda's Hutu president, on April 6th, 1994, a horrifying campaign of anti-Tutsi violence erupted. Scenes of slaughter swept the small country for more than 100 days. By the time the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded from Uganda and ended the killing frenzy, a million Tutsis had been murdered. The leader of the RPF was Paul Kagame. Today he is Rwanda's president.
When the RPF came to power, in 1994, more than a million Hutus fled Rwanda for Congo and Uganda in a mirror migration of the Tutsi exodus after independence. These Hutus fear returning, as many would be identified and put on trial for genocide crimes.
Recent reports of a surge of ethnic hatred in Rwandan schools has alarmed the government. In a country where, at current rates, the population by 2020 will be 20 million, land pressures may become intolerable. Future political stability will be a stern challenge for Kagame, with a million refugees on his borders, waiting for their hour to return.
Go there
Peter Cunningham flew to London with Aer Lingus, www.aerlingus.com. His trip to Rwanda was arranged by Aardvark Safaris, www.aardvarksafaris.com. Call John Spence or Richard Smith on 00-44-1980-849160.
For more information about Rwanda's mountain gorillas, see www.wildlife direct.org.
Where to stay and where to go
Accommodation
Kigali is surprisingly western. Kiyovu, the Dublin 4 of Kigali, is laid out in broad, undulating avenues.
The four-star Hotel des Milles Collines, setting for the film Hotel Rwanda, is a popular place for a cocktail. www.millecollines.net.
Hotel Serena is where many tourists end up; it charges Dublin prices and is poor value. www.serenahotels.com.
Iris Guest House (where we stayed), 00-250-501172.
Hotel Gorillas, 00-250-501- 717, www.hotelgorillas.com.
Eating out
Indian Khazana, Kiyovu, 00-250-503957.
Havana Club, 00-250-510440.
Cactus, 00-250-575572.
Getting around
Transport around Kigali, with its population of a million, is by crowded minivan or bus; by taxi, which is inexpensive; or by moto, a scooter on which you ride pillion (highly inadvisable). The government has adopted a Singapore-style zero-tolerance attitude to crime, which by official accounts has made Kigali the safest city for tourists in eastern Africa.
Go visit
Rwandans are extrememly friendly to visitors. They are most sensitive to outsiders' shock at Rwanda's recent history, but they are also open about it. The Genocide Memorial Museum, in Gasabo, is a sobering but essential stop. Out in the country, gangs of pink-overalled labourers are a common sight. They are serving out their sentences for their part in the genocide.
In Kinyinya, a 10-minute drive from downtown Kigali, a small village, or umudugadu - entirely run by children, most of them genocide orphans - has been established. We brought parcels of food and were welcomed with warmth and dignity.
Shopping
As a recreational pastime, shopping does not exist in Rwanda. However, retail banks, airlines offices and basic pharmaceutical and food items can be found in Union Trade Centre, Rwanda's only modern mall complex, downhill from Hotel des Milles Collines. Off-street stalls selling crafts and souvenirs are everywhere.