BackBlog I - Clothing (by Karen)

We've left the Congo (more on that soon), but I have a backlog of blog posts which I'm going to try to get up in the next week or so.

Clothing

The most common type of clothing in Lubumbashi and elsewhere that we’ve been in DRC (and places we haven’t, judging from the wardrobes of the MPH students, who come from all over), is “western”-style clothing. Not cowboy-shirts-and-rodeo-pants-western, but jeans and t-shirts and skirts and heels. Lots of this clothing came from second-hand stores in the US, sold sometimes with the Goodwill tag still attached.  This is removed before wearing, but if an item – especially a man’s suit – is bought new, the labels are often left on to flaunt that fact.

A few of the used T-shirts I’ve seen have particular significance to me, and it’s odd to see them crop up so far from their original contexts. To wit: Seattle Marathon, Ballard Boys & Girls Club (Ballard is a neighborhood in Seattle, and I know exactly where the B&G is), Northbrook (my sister’s old stomping ground), and Hamden (my hometown and alma mater – complete with forest-green shirt and yellow/gold lettering). Another incongruous thing is that clothes lose their cultural signification. Men un-ironically wear clothes that would be considered women’s in the US. A notable example was a wiry, contentious taxibus collector with daisy-studded flip-flops. Women and children sometimes wear pajama tops or bottoms or, once, I even saw a satin slip, as regular streetwear.

Though men almost always wear slacks or jeans, it’s not uncommon to see them wearing a shirt made of pagne (big length of colorful, patterned cotton cloth), and it’s quite common to see women wearing dresses or an outfit made of pagne. Lots of women have both western-style clothes and pagnes and wear one style sometimes, the other at other times. Often pagnes have religious, political, or professional images and slogans printed on them.

I didn’t bring many clothes with me, being unsure what would be most appropriate to wear and planning to get some things made. Initially, I had assumed that pagnes were relatively inexpensive. Not so -- I bought a used skirt at the local market for $10, which is not cheap, but still cheaper than buying a pagne ($10-20-ish) and having it sewn up into an outfit. My first attempt at getting something custom-made out of a pagne ended in disaster, with the jacket ($45) tolerable but the skirt ($15) lamentable. Eric’s shirt ($15) turned out well, though he’s never worn it. [Eric: I don’t want to feel like a poser.]

I decided to try something ready-made, thinking that it would be less expensive. One of the doctoral students, a woman around my age, took me to a few hole-in-the-wall shops that had surprisingly nice stuff. There’s little advertising on the street, and storefronts are often deceptively plain, so it’s hard to judge the extent and quality of the wares from outside.

 I was fascinated by the outfits imported from West Africa made of shiny, moiré fabric called bazin, often decorated with beads or metallic thread, and I tried a few on. I thought I’d be willing to spend $20-30 on one; my jaw hit the ground when I heard the plainest started at $100.

We went to a shop that had a variety of West African imports at half-price. The bazin weren’t on sale,

These range in price from $250-$350

but I ended up with two outfits, including this one (for $75). This shopping experience re-calibrated how I saw women on the streets of Lubumbashi; lots of pricey threads out there.

The salesperson caught me with an unfortunate expression, but I was smiling inside

The skirt was tight in the hips, and I was impressed that the seamstress just eyeballed me and said there was no need to try on the skirt again for her. I put it down to her incredible skill, and left the skirt in her hands, marveling at her mastery of the art of dressmaking, nearly lost in the US. When I tried on the altered skirt, though, it had comical huge pouches on each side that bore no relation to any conceivable human shape. Looking at her handiwork, the seamstress agreed that a re-do was in order; it came out better the second time around.

As our departure approached, I started to get gifts from the grad students I’d been giving seminars to. The first was from the Higher Institute of Allied Health Professions; one of them invited me to her house (after nearly 9 months in Lubumbashi, the first invitation to a Congolese friend or colleague’s home!), and she and her colleagues presented me with this beauty:

The Dansko clogs definitely add to the effect.
I'm standing beside my hostess -- she probably wouldn't mind my showing her picture, but we're (perhaps overly) careful about not posting pictures of people without their OK.

Then I bought a couple more pagnes and decided to try again at a different seamstress, but again with mixed results.

Then the grad students from the School of Public Health gave me and Eric each an outfit (and me a malachite pen holder, malachite being abundant in Katanga Province):

Then one of the grad students with whom I’ve worked particularly closely gave me and Eric each an outfit (no picture yet, but I think it’s going to be on our Christmas card this year …), and the colleague with whom I’ve worked most closely gave me a very elegant outfit. 

And, finally, the Director of the School of Public Health presented me with my very own UNILU academic robe!

Never having owned my own robe before, I was quite tickled, although I was a bit chagrined the next day when I attended the graduation ceremony and realized that most professors had leopard skin trim on their robes:

UNILU Med School grads of 2015

Of course, it remains to be seen whether I actually wear any of these in Seattle.

Volcanoes (by Eric)

From the Virunga / Kahuzi Biéga trip we took last month.

I mentioned in a previous post that we visited gorillas in 2 parks in Eastern DRC: Virunga and Kahuzi Biéga. We also climbed a volcano in each park, Nyiragongo in Virunga, near Goma, and Kahuzi, near Bukavu. The two were very different mountains: Nyiragongo is an active volcano with a lake of bubbling lava; Kahuzi was last active about 12,000 years ago. However, both were spectacular in their own ways.

Nyiragongo

Looking into the lava lake at Nyiragongo. The surface slowly churns.

We organized the trip through Virunga Park, and (for a fee) Mikeno Lodge provided us with sleeping bags, backpacks, sweaters, winter coats, a fleece layer, food for dinner, breakfast and snacks . . . and a cook. Our park driver took us directly from the lodge to the beginning of the hike on the morning of Friday, May 15. At the ranger station we met with our armed guides and joined 2 other tourists; I bought a walking stick; and all of us hired porters. Our party of 15 or so climbed Nyiragongo and spent the night at the top. It may be possible to go up and down the same day, but seeing the lake of lava at night is worth the discomfort of sleeping in a tent at 11,382 feet.

Hiking with ant-proof ankle protection, i.e., with pants tucked into socks like dorks.

Nyiragongo has erupted 34 times since 1882, most recently in 2002, when a fissure opened on the side of the mountain facing Goma and drained much of the lava lake, destroying the airport runway and burning a path through the city all the way to Lake Kivu. The runway was rebuilt, and Goma is under construction, but the roads are just bare lava in many places.
The upper portion of the hike was through bare volcanic rock and loose pumice. In that way, it reminded me of hiking up Mount Saint Helens.

Volcanic rock providing sheltering holes for a skink.

The hike started in the sun with a gradual incline, but later the trail became very steep and it poured rain. Fortunately, our packs also contained ponchos! It stopped raining before we reached the top and, over time, the clouds gradually blew out of the crater.

Before the rains

At the top there are insulated tents inside small, dilapidated cabins. Even 88 miles south of the equator, it gets pretty cold at 11,000 ft! Our cook prepared dinner for us over a charcoal fire – chicken and tomatoes, potatoes, soup. It got dark quickly at about 6 pm, and we made a foray to the edge of the crater to see the lava in the dark – a most amazing and awe-inspiring sight, but not one we could easily photograph with our low-tech cameras.

Isaac warming up before the sun set.

The lava is about 1 kilometer below us. There is a steep drop-off.

The following morning: looking towards Goma and Lake Kivu from the summit. The outhouse is visible in the foreground, and below it, the crater left from an earlier eruption.

Nyiragongo is a very steep-sided volcano; the hike starts at 1984 m (6500 ft) and the summit is at 3470 m (11,385 ft). That steepness and the very low silica content allowed the 1974 lava flows to reach speeds of 60 mph. For us, it meant that our legs were feeling the volcano for a few more days after our descent – Karen and I struggled with stairs for a while!

Kahuzi

After Nyiragongo we went to Bukavu, visited gorillas, and climbed Mount Kahuzi. In both Goma and Bukavu, the rainy season lasts most of the year, although it is drier from June to August. We drove from Bukavu to the trailhead along a road that continued all the way to Kinsangani. The road was extremely muddy in places and we were stopped for a while at this traffic jam:

The white truck is badly stuck. Photo taken through our windshield.

A mile or so before we got there, we knew we were approaching a jam because we started seeing people walking down the sides of the road. This was over 20 miles outside of town and this was the park – there weren't villages along the road. They were walking because the trucks or taxi-buses (vans) in which they had been riding were trapped behind the stuck trucks. Unfortunately, our driver thought we could squeak by the right side of the white truck above, and we also got stuck. Perhaps, if he hadn't tried to go around and gotten stuck, we would have turned around and not climbed Kahuzi. As it was, we hadn't been waiting very long before a UN patrol arrived. They were on their way to investigate reports of a new rebel group farther up the road. 
Anyway, the UN patrol was made up of a couple of large, white SUVs containing one officer from Russia, Pakistan, the Czech Republic, Uruguay, and the Philippines each, and 2 very large trucks driven by local contractors (probably Beiben 1629s or something very similar.) I can't help thinking of the Olympics when I see people from around the world working together! They quickly assessed the situation and hooked the stuck truck and the 2 Beibens together in series, and with much wheel-spinning, exhaust-spewing, mud-burning action, pulled the white truck out of the hole it was in. It had spun its wheels so much that it had dug a hole deeper than the radius of the wheels themselves. Everybody cleared out pretty quickly after that, and on the way home there was little evidence of the entire event. We were very lucky because without that UN patrol, we could have been stuck for a long time or had a long walk back to town.
Some distance further along the road was the ranger station, where we picked up 3 guards/guides and left the driver behind as we hiked up into the bamboo forest. This hike was also quite a climb, Kahuzi topping out at 10,883 ft. Coming down the steep parts, I slowed my descent by grabbing onto the giant bamboo along the trail, rubbed shiny by scores of other hands that had done the same thing.

The commanding view of the forested hills around Kahuzi.
These forests may contain both gorillas and dangerous primates (man).

Lots of lichen hanging from the trees near the top.

Isaac and I following our armed guard through the giant bamboo forest on the way down; Karen called it a day about 2/3 of the way to the top, and then headed down ahead of us (and took this picture).

The hike was a lot like summits that I have done in the Cascades – the flora was pretty familiar-looking – the lichen and a heather-like plant at the top. The giant bamboo was new for me, but the biggest difference was the accompanying armed guards. We just don't have that with the Mountaineers.

Weather II/Resilience II/Kundelungu II/Robot II (by Karen)

Weather II

The opposite of the rainy season is not the dry season. It’s the dusty season. Fine dust everywhere, on the computer screen, keyboard, the chairs you just wiped down yesterday, on your clothes, in your nose. Sneezing, snuffling – and cold anywhere (the apartment, my office, under a tree) that’s not in direct sun. 

Dust.

Sleeping not only with the blanket, but also thick wool socks, one night even wool long johns. Shivering in the bath though the water’s warm. The upside is that walking in the sun is pleasant, you don’t break a sweat. Reminds me of Indian Summer in the east coast autumn – clear, crisp, dry mornings and dry, sunny days. Like Nairobi in January, or Phoenix at Christmastime.

Resilience II

Remember all my crowing in an earlier post about how “resilient” we were to the vagaries of power outages because we’d bought a brasero and some charcoal? We got our comeuppance on the Kundelungu Plateau. Eric described some of our struggles to light the charcoal, but he didn’t go into the half of it. Lots and lots of candle wax, blowing on the coals until we were light-headed, soaking the charcoal in some of our reserve gasoline – I even stooped to trying a plastic bag.

I’d first seen someone use a plastic bag to light a fire on our Nyanga hike in Zimbabwe. I was scandalized – all those toxins! But of course, plastic, being a petroleum product (as I am fond of pointing out in my crusade to reduce, reuse, and recycle it), burns very well. Every time we’ve used the brasero at home in Lubumbashi, the guard has lit the fire for us, and he, too, sometimes uses a plastic bag. On balance, I suppose it’s better to use a plastic bag to start a cooking fire than to let it sit in a ditch for a few millennia, or to burn it in a pile of trash that generates no useful heat energy and emits lots of toxic smoke.

First night -- dry charcoal, lots of candle wax. Dinner was served a couple of hours later ...

Next morning -- I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!

Where there's smoke, there's fire -- or??

Pine cones to the rescue.

A wisp of a flame!

These days, at home in Lubumbashi, the power is out every morning from about 6 to 9 or 9:30. This is nice, because it’s predictable; on the other hand, it means no hot breakfast or coffee if we leave before the power comes on. Usually we have a hot bucket bath because the hot water heater has been on overnight. So, on balance, we’re still pretty dependent on our creature comforts, hovering near the lower end of the resilience spectrum.

Kundelungu II – Night

The park is supported through a Congo-German cooperation.

Crossing the Lofoï above the falls on a thick, spongy carpet of green, red, and black ferns and algae.
(Photo by Mama Bear; Tween Bear and Papa Bear in front of Eric, Baby Bear clinging to the park guard/guide.)

The night sky at Kundelungu was breathtaking: the Southern Cross, the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, and a striking straight vertical line of three points – Jupiter, Venus, and Regulus – shone bright. There was no light pollution whatsoever; the six of us were alone up on that plateau, kilometers away from the nearest town, cozy in the gite, our only company the spiders and wasps.

The night sky at Kundelungu, as snapped with my phone.
The amazing thing is that, if you look very closely, you can actually see a couple of planets!

After our long drive back from the Lofoï Falls, we sat around the low coffee table, talking by candlelight, eating the dinner we’d cooked over the brasero, drinking wine, melting squares of chocolate in the candle flames. The 4-year-old had gone to sleep, too tired to wait for dinner, and her 11-year-old sister had had her fill of marshmallows toasted over the brasero coals. We were all feeling mellow, well-fed and sleepy …

As the sun was setting ...

Suddenly, through the darkness, we heard the sound of a vehicle, and voices of men – drunk? – singing, chanting. The gite no longer seemed cozy, the candlelight no longer warm. We blew out the candles, closed the curtains, made sure that the flimsy locks on the glass doors were closed. Then we sat in the dark, straining to hear. They were still out there, more distant now.

We had no phone service, no radio. Of course, we weren’t totally alone on the plateau – the park staff, including the guard who had been with us that day, were somewhere, but we had no idea where. We thought of stories of nearby Upemba Park, which is effectively off-limits to tourists (and dangerous to rangers) because of rebel activity. When I was in Kilwa the week before, there had been reports of activity of the Maï-Maï Kata Katanga, and the guard had said that their traces had been seen near the Lofoï Falls. But thus far, he said, they had never caused problems in the Kundelungu Park.

But there’s always a first time, I thought. I tried to reassure myself and others that they only came looking for food and money, that they wouldn’t cause us harm, but I was painfully aware of the two girls and of stories of kidnapping and rape.

Quiet returned. Had they gone, or were they lurking silently, surrounding the gite, waiting to make their move? We went to bed, slept fitfully.

In the morning, as we were trying to light the charcoal yet again, three park staff came walking along the road. As they struggled in their turn to light the charcoal – they said it was damp, exposed to the dew because we hadn’t closed it up well enough – we asked them about the noise we’d heard the night before. It was they and their colleagues, returning from watching the European Cup finals, happy that their team, Barça, had won.

Of course, we hadn’t been alone the night before – that was an illusion. And the Maï Maï weren’t out to get us – that was a delusion, born in part of reality (there are rebel groups and they do do bad things sometimes), in part of a paranoia with shameful roots in tropes based on class, colonialism, and race. 

Moral of the story: always check the football (soccer) schedule before heading for the hills.

Robot II

The traffic robots in one of our early posts were a big hit.

Unfortunately, the robots have not fared well. The one I pass most often on the way to work is often ailing, unable to raise one or both arms or failing to rotate in sequence. Actually, for a time, it appeared to be completely dead; after a few days, we realized it was only in a coma, because the green light on one of its hands started blinking. A few days later, it woke up, but it's never been the same.

Go west, young man!
The robot at the intersection of Kilela Balanda and 30 Juin out of commission, replaced by a flesh-and-blood traffic cop in a reflective yellow vest.

Of course, whether they're functioning or not, drivers interpret the pattern of lights in idiosyncratic ways, which don't always involve correlating red with 'stop'.

The robots have been diminished. They now have patches (only red and green, no warning yellow) on their knees, their heads don't swivel, and it doesn't look like the red-light cameras in their chests are working anymore.

A few months ago, there was a spate of news stories about DRC's woman-engineered robot cops, mostly from the capital, Kinshasa. Click through the links to read some of the stories:

http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/mar/05/robocops-being-used-as-traffic-police-in-democratic-republic-of-congo

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2015/03/the-case-against-giant-traffic-robots/387358/

http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/7229/Traffic-Robots-in-the-Democratic-Republic-of-Congo.aspx

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/24/tech/robot-cops-rule-kinshasa/

This one's from L'shi! http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26820565

An interview with the inventor: 

Nice to see DRC getting some positive press, though given how the ones in L'shi have fared, I'm not sure these robots are going to turn into a big source of export income anytime soon ...

Gorillas

Here's the first in my posts about our vacation with Isaac in Goma, Virunga Park, Bukavu, and Kahuzi-Biéga Park, all in the eastern part of the DRC. I'm posting some of our more interesting gorilla pictures. We visited two different families of mountain gorillas in Virunga, one family of eastern lowland gorillas in Kahuzi-Biéga, and we visited the gorilla orphanage at the Mikeno Lodge in Virunga Park. Mountain gorillas and eastern lowland gorillas are both sub-species of eastern gorillas and very endangered by poaching and habitat destruction.

Big daddy silverback watching over his family.

Perfect silverback posture.

This map gives a general idea about the location of the parks.

Mountain gorilla visits are available in the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda. I really wanted to support eco-tourism in the Congo, and when we heard that the security situation had improved, I worked with a guide company to plan a wonderful trip. Visiting a gorilla family works like this: mountain gorillas are herbivores and live in families headed by a dominant male (silverback). Besides the adult females and the juveniles, larger families may also have one or two subordinate silverbacks and possibly other blackback males, but the male : female ratio for adults is always heavily skewed – 4 or 5 times as many adult females as males, for example.
Certain mountain gorilla families have been "habituated" by park rangers over time so they are not threatened by human visitors. About 6 families are habituated in Virunga out of 20 or so. The park leaves many families alone; during the war the habituated families were more readily victims of poaching.
The park guides visit the gorilla families every day, either with or without tourists. Before our park vehicle arrives at the closest access point to the forest, the guides have located the nesting site from the night before and we hike into the bush following the guides as they track the gorilla family. Once the family is located, humans are required to stay 7 meters away and wear masks to try and reduce human-to-gorilla disease transfer. At that point, the rangers start the timer and you get an hour to watch the gorillas.

This doesn't look like 7 meters!

For our first visit, an excellent park driver picked us up in the morning at our hotel in Goma and drove us into the park, where we started hiking with a ranger. When we reached the large family (we think it was the Bageni family), the adults were mostly resting, but the juveniles were playing.

I didn't realize Ewoks looked like gorillas.

There were 1000s of flies around and you can see them in every picture, but they didn't seem to be interested in either the gorillas or the humans. Perhaps they feasted on the bruised leaves.

Flies

Long arms scratch better

Our second visit was to the smaller Humba family. The families are named after the dominant silverback, and even this smaller family had a subordinant silverback. We walked directly from the Bukima tented camp in Virunga into the forest, following the guides. The guides knew where the gorillas had slept the night before, but it took some tracking to find them again. The family was actively feeding on leaves and bamboo and was moving around a lot more than the Bageni family because we found them earlier in the day. We followed after them and the guides tried to get us better views of Silverback Humba, but he wasn't too happy about it. We ended up having a close encounter with the subordinate silverback who seemed very big, but very gentle, when he walked close enough to brush against Isaac. [Karen: We were actually a little disturbed at the guides' insistence on following the silverbacks; we didn't want to harass them, and thought the others were just as interesting.]

Silverback approaching Isaac

We also visited the gorilla orphanage at Mikeno Lodge in the Virunga Park. They had about six young mountain gorillas, and a single eastern lowland gorilla in a separate enclosure. Only one of hte mountain gorillas was still bottle feeding.

At the orphanage.

The Kahuzi-Biéga Park is outside of Bukavu, and Isaac and I visited a family of eastern lowland gorillas. Karen was incapacitated after hiking the Nyiragongo volcano. [Karen: "incapacitated" in quotation marks ... my legs were sore, but I was also grateful for a day to catch up on work and to use the hotel's fast internet connection.] We reached their forest after crossing a tea plantation.

I want a world where fascinating, magnificent animals like these thrive. I am so lucky to have been able to see them in their natural habitat. I really want to see the Virunga documentary (nominated for an Oscar this year) when I return to the States.

Eye contact.

What do you think?

Parc National De Kundelungu

The Kundelungu National Park is the closest national park to Lubumbashi and is well known for waterfalls, including the Lofoi falls – one of the tallest in Africa at 540 feet in a single drop. There are reports that it is the highest in Africa, but that seems to be based some erroneous information stating the height at 1100ft. We've been wanting to visit ever since we arrived, but our lack of information made the trip seem insurmountable.
However, friends of friends had successfully visited; that gave our friends, a French volunteer couple with two young girls, the confidence to attempt a visit, and we invited ourselves along. We had to find a 4WD vehicle to rent and get things together fairly quickly, but the visit turned out wonderfully. Karen drove the big 2000 Toyota Prado, following our French friends out of town Friday morning. The SUV was imported from Japan with the steering wheel on the right, but beggars can't be choosers.

The park is north of L'shi. You can also see Kilwa, where Karen went a couple weeks ago.

We arrived at the park's gite (guesthouse) before lunch. The gite was very rustic by Western standards: no power, no running water, no kitchen, no dining room. But it had 3 bedrooms, each with a bathroom where one could bucket-flush and bucket-bathe. The gazebo shown below on the right was designated the kitchen.

Our gite for 2 nights. No running water or electricity.

After lunch we drove both cars to the first set of falls – Masansa.

Turning off the road for the track to the first set of falls.

The southern part of Kundelungu park, where we were, is a plateau and the waterfalls tumble off the plateau on to the plains below.

Above the Masansa falls, looking off the edge of the plateau.

Masansa falls

That night we struggled to get the charcoal lit, succeeding with the help of a lot of candle wax. We all played Blisters, a dice game, snacked a lot, and had rather burnt chicken around 8:30 or 9:00. Oh yeah, and toasted some marshmallows, too. A positive thing that could be said about the gite, though, was that the beds were firm, but comfortable, and clean towels, linens, and blankets were provided.

The next day we left around 9:30 for the 3-hour, 65-km drive to the Lofoi falls. We might have left earlier, but we struggled again to light the charcoal. The plan was to heat water for coffee, for dishes, for bathing, etc. However, we spent a couple hours failing to light the charcoal until we used the pine cones that the 4-year-old picked up the day before. We only had time to heat water for coffee. Not worth it ... almost.

Parts of the drive were through grassland like that shown below, and parts were through dry scrub forest. It looked like a perfect environment for elephants, antelope, zebra, and other animals. We heard there used to be a lot of animals before the war in the 90s, and it sounds like the lower parts of the park may still have a few left.

Crossing the grassland savanna to the Chutes Lofoy.

After parking and having lunch next to the river, we followed our guide across it and hiked around to the overlook of Lofoi falls.

Another lunch by a river before viewing the falls.

A view of the Chutes Lofoi and the edge of the plateau.

Another view of the falls.

We hurriedly left the overlook of the falls when we realized it was 3:20 -- the day had gotten away from us, and we knew we wouldn't make it back to the gite before dark [Karen: but we had a nice drive back, listening to ABBA and Dire Straits [Eric: Too much ABBA]]. When we arrived about an hour after nightfall, the park rangers were planning a rescue for the next day because our guide had no radio and no way to let the know we were OK.

Having learned our lesson, this time we asked our guide to light our charcoal, which he did using lots of dry grass. We heated water for pasta and grilled some thick slabs of bacon. Yum.

The next day, Sunday, we visited a third set of falls – Luchipuka – had lunch at the river, and hiked around to see the falls.

Luchipuka Falls.

Another part of Luchipuka farther downstream.

After the falls we returned to the gite, quickly packed up and headed for home.

Sign for home

We didn't see much wildlife of any size on the whole trip. Not a lot of bird life, not a lot of insect life (and I include spiders in that category), no mammals except some baboons on the last morning. There were a lot of interesting and unusual plants, not flowers generally, but plants: vines, trees, bushes, grasses. We did see one amazing large spider, but it was too high to photograph well; we also saw a variety of butterflies.

A large blue-winged wasp with a long ovipositor.

A wild iris. Much smaller than our domestics.

I really liked the Kundelungu plateau, but can't help but compare it to the Turaco trail that we hiked in the Nyanga National Park in Zimbabwe. Nyanga has developed trails and self-guided and guided backpacking options. In contrast, there is a little camping on the Kundelungu plateau, but self-guided hiking isn't an option, and what is available must be reached by car.  I dream of a developed set of wilderness trails used by backpackers and other outdoor enthusiasts to explore the plateau and the waterfalls. Unfortunately, the whole idea of wandering around the bush in the Congo is out of the question at this time – not due to wildlife, not much of that left – but due to a rebel presence. We were accompanied by an armed guide at all times. He has worked for the park for fifteen years and hasn't actually seen rebels, but said his colleagues recently ran across their traces near the Lofoi.

Kundelungu is tremendously beautiful and, due to its elevation, it is pretty comfortable during the dry season. The entire park is 7,600 km² compared to Nyanga's 472 km². I look forward to regional stability opening up more of this beautiful landscape.