This whole trip to Rwanda, Uganda, and the Congo started because I decided that I wanted to see the mountain gorillas in the Congo’s Virunga Park. I planned my itinerary around three days to be spent in that park.
Virunga has its problems: bandits, poachers, armed groups hiding out, violence. Dozens of the game wardens, who work to protect the park, have been killed recently by the bad guys. But it was only when a British couple was kidnapped in the spring of 2018 that they decided to close the park until 2019. That is probably the right decision from a security perspective, though it has been devastating to the tourism businesses in the area. And, of much lesser importance, it left me with an altered holiday. But I decided I would still go to the Congo and see something; because once I get an idea, it is difficult for me to shake it.
Getting to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is difficult now that the park is closed. It is hard to get a visa; you have to be invited and will have to provide some combination of your bank statements, itinerary, plane tickets, a letter from your employer, etc etc. It was much easier when the park was open as they could provide the letter of invitation and cut down on some of the other red tape and you just had to pay them and fill out a form. But that is currently not an option, so I found another way.
[If you are not interested in the details of the visa process, skip the next three paragraphs. There is a dearth of practical information on this, so I am including it.]
After a lot of googling, I started emailing tour companies and hotels to see if any of them could assist with a letter of invitation. Most did not respond at all and only one said he could help. Christian runs walking tours of Goma (the town just on the other side of the border). You can find his website here. He was great. He sent me a form, had me sign a promissory note for the the cost of the visa, and emailed me a picture of a certificate to show at the border. I figured it was 50/50 that the picture of the document would equal a visa. But it did!
I walked to the Rwandan immigration building and easily got my exit stamp. I then walked to the DRC building, stopping several times to have my temperature checked and to wash my hands as loudspeakers blared recorded ominous sounding warnings about Ebola.
At DRC immigration, they scrutinized my form and passport and asked me a number of questions, but at no point was it equal to or worse than the treatment one receives at the hands of USA or Canadian border guards. About 10 minutes later, I had my visa. The only remaining stop was the desk where they screened my yellow fever vaccination card. (Tip: the certificate must include your name, birthdate, and passport number in addition to the usual vaccination info. Without that info, you will not be allowed in. I had written my passport number on that morning, but that was good enough.) They asked me many of the same questions, and took my temperature again. (Finally after all these years of carrying that certificate on my travels, I was finally asked for it. I was pleased.)
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC, aka Congo Kinshasa, aka the Congo – there is another Congo next door, called, confusingly, the Republic of the Congo. They both used to be called Zaire.) is not super touristy to say the least. The main draw is the gorillas, but they can be seen more safely in Uganda and Rwanda. It regularly shows up on lists of the most dangerous countries in the world. (#9, according to the last list I saw.) Since the end of colonialism it has suffered years of civil war (which is ongoing), armed conflict between various groups, assassinations, general political instability, corruption, and foreign corporate meddling. Google it. It’s bad. The DRC is rich in the stuff everyone wants: wood, oil, diamonds, cobalt, etc. It should be rich, but has suffered due to its natural resources combined with its lack of military and political security.
So as I planned this trip, I found myself checking the DRC news each day. It was grim. Ongoing conflict, plus a new and as of this post, escalating Ebola outbreak, which they are having difficulty combatting due to the conflict. Some actual headlines in the weeks before my trip…
So, yeah, I was nervous, but I still wanted to go, and I know from past experience that “dangerous” countries are not as dangerous as they seem in the news.
So when I crossed the border, I didn’t know what to expect. What I found in Goma, was a rough city with an unusual number of machine gun toting people, but people just going on with their lives. It wasn’t chaos, though it wasn’t orderly. I could imagine things spinning out of control quickly, but nothing like that happened whilst I was there. Aside from some fancy houses, which are for the politicians and diplomats (and which may not be photographed), Goma is just quite poor.
It sits next to active volcanos, which have reduced the city to rubble, as recently as the 2000s, so a good part of the city is just rough, black lava rock. It also sits on the edge of Lake Kivu, which is a beautiful lake, but is also due to explode. Seriously.
One thing that really stuck out to me was the great number of white, safari style, SUVs, each with the name and logo of a well known NGO: Unicef, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, etc – basically all the organizations you mean to donate to, but never do. And of course, there are UN trucks and soldiers everywhere, which is apparently one of the only things that keeps Goma from becoming really violent. Almost every non-local person is there for work.
I checked into my hotel, the Ihusi, which I picked because it is just steps from the border and on the lake. It has all the amenities you would expect from a fancy hotel, but it is pretty old and dated. That said, I was delighted to have hot water, a tv, in suite coffee, and a pretty spot by the lake. (Now that I know that Goma is not in fact a veritable war zone, I probably would have booked one of the cheaper and nicer hotels a little farther from the border.)
I didn’t spend long at my hotel though, as I was going on my walking tour of Goma. The walking tour really turned out to be mostly a boda boda (motorbike) tour due to the distance between sites, but it was good. I was with a local fellow named Arsene and his brother, who tagged along. A note about the bodas here: they are very affordable, but while the driver may wear a helmet, the passenger does not and the roads are known to be dangerous.
We went to what I later realized was really the only crafts market in Goma. (I should have bought more!) There I picked up a mask and heard the stories behind many others.
From there we walked past the 3 traffic circles, which is a thing. Only one of them is permitted to be photographed; the one with the gold man with the chukudu.
A chukudu is a wooden, oversized scooter, ubiquitous in the DRC. They also use them in Rwanda, but they are everywhere here. They’re odd. They look like something out of the Flintstones. On flat surfaces, people kneel on them with one leg and push with the other. Going up hills, they are just pushed – often while carrying tremendous loads. And downhill they are ridden. I don’t think they have brakes.
Anyway, the gold one in the roundabout is a symbol of how hard work is necessary in life.
Many sites in Goma, from buildings to markets to some streets cannot be photographed without a permit or at all. Plus, people really don’t like to be photographed without express permission. So that is why nearly every photo in this post either involved asking many people if it was ok to take a picture, or, they are pictures I snapped while clinging to the back of a motorbike, traversing jagged lava rock. So the pics are rough, but interesting, I think.
The tour was good because aside from sites, like markets, a cave, a beach etc, we got to ride the motos past many interesting areas.
The sites themselves are not remarkable, except perhaps for the fact that they apparently are the best of what Goma has to offer. For example, I was given a tour of an old and fairly decrepit ferry and a market that sells used shoes.
It was great though and I was able to ask my guide all sorts of questions. We finished up the outing with a meal at a local buffet style eatery where I had plantains, rice, potatoes, and what I was told were celebrated Goma beans.
In the evening, I decided to see how the ex pats live and took an expensive taxi ride to a charming restaurant called Le Chalet. Great food and ambiance. Not expensive. It is remarkable to think that this place is in Goma, in the Congo.
I had a Romeo y Julieta cigar and a curry and chatted with a fellow from Delhi who was in town on business. Solar energy. It was all delightful.
But then it was dark and I had to return to my hotel. I asked the restaurant to call me a taxi, but one of the waiters offered to take me on his boda for a fraction of the price. I was in. I soon regretted that decision as we were hurtling though the dark, un-lit streets, through the chaotic traffic…and passing everyone. Seriously, it was just way too fast. The ride was long enough that I had time to imagine all the ways I might die: a dog running out, a patch of loose gravel, another vehicle getting too close, a surprise pothole…all sending me flying in the air and then crashing to the ground. But obviously that didn’t happen. I survived the near death experience and paid for the privilege.
It was a great first day in the DRC. The next day I would leave Goma for calmer climes. (I’ll save that for the next post.)
