After eating an early breakfast at the Muhabera, Magnifique picked us up at 0630. To do this hike you have to go to the same staging area as for the gorillas. There we paid $75 each and were assigned a guide. Our driver drove us and the guide to the drop off point for this particular hike. This involved a fairly long drive up a very rocky road until we got too the drop-off point. There I hired porter and we hiked through the farm fields to a gap in the stone wall. The guide explained to us that Dian used to park her car there, paying a villager to watch it. There we met 3 trackers including one with a gun who were to accompany us. Keep in mind there was only Simon and me. We set off on a steady uphill through the forest for about 30 minutes until we arrived at a clearing with benches to sit on. At that point our guide informed us we were half way there. The remainder was flatter but extremely muddy. Logs had been laid across the path in a futile attempt however they were slippery and sometimes it just seemed safer too walk in the mud which went up to the top of my boots in places.
We eventually arrived at the remains of the camp and the gravesite. Most of the camp is gone now except for the foundation stones and some stoves. It has been reclaimed by the jungle and also was looted during the genocide and aftermath. The site is very muddy which according to Weber and Vedder is what it was like in the 1970s. We walked somberly past the remains of several cabins which the ranger explained to us before arriving at the remains of DFs cabin. This was bigger than the rest but of course she was the boss and lived there for quite some time. This was where she was murdered. The guide did point out that the camp was quite spread out and her cabin was a ways away from the nearest cabin which may have accounted for why nobody heard the murder or tried to help her.
The whole area is very gloomy, shaded by large moss and vine covered trees that project out huge horizontal branches. We proceeded to the grave site.
In addition to her grave marker, multiple other gorillas are buried. These include Digit a silverback, whose death lead off Walter Cronkite's broadcast way back when, he having been featured in a National Geographic Special. According to the hagiography, Dian's body was at the airport ready to be taken back to the US when somebody found out that she had desired to be buried next to Digit.
Also buried there are the many gorillas she knew who have since died of natural or not so natural causes. According to the guide only gorillas she knew get to be buried there and only 3 such gorillas are still alive.
It was sombre place, dark and damp and after paying what was a reasonable amount of respect we indicated to our entourage that we walked to leave and so we proceeded back on the muddy path. As we started down the steeper part which was a little damp, one of the porters would grab my hand during the sketchy parts and I didn't even feel insulted.
Magnifique met us at the bottom and with the guide we descended the rocky trail. We stopped for lunch at a tourist lodge, a few steps up from the Muhabera. They took our muddy boots and gave us flip flops and we ate a pretty decent buffet lunch. It was a little expensive at $20 US each but when we came out and our boots had been cleaned it seemed like a fair deal.
I slept and gazed at the scenery on the 2 hour drive back to Kigali.
No comments:
Post a Comment