Akagera

A few weeks ago, Ben, Katy, Alissa, Tigranna, Talia, and I went to Akagera National Park for safari number two! Tigranna and Talia are from the other SIT group. We woke up at around 3:30 in the morning, well at least I did. We had originally planned on staying up all night and partying, but I’m lame and decided to go to sleep while everyone else went out to a Kamichi concert (a Rwandan pop star who just so happens to be Ben’s brother. I’ll name drop for him). We woke up, packed a few snacks, and met our driver and our car near the top of our road. After picking up the other members of our group, we set out on the 2 hour drive east to Akagera. I probably slept most of the way there because I really don’t remember it, but we were pretty excited when we got there! We took pictures at the gate then headed in to see the giraffes and zebras (our main goal since we’d seen most of the other big animals already). Long story short—the scenery was beautiful, but our guide sucked. We saw a bunch of hills and cloud filled valleys…oh, and we saw a few animals too. There were (after a few hours) a fair amount of zebras and water bucks, I think they were, but we only got to see one giraffe from fairly far away. We were told before that there are just tons of zebras and giraffes, so either everyone in Rwanda lied to us, we had terrible luck, or our guide could just really care less that we really wanted to see those things. I’m pretty sure it was the latter. She basically did nothing the entire trip, which we later heard could be changed with bribes, but we had no idea at the time. Oh well. Overall, the whole trip really didn’t compare to Queen Elizabeth, our first safari, but at least we can say we’ve been to Akagera. So after five hours or so of attempting to find animals, we dropped our guide off and headed back to Kigali. At least we got to see a pretty sunset on the way home :)

Something that I found very interesting, though, was how little many of the Rwandans I talked to knew about the parks and animals in their own country. There are no more free roaming lions, zebras, etc. outside of parks in Africa (there goes that stereotype), and pretty much the only animals most Rwandans see are cows, goats, and chickens—domesticated farm animals. When I told a friend of mine that we were going to Akagera, he asked me if I was going to see the gorillas. I had to tell him that no, this isn’t the park with the gorillas. A week later, I told him we were going to Nyungwe (next post), and again he asked if I was going to see the gorillas. Again, I had to tell him that no, the gorillas don’t live in Nyungwe. They live in Virunga. Or Volcanoes. Either way, all foreigners here and I’d guess most of the well off Rwandans in Kigali know that the gorillas are all in the park up in the northwest of the country. But that’s exactly who tourism and the national parks in Rwanda are geared towards—the wealthy elite. I hate being called rich here, but relatively speaking, it’s true. It’s not like I have money to just throw everywhere, but I can afford to go to these parks as a special occasion. Going to see the gorillas costs $700. Akagera cost us each maybe $70 each. Nyungue hikes were each $50 and $60 for the ones we went on. Tourism, seeing your country’s prides and joys, is just not geared toward the vast majority of Rwandans, and as a result, people end up ignorant about what exists in their own country. Another story—I was at work the other day, and Ordille (or however you spell her name), the French lady, brought a movie for the kids for me to show on my computer. It was a little kids’ cartoon movie set in an African village, and at one point, a giraffe came on screen. The workers turned toward Teresa (the Spanish lady) and asked her if it was an “ihene,” a goat. No, she said. “Inka (cow)?” they asked. Nope again. She had to go get her dictionary and look up the word for giraffe in Kinyarwanda (“twiga,” as it were), but by then, most had lost interest. Another stereotype busted. Not only do Rwandans not live next door to giraffes, they have no idea what they even are. At least these women didn’t.