Why swimming in Lake Tanganyika, Burundi needs to be on your bucketlist

Taking a dip in the longest freshwater lake in the world can be both dangerous and thrilling. If you search “swimming in Lake Tanganyika,” one of the top results is about a 70-year-old man-eating crocodile named Gustav. But there is much more to Lake Tanganyika — which is 410 miles long and runs across Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Zambia — than hungry reptiles.

In the west of Burundi, in a remote and isolated town known as Rumonge, the shores next to the Blue Bay Resort are covered in white sand. The area is free, thankfully, of crocodiles and hippos. Lake Tanganyika is in the western branch of East Africa’s Rift Valley and is surrounded by mountains that make the views — both in and out of the deep water — spectacular. You might just forget that you are in a landlocked country. With fishermen in rowboats in the distance, it’s like time is standing still.

Jumping off the pier into the bluest, clearest (non-crocodile-infested) waters is a refreshing break from the heat. The water is the perfect temperature, rejuvenating but not too cold, and so clear you can see to the bottom of the lake without the sting of salt in your eyes. The water is very calm — no waves or tides. There are more than 350 fish species, 250 of which are rare cichlids, most of which can only be found in Lake Tanganyika.

Located an hour’s drive from the capital city, Bujumbura, this idyllic area is sheltered from the political instability that has dragged on since April 2015, when the country’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, clung to power for a third term, defying the country’s constitution. Still, things have improved and tourists are returning. “This year, the political situation has been very calm, good for our business and we are getting back on our feet,” says Joseph Furaha, Blue Bay’s executive manager. By 2016, most international tourists had stopped visiting Burundi, but political and constitutional solutions are being sought and there has been a reduction in protests. Most foreign nationals still need to apply for visas before arriving in Bujumbura; check with authorities before planning a visit.

Check out my full article for Ozy here.

Alone time in Tokyo - Harajuku, Meiji shrine, Akihabara, Roppongi

Tokyo had revealed to me just how exhausted I was after all our crazy backpacking. I was almost never able to make it for any of our morning group plans in Tokyo. All I wanted to do was sleep, sleep and sleep some more. I recall Mouna asking me, “Did you come to Japan to sleep?” Death..My friend has a way with words. So I took my Tokyo trip into my own hands and decided that I was not going to let this be an expensive sleeping trip, but really take advantage of the fact that I was in Tokyo – Tokyo of all amazing places with Natsuno as our fabulous tour guide, and I was going to explore the city.

I spent a few days wandering around Harajuku – the home of Tokyo street fashion. A long walk down Takeshita street – revealed lots of fascinating and amusing people and shops.

I spent a lovely afternoon visiting the Meiji shrine – Tokyo’s most famous Shinto shrine dedicated to the late 19th century emperor who opened Japan to the West. The shrine is dedicated to the spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken. In the Edo Period (1603-1867), the site had belonged to the Kato family and Ii family, both feudal lord families. In the Meiji era, the shrine was built in 1920 at the site and the inner garden – Yoyogi garden.

I marveled at the 40 foot high gate at the entrance to the 200 acre park Meiji shrine is in. The gate is made of 1500 year old cypress…..Japan must have the most polite termites….you’re telling me wood can survive that long?

I wondered about the hundreds of wine barrels near the shrine. Turns out that Emperor Meiji who had embraced western culture, was a lover of wine and particularly loved wine from the wineries in Burgundy.

When I finally got to the shrine, I enjoyed the tranquility of it. It was very understated compared to Akasuka shrine that I had visited only a few days back. Everything was more moderate. There was the budhaa with the two angry genies next to him to chase away evil spirits. There was a little place where coins were dropped into for good luck. There was smoke and incense.  

I also spent half a day at Akihabara – the gadget/tech part of Tokyo.

In the evening me and my roomies walked to roppongi hills – a really popular area with great restaurants, an amazing club scene etc. and enjoyed a calm dinner in a really great restaurant before walking back home and calling it a night.   

Picnic at Yoyogi park and finding platform 9 and three quarters in Tokyo

After the crazy party night, everything was difficult – including waking up. I finally dragged myself out of bed to go to Natsuno’s annual giant party at Yoyogi park. I was almost at the park when I got a message that this was our last opportunity to go get anything we had left behind at the temple we slept at before our cross-country Japan trip had started. I have to confess that I left around 2kgs of earrings, necklaces and rings because I realized that I would hate myself within a few days of backpacking.

We all have our addictions....

I took the train to the temple to get my stuff. Finally, I made it to Yoyogi park and it was lovely. Hundreds of Natsuno’s friends from everywhere round the world, eating, drinking and making merry. We were at the park till 8:30pm.

Mouna and I finally left to get to our Airbnb. We had been warned about train stations in Tokyo and how you can get lost in them for life, but we had not taken these warnings seriously. In the train station next to our home, we had very detailed instructions on how to get out and it took 15 minutes each time from getting off the train to actually getting out of the train station. Lazy and tired as we were, when we saw an elevator, we decided to take it up?

How difficult can it be to get to our exit from where the elevator takes us?

That’s how difficult.

We got out and decided to try googlemaps as nothing looked familiar. How huge is this train station? Are we even still in Tokyo? Googlemaps directions read as follows, “Go straight. Get into the elevator…followed by lots of other directions.”

We ignored this – surely we won’t have to get back into the train station to find our home? We can’t be that far. After walking around for half an hour and having no luck, we decided to go back into the elevator and follow the directions we had initially been trying to avoid…the one we took every time that took 15 minutes for us to get out of the train station.

You would not believe it….the elevator that had brought us out of the train station, would not take us back down to exactly where it had brought us from. In short, we would never find Exit 2 – the exit that would get us home.

Did we imagine that we had been in that elevator before? We got so desperate that we just took the elevator back to the street. By this time we were so hungry and frustrated. We got into a restaurant and had dinner as we brainstormed on how we were going to avoid homelessness that evening.

Finally, we came up with a plan, “Let’s take any train back to roppongi, take the train back..and just follow the directions that we always used before. None of this..I’m too lazy to walk 15 minutes out of the train station business and using magical elevators that take you nowhere.”

At that very moment, hours later – we finally saw a sign for Exit 2. Mouna and I almost kissed the ground.

Freedom at last!

The grand feast of Ohira

Having spent a wonderful day with the kids at Natsuno's former high school in Ohira, the afternoon was all about passing out. 

All 18 - 19 of us MirozinJapan were going to stay with different families during our time in Ohira. We were staying with 4 different families. Afternoon nap time was amazing and was to prepare us for what Natsuno had described as a night of feasting in each of our individual homes. When it was dinner time at Natsuno's, she told us to dress in pyjamas, "because we are going to eat a lot and you need space."

When we got downstairs, we realized that Natsuno had not been joking. There was so many different types of food and at least 7 different types of alcohol - including 3 types of sake. Her family was not playing games. 

Family time was amazing. We ate to our hearts' content and drank to our fill. Natsuno's dad played the guitar for us, we looked at photo albums - made fun of Natsuno's childhood pics and had merry night. After all this we slept very soundly till the next morning. 

Japanese Alps, Shirakawago, natural hot baths in the mountains…

Early in the morning we left the theme park public bath we had slept at and went to the Nagoya castle. It was a very lovely castle. Shortly after that we traveled by car to a city called Gifu to participate in a boys’ festival called Takebana Matsuri. We walked a lot, tried all sorts of delicious foods and spent a leisurely day walking through the streets to different parts of the carnival. There were some huge fascinating traditional cars being pushed around during the festival. We asked one of the guys pushing the carts, what the significance of this particular festival was, and he said he had no idea. That was quite amusing – given he was pushing this gigantic car for the festival. In the evening, we drove to the village of Shirakawago. On our way there we finally found a shop that sold the famous Babyfoot. We stocked up on that and food too.

Early in the morning we spent some time working with the sweetest old ladies who had a crafts shop and taught us to make table mats. Given language barriers, a lot of the work was done in silence. It was lots of fun just watching, imitating (as best as we could) and making table mats that were not too terrible looking.

After this we drove to the Japanese alps and took the ropeway to the mountain top. We had not really realized how cold some parts of Japan would be. You should have seen #mirozinjapan freezing as we prepared to take a group pic on the top of the mountain.

Our next stop was Roten Bura – natural outdoor hot springs. It was a beautiful sight seeing these natural hot pools in the middle of the freezing mountains. We started off at one pool that was a bit enclosed between cliffs – this was the women’s hot spring. There was also another enclosed one elsewhere for men and a huge exposed one for both men and women. There were naked men sitting around with a small towel placed on their crotch’s for modesty’s sake. Our large group eventually ended up in the outdoor hot spring as that had the most lovely view….but we kept our costumes on;-)

Shortly after this we went searching for cherry blossoms. We eventually did find a tree of two that was still blossoming. They were beautiful. We went back to our lovely home in the UNESCO village of Shirakawago and partied till 3am. Japanese drinking games are lots of fun!

First public bath in Japan, zen meditation at the temple and sleeping in the temple

I had been fascinated with the concept of onsens/public baths since the first time I heard about them. You’re telling me everyone just gets naked and bathes together? If I was going to get into a public bath in Japan, it was definitely going to be with mirozinjapan- that way in case of any staring, the stares would be shared. In the words of my lovely Senegalese friend, “Yeah. Everyone is naked, but what if this is the first time they are seeing a black butt?” It was an important point to consider – you could all be naked, but some of you might be more of a novelty than others:-). My other friend did have some interesting concerns, “You know in Senegalese culture it’s considered bad luck to see someone’s butts. I don’t know if I am ready for all this bad luck.”

After the tea ceremony we all dressed up in kimonos and did amusing photo shoots. In our attempts to look dainty and demure as the Japanese ladies who had led us through the tea ceremony, we sometimes ended up having pics that made us look like sheep about to get slaughtered. FAIL.

Natsuno had managed to get media to join us for the day. They were fascinated about this group of 18 or so mirozinjapan who were traveling together and wanted to hear about our first impressions of Japan. Later we sat with Jokan – our monk friend, drank tea and chatted a lot about his path to becoming a monk. He was so interesting and calm. We all enjoyed being with him.

We walked half an hour away for dinner at a local restaurant. Before getting in to the restaurant, we took off our shoes. This would become the norm in most of the restaurants we went to in Japan. I found it strangely calming – as if you were entering an African home and had to take off your shoes before stepping on the carpet. It made the restaurants seem more intimate – like someone’s house rather than a hotel. The dinner was delicious and we had yummy sake after that. Gift giving was very big in Japan and Natsuno had reminded us to bring enough trinkets to give as gifts as everyone else would alsobe giving us gifts. We were each given delicious boxes of wafers and in return we gave an assortment of our gifts that represented the diversity of countries we represented. After dinner we walked back to the temple and picked our bath essentials. We got to the public bath house. We walked into a giant room (women-only) where a few naked women were sitting on green buckets soaping themselves. We followed suit – soaped ourselves sitting on the green buckets – still not sure why this has to be done seated. (Maybe it's also bad luck in Japanese culture to moon people?) We rinsed off a bit then jumped into the giant bathtub. I believe that the bath had been set up to boil lobsters – cause that water temperature. I was only able to stay inside for five minutes before I started to fear for my life. I got out of the bath and had to drink lots of water to rehydrate. We wore our pyjamas at the bath house and walked back to the temple in our pjs. We got to the temple – made our futons for sleeping then proceeded upstairs for a session of zen meditation. It was quite relaxing. I believe most people were already half asleep five minutes in – after our long day. It was quite hilarious when in the midst of chanting, the monk hit the gong. Some people almost fell off their seats as they were already drifting off to sleep. We slept at 12:30am and were up by 4:30am for an adventure filled day that would start off with eating the freshest sushi and sashimi at Tsukiju fish market.

Up close and personal with sea creatures

Two months into my Dakar move, I heard about a grand annual race that takes place from Dakar to Goree island – a distance of 4km. I love swimming! Me and a few friends decided to start training for the race by swimming from Ngor to Ngor island and back a few times a week. I still recall that first time. It was something from a bizarre comedy. This was my first time swimming in the ocean. Of course I have swam in the Ocean a few times, but it’s more of jumping, catching waves etc. – not intentionally leaving the shore to swim into the deep of the ocean – get to an island across and swim back. I have also swam in other water bodies including a river in Arembepe, Bahia in Brazil. There I was enjoying the swim in the peaceful river when my friends called me back. “Watch out for the snakes!” So river swimming – yes there are risks. My favourite open water swimming was in Lake Tanganyika in Rumonge, Burundi. That water was perfectly clear, freshwater lake – no salt, calm…and I was told that in this particular part there are no hippos or crocodiles. It was such an idyllic place to swim.

The ocean though – I had my concerns before. What about the salt? I was going to wear goggles but you know you can never trust those things – the number of times they get misty and you can’t see anything. What about the waves? We were going to swim at 7am and the waves were not expected to be terrible. What about the sharks? There have been only 4 shark attacks in Dakar from 1828 – 2004. Basically if I got attacked by a shark, then it was fate.

There were 5 of us the first morning. We got to the water at 7am. The view was lovely – the sun rising over the ocean, rocking boats by the beach, a nice view of the island we would be swimming to. We began swimming and everyone got to their natural rhythm. We were all swimming at different speeds and doing different strokes. I chose to do breast stroke as it was the easiest to breathe in, given the waves coming in from the side. I would have drunk too much water if I tried to do crawl – and crawl is tiring for a long-ish swim. Everything was going perfectly up until I was really close to the island. One of my friends is an outdoors rockstar. She had already done the Dakar to Goree swimming race twice, rides a scooter, surfs all the time……ooooh and by the way, she also happens to be an amazing project manager at DalbergJ, in addition to being a really nice, kind, fun person! Before we started swimming, she warned us “When you get to the other side, there will be rocks but don’t worry. They appear much closer than they actually are.” At that point, I had wondered why rocks should be something to worry about – I would soon learn.

I got to the rocky part – the rocks were still far beneath me. With my goggles I got to see lovely small fish swim past me. I was marveling at nature. I went a bit further and because the tide was low, the rocks were much closer to me. It was becoming hard to swim as the water was now really shallow and the rocks were touching my thighs. The obvious instinct was to walk on the rocks…..

But……

The rocks were covered in poisonous sea urchins.

At first I didn’t see the sea urchins. I stood on the rocks a bit. At this point, Tania (the rockstar) turned back and told me – “Ciku don’t stand. Keep swimming. Swim flat so that you don’t touch the rocks. There are urchins on them!”

Up to this point, my interaction with sea urchins had been limited. There had been a plate full of live urchins that my crazy cool Japanese friend – Natsuno – had ordered the first time we went together to Point des Almadies. Those things are ugly! So I knew they were ugly and move like something from a nightmare.

I had later learnt that on top of being a very creepy meal, they are extremely dangerous. Two weeks before, Tania had been surfing and landed on sea urchins on a rock. Her knee had been the size of small football for 4 days.

I knew I wanted nothing to do with these urchins – not on my plate, not under my skin.

“Ouch!”

“Did something sting you?”

I replied, “Yeah. My foot hurts and my finger too.”

“Oh no. You’ve been stung by sea urchins. Let me see if there is a way to get to the beach without having to pass these rocks.”

By this time I was petrified. I had no desire to get to the island anymore – we were close enough, but would have to go through poisonous territory to get there. I decided to turn back and swim back to the mainland. By the time I got to the mainland, my foot and finger were stinging. From an inspection of my wounds, we suspected that my finger had been stung by a jellyfish, while my foot had sea urchin spikes in it. Tania got a needle, heated it usinga lighter and got to work. I thought I would need a shot for the spike removal but it wasn’t too bad.

Some spikes were really deep inside and Tania advised to call a doctor home to come remove them immediately or risk getting really swollen and having to deal with lots of pain. A doctor was called and I needed quite a bit of language support from my friends as I could not even pronounce what got me Les oursins (sea urchins) et une meduse (jellyfish). I kept on saying Les Oiseaux (birds.) Clearly the doctor must have been wondering how “birds stung the sole of my foot.”

Aaaah. I got up close and personal with these sea creatures! Be warned. These stings get worse day by day. On the first day I thought “this is not too bad.” By the 3rd day it was really painful to walk. I had to bail out of a weekend trip to Gambia.

Sea urchins, next time I will eat you.  

Adjusting to a different culture and finally getting rid of a certain bugga--boo

The afternoon of the day The Terminator went hard on the non-compliant teachers was a Friday. At lunchtime, everyone went to the mosque for prayers. I was left at the beach to kill time – there are definitely worse ways to kill time:-). After that we went for lunch at a small roadside place. I had the most delicious fish ever – everyone insisted I should order it and said it was rare and a specialty in Comoros. It was called “poisson rouge” which translates to “red fish.” It was only months later during a French class that I learnt goldfish are poisson rouge. Comoros has rare goldfish that grow to a full size. That fish was delicious and so soft! There was a lovely baby at the restaurant. I could see the fascination in our driver’s eyes. He told me how much he loves babies – and he had many of them. When he had come to pick me from the beach earlier, we had met his wife and one of their small babies. He was such an affectionate father. Later on the streets we had met one of his daughters and he had called her over, hugged her tenderly, exchanged kind words with her and given her some money to go treat herself. Comorians were really warm. We kept on stopping everywhere along the way to give people lifts.

We had some official meetings later in the day. Given that some conservative muslim men don’t shake women’s hands, I had chosen to take the cue on what was appropriate from the interviewee. Most times I would simply bow my head and do a small hand wave. If they reached out for my hand, I would shake their hand too – but I would never stretch out my hand first – just in case they did not shake hands with women. You can imagine my confusion when one of our government interviewees cheekily asked me to kiss him on his cheek after a meeting. It was quite strange. It would have been less strange if he had just initiated the cheek kiss – a lot of Franchophones greet in this way – but asking for it just gave me a very creepy feeling….plus he was sitting down and I was standing – so I had to bend down to give this awkward kiss – with a few men standing behind me. I had already began to get self-conscious about my work clothes in Comoros. In many other countries, my work pants and skirts would be normal, but in Comoros the women generally covered up quite a bit and I instantly felt like my regular work pants were suddenly waaaaaaay too tight – when I compared them to the other women’s dressing.

On our long drive, we passed a lovely lady who came to greet our driver. Instantly from the way they interacted with each other, I knew they were an item. There is a certain energy that’s around two people who have a thing together. I think he noticed I noticed and decided to entertain me and the local consultant with the highlights of his love-life. Yes, this was his girlfriend. He has 2 wives, 2 ex-wives and 8 children in total. I have no idea how anyone manages all these close relationships. All those wives, lovers and babies. When do you sleep?

In Comoros, I also experienced for the first time the faux pas of not knowing how to behave in certain situations in a muslim country. For example, sometimes we would walk into a government building for meetings – find our interviewee in the middle of prayer and my first instinct would be to wait outside till they finished. My Comorian colleagues for the trip however would tell me it’s ok to wait in the room as the person finishes praying. I felt like I was intruding.

There was another thing in Comoros that I never quite figured out. Most of the areas we were visiting were extremely remote and we were using latrines. For some weird reason, all latrines had 3 holes. 2 small ones and a bigger one. What was that all about? One small one and one big one would make sense, but why the three?

Later in the day, the local consultant declared his undying love for me in a long soliloquy. I did what I usually do in such situations – I feigned ignorance and acted like I thought he was telling me all these things in a platonic way.

My salvation was to come later in the day. In the next island we would be in, the hotel I was to stay in was more expensive than the one he was to stay in (he had already been paid his part and that was to cover his accommodation too.) He tried to be cheeky and call our other consultant in Moroni to insist we need to stay in the same hotel so as to be more productive. He was told that this would only happen on his own budget.

When I met the local consultant after he had been told this news, he almost had tears in his eyes. I sympathized with him as much as was polite to do so, but secretly oh secretly I thanked God for saving me from all this awkwardness I had been dealing with in the past few days.

You just might bucket in paradise....then eat yummy fish to make up for it

This was one long day that started in Moroni. I was ready to get to the hotel and sleep, but this was not the case. We got to the next school and there was a proper baraza here. Everyone was sitting outside under tents, dancers welcomed us, we were dressed in mushaino (glitter ribbons.) An announcement was made about the project we were working on. I was called to the podium and gave a 2 minute speech about our project – as best as I could without any preparation. Some prayers started and ended the meeting. Though I didn’t quite understand what was going on, I was able to understand a little more when people mixed French and Shikomori. For my benefit they called the English teacher at the school to the podium to give a speech in English. It was so unfortunate. His speech in English was worse than my speech in French – and he was the English teacher….An interesting thing I noted was that in Comoros most of the school directors were women. I remember looking it up later and realizing that though the island is still plagued by issues such as child marriages, girls not being educated as much as boys etc, in certain spheres of society there is more equality among the sexes than one would expect.

On our route home, we passed by the Ylang Ylang forest from my previous post. It was magical – even at that late hour and after a physically exhausting day. Driving through the mountains though was a bit scary as the roads are very narrow and full of turns – at each turn, the driver would hoot to alert other drivers that we were coming. I think the reason we didn’t see any accidents though was because in Moheli the number of cars I saw during that full trip would not fill a small mall’s parking lot. The island also does only have less than 50,000 people. 

We got to our hotel at 8:30pm and it was a wonder – not in your typical way. There was no internet. Gosh – I am clearly a millennial if that was my first complaint….The toilet did not flush. There was a bucket of water by the toilet to flush it. The showers had no water – there was another bucket of water for showering.

Dinner was amazing though - despite all the other challenges. I had fish and potatoes for dinner. After dinner, when we got to the doors of our rooms – the local consultant hugged me goodnight. It was very strange, but I chose to assume that this was a norm in Comoros. 

Do you really speak French?

You know that moment when you feel like an impostor? Actually those moments are many. What I should really say, is “those moments when you are actually caught being an impostor.  When your 40 days are up….Siku za mwizi ni arobaini (a thief’s days are 40) and me I was on my 39th day – and I didn’t know. This was what happened on my first day of field work in Comoros.

Thus begins the day….

I woke up at 6am. I had successfully not given in to the big bad wolf the previous night – despite my thirst for something stronger than mango juice. I was to leave the hotel for the airport at 7am. The driver had not understood this. He thought he was to come at 8am. Mini-crisis, but it was averted. He managed to still get me to the airport on time. On the way to the airport I noticed the strangest thing. Lots and lots of women were walking around the city with yellow/white pasty facemasks on. Yes, proper facemasks in broad daylight. You know the ones I’m talking about. Every romantic comedy has a scene like this. Girl is chilling in the house in her most comfy “seng’eng’e ni ngombe” t-shirt, that leso that has a hole, a headnet and a green face mask. Unbeknownst to her, her Romeo is coming over to surprise her. Ding dong! She rushes to open the door – just like that – cause you know Nairobi is so safe, you just open the door without first carrying out a background check on the person behind it. Alas! It is her prince charming. He has come to surprise her with a bunch of roses and a pair of tickets to Paris! He had a crazy revelation when he was chilling drinking his Jameson with the boys at Tamasha. “She is all I need! I am tired of this life of debauchery, mismatched bedsheets, bachelor meals. I need to marry her now…..All this money I have been saving to buy a pro-box to use for biashara…..Yote ni vanity. I am buying us tickets for today to fly to Paris and propose to her on top of the Eiffel tower!” Later in the day you can see his love interest has gotten over her earlier mortification at being found with a green face mask on. They hold hands as they board their evening flight to Paris.

Ok. Snap out of it. Which African is this getting a visa in a day to anywhere in the world?

Ok, but you get the point – yes, that face mask that women only put on in the privacy of their homes to exfoliate, detox, open pores etc….some women in Comoros are walking around with it on the streets daily “to keep their skin from getting damaged by the sun.” That’s the official word on the streets, but I did tend to notice some tell-tale signs of bleaching in some Comorian women when I did see their faces and compared the color with their knees and knuckles….This bleaching thing is really affecting black people worldwide. 

Anyway, we get to the airport and turns out the local consultant we have hired – he knows everyone in Comoros – including my driver.

It was a really quick flight to Moheli – on a small plane – it took around 30 – 45 minutes. Once we arrived at Moheli – we were picked up by the head of the teacher’s association in the island. He was a fiery old man – I really liked him. He was extremely passionate about education and required excellence and dedication from those working for him. You can imagine that this is no easy feat in a country where teachers’ salaries hadn’t been paid in over 3 months at the time of my visit. He immediately took us to a focus group meeting with other heads of the association. It was during this meeting that I heard snatches of conversation from our local consultant saying I would lead the interviews – which were to be in French. I thought I had heard my own things. We had agreed that he would be the French expert. We had questionnaires translated into French – he was to lead the interview and I would support given my limited language skills – especially when it came to issues such as vocational training, efficacy of the curriculum changes, teaching pedagogy etc.

I was screwed.

The next meeting started and I was told to start – it was so embarrassing. I couldn’t even pronounce half of the words on the questionnaire right. After a few minutes, the local consultant realized that he was indeed going to have to do his job. It worked out much better once we switched because then I could focus on listening to the responses, understand the meaning, take notes etc. – rather than sweating as I tried to understand what the respondent was saying, think of how to ask a follow-up question, take notes and wonder how I was going to get through the next question that had so many words I had never seen before in my life….Le sigh….Impostor

After this we had 2 more meetings with groups of teachers numbering 4-5. The local consultant had all sorts of questionable habits – like hitting on the female respondents thinking I didn’t understand what he was doing. We then went to another school, but as soon as we got into this village – there was a very somber mood everywhere. It turned out a 30 year old guy in the community had been unwell – he had just died and the whole area was in mourning. The school had even shut down for the day. I quickly learned how small and familial everything was in Comoros – everyone knew everyone; everyone was somehow related to the other or at most one degree of separation from the others. That’s not surprising though given the population on all the 3 islands totals up to less than 800,000 people. In this particular island I was on, the population was 54,000 people.

We went to yet another school – in this particular school – it took over an hour to find any teachers or the school directors – the head of the teacher’s association gave them a proper lecture. It was a bit awkward being there for this “Vous-etez parasseux”/”You are all lazy!” I pretended I didn’t understand just how much trouble they were in.

This was only halfway through the day and it was turning out to be very eventful….

The wages of epic debauchery, is missing your flight

After the Amsterdam tours, we went to town to have a beer. Then we visited a coffeeshop - after which we went back to our hostel for happy hour. Our hostel was really really bad (White Tulip), but happened to be in the middle of all the fun stuff and right on top of a great Irish pub - Slainte. We got back to the hostel in time for happy hour - Buy one get one free. We each chugged around 4 beers in quick succession because we were trying to get to a certain club for free - by 10pm. We got to the club, but they were already charging entrance. We decided to go back to Slainte. Most of the team was sleepy, but I really wanted to party. I went to a club in Rembrandtsplein called Smokeys. I got there and it was lots of fun. They had 10 shots for 10 Euros - we indulged....I called The Reluctant and asked her to join me. We had fun and got home around 6am....

That night would however fade in prominence when compared to the next one...I  learnt many lessons the next day : 1. Expecting to party all night and catch your morning flight is foolhardy at best 2. Sleep is dangerous - don't trust it 3. Just because the offer is 10 shots for 10 Euros, doesn't mean you suddenly have superhuman strength to drink 4. They say with age comes wisdom, but Amsterdam proved to me that this can be a fallacy....

Such a lovely day - it started so well. We went to town to buy boots. We got back to the hostel in time for an early dinner and happy hour. There was a huge crowd of pockmarked guys at the bar chanting some football songs in an unknown language. They looked like fun - though we couldn't understand their language. We had our happy hour beers as we tried to figure out what to do. At some point in the night, the leader of this tribe of football fans approached us and we became instant friends. That strange language they were chanting in - was English.....apparently....they were Man City fans who had traveled for a game. Him and his friend joined our table and they were good company. Their 30-40 football tribemates did not disturb our peace. 

Our new friend told us to join them on one of the bridges for a post victory drink. We got there and there were thousands of people drinking and dancing by the bridge. Our friend was a gentleman and plied the 6 of us with lots of beers. Finally around midnight we were finished. The more logical in our group went back to the hostel to sleep. They had a flight to Nairobi that they would need to leave the hostel for at 8am. The Safety Net and I who had to leave the hostel at 5am for our flight to Copenhagen, decided "it is easier to wake up if we don't sleep." .....Yeah. I know. The devil comes in many forms. 

We went to Smokeys to party the night away...I bought the first round - 10 shots - which we shared. The Safety Net bought the second round - 10 shots - which we shared. After that, hell broke loose. We made it back to the hostel and The Safety Net pleaded with me "Let's just go to the airport now" but sleep and alcohol (the two headed demon) had taken control of me. "No, please. Just let me sleep 15 minutes." We had only an hour before we needed to go to the airport.....

You can guess what happened. We woke up at 8am as those who were leaving for Nairobi were on their way. We decided that since we had already missed our flight, there was no need to panic. We went to the Jamaican-Ethiopian hostel manager and pleaded to check out at noon. He was quite kind - and I did look like a train wreck - he knew we needed that sleep. 

Around 1pm we finally went to the airport. In the US when you miss a flight, you pay around $25 to $50 to book a new one. We thought that would be the case.....If only.

"Miss Kimeria - you two were a no-show. Your tickets have been cancelled. If you are to travel, you need to buy a new flight for 350 Euros each" (over 3 times the cost of our initial flights.)

I still remember the moment I heard that news. This was the end of a 6 week Eurotrip. None of us had 350 Euros to spend just like that.....I had already paid for housing in Copenhagen....We had no money to pay for new housing in Amsterdam.....and our return flight to Nairobi - required us to leave from Copenhagen to Munich. We thought of our options......We really had  none. We thought of taking a train - costs were almost similar and the journey would take 24 hours or so.....I put the new costs on my credit card - really hoping it did not get declined.

The wages of epic debauchery is missing your flight.....and having to cough up 350 Euros...and having to sit at the airport with your hangover from 1pm to 9pm for a flight..OUCH!

Geneva - partying and hadron colliders

Geneva made it into our itinerary because one of my closest friends lives there and another great friend was also based in Geneva at the point. These are my ride-or-die friends who always come visit whenever i'm in the continent - mostly Germany. They had actually joined for part of Oktoberfest too this time. My main friend in Geneva actually came to surprise me for my 30th birthday - all the way in Nairobi. Imagine that - going to open the gate and finding Pattiko there - all the way from Geneva to visit for my 30th. I love you Patti and Constantinos!

We left Venice in the afternoon and got to Geneva in the evening. We were instantly picked up by our friends, they took us to drop our bags and off we went clubbing. It was a fun Friday. Despite our exhaustion and sleepiness we had a blast - two of those in our group - The Reluctant and The BARacuda even danced on stage. Geneva was expensive. I remember each drink was around 25 Swiss Francs/USD. 

Saturday morning we woke up a bit more refreshed. My other friend - Constantinos - also a friend from my university days in Boston - is a nuclear physicist......Yes, you heard right. Nuclear physicist [name dropping alert]. He took us to his workplace -  The European Organization for Nuclear Research - CERN. This was a few months after the Higgs Boson particle had been discovered by CERN scientists. Constantinos told us the coolest stories about how lectures had been given at CERN shortly after the discovery and the lines to get in were even longer than lines at famous rock concerts. CERN houses the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world! Yes, we were nerding out at CERN and it was lovely - especially when you are being given an insider tour. 

We spent the rest of the day walking around Geneva then had dinner at an Italian place called Luigi's. Later on we went clubbing with our friends and their friends. 

This was our Geneva experience - great friends, great memories.

About that time in Barcelona when we went to an all-you-can-drink Australian pub

There are few things as dangerous as an open bar. Commonsense out, greed in. That is exactly what happened to us in Stoke pub in Barcelona. The hostel gave us a card with all the must-do things in Barcelona and one was to go to an Australian pub with 10 Euros all you can drink beer or sangria for what they called "power hour." As much sangria and beer as you want for an hour. We did the math and figured out this would be a nice cheap plan - go drink at Stoke then not need to buy any drinks for the rest of the night.  

We got to Stoke at a respectable hour - around 5pm. We did the math. If a glass of sangria or beer costs 3.30 Euros, then to break even we need to have at least 3 glasses to break even. But we are Kenyans. Do you think we win all those olympic medals by doing the bare minimum? Of course not! We were going to do even better than break even - we were going for gold. We had to pick whether to go with Beer or Sangria. It was decided by our small committee that sangria was more bang for our buck - how much beer can one realistically drink in an hour - before getting bloated.....How that hour began and how it ended are like night and day. We got in as proper cultured ladies and pretty soon we were yelling at the top of our voices.  

They started by bringing us 2 pitchers of sangria. There were 6 of us. When we finished our pitchers, there was a bell we were to ring for them to refill. Towards the end of that power hour, we had some frantic bell ringing courtesy of The BARacuda. We also had some erratic chugging, some crazy pouring - that resulted in more sangria on the table than in the glasses. There was one casualty of the power hour - whose partying came to an abrupt end after the hour. She found herself home by 7pm. 

The rest though - we left Stoke and moved to the next place. A bar that had live music, wine and shots for a flat fee of 5 Euros. I'm still not quite sure how we managed to have more drinks. Later in the night, we went to a night club called Jamboree where we danced and danced and danced. We got home at 6am. 

Barcelona was clearly our type of city.

Oh....you're wondering. Did we break even at Stoke? Hell, we bankrupt the place:-)

The official Paris tour

Today we finally managed to go for the official free Paris tour. The tour guide was a Dutch guy who seemed really high. We learnt quite a few interesting things - who knew Napoleon was Italian?  Napoleon was born on Corsica on August 15, 1769, just 15 months after France had purchased the island from the Italian city-state of Genoa. Next we spent quite a bit of time learning about the French revolution - whose most bloody memory is the death of Marie Antoinette and 4000 other royals. The French Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally resulted in a dictatorship under Napoleon that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Some of these repercussions included the end of slavery in French colonies.  

 The safety cord was unfortunately able to join as her leg got injured in the previous day's long walking adventures. After the tour, we went to the train station to try and buy tickets to leave Paris for Barcelona the next day. Yet again, we were not able to book any tickets. It was beginning to get very annoying. By this time, most of us were tired of Paris and its unfriendliness. We were ready to leave.  In the evening, we went to a quartier of Paris called Montmarte for dinner. 

I started having a killer toothache - that could only mean one thing. A cavity in need of a root canal. I am an expert at teeth issues. This had to the the worst timing for a tooth to do this to me. On the following day, I was bedridden. Toothache was killing me. I had bought a little anesthetic and was self-medicating. I sent The Little Toe and the Reluctant  to buy train tickets - yet again they were all sold out. Paris was trying to hold us captive. We decided we would have to go to the train station the next morning and find train tickets out of town, however we could. I tried to sleep early, but pain kept me up till 5am. By 7am, we were up and on our way to the train station with all our bags.......and no tickets..

The Havana Tour

We planned to do a city tour - it was a dramatic day. We almost never made it to the tour - we got lost lots of different times and almost gave up on the bus tour. I'm happy we didn't give up though - I hope you've enjoyed the pics.

How I almost gave up the ghost, gorilla trekking in the mountains

Definitely longer blog posts coming up, but quick highlights on gorilla trekking a few months back in Bwindi impenetrable forest in Southern Uganda  - I would likely not have gone if I had known just how tough it was going to be:-)

I still remember a naive Thekenyanexplorer asking the guide in the beginning "How steep can it get?" Haaaaaa! Jokes! We spent the first hour hiking up a major steep path that can only be described as Mount Longonot. Turns out this was the path that was to eventually bring us into "the impenetrable forest." Yaaaaani, this was not even the real trek yet. Having panted my life away I imagined that the gorillas would be so kind as to avail themselves to a nearby part of the forest - you know.....kind of meet us halfway....Nothing....We then spent the next hour in the forest mostly uphill with some few blessed moments of going downhill (I might not have considered the downhill parts a blessing if I had realized that we would be using the same exact path going back i.e. this would be an uphill path on our way back.) After an hour of trudging through the forest (which was muddy and slippery as it had rained the previous night,) I imagined that we must be really close to the gorillas. One of my colleagues asked how much longer and the guard said "In the next hour, we will be with the gorillas." I almost flung myself on the ground and started crying. An hour?? I can barely put one foot in front of the other....Can I just stay here and wait for you guys? And photoshop myself into your pics with the gorillas?

Then our guide talked to the tracker again and he said that we would have to cut our way through the forest to get to where the gorillas were. Armed with a sickle, our guards started cutting down vegetation in the "impenetrable forest" to get us to the gorillas. Maybe it's just me, but I always thought forests have a ground - yes, the trees might be close together, but there will surely be a ground, right? No. We were walking on air, on trees, on fallen branches, over streams, on nothingness, on everything - I fell down a minimum of 5 times - once into a hole of my height, another time I slipped on a muddy rock and was just so glad that this was saving me some effort, that I just let myself slide down 5 or 6 more muddy rocks - like I was on a water slide at Splash or something - I could not even be bothered to stand up and would have gladly slid down the mountain if there was a way to...

Finally, oh, finally that sweet moment arrived - when we got to the gorillas. The family we were tracking was amazing - 26 in total, 3 silverbacks (the male leaders), 5 or so blackbacks (younger males), 10 or so females and the rest were babies. This sounds silly, but I didn't realize how huge gorillas are. The first one we met was 225 kgs, so human in action, just stunning. To think that there are only 840 mountain gorillas remaining in the world - all of them in Rwanda, Uganda and DRC - just amazing work that the parks have done in keeping this magnificent, beautiful creatures alive for future generations to enjoy. It was so exhilarating just standing in the middle of the forest with the largest primates known to man. 

There were some hilarious/frightening moments, with 2 of the silverbacks charging at us twice and having to be stopped by the trackers who are able to mimic their sounds. We also heard the screams of a gorilla baby and saw how quickly the silverbacks went to check what was happening. One of the silverbacks also started pounding his chest as he retreated from us - to make sure we knew who was boss. It was really out of the world.

The next day with my aching bones, I could genuinely say that it was worth every bit of physical pain to see the mountain gorillas. I thank the Kahungye gorilla family for letting us take a sneak peek into their lives, the great wardens and trackers for loving and caring for these treasures of the world, my travel companions for pushing me forward and encouraging me when all I wanted to do was give up during that journey. 

I encourage every one who can to go see the lovely mountain gorillas. East Africans, the deal is sweet for you - USD 90/person vs. USD 600 that foreigners pay:-)