Thousands of Hills and Memories

April/May 2007 (Rwanda/DRC)

Rebuilding Rwanda


THOUSANDS OF HILLS AND MEMORIES

The 2001 national flag for Rwanda consists of three colours. The top half with a bright yellow sun in the right corner, is light blue and signifies peace and tranquility, the two lower quarters are yellow (wealth) and green (agriculture, productivity and prosperity). The old 1962 Independence flag had red signifying the blood shed for this freedom. This was deemed inappropriate for the current state of the nation.
If any country is instantly recognised for something, it is Rwanda: Genocide. The latter word is a twentieth century invention just as genetics, is. And if you go to the museum in Kigali, you see examples of the twentieth century's most famous contributions to define these words: The Namibian (German South West Africa) Hereros, The Turkish Albanians, Paul Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Holocaust, Bosnia's latest ethnic cleansing...and there are others I do not wish to remember. Enough is enough. The Cri de Coeur at the genocide museums and in printed articles/books is NEVER AGAIN. I do not agree. I am cynical enough to know that mankind does not change and that such atrocities can very well happen again within our lifetime. My cry is LEST WE FORGET.
So, what does one do in Rwanda, one of the world's smaller nations, where one can reach all borders within a few hours from the central capital, Kigali?
First of all, you cross the border.
I had left Kabale in south-west Uganda in a matatu bound for Kigali. We were at the scruffy border within half an hour. The inevitable money-changers besiege one and after doing the deal and as I walked through the no-man's land between the two countries, I spent my remaining Ugandan small change on some bananas from the many hawkers who take up position on this piece of land. I needed a container and pulled out the plastic bag normally kept for just such a purchase or for wet and dirty clothes. Back in the matatu the lady sitting next to me, who does the trip every day as she takes orders from Kigali merchants and then ferries vast boxes of soap or tins of easily available goods from Kampala, to them, despite the border taxes imposed, turned to me; "You must hide that bag" she said. I remembered then that I had heard that plastic bags are banned in Rwanda. What bliss! I have never seen such a clean African country. Not only are there no plastic bags all over the place, but the streets are clean and there is no other obvious litter. If you need a sturdy brown-paper bag, you have to pay for it.
It is not only the streets that are clean; traditionally the Rwandans are great gardeners and in front of virtually every house is some kind of garden and flowers in bloom. In areas where the local authority is in charge, the gardens are tended during the last Saturday of every month. It is known as Community Day when all local citizens are obliged to do community work. On the other hand, there are also other groups who can often be seen digging or clearing ditches etc. These are prisoners from the overflowing prisons. In Rwanda it is very undignified to show the calf of a leg (tourists in shorts are positively frowned upon), so the prison authorities have designed bright pink 'pajamas' for the prisoners to wear and the indignity is furthered by having the bottom half of the trousers cut off. Gangs of these pink prisoners, with maybe one guard to every 30 men, are a common sight on the road.
Kigali is a sprawling city on many hills. And why not? Rwanda is known as the ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’. This is most famously illustrated in the name of the Hotel we all associate with this country; the Hotel des Mille Collines. It is estimated that there are actually about half a million hills in Rwanda. I found it incredibly frustrating to walk about in the countryside as the sun kept being in the wrong position! It was as though hills popped up and down like pistons and you were spinning around all the time!
I had intended to take an official tour of the city, but the early morning tour I had planned was not in demand and was cancelled. So I decided to hire a cycle taxi for the day. As it turned out, this was a much better deal. Licensed cycle taxis are all obliged to have luminous vests with their registration number displayed there as well as on the bike and the two helmets they have to carry. My driver presented me with the obligatory helmet and we were off to 'do' Kigali. What bliss to just suggest somewhere or to dawdle whenever we wanted to! He had never been to the newly opened Genocide Memorial Museum, so could share with me the pain and revelation. At the parliament buildings I started wandering around and a kind MP showed me the council chamber and explained the workings of debate there. He then showed me the works being done with EU funding: all the scars of bombing 13 years ago were finally being cleared away, but on the high walls, where mortars had struck, the damage was being repaired and then brightly painted to show what had happened. It was like some modern piece of art. I saw it again on other buildings and it reminded me of the time I was in Sarajevo and Mostar. There, the places where bombs killed someone in the street or on the pavement are painted red. My driver got into the spirit of things and even took me to the Ministry of Statistics because he thought they might be able to answer some of my questions. They 'needed time to research' but I was satisfied: the population before the 1994 genocide was 8million. Nearly 1million were slaughtered within 100days. This was the most effective if not largest world genocide to date. Within a year about 1million had returned from exile. Today the population is nearly 9million. Rwanda has one of the highest birthrates in the world, is highly overpopulated and just about every woman you see has a baby or is pregnant. With no natural resources and surrounded by four countries which all have refugee problems, there is potentially an explosive situation. As usual in Africa, everyone thinks education is essential, but the jobs will not be there....
Mentioning these statistics to expats or NGO workers on other occasions, the general feeling is that the present president, Paul Kagame, who was democratically elected under the new constitution, may be in office for another ten years. He has done a wonderful job of making this country such a peaceful and happy place. Nowhere else in Africa have I felt so safe and walked in the dark without any sense of apprehension. The people are inevitably extremely friendly and helpful to this non-French-speaker. As Kagame does not speak French and he realises that English is an important language, more and more English is being taught and used officially.
BUT, and it is a big 'but' with all kinds of connotations; Kagame is part of the Tutsi minority who are regarded as arrogant (my discussions on these lines were only with mzungus as I did not dare to broach the subject with any of the locals). The majority of the population is Hutu and is less well educated and they were the people who planned the genocide. Resentment festers.... It sounds so wonderful: no one is ever allowed to say the T or H words. All people are Rwandans and I could certainly not type these comments in that country. A Polish nun I spoke to, whispered about the two sets of people and told me that even if she mentioned the T or H words in Poland, she might be overheard and not be allowed back into the country. Another expat told me that there are stories of people 'disappearing' because of opposition. Others are leaving.... In neighbouring DRC or Burundi people openly say they are T or H and happily live with it. A priest, who has been in the country for over 25 years, told me that he was sure it will disintegrate once again within the next ten years... So the very happy time I spent in what I superficially think of as a safe and kind place, could be an illusion.
As a treat, I offered to pay for my driver's cinema ticket if he took me there and back that night. It was about the Coast Guard in the Bering Straits and I wondered what this land-locked man must think of the cold and the sea and the power of the waves. But our lack of language forbade such discussion. The next day my driver took me south of Kigali to visit two of the better-known genocide memorial sites. It was fortunate that I was in Rwanda in April because the main slaughter, planned for months before and with lists of names and addresses being distributed to the killers (mainly the army and people known as the interahamwe), started on 7th April 1994 and continued for 100 days. The country remembers the people who were killed for the first week in April and they then continue to remember the survivors for 100 days. This was the time it took to kill nearly 1million people.

Every memorial site, whether next to or in a church or school, whether in the centre of town or on the side of the road, was bedecked with purple bunting, the colour of the jacaranda tree flowers that are in full bloom. Endless bunches of flowers and wreaths, encased in clear polythene, were still to be seen on these sites on the day I left Rwanda; 13th May. But the bunting had been universally removed overnight on 30th April, so that one was suddenly unable to see where the sites are. A strange sensation when I was so used to spotting the numerous sites as I passed in a vehicle or on a bike. This shows how the people are doing as told. Not as unpleasantly as in Singapore, where I found an unemotional people doing as told a few years ago, but they are nevertheless obeying dictats which come from above. Just like it is forbidden to ride bicycles on the tar roads in towns...
There is no need to describe the horrors of what one sees. In one place, 60,000 inhabitants, assembled in school buildings and with support from the church authorities, were killed within 4 days; in another, it took 3 hours to kill 4,000. Even the smells are still there; the clothes covered in dried blood; the skulls and bones; the 'repairs' to buildings where the walls were broken into and are now purple-painted memorial shapes; the part of a mass grave being newly cemented where yet more bones have been found and are now interred; the knowledge that priests of the RC church took part in the killings after offering shelter to their own congregations… One of the most understated notices over a mass grave I have ever seen, simply states Site of French Volleyball Pitch. When the French soldiers entered the South West of the country to keep ‘peace’ after the slaughter, the soldiers created this recreation pitch. It beggars belief. I saw enough during this 'genocide tour' of the country, yet know that one has to witness some of it just to remind oneself. I have seen quite a few of the Nazi genocide sites (and always found the small East German ones without the hoards of tourists more moving) and I know one has to accept that this is now part of the tourist experience in Rwanda. Yes, it is macabre, but it does make one think of what humanity is capable of and what it is about.
It was established that if all the perpetrators held in prison after the slaughter were to be tried in the conventional courts, it would take 100 years to clear the backlog. Thus the traditional village courts of Gacaca where introduced. People were trained to be judges and every village has a court session outside in the open once a week. All shops, Banks and markets are closed and hundreds of people gather to listen to the cases against local imprisoned people. The prison sentences are now more lenient and the earlier ones of 30 years are drastically cut. Perhaps everyone has reached saturation point. I did not wish to intrude at these very personal trials, but one day I did walk close by and quietly stood at the back. A woman was giving evidence and she was obviously highly distressed. After all these years the wounds are still very raw. It has been established that 99.9% of children witnessed violence; that 87.5% of children saw dead bodies or parts of bodies; that.... the statistics are there....

The more ‘important’ perpetrators and ex-government officials responsible for the genocide are being tried at the International Court of Human Rights in Arusha, in Tanzania. Here, the contrast is stark: Trials take place in high-tech modern, air-conditioned buildings with endless security requirements. In four courts there are daily trials which take place before eminently qualified International lawyers and specially-trained Judges who represent many of the UN countries. There is constant video-screening from six cameras in each Court. The official language is French, but numerous translators do ten-minute stints and visitors in the bullet-proof glassed off areas may sit on comfortable seats and listen to the translation on earphones. The number of officials representing the accused and the Court of Human Rights fill the very elegant and comfortable furniture. The accused is in his ‘dock’ and supplied with the latest technology. He invariably wears a smart suit and looks well-fed and prosperous. It is difficult to think of these men I later saw in the courts in Arusha as the perpetrators of such a heinous crime as genocide. That most of their victims were personally killed with machetes just adds to the image of blood-crazed murderers. Millions of dollars have been spent on these trials in Arusha and they are laughably extended for months as minions argue about pieces of paper and incomprehensible technicalities. I was speechless with disgust. But, for all these experts keeping the trials going well into 2010, it is a good place to be seconded: the weather is superb; one is only a few miles from mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru and numerous Game Parks or a few hours’ flying away from the great Rift Valley Lakes, Nairobi, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam or Zanzibar…. Back in Rwanda, the locals like the raped women now giving evidence against their former neighbours and friends, inevitably ended up with babies and both with AIDS. They did not receive the superb medical treatment their rapists-in-luxury-prisons in Arusha did. And most of them have not even heard of ‘counseling’ or ‘compensation’.

One of the joys of this kind of travel is that I am exposed to all kinds of literature. You take what you can get. I had not read Dickens for years, but ‘Hard Times’ would remind me that poverty is the same in other countries and ‘The Tale of Two Cities’ describes the horror of similar killings in France. While in Rwanda, my main reading matter was ' Shake Hands with the Devil' by Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire who was in charge of the small UN peacekeeping force during this time. It is a very moving book and surely must be read by anybody involved in peacekeeping or trying to 'do good' in unknown areas. The world has much to learn about being involved in other peoples’ cultures. And to act decisively when necessary. Another book was the re-reading of Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’. Later, when I read Michela Wrong’s book “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz”, which is about the 30-year reign of Mobutu in adjacent Zaire as he called the renamed DRC, I could better understand the horrors of the constantly-shifting refugee camps over these adjacent borders. Mankind does not change.
Not all was doom and gloom. There is a wonderful cultural museum in Butare which used to be the Belgian administrative town and where a local student who volunteered as a guide, extended hospitality and took me all over the vast and largest University in Rwanda. The old Kings' palaces in Nyabisindu (formerly Nyanza) are certainly worth a visit. A traditional palace with a round rush roof has been created next to the 1931 Art Deco Palace the colonials thought more appropriate. Later in the 1950s another palace was built and this is today used as a cultural center and art gallery and as the national school for dance. I had been walking all day with a VSO Educational Officer from the UK and as we approached the latter building, children who had gathered for dancing lessons came together and spontaneously hit the drums and started dancing for us.

Lake Kivu on the western border is a tranquil and very beautiful lake where I spent time to just relax and enjoy the views. When the sun sets and it colours the clouds above the lake blood-red, that is reflected in the water and one has a magical view of a pink lake. There, at the harbour of Gisenji, I could watch the dugout fishing canoes set off as dusk fell. These pirogues were lashed together like catamarans, but each dugout was at least 20m apart and lashed front and aft by sets of two eucalyptus poles so that fishermen could crawl to each boat if necessary. Each boat had two to six paddlers and as they set off towards the middle of the lake, they sang in unison. The most haunting of sounds…. What intrigued me though was the fact that every boat has a very long pole or two lashed to both the front and the back of the dugout. Because it is so long, it bends under its own weight and, as the boats move, these poles dip up and down and the whole setup is like a giant lobster with waving tentacles. I could not speak the language and they could not explain. As each set of three boats gracefully passed, the men spied me on a hillside and they would call out and greet the mzungu from across the water.

Once I was sheltering from a downpour. The large corrugated iron roof covered a cemented area and women were sitting on empty sacks with piles of coffee beans in front of them. Each pile, which they had dried at home and were now cleaning and sorting, was from their own trees. They would be for sale at the adjacent coffee factory. I decided to try and sort them myself. It is a decidedly tricky operation and I constantly needed to refer to the owner when I wasn’t sure if a blemished bean was OK or not. Just think of it: millions upon millions of beans are sorted in this way before they are sold and then exported on to us in the Western world. In Ethiopia, where primary school education is not provided or compulsory, children are also involved in this sorting, just as they were employed by their families to herd the cattle and goats. It is not exploitation, just part of the culture. In the book ‘An Ordinary Man’ by the manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines, he talks about the great honour it was for him as a small boy to do tasks for his mother and that it was never considered a chore nor exploitation. We in the West like to think that our values have to be exported to all cultures.

Some of the many mountainous roads were a pleasure to travel on because of the distant views or the dense forests one went through. In the south I traveled through the Nyungwe Forest, famous for its orchids and also for being the dividing point between West and North Africa. It is here that you travel on the ridge where the catchment areas of the two major rivers of Africa separate: The Congo to the west and the Nile to the north. The countryside is very overpopulated a therefore every spare bit of land is cultivated with bananas, maize, sweet potatoes, what they call 'Irish potatoes' (ordinary potatoes to you and me), sorghum, millet, beans beans beans (for drying and in full growth at present), lentils, rice, small green egg-plants, tomatoes, greens of all kinds and so on. The Rwandan cuisine is very much vegetable-based and the 'national' dish is pieces of goats' meat on a skewer (brochette) or meat stew which is eaten with plates piled high with vegetables, chips, spaghetti and rice. Eating joints are generally buffet-style and one can pile one’s plate a high as possible. It is fascinating to see the results! But containers of food get cold, so a hot 'soup' is poured over the lot. And all this is grown on the hillsides of ‘the thousand hills’. As Liz said, the agricultural scientists claim that no planting can be done on land that is at an angle of more than 60%. In Africa, they have not read these books...

One day I noticed smoky fires coming from the densely cultivated terraces where people were working. It was explained that the fires were deliberately made to produce smoke in order to keep the mosquitoes and various bugs away from the toiling farmers. Ingenious! But then someone else told me it is not true…they are only burning rubbish. I quote this as an example of how easy it is to decide what one wants to believe when traveling about. If one story is better than the other or suits one’s prejudices, that is told and all other facts to the contrary are ignored. Always take what I say with a pinch of salt! I like the mosquito story!
Near the end of my stay I walked for miles on little-used roads near the northern lakes. Views of these wonderfully shaped and deep expanses of water, usually dotted with islands, were worth the effort. I was offered occasional lifts in trucks and, to get me to a town before it got too dark, I hired a bicycle taxi. The enthusiastic young bike-owner had never had such an experience and for the 18 kilometers that we sped down hills or he furiously peddled up hills, and as the roads filled with people going home, he called out something to the effect of "mind out, here I come with a mzungu on my bike!". It was hilarious and I was fully occupied with waving at the crowds who called out "mzungu, mzungu!" and children running alongside to try and touch my hands.
My 18-day stay in Rwanda was one of my happiest experiences and I am so privileged to have seen the country and to have met some of its people. As an addition, I must record the most challenging and ultimately most memorable two days of this whole trip so far: A visit to the DRC (formerly Zaire) while I was in Rwanda.

4th/5th May 2007 (Democratic Republic of the Congo)



The Lava Lake




A millionth of the DRC

It used to be called Zaire, but today the Democratic Republic of the Congo is still the same place; It is one of the largest and most impenetrable and ungovernable of countries in Africa. But I did not wish to try and negotiate the roads and forests. I just wanted to see the town of Goma and a volcano.

Goma is a town across the border from Gisenyi where I was staying in Rwanda. It is most famous in the eyes of the world as the place where millions fled across the border during the 1994 Genocide and where there are still refugee centers, especially as there was a counter-movement of refugees during the time of the overthrow of Mobutu, the man who created the name Zaire and systematically bled it of all its wealth over 30 years. During the 1994 aftermath, cholera killed off thousands and the NGOs and Aid agencies fell over each other in disarray….

In January 2002 the borders were once again opened to a flow of refugees into Gisenyi. But this time it was not politically created. The nearby volcano, called Nyiragongo, had split its southern side and lava flowed through this fissure towards the town… In 1977, it had been just as ferocious, but it was more unexpected and over 5,000 people lost their lives as the town was engulfed in molten lava. This time, the lava flowed underground after a few kilometers, but then it suddenly emerged over ground once again and parts of the airport and 15% of the city was consumed. 120,000 people were made homeless. The lava went into Lake Kivu and caused a new piece of land to be created. The fact that there is a lot of methane gas in the lake, posed a great fear of a mighty explosion, but the lava stopped and cooled down before anything happened. It was the most destructive effusive eruption in modern history. One can see the volcano from various places along the shores of Lake Kivu and, when it is dark, there is a magical glow above the top, which can be seen from long distances away.

Today the town of Goma is slowly re-emerging where people are building houses on top of the black, very hard and broken-up lava surface. It is up to 2 m high. The places where the 1977 lava came to rest are still very bare with only brave weeds and grasses beginning to grow. So it will be a long time before the black surface of Goma is fully functional. But the town thrives and there are very luxurious houses and hotels near the beach and on the newly created peninsula, which reflect the relative prosperity of the area. One can question the source of such wealth, and having read Michela Wrong’s book ‘In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz’ about Mobutu and his corrupt reign, one can understand the proliferation of luxury houses. I once saw a BBC film about the mining of colombite lantalite. The unfortunate ‘miners’ (for which read ‘slaves’) are being exploited to an alarming degree and it is quite a scandal. But the middlemen in Goma, who then sell off this Colta, are getting very rich… After all, we all need to have a mobile telephone these days, don’t we? And colta is an essential ingredient…

All over town are rusting notice boards, which have a painted message on them. They are divided into four colour squares and each square tells the citizens to be aware: if a green flag is flying above the signpost, the volcano is dormant. If a yellow flag flies, it is active but not too dangerous. Finally, a red flag means they must listen to the radio messages and be ready to flee… The tatty yellow flags have been in place for some time, although there is a constant rumble of activity.

How people live and walk on the very hard and sharply rugged pieces of lava is admirable. Only on the football pitch has it been ground down to a fine black powder.

With the necessary visa, climbing permit, hired sleeping bag, food, water, porter with tent and armed guard, I set off to spend a night on the crater rim.

The going was definitely very hard. The climb to the top (3,470meters) took me 5 hours (fit people do it in 4!) and I used the excuse of getting my breath back to admire the ever-changing vegetation: From savannah to tropical (wild dahlias) to montane (enormous pink ground orchids) to high altitude giant lobelias and tree heathers and finally to the bare and steep remnants of lava at the cone. This last bit needed about 30 minutes of climbing and there are vandalized remains of metal huts just before the final climb. Recent rebel activity meant that even in such remote places, where essential hut shelters are provided, the rebels couldn’t resist destroying things. My guides wanted me to camp there, but I insisted on sleeping on the rim. Just as well, because we had hardly reached the top when they exclaimed, ‘Look, Monique!’ Well, at least that was what I thought. I had this image of an attractive French lass who had just caught up with us. But far down, I saw a whole group of soldiers trekking to the shelters. They are part of the UN peacekeeping force and are fondly called MONUC for Mission d’Observation de Nations Unies en Congo. These men were part of the very highly respected Indian contingent that are very well-disciplined and keep to themselves, whereas the South Africans who were there before, were totally out of control and liked to drink and enjoy the ladies of the town…. It reminded me of the hard time had by the UN in Rwanda during the genocide when a small contingent of ‘soldiers’ were worse than useless and the undisciplined Belgians were murdered as revenge for their past arrogance. Coming into view was a group of about 24 men. The Colonel and Major soon joined us, while down below, the men were preparing the camp. As I saw the following day, the best of the huts was closed in on one side to give adequate shelter for these two officers and the rest of the men had to make do with a small bit of shelter and otherwise sleep and cook in the open in the soft rain that fell that night.

By this time I had had the most wonderful view of the molten lava below! I lay and balanced over the hard lava edge and was transported. It is a sight never to be forgotten! A vast (250m down) semi-permanent black lava lake (2km wide) was being pushed about by forces from below. Red cracks appeared and spread across the heaving mass, just to be merged and broken up again into different patterns. Meanwhile, at the rim of the circle, the molten lava was smashed against the edges like waves on a rock, thus spewing great geysers of red into the air. It is certainly magical and worth every hard breath one takes to get there. My guides were also pleased for me, because a misty cloud often obscures the crater. This happened a bit later after more soldiers had arrived and many photos were taken. The last soldiers, who had had to finish setting up camp, were unfortunate and saw nothing! The Colonel kindly offered to provide us with supper. “As you know, there is always lots of food with the army.” And the two lads had no difficulty agreeing to walk down to the camp and back in the dark and on the ferociously hard and jagged lava.

My 2-man tent was erected with difficulty as only pieces of black lava rocks on this barren ledge could be used for fixings. Clouds came over and the dark set in. The boys went down to collect the food and returned later with boiled eggs, rice, chips, beans, chapattis and lime pickle. The feast was laid out and the porter sat inside with me while the guard sat on the entrance. I was happily eating my rice when I noticed the chapatti I had placed next to me, slowly moving into the corner of the tent! How can this phenomenon occur on such a lifeless place? All was soon revealed. We had a visitor! If you go to a London Underground station and observe the tracks, you will soon see small brown/black mice, which have adapted to conditions underground, scurrying about and collecting crumbs dropped by the humans. Similarly, mountain mice must have learnt that humans sometimes sleep and eat on the rim… My porter was most upset and a hilarious chase ensured with him trying to catch the mouse, me insisting that it must be saved and allowed to exit the tent and the bowls of food doing a noisy, emptying jig as the porter flailed about.

After our interrupted meal, I insisted that I was happy to sleep alone. However, the porter insisted that he stay with me and promptly rolled into a ball in a corner. The guard went down to join his colleagues and no doubt eat more Indian food. Both of them had ravenously eaten anything I produced during the day and I later realised that they had brought nothing to eat themselves although I had been assured that I was not to feed them. I lay reading by torchlight in my warm sleeping bag on top of my own Sahara sleeping bag, which was essential for some softness. But how could I sleep with him next to me at this cold height with no cover whatsoever? So I pulled my bag from under me and threw it over him. He hid his head under it and I never heard a sound from him all night!

Having a dodgy bladder means frequent trips out of the tent. For once I was pleased about this as it allowed me to have the chance to see the different moods of the crater throughout the night. In the pitch black, I would crawl on the hard lava to the edge. But the misty, reflected red cloud never lifted and the sound was a continuous, distant roar like waves on the rocks. It had been the 4th May, what would have been Francis’s 28th birthday. All was well with the world.

Early in the morning we descended to the soldiers’ camp and were promptly stopped to have breakfast. I was escorted to the hut where the two officers were still in bed, drinking cups of tea and being given freshly cooked chapattis. The Colonels’ batman brought him his warm shaving water and then laid out his clothes. What amused me most though was the fact that the Col. slept in a camp bed lined with delicate pink sheets and a pillowcase. As he later said to me as we moved down the hill in tandem; “I worked hard to get to this position and therefore must show the men what to strive for.”

If you ever want a truly unforgettable experience, I would recommend this climb!

Sadly, as I trawled the internet to get a picture for you, I read the latest news about the volcano. On July 6th 2007 (two months after my climb) a 33yr old Hong Kong Chinese tourist slipped and fell into the crater. She survived on a ledge, but rescuers could not get to her and she died later. My Indian Peacekeepers have been given the task of trying to retrieve the body.