Nomadmania is an affinity group for self-styled extreme travelers.  One of their features is organizing trips to places well off the beaten path, where tourists rarely go.  I have signed up for a four country trip to east central Africa.  Adding an independent trip at either end, I will be covering six countries, four of them new to me.

 

My first destination is Cormoros, islands off the coast of East Africa.  Getting there is by flying New York to Nairobi (Kenya) non-stop, then a connecting flight to Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), where I overnight, and finally to Moroni, capital of Comoros.

 

Settled by Arab traders, the four islands that comprise the Comoros became a French colony.  Three of the islands declared independence in 1975, with the fourth, Mayotte, remaining an Overseas Department of France.  The country is part of the Arab League and is almost 100% Muslim.  It is also one of the poorest countries in the world and prone to political instability – since independence there have been twenty coups and attempted coups.  Almost all movies and novels about white mercenaries in Africa are loosely based on events in Comoros.

 

Our visit is confined to Grand Comore, the largest and most populous of the islands.  Home base is the only decent hotel in the country, located several miles up the coast from the city, offering nice views and a resident giant tortoise.

 

 

We’ve hired a guide and driver.  The first day is a tour of the north.  A giant baobab, a local market, a nice beach, and plenty of wrecked cars to adorn the setting.

 

Near the top is a geologic formation called the Dragon’s Back, actually the remnants of the rim of a volcanic caldera.  Also, another ancient baobab.

 

The next day is Moroni and the south.  As to the former, the harborside mosque, dating to 1427, is about the only decent sight in this gritty, chaotic city – one of the several reasons that this is one of the least-visited countries on earth.

 

 

At Ikoni are a large mosque and the ruins of the 500 year old Sultan’s Palace.

 

At the southern tip of the island a fleet of small boats brings in the day’s catch.  Market women buy the whole fish and resell it in portions.

 

The ancient walled town of Foumbouni is a shadow of its days as the center of a regional sultanate.  We are invited by an old crone to visit her centuries-old ancestral manse.

 

And wrecked cars litter the landscape.

 

 

Three days is plenty for Grand Comore, but not enough time to visit the other two islands, so it’s back to Dar Es Salaam, where we spend the night (sort of, as we need to leave the hotel at three AM to make our five o'clock flight).  I’ve been here before, so it’s not a new country or even a new city.  In the afternoon I have time to visit the National Museum. It features fossils of the earliest man and predecessors and photos and relics of when this was part of German East Africa.

 

The automobile shed holds the chariots of the sainted first president, Julius Nyerere.  To the left, the Morris Minors which served him adequately before assuming office.  To the right, transportation suitable for The Big Man.

 

Our two-hour flight is to Kigoma, in the extreme west of Tanzania, on the eastern shore of  Lake Tanganyika.  After arrival at a rudimentary airport we are pleasantly surprised by our hotel.

 

The sights are limited but interesting.  The railway station dates from the German colonial era.  Running to the coast at Dar Es Salaam, it opened up the riches of the interior.

Another historic relic is the only surviving ship of the German Imperial Navy. It was built in Hamburg in 1913, disassembled and shipped here in 3000 crates. Reassembled and launched as the Graf von Goetzen, it dominated the lake in WWI and was the inspiration for the German gunboat Luisa in that classic movie, The African Queen.  Rechristened as the Liemba, it is, amazingly, still in service as a passenger ferry.  Unfortunately, the port where it is docked is a security area and I can only catch an obscured glimpse of its smokestacks.

 

Nearby is Ujiji, then a small lakeside Arab trading post and now a suburb of Kigoma where American adventurer Henry Stanley found famed British explorer David Livingston

 

The quest was to locate the source of the Nile, believed to be somewhere in the Great Lakes of Africa.  (Spoiler: it is Lake Victoria.)  Measured by volume, Lake Tanganyika is the second largest and deepest on the planet (Lake Baikal in Siberia takes first prize).

 

 

The “road” to our next destination is by boat.  A sudden squall forces a detour to a fishing village until the storm passes.

 

Gombe National Park is where Jane Goodall conducted her decades-long study of wild chimpanzees.  It takes an hour and a half of uphill hiking to reach the damn apes, who are totally unappreciative of our efforts.

 

It’s not far to the Burundi border, our next country and a new one for me.  We forego the route to its capital city, Bujumbura, and instead take the inland route.  Greeted by the usual signs warning of Ebola, Marburg, and Monkeypox, we return to the lake at the town of Nyanza-Lac.   There not being much else to do or see, we visit a fishing village and take a spin out on the lake.

 

Roughly heart-shaped and more or less in the center of the continent, Burundi bills itself as “The Heart of Africa. A catchy slogan does not make up for the lake of attractions: it is one of the poorest and least visited countries. In the town of Makamba we are treated to a very colorful and energetic dance performance.

 

Our night’s lodging is at the small provincial capital of Cankuzo.

 

On the edge of Ruvubu National Park we visit a pygmy village.  Rarely seeing visitors, they are literally dancing in the streets.

 

The arrival of white men bearing gifts brings out the entire village.

 

Not to miss out on the local cuisine, we sample the termites.  Reputedly nutritious, they taste like fried, crunchy nothing.

 

Burundi is a small country so it does not take long to reach the opposite border.  We are heading to neighboring Rwanda, but the border between the two is closed so we have to transit via Tanzania.  The double border crossing pretty much consumes the entire day.  Rwanda is exceptionally fastidious -- you have to wash your hands before entering, and, for those unfamiliar with the practice, there is a large instructional signboard.

 

We drive to Akagera National Park.  Established by the Belgians (who back then were running the place) in 1934, it was a wildlife paradise until the 1990’s when all the animals were killed and eaten during the turmoil surrounding the genocide.  The park has since been restocked and there is plenty to see.

 

Even though we are practically on the equator, the park – and most of the country – is situated about a mile above sea level so the temperature is quite moderate.  Mosquitos are not much of a problem, but the tsetse flies are.

 

Next, we have an unexpected stop.  As part of its drive to become a high-tech leader in Africa, the government has contracted with a company to deliver medicines by drone – no hospital is more than thirty minutes away by air.  We tour the supply depot and watch the drones being assembled, loaded, launched, and recovered.  Deliveries are made by parachute so the craft remain airborne the entire journey.  The entire process is highly automated.

Drones are going out and returning every few minutes, but, there being a limited need for such time-sensitive critical items as rare blood products or anti-venom, most shipments consist of ordinary medical supplies and common pharmaceuticals.  As impressive as the operation is, I suspect that its economics are fanciful.  To my skeptical eye, the entire operation looks like an investor presentation.

 

We traverse the densely populated hills – Rwanda calls itself "The Land of A Thousand Hills" -- to reach Kigali, the capital.  In the twenty years since I last visited there has been tremendous economic development. The beehive-shaped convention center is attached to our 5 star hotel and next to an upscale shopping mall.

 

 

No photos are allowed at the Genocide Memorial (so you don’t have to look at any).  Everything about modern Rwanda stems from the hundred days of madness in 1994 when some 800,000 minority Tutsis were massacred, mostly hacked to death with machetes by their Hutu countrymen.  For such a somber place, I am surprised to see a gift shop.  (No, they do not sell souvenir machetes.). We stop by the real-life "Hotel Rwanda" where the events depicted in the movie actually happened.

 

 

The slaughter ended when the Tutsi military emerged from their base in neighboring Uganda and swept in to defeat the Hutu-dominated government forces and allied militia.  Aided by France, the killers escaped over the western border into what was then called Zaire (now DRC – Democratic Republic of Congo).  The conflict continue to this day – mostly in eastern Congo – at a cost of millions of lives. The Museum of the Campaign Against Genocide celebrates the military victory. 

 

Our tour is scheduled to next make a brief visit to DRC for gorilla trekking, but our plans are overtaken by events.  The day before we are supposed to cross the border Rwandan-backed rebels seized Goma, the largest city in eastern Congo.  Fearful that the border would be closed with us on the wrong side, we scrub the trip.  (Right after that decision, we learn that the park has been closed, so we couldn’t go anyway.)  To console myself, I commission a new shirt in subtle, calming colors.

 

Plan B is implemented: we will go to Uganda instead.  Instead of lowland gorillas, we will be seeing mountain gorillas.  Another border crossing. DRC would have been a new country for me, but Uganda is not.

 

Seeing the mountain gorillas in Rwanda twenty years ago was both memorable excellent, but I don’t feel like starting out at five AM to repeat the experience.  Instead, out of curiosity, I wander over to the DRC border.  The rebels control the other side, but they are keeping a low profile here.

 

 

Around  noon the trekkers return, having found their quarry.  We pack up and head back south.  On the way, we pass a convoy of busses transporting Romanian mercenaries to Entebbe to be repatriated.  They were recruited to fight for the Congolese government and paid fifty or a hundred times the salary earned by native soldiers but simply surrendered, as did the Congolese army, to the rebels.

 

We sojourn by the shores of Lake Kivu.  The other side of the lake is DRC.  This area is hydrographically significant because the mountains here form the Congo-Nile divide (equivalent to the US Continental Divide) where the waters separate into the basins of the two great African rivers.  Depending on just where it falls, the rain here will end up either in the Mediterranean or the Atlantic.

 

The next night is at the completely unexpected Chateau La Marara, a total folly of a hotel.  This is something that Idi Amin or Emperor Bokassa (look it up) might have built, but instead is the passion project of a Rwandan physician with a clinic in France.  It must be seen to be believed.  This place certainly deserves greater renown in the world’s catalogue of the bizarre.

 

Back to Kigali for a final night and departure from an airport with security measures that rank with those in Baghdad and Kabul.

 

I fly to Nairobi and the next day connect to a domestic flight to the island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean, just off of Kenya’s Swahili coast.  The airport is on the mainland and transport to the island is by small boat.

Lamu town was founded by Arab traders in the 14^th century and is the oldest town in Kenya.  The old German post office was the first in east Africa.  The slave trade was its economic mainstay until the 20^th century.  Today, it is tourism.

 

 

It is very Muslim and deeply conservative.  Visitors are admonished to dress modestly: “It is possible to look attractive without putting every inch on public display.”

 

I stay in the former residence of the governor now converted into a guesthouse.  Very authentic and quite comfortable although lacking in such modcons as AC and proper plumbing.

 

It is just behind the seafront fort and next to the market 

 

The narrow streets do not permit motor vehicles; donkeys are used for transport.

At low tide the fleet is beached.

 

After two nights on Lamu, it’s back to Nairobi.  I sign up for a tour to Nairobi National Park, a bit of wild Africa located in the urban area just adjacent to the airport.

 

After that, the elephant orphanage.  The visit comes with a lecture about the evils of poaching and why we should not buy ivory products.  I'm thinking that the message would be more effective if it were delivered in Chinese.

 

And, finally, the Giraffe Center, where one can see their long, blue tongues up close.

 

The next day I visit the National Museum.  Pride of place is the exhibit of the earliest man and predecessors.  You can tell from the security features that these are the real items, not the replicas that many museums fob off on visitors.  There is also an impressive collection of stuffed animals.  The aquarium is a disappointment: guppies, goldfish, and a few cichlids.

 

I hang at the hotel until my late evening flight. I am invited to utilize the sauna, but decline -- schvitzing what you experience when staying at an African hotel without air conditioning.  A fitting finale to the trip: just before the entrance to the airport is an automobile security check.  You can bypass it with a 100 shilling note right proferred right under a large "Anti-Corruption Zone" sign.  Africa will always be Africa.