I apologize for sort of being missing in action the last few days. I actually took a spur of the moment trip to Rwanda to go gorilla trekking and also have had some internet connection troubles. It seems to go down with unpredictable but frequent regularity. I wonder if it’s like the electricity problem where I think that too many people are trying to use it. I’m not very technologically savvy and don’t really understand internet access all that well. I’m just happy when I can get on. (It’s frightening how accustomed and even dependant I’ve become to my luxurious cable-line access at home).
Things are going along as usual on the ID female floor. I am trying to learn as much as I can and to help as much as I can without getting too upset about the inadequacy of the care we are able to give most of the patients. I think one of the reasons a lot of the staff people are just not around on the ward is that they realize this as well and probably get burnt out dealing with it so just don’t. Somehow ID female has also been saddled with the next rounds (next Tuesday), which happen to be the last rounds of the semester as exams start the next week. No one wants to have anything to do with them of course because of all their exams and trying to finish up work. We also can’t find a good case on a topic that someone hasn’t recently just done a presentation on. I think we are going to actually revamp my old Primary CNS Lymphoma talk as an “Approach to CNS lesions in HIV” as 75% of the work is already done. I hope it turns out OK as they tend to be a very hard crowd and like to nit-pick even more than some of the more famous nit-pickers in our program.
Speaking of nit picking, that reminds me of the gorillas last weekend and their grooming habits. I was feeling very burnt out and frustrated and after having worked everyday since I came here I was encouraged by numerous people (including many of you) to take a weekend off and do something. The opportunity came up to go gorilla trekking in Rwanda so I took it and loved it – despite the 10 hour bus ride each way (yuck – I won’t dwell on that much, only to say that loperamide is a good drug in a desperate situation), and the very random border crossing procedure which involves all passengers signing out of one country and trekking 500 metres through the mud to sign into the other country. I went with Victoria, a recently graduated medical student from the US. She is a very interesting girl.
Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) is absolutely beautiful (more beautiful than Kampala actually). All of Rwanda that I saw is really beautiful, it’s hard to believe that the genocide could have happened in such a beautiful place with such nice people. It’s such a small country that all of it has to be under cultivation so you see all these fields straight up all these very steep hills. I took a million pictures of it because I thought it was so nice.
We arrived in Kigali at about 1pm and were met by Isaac, the brother of a travel agent that we’d been in contact with. He was very nice and drove us around Kigali quite a bit. Nothing was open until 2pm as it was the last Saturday of the month (and that’s national clean up day in Rwanda so everything is closed while everyone cleans the country – great custom) so we ended up going to the nice mall and eating lunch in a coffee shop there. So, after lunch we went and picked up our gorilla tracking permits and then we went to the genocide memorial. It’s a lovely building and tells the story of how the genocide actually happened and some reasons why. It is very well done and completely heart wrenching. I was quite upset at some parts and I think Isaac felt bad for me. The only place I’ve been like that before is Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. There were two particularly bad parts, one was some commemorative biographies of children that were massacred in the conflict and the other one was in the clothing room. They’d saved some of the clothing that was found on some of the corpses and one was a little boy’s t-shirt that said “Ottawa, Canada” on it. It made me feel awful, we could send all our used clothes over to Africa but somehow none of us could do anything to stop the horror of the genocide from happening. Outside the building there is actually graves of victims and beautiful grounds. I guess whenever they find a mass grave (and there are lots) the bodies are coffined and brought there for formal burial services. It’s a peaceful place with lovely gardens.
Kigali, from grounds of genocide memorial
Anything after that is a bit anticlimactic but I must say the ride up to Ruhengeri (the town close to the Parc National des Volcans – where the gorillas are and where Dian Fossey did her work) was stunningly beautiful although a bit frightening because of the drop off. It was akin to the “Going to the Sun” highway between Waterton and Glacier National Parks but obviously more tropical. We got up early the next day in order to get to the local park office and there we were split up into groups of 8 (the maximum number of people they allow to visit each family group of gorillas). We had a bit of orientation with our guide, Placide, who told us about things and then we got to know each other a bit.
Road to Ruhengheri
We drove on abominably bad roads for a while out to a little village nearest to where our trek would start and then walked through fields for about 40 minutes to the edge of the park. Then it was pretty much straight uphill, although after about 10 minutes we had to stop, turn around and go back down and around to another point as the gorillas had moved. We went uphill then for another 30 minutes or so and then, all of a sudden, there they were, sitting contentedly and resting. It was an amazing experience! You understand while people get into studying fascinating animals in the field for years on end although at the same time you wonder how appropriate it is to sit there and stare at them – although they often stare right back, probably wondering why in the world there is an odd group of awkward, funny-looking animals that come to look back at them for awhile everyday.
The group we went to see has 9 members. The silverback was the first one I saw, just sitting and leaning over. I didn’t realize how big he was until he got up and started to move towards me – yikes. Then there were three females (although I think we only saw two), one blackback (a male, not yet mature), a juvenile female who sat grooming her mother the whole time, two young ones (a year or two) who were hilarious and very active – rolling around, climbing and falling out of trees, and rough-housing with one another. The last one was a very cute little baby that is apparently only 1 month old. She (they know it’s a female) sat in her mother’s arms the whole time, every so often peering out at us. I probably took about 100 pictures. You’re not allowed to use the flash so some of them didn’t work that well but I think I’ll save all of them to show to Alita – she’ll be really jealous as she really wants to see gorillas – maybe we’ll see some chimpanzees instead.
Gorillas
Mist
Anyway, it was a great experience but we eventually had to leave and walk back down the slippery, wet mountain (yep, everyone landed on their bum at least once) - it was fun. We then drove back to the main park centre – or I should say, we attempted to drive back to the main park centre but had a bit of trouble i.e. running out of gas. (I wonder if that terrible road we’d been on put a hole in the tank – I wouldn’t be surprised). All’s well that end’s well though and we made it. Two of our group members actually offered us a ride back to Kigali with them as they were going anyway and as we were nervous about the mini-van we’d been in (that had run out of gas) we paid off the driver and took them up on their offer.
Well, this posting has not been much about Mulago or the ID service but as it’s getting pretty long I’ll stop now and write more next week. I’m looking forward to seeing those who are coming in a couple of weeks!!
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