Tuesday, January 30, 2007

hotel rwanda

i'm lucky to be standing today. i think i caught my lastest cold. i've been on the brink lately. i was having lunch at a local chinese eatery called the shanghai restaurant (yes, run by a real chinese doctor). i ordered the beef and vegetable sizzler. it was delicious. i digress. at the end of lunch, there was a huge rainstorm. the temperature dropped. i caught a chill. the rest is history. i headed back to the hotel and crashed from 2 PM to 8 AM.

i'm quite anxious. the gorilla tour is tomorrow. you can't track them if you have an illness. gorillas are susceptible to human viruses apparently.

i feel much better today though.

went to the kigali genocide memorial a couple of days ago. a must if you are here. the exhibition itself was very well done. very emotive and shocking displays. the whole thing centred on video clips of survivors talking about their experiences. while walking around town, it's difficult to see how these people were hacking one another with machetes just 13 years ago.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear there won't be a Bubba memorial in Burundi. Rwanda sounds like its come a long ways in a very short time. Looking forward to the pics.

Try not to piss off the Gorillas, and avoid taking shortcuts through Darfur.

Anonymous said...

Al, I'm at work right now. We're doing inventory; I'm waiting for the accounting department to prepare for the next step, so I have a little time. It sounds like a great trip so far. You'll be counting gorillas while I'm counting hinges. You lucky dog! Actually, you're pretty smart. You know what you want and you go and do it.

Anonymous said...

hola friend,

don't be giving those gorillas yer durned cold! that would be bad karma dude - "mtn gorillas wiped out by canadian traveller's runny nose" - not a good headline my friend!

finally saw grumpy's photos of arfrica. very nice. i especially liked the 'skin' study. also got the whole 'close encounter with elephant' story from okavango. you one crazy dude, dude. :-) no more pissing off big animals, 'kay?

front yard currently graced with 'snow ant' , complete with legs and antennae. couldn't be further from your current reality.

take care fella - nice to see the self-portrait!
hugs,
the haus frau

ps - don't be lookin' those big monkeys in the eye...verry baaad....

LJ said...

Hi there Wanka. You look just like you did after we had finished hiking up Everest base camp and back! You need more sizzlers.

I pe that the gorillas don't take you camera like they did in Sabah.

I've just sent you $5.00 for a beer-- you are so lucky.

Inshillah!