Over the border and through the woods

        We left Gisenyi mid-morning and started heading for the Rwanda-Uganda border.  The countryside was very beautiful.  I was especially

taken with the TEA fields!  They were so lush and richly--well, GREEN!  Apparently it was the season to harvest tea, which is very labor intensive.  I was told that the only way  to harvest tea is by hand-stripping the leaves from the bushes.  That, I guess, is what these people were doing.
   It wasn't far to the border, and the crossing was chaotic and interesting.  This was only the second time I had ever crossed a border in Africa, and it made me feel uneasy.  There are a lot of armed guys in uniform all over the place making all sorts of official demands, and they don't seem to have a very good sense of humor.  Money changers approach one to get one's currency changed from one country's to the other's.  There are vendors and loads of vehicles.  One must get out of one's vehicle and walk across the border and then retrieve it on the other side.  Complicating all this is that Rwanda is a right-hand drive country and Uganda is a left-hand drive, so there's another switchover that must be negotiated.  And also there are handsome cows grazing right by the road, seemingly begging to have their pictures taken. 

 They reminded me of Precious Ramotswe, a fictional character I love so much she seems real to me.  She ruminates about cows frequently in the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency books, talking about their sweet breath, and how, if they are fat, it is a sign of well being for all of Botswana and indeed all of Africa.  These cows, as you can see, seemed nice and fat, but I can't tell you a thing about their breath.


     I was taken aback when one of the official guys examined my passport and gruffly asked me, "Do you speak Hebrew?"   I must have looked pretty dumbfounded, because he went on to explain that I had a Hebrew name.  That was news to me.  He did decide to let me into Uganda, however, either despite or because of my Hebrew name, I don't know.
     It was with some relief that we four made our way into Uganda.  I think I mentioned before that all three of my travelling companions were Rwandan by birth, though they had lived most of their lives in Uganda.  And they shared an air of joyful homecoming with me and a feeling that now we were in a place better than Rwanda--more prosperous, more freedom, and better run. 
    Soon we were at our destination, and it was clearly one that had made its bread and butter for decades from gorilla trekkers.  Take a look if you can at this announcement that was displayed prominently.
  

Well, that's a pretty impressive history.  But as I sat down to a late lunch of spaghetti, I was joined by some one who impressed me more:  Suchi!! 

     I didn't realize how homesick I was for the company of dogs.  I had seen virtually no dogs the entire time I was in Rwanda.  It didn't occur to me that there was anything odd about that, but when I got home, I read a book about the aftermath of the Genocide and learned that many Rwandans lost any love they had for dogs during that time.  Suchi, however, turned out to have a deep yearning for spaghetti.
     After lunch, Jackie and I went shopping for African fabrics.  I wanted to take home some of those wonderful colorful prints that people seem to be wearing all over, so Jackie and I went looking in the town of Kisoro.  It was very confusing to me because I never did get acquainted with either Rwandan or Ugandan currency.  Both of them had an extremely high ratio to U.S. dollars, making things seems breathtakingly expensive.  Jackie assured me, though, that these were reasonably priced and I came away with three large swaths of waxy fabric that she confirmed were the "real thing."
      And after dinner, I turned in early, because I had to be ready for the culmination of the whole journey----my first gorilla trek!