Updates from Africa: Rwanda

As of 2010, there were estimated to be 800 mountain gorillas remaining worldwide. These charismatic heavyweight vegetarians are completely contained within the mountainous regions of three African nations: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Rwanda, a country the size of the state of Maryland, houses one-third of the world's remaining mountain gorillas in its highly frequented, high-altitude, Parc National des Volcans. These 200 some gorillas are the poster child for Rwandan tourism and generate nearly 90% of the small country's revenue for that industry. There are seven habituated family groups available for public viewing and others that are strictly scientific study groups. Each day eight permits are available per group for a total of 56 possible permits with the potential to bring in $28,000 per day in permit fees alone.

We were assigned to the Amahura group and the day after Christmas we trekked up into the misty Virunga range to meet 16 of Rwanda's famous mountain dwelling apes. We ducked and dove through a bamboo forest, made our way up a muddy trail and traversed a nettle infested mountainside for four hours before finding our group at a rest spot. Before we knew it we were in the center of the group and there were gorillas in every direction. With mud stained clothing, nettle stung skin and racing heartbeats from the high elevation hike and excitement, we watched them. And they watched us back with little concern, intense brown eyes and dark black faces, all the while rolling through the nettles and chewing on wild celery stalks. A six month old baby bored with his food rolled on his back with his feet in the air. Perhaps on purpose, a silverback turned his back to us as we took pictures. A
juvenile reached out and touched one of the trackers. A blackback awoke from his nap in the sun and yawned in our faces. It was amazing and so surreal that I'm still not convinced it wasn't just a dream.

After our great ape encounter we headed southwest to Parc National de Nyungwe for a few days. Nyungwe is home to 13 species of primates, including another great ape, our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Unfortunately, the forest is so dense and vast that we only encountered four: blue monkeys, L'Hoest's monkeys, vervets, and olive baboons. Nonetheless, it was great to get out and hike after days of sitting in safari vehicles, planes and buses. And hike we did. Nyungwe, one of the oldest remaining intact African forests, is a montane rainforest so there are no flat trails, only hills to climb. Walking sticks are a necessity for successfully descending and then ascending the steep slippery slopes.

Rwanda, like many other countries in the region, has a dark past. The genocide in 1994 touched everyone and every person has an incredible and horrifying story to tell. As a whole, Rwanda has healed amazingly well and the outlook for the future is very optimistic. We met the most genuine, helpful people everywhere we went and were very impressed by Rwanda in general. Our visit was too short and went by too fast. I cannot wait to return to the land of 1000 hills again and climb a few more.

Yesterday afternoon we were treated to an amazing view of Mount Kilimanjaro. As I watched it pass by my plane window in a matter of seconds I had flashbacks of the seven day excursion my mom and I made up it's slopes over two years ago.

Last night Jake and I arrived in Zanzibar and were greeted with a wave of hot muggy air followed by a salty breeze off the Indian Ocean. Here we will reconvene with 6 friends, all making their way from Rwanda on different flights at different times. Right off the coast of mainland Tanzania we will ring in the New Year with spices, Swahili culture, and snorkeling.

Happy New Year's from Zanzibar,
Corey & Jake

Updates from Africa: Kenya

It's amazing how after a period of time you easily forget the negative and only the positive remains. I was so excited to return that I forgot just how long and arduous the journey is to Kakamega. Unknown to us, Jake, Meaghan and myself arrived in Kenya just in time for a long holiday weekend and we weren't the only ones trying to spend it in Western Kenya. All of the direct buses were booked for days so our best option was to take a "direct matatu" to Kisumu and transfer from there. I told Jake and Meaghan they needed to experience a terrible mini-van matatu ride in order for their Kenyan adventure to be complete. We were able to check that off the list right away. A sleepy driver trying to keep herself awake by chatting on her cell phone, shoveling crisps into her face and chucking her trash out the window, a multitude of wrong turns, an off-roading adventure, and a river fording experience completed that requirement.

Approximately 12 hours after leaving our hotel in Nairobi we arrived in the calm inviting shade of the Kakamega Forest. It didn't hit me until just then, when we drove down Station Road and I spotted Erick, one of the field assistants, that I was back. How I can feel so completely at home in the middle of a foreign country so different from my own, where clearly I am an outsider is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it for themselves. The sounds of tinkerbirds and hornbills, the smells of wet earth fresh from the rain and cooking fires used for preparing chapati, plus the sights of familiar blue monkeys crashing through the trees brought me right right back to where I left off in August of 2009. Even though I only spent 15 months of my life here, it seems I left a lasting impression. I may have physically left the forest but something of myself remained here; before leaving my neighbor and his wife welcomed a baby boy into their lives and named him after me. As we arrived I could hear my own name being shouted through the village as they called baby Corey home.

Between the two of us, Jake and I carried over 80 pounds of donations for the Little Prinz Orphanage. Sabina and staff were overwhelmed and so grateful for the shoes, clothing, and toothbrushes, plus the $700 we deposited into their account. Thank-you to everyone for your support and donations. They are off to a great start and will do amazing things to help the communities around them. I have many pictures to share.

One of the highlights of our time in Kakamega was the neighbor we had and the work he was doing. Hans is a professor of ornithology at a university in Germany working on a long term study of the bird species in the forest. While we were there he was mist netting, catching and banding birds. Six, sometimes eight times a day Hans and his field assistant, Evans, would return from the forest with small pillow cases stuffed with birds to process and band on their front porch. Jake said it was like Christmas every time they came back with presents of new and exotic birds for him to admire.

While Jake and Meaghan were getting their bird fix I was putting in my time with the monkeys. Many of the monkeys I once knew are gone but many more remain. I recognized the majority of them and was greeted by many of my favorites and old friends like Dude, Quack, Buai, and Desdemona. It was nice just to hang out, drink coffee on the porch with monkeys in the yard, take a tour with Wilberforce, undoubtably the best guide in the forest, and hike the trails around the forest station at my leisure. I never had the free time when I was there last time.

We spent nine fantastic refreshing days in Kakamega visiting with old friends, both human and non-human primates, and making new ones. It was hard to leave Kakamega a second time but I can almost hear my name radiating through the village right now as someone calls Baby Corey home for Christmas dinner. 

Post Kakamega we met up with four friends from Tucson in Kisumu. They had spent the previous week exploring Uganda. We left the following morning to meet 30 other familiar faces in the Masai Mara for what would be the most beautiful and memorable wedding any of us may ever experience. Our dear friends from Tucson, Mich and Kate, were married amongst family, friends, lions and elephants overlooking the Mara River. The first to pronounce them husband and wife was in fact a hippo as he let out a loud grunt during the service. 

And the wedding activities aren't over yet. Last night a group of 20 wedding attendees arrived in Kigali, Rwanda. We awoke this Christmas morning in the land of 1000 hills and will travel to Parc des Volcans this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we will embark on an adventure I have dreamed about my entire life, as many of you likely have as well. We will come face to face with the mighty mystical mountain gorilla on the anniversary of Dian Fossey's death, the women who died trying to ensure their existence.

Merry Christmas from Rwanda,
Corey and Jake

Travels in Borneo

July 17, 2011

According to the rain gauge, there has been more than a meter and a half of rain in the last 12 hours. It rained off and on all night. When the deafening sounds of the rainstorm on the tile roof quieted they were replaced by frogs bleating like sheep in surround sound. It sounded like they were tucked away in every corner of the house. We were supposed to be on the boat by 5:30 this morning but the rain has kept us indoors. It’s been raining off and on for the past four days and this is supposed to be the dry season!

Jake and I are visiting my friend Katie in Indonesian Borneo(or Kalimantan Barat) for a few weeks.  Katie has been here since last October and has learned the local language, Bahasa Indonesian, quite quickly, which is necessary because not many people speak English. (We made sure to bring gifts of cheese and chocolate to pay for her translator fees…) She’s here studying the proboscis monkeys – orange pot-bellied monkeys with protruding noses that are endemic to Borneo’s riverine systems. Not much is known about the species in general, much less about the population here in Kalimantan Barat. Katie lives with a local family in the small coastal town of Tolak. It’s not the easiest of places to reach from the Southwestern US. We took four flights spread out over a day and a half to reach Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital located on the island of Java. From there we flew to the island of Borneo, spent the night Pontianak (Kalimantan Barat’s largest city), took an hour long flight to Ketapang, and finally jumped on a bus for an hour before arriving at the house three days after we left our own back in Tucson. From here camp is still another 18 km up the Sungai Tolak (Sungai means river in Bahasa) by long boat.

“Camp Katie” is not much more than a small cleared area on the river that Katie and her two local assistants claimed for themselves. There are no permanent structures other than a wooden table, bench and a swing. There is a lot of logging traffic on the river and multiple small encampments perched along its banks. It has been disheartening and hard to escape the constant sounds of chainsaws creating destruction in the surrounding forest. We spent our first four days up at “Camp Katie” and were treated to some of Borneo’s many treasures as well as hot and dry weather. We had some great views of many of the river’s primate species, including an acrobatic water show starring a rather large group of proboscis monkeys. We stopped to watch a group along the river and quickly realized there were monkeys on both sides of the water. Not before long a few daring monkeys started diving out of trees into the river below and swimming to the other side. The most timid of the group slunk in at the shore and soon there was a steady stream of monkeys with their long noses above the water, swimming in a line to the other side. It was amazing!

We’ve been looking forward to a glimpse of Asia’s only great ape, the orangutan. Appropriately enough, orangutan means man of the forest in Bahasa. Katie doesn’t see them on a regular basis but she has, and they are here so we have been continuously scanning the trees for a large orange man of the forest. Our third day on the river we parked the boat and went for a walk on a logging trail in the forest. We lost track of Jake early on because he was busily snapping photos of every bird he came across. Katie and I decided to stop and wait for him to catch up. Not far from where we were standing something fell from the tree tops. Then something else fell in the same place. It wasn’t a group of monkeys; they make more noise and shake the foliage when they jump around. This thing wasn’t moving much but there was definitely something up there. We looked at each other without saying anything, I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing, and scrambled around the undergrowth for a better vantage point. And there he was, a giant flanged male orangutan high in a tree feeding on stinky durian fruit. Jake caught up with us and we all watched the orangutan feed for quite some time. Orangutans have no natural predators so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t seem bothered by our presence in the least.

Jake has been hard at work identifying and recording every species of bird he can and has come up with a sizeable list for Katie’s site. I’ve been busy pointing out and counting monkeys as we cruise down the river in the long boat. We are hoping Katie hires us in the future as assistants…

 Katie took a break from work and we went north to Gunung Palung National Park for a three day expedition. We saw three more orangutans from our camp, a bunch of singing gibbons, radiant red-leaf monkeys, huge hornbills, glowing mushrooms, pygmy squirrels you could put in a coin purse, blood loving leaches, and monstrous insects. Camp was not what we were lead to believe it would be, Jake ended up sleeping on the floor by the French tourists, Katie and I shared a plywood platform, and the hike in and out was a little crazy with our packs. We are still kicking ourselves for not bringing the sleeping pads but really glad we had mosquito nets. Regardless, for what we saw, it was worth it. We spent our last night of Katie’s vacation down in Ketapang running errands, most importantly finding some cash as we nearly ran out of money and couldn’t find a working ATM near the park. Plus we wanted to eat extravagant foods like ice cream and burgers washed down with beer, a welcome break from the rice, veggies, and tempe we’ve been eating three times a day for the past couple weeks.

We are going to spend four more days in the field with Katie…if it ever stops raining. Then we are headed to Lombok and Bali to experience a very different side of Indonesia.

All the best from Borneo,

Corey and Jake