Rwanda--an experience. *Chronicles of a West African in Kigali*: Safari trip- Akagera National Park

Friday marked the end of our first week as interns. I already feel like we've been here for about a month. Our week ended with more meetings concerning the finalization of the preliminary report to be submitted to the Secretary General next week. It also included going for a meeting with the Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI), a division of the Ministry of Health. A survey had been conducted earlier about the efficacy of immunization programs and how well such programs were utilized. It was pretty interesting to listen to the presentation as well as witness the useful contributions that were made, as well as the finalization of said work.

The most mind-blowing bit of this journey so far was our trip to Akagera National Park on Saturday. I have never been on a Safari before so I was very much excited about this. We left Kigali City about 6:30am to the Western Province of the country. It took us about 2 hours to arrive at our destination. The ride was rather smooth as the road leading to the place was a relatively straight shot. We got to the game park and found out that supposedly we were supposed to have brought our passports in order for them to determine if we had visas or not. Since none of us had our passports, we talked it out with them and settled on paying the fee for residents (residents pay $20 and non-residents pay $30). Our tour guide, Charles, was really nice. He gave us a little history of the park and we started our trip.

Our first agenda was to see the buffalos. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the part of the park that would lead us there. The path leading up to this part of the park was a rather marshy terrain but the guide said we could drive up the path. 5 minutes later, our car was stuck in mud. Pierre (the driver) kept on changing gears and the different terrain modes of the 4-wheel. The car did not budge. The guide started to push the car as myself, Carmen and Ama sat uselessly at the back of the car. We offered to get down to push but the driver didn't think it necessary. We spent about 30 minutes stuck in the mud with the driver trying multiple ways of maneuvering the car out of the mud. After 30 minutes and our white car now covered in brown mud, we slowly made it to the buffalo site. It was soo serene and breathtaking to just watch nature in action. A couple of antelopes happened to be passing by so we witnessed that as well. Took us a while to find the zebras but we did and that was fun as well. We were not able to see the elephants--none of the other tours did.

Interestingly, the giraffe that we saw was a Masai giraffe. We were told a couple were brought in from Kenya. Plans are being made to re-introduce lions as well into the park as all the lions that were present prior to the genocide had been killed off. Moreover, the park is now being fenced off so it will help to contain the animals in the reserve.

In passing, we saw baboons just hanging out. I was quite happy to see them because we are told it costs quite a bit to see the gorillas so seeing their not so distant cousins made up for not being able to see the actual gorillas. The park has a number of lakes which were absolutely divine. From one of the lakes, we were told we were actually looking at the Tanzanian border.

The 6 hours we spent at the park was worth every minute!!!