Haruguru (Above)

HARUGURU (above) from Ricky Norris on Vimeo.

This is a video of the Kigali sky from our house. Breathtaking beauty.... We sat on our porch and watched the lightening as it lit up the night sky. Only 2nd time i have seen rain since I have been in Africa. We are now entering the dry season....

Gorillas in the Mist

On Sunday I boarded a full bus in Kigali to head up the winding mountains for about 2 hours to Rungheri. From there we spent the day walking around the market and local villages playing with the kids. Finally the sun was beginning to go down and we wanted to get to the base of the volcanos before sunset. We grabbed some motos and took the most breathtaking moto ride I have ever taken. It was like something out of a movie. We got to our Kinigi Guesthouse...which was like a bungalo/dorm style and decided to take a walk at sunset. When we were coming out of the guest house we saw four boys standing on the edge of the road...three of them with sacks of food on top of their heads, and one with a smile that stretched ear to ear. We said hello and asked them where we could walk...they said that they would show us. They ended up taking us on a walk straight for the base of the volcano. On the way we passed some RDF (Rwanda Defense Force) military camps, most likely because we were so close to the border of DR Congo. The walked us all the way through their village. The main boy who showed us around name was Jorge. He told us about their soccer team there and introduced us to his best friends. They took us to their school and through their potato fields...even let us pet their cows. Everyone was so welcoming and loving that I knew this would not be my last time here. One 74 year old women walking on the road came up and gave me the biggest hugs. All of the children would stand there and say "Hello, hello, hello hello hello hello hello!" until we were out of sight. This village was truly how I imagined Africa to be. Full of people that were smiling we joy when they see you and welcoming with open arms. Kigali has given me quite a shock of an african experience, and difficult at times... but going to Sabyinyo village and meeting the futbol team lifted my spirits.

 The sun went down ove

r the cloudy volcano and we headed home to have some African tea and 

get some rest. It was to be a big day hiking to the gorillas the next day. In the morning we woke up at 5 am when the sun had not even rise

n yet. We ate a hearty breakfast and walked to the Gorilla headquarters. W

e got lucky and had become friends with an english girl who had a brother that had lived with the gorillas for 5 months filming them so she had connections when it came to group picking. There are about 5 groups th

at were go

ing up the gorillas that day with only 8 people per group. The biggest hike/family that I wanted to see ended up not bein

g a possiblity becu

ase the day bef

ore the group didnt get back til 9 at n

ight and it was too dangerous; the family of gorillas had moved too far up the mountain. We got asinged the Hir

wa family instead which was supposedly the next best. In this family there was one

 male silverback gorilla, 6 women, and 6 babies. We started our hike through the sa

me vill

age I was in the night befo

re until we got to the ed

ge of the national park. We began the hike through the bamboo forest with two RDF guards with guns for the wild buffaloe and elephants that can char

ge, a guide, and someone to carry bags. The hike was about 2 hours of seroius trekking...like nothing I have ever do

ne before. The jour

ney was wo

rth it for the hike alone. Most of the time we were walking on a ridge surro

unded by cascading jungle the ent

ire time and chopping our way through branches. At some points you have to almost rock climb on plain soil that broke away as you made the vertical climb. I thought I was 

going to not make it at one point cause the air was so thin you felt lik

e you were doing all that you could to breathe and nothing was getting through. After two hours...the guard whispered to stop and put down our bags. The gorillas were 

about 10 min away and

 could s

mell us coming. We would leave the bags behind. He told us that when we got close enough he would make a noise to communicate with the king silverback to ask permission to join

 the family. He did...and it sounded kinda like a grunt. In the distance we could here the king respond and allow us to come. we slowly approached clim

bing straight on top of layers of vines like monkey bars in this ste

ep valley. There were tons of st

inging nettles that caught your skin and hurt like bee stings. We saw our first mama gorilla with her baby appear 

only a couple feet away. they just went past us like we were apart of their clan...eating the stinging nettles on their way! Then we came around to papa gorilla who was hunched over. He must have been the size of an arm sofa! He grunted the angry grunt at us cause 

he just wanted to nap and we were being to loud and our guide grunted the "Its Okay" grunt back to calm him down again. At one point I crawled almost 2 feet away from him and he got angry and swang at me  a little bit. We spent the next hour just observing and taking in all of God's wonder. Gorillas have become probably my favorite animal...especially after this. They are so human like and give you chills when they look at you in the eye. On the way down I got my right foot tangled and fell forward...flipping myself upside down and hanging there by my foot. It was pretty hilarious. The hike down was much faster and I was sad to leave but overall it was the most amazing adventure of my life and I will never forget it!! 

Off into the Jungle!

I am about to catch a bus to the base of the volcanoes 2 hours away. Tomorrow morning I will wake up at the break of dawn to start my trek deep into the jungle for 6 hours to the largest family of silver back gorillas. Our guards will be tracking them will infrared and cutting our way through the jungle with machetes. I will spend about an hour amongst the family of 40 gorillas and their babies. Pray for my safety! This is an adventure of a lifetime.... I love you all. Next blog will be full of footage!

love,

erin

The Remba House

This is my new house in Kigali!...photo montage courtesy of my roommate Seth Johnson. See that grasshopper.

... i shortly hereafter removed it by grabbing its leg... a

nd the journal and bible on the table outside thats mine too! only pieces youll see of me in the house, i was most lik

ely napping in the room he didnt go in.

Here is our family!

Amanda Flores (top right) blog: www.amandainrwanda.blogspot.com

Natalie Warne (top left) blog: www.nataliewarne.blogspot.com

Me (middle left)

Rachel Burney (middle right) blog: http://www.rachelinrwanda.blogspot.com

Seth Johnson (bottom left) blog: http://sethmjohnson.blogspot.com/

Ricky Norris (bottom right) blog: www.africa.rickynorris.com

Uganda to Rwanda

Rwanda to Uganda from Ricky Norris on Vimeo.

My amazing videographer roomate Ricky and Seth on their way to Kigali!

Father's Day

I said goodbye to Amanda yesterday morning and I am really sad because she was my first friend and ended up being my closest here in Rwanda. I know its cliché to say that I really hate goodbyes but in the past 6 months of my life I have had way to many with people I really care about. Its going to be good to go back to the states for a while and then hopefully move to Ireland for a long time after that. I have been doing a lot of searching for jobs in Ireland for after I graduate in May, so say some prayers for me cause the job market is impossible there especially for an American. I ended up not going to the Gorilla naming ceremony yesterday because I’ll be making that trip out there next weekend. Supposedly this week Akon will be coming to perform in the Stadium by my house as well as professional soccer players including Renaldo. We had a good week this past week with…the boys started filming interviews with the women and getting some good footage. We don’t have much to do at night during the week so I have been designated storyteller every night. I have started on display designs for our retailers... one of them being a large branch that I found in a trash pile. My plan was to hang the necklaces on the branch after varnishing it but I came in and the women had used my branch as firewood. They thought it was so funny…now I have to find a new branch.

Today we all went to church in our community, only about 5 houses down. It is something that we always wanted to do because we can hear the choir practicing everyday from out house down the street. When we came in they made us to come the front of the church so that they could welcome us. They even put two translators in between us all so that we could understand. During the sermon, there was a woman who came up who was from the Congo and talked about her family there. They continued on to talk about how in 94 the genocides often took place in churches like this one and how we can never forget. After church I took a moto to the genocide memorial by myself. It told the history of the genocide and was actual the site of many killings. It was not to far from my house that I live in now so it brought me back to reality. In one of the main testimonial videos a woman spoke of her father that was killed and how he was a quite man with many many friends. It made me think of my dad today on Father’s Day and how much I miss him and am so lucky to have him in my life. I will try to get a hold of him later today. If you are reading this Dad,… I love you!

Paradiso

 June 12, 2009 (dates are off because I am behind)

I havn’t found much time to write within the past week, mostly because work has been busy and internet has been down the whole time. I have also been doing a lot of traveling which tends to be exhau

sting especially on winding roads with po

t holes every ten feet for 3 hours. Despite the pot holes on the way, Gyseni was well worth it. Gyseni is a Rwandan town on Lake Kivu that is shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo. We traveled there in my ro

omates car which we call “The Beast” because it can handle everything. We packed up the old white la

ndrover with my two close

st friends both named

 Amanda, 5 law students from Pepperdine, myself, and Gad who is becoming a 

close friend of mine and is one of the most 

genuine humble Rwandans I have met. He takes very good care of us and knows almost everyone in Rwanda, and I mean everyone. We all piled in on th

e bench seats in the back and traveled thr

ough lush green mountains, villages, volcanoes, and gorilla territory to Lake Kivu. The origina

l plan was to try and make it into Goma, DRC on Sunday, but unfortunate

ly that did not happen

. The goal for the weekend was to just get away and relax and enjoy the beautiful country that Rwanda is with a thousand rolling hills. When we got to the Lake it literally looked like Hawaii. Just as we were about to pull into the hotel there was a dust 

cloud up ahead and was moving mysteriously fast toward us. Someone shouted to roll up the windows but we couldn’t because we were in the beast. Next

 thing we kn

ow we come to a complete stop and let the cloud of re

d dust consume us. We took a deep breath ad the dust came in and filled the windows. Not only we

re we in the cloud…we were the cloud. Next thing we know we hear honking and a tractor becomes visible as it is about to scoop us up. We swerved out of the 

way and couldn’t stop laughing at how not one person 

could see it before this all happened. It was a nice relaxing weekend and the Amandas and I found a canoe which we thought we could conquer. This canoe was most defiantly made from one tree and we begged the fisherman to take it out. Within two seconds the canoe took on water and we  

were going under. We sunk the boat and as the captain

 I went down wi

th it. I couldn’t leave this poor man’s boat at the bottom of the lake so I flipped it over under water and somehow got it to shore. Then if that wasn’t enough I found a one man pod like size canoe and paddled my way out into the lake w

ith the end of a shovel that I found. I almost sunk myself and didn’t 

make much progress. With only one paddle and a pod I ended up just going in circles. The drive home on Sunday night felt even longer than the way there. It was like a movie though as we drove back to Kigali under a

 full orange moon above the volcano and clouds lightly covering it.

The rest of the week was eventful as the new interns arrived on bus from Uganda. They are the film crew and my friend Rachel who is head of the REMBA team which will be starting a beauty school intiative. I also ended up moving into their house with them because rent was much cheaper and in a better location right behind the US Embassy. Everyone in my new house is mostly from southern California and one is from Hawaii. I finally booked my gorilla trek this week and will be hiking 5 hours into the jungle to be with them on the 27^th. It is going to be so surreal and I have to start training cause apparently the hike is at a very high altitude. I am so excited.

I have spent most of my time this week going over some business checklists with the women. One day I walked up to the market with them after work and we all laughed and linked arms. We ended up having a photo shoot on the walk up to and all the women couldn’t stop laughing. Their spirits are much higher as we bought bundles of food out in the countryside on our way home from Gyseni and gave it to them. I love them so much and I already can’t imagine leaving them. Aside from the great week I had…I also had my first Malaria scare. I woke up on Friday and could tell that something was wrong. My body was aching and I had hot sweats and chills. I came into BURANGA and the women immediately noticed that I looked weak. My boss told me that I had to immediately go get malaria testing cause apparently even though I am on preventative medicine I can still get it. I grabbed a moto to the hospital and waited for a while to get the test. My Rwandan friend and Amanda showed up at the hospital and it meant so much even though they really didn’t need to. Turns out there was no need to worry and the test was negative. Still scary but I knew I didn’t have it. This weekend my friend also hooked me up with tickets to the annual Gorilla naming ceremony, which is a festival that they name all the new baby gorillas that were born that year. Last year Natalie Portman came and this year Akon is coming haha should be a good time. As of now my health is back to normal, the women are finishing up a big order, spirits are high, I will hopefully learn how to drive stick this week, and I can’t wait for the gorillas!