Got some vacation lined up (yea!). Hiking to Silver Peak in Killarney Provincial Park followed immediately by bus-train-walking in Eastern Europe. Yes, for some reason this year, I've managed to end up with trips booked back to back. Perhaps subconsciously I've succumbed to the 'adrenaline junkie' travel method--barely leave yourself enough time between trips to unpack and repack just to test your endurance. Whatever the explanation, I've got these piles of stuff started in my living room, one for hiking, and one for Europe. This I tell myself, is helping me prepare for both trips at the same time. Also I'm trying to accumulate a sufficient body of knowledge about E. Europe to allow me to navigate successfully. Below for example is a map of the tram line in Sarajevo, which I hope to use to get from the airport to the city centre. In fact, the tram line does not connect to the airport, so I will have to take a bus (I think) from airport to tram line. This also has become one of my things: taking on the public transit system instead taxis. Also part of the adrenaline agenda it would seem.

The Kakumba watershed in the 'winter', or perhaps more appropriately, in the dry season. Farmers burn their fields for a variety of reasons most of which are actually pretty reasonable, but the end result is greater erosion, declining soil health, and ultimately a loss of ability to feed one's family. The challenge of reversing the community habit of burning fields is a great one, as our project manager is Congo is contemplating.

Yesterday, I saw monkeys! Seeing monkeys in and of itself is not that big a deal, but it is the first time I've ever seen monkeys at one of our project sites. Most of the places where I work are, let's say, very agricultural, and there's not that much room for wildlife. But the Congo basin, as I've probably mentioned before is the site of the second largest rainforest in the world and even in the farm communities where we are (just beginning) to work, there are still pockets of forest left. It is one of our hopes that, together with farmers in the area, we can intervene to not only help people protect their precious farmland, but also to help them protect the wild areas that still remain nearby. This is in a sense the notion of preventative medicine versus curative medicine. Or dealing with the problem early instead of waiting til things have gone way too far.

And just so you don't think that there are monkeys just falling out of trees everywhere here, you should know that in order to see these ones, we started hiking around 7 am and reached the spot in the photo around 8:30 so, hiking over what I would say is pretty rugged terrain.

It's true that this photo looks a lot like a picture of a bunch of trees, but I swear to you that there are monkeys. Had I taken video, you would see the branches moving around as they jumped from tree to tree.

This morning about 3:30 am I woke up to the sound of a loud argument between a man and a woman. The argument went on in several languages, including occasionally in English, I guess because both of them wanted the entire world hear their side. What I heard in English was the woman screaming,"Give me my money!", and the man saying,"Get out!". I also heard snippets in French that sounded like, "Shut your mouth", and "I don't want to talk to you". The whole thing went on for nearly an hour. Fortunately for me, I had to get up early anyway to get ready for this bus trip. So just a few minutes ago, while I was waiting in the lobby for my ride, I saw a middle aged man leave with his luggage in a large SUV, and a few minutes later a young woman leaving with no luggage. 

Mind you, counting travel hours that way is a bit misleading since the 40-60 hours includes about 7 hours at a hotel. Which is where I am right now, with internet connection, a working shower, and drinking cold water supposedly bottled from the 'Source of the Nile' (in fact on the bottle label, 'Source of the Nile' is actually in quotes).

Kigali is in fact in the Nile watershed, and somewhat close to the source, so I suppose a water bottling company could make that argument. In any case, the bus that I get on tomorrow morning, will wind its way through the mountains towards the border, and at somewhere in Nyungwe National Park will cross over from the Nile to the Congo watershed. Interesting thing about Rwanda and Burundi, that both countries sit atop the divide between two of the most important watersheds in Africa. One wonders how that geography is linked to the history of this part of the world.

13 minutes 6 seconds, airport entrance to departure gate. Pearson airport, terminal 3.

Today I head  back to Congo. Just got back this morning from a GIS conference, which was great, and this afternoon I'm at the airport again. So I don't know how to count my journey. When does one trip end and the next begin? And yes, I do mean that in both the existential sense as well as the time keeping sense. Numbers-wise it doesn't make that much difference. If I count from now til I reach my real destination in Congo, it's about a 45 hour trip. If I count since I left the conference last night til I reach Congo it's probably more like a 60 hour trip. This is totally OK, because I got to go to an excellent conference where I learned a tonne, and now I get to visit a really beautiful part of the planet which is the Congo Basin. Everyone should do it.

Me and the Rwandan flag. One more country to add to the count.

Not much blogging (actually none) on this trip although there was plenty to blog about. Among other things, the scenic bus tour through Rwanda and eastern Congo turned out to be an intense and grueling journey, definitely a test of one's stamina. Not totally unexpected, but there were a couple or three moments when arrival at the destination was not at all certain. I also witnessed a new record for number of people on a minivan, 31. No, I'm not kidding and for comparison, the previous record (as witnessed by me) was 29. That leg of the journey featured a bench seat where all of the padding had worn off, so I was basically sitting on the pipe frame that would normally hold up the padding, and the board that had replaced the padding on the back had a nail sticking out of it and occasionally into my back. 

Things I am looking forward to on this trip:

• adding a new country to my checklist
• a scenic bus tour through Rwanda and Eastern Congo
• the possibility of being witness to the launching of a new program for our organization--please note this is not a slam dunk, so many things could push back, postpone, undermine, derail, or otherwise frustrate this process. All the usual philosophical cliche's apply: Murphy's law, 'nothing is ever  as easy as it seems', 'that that don't kill me, can only make me stronger', Ok, that last one is a bit of a stretch, fueled by the double espresso I just ordered and my inability to sleep on airplanes. In fact at this point I'm barely ahead of the proverbial army of monkeys randomly typing at keyboards. I mean this is a bullet point that has apparently turned into a rambling paragraph, hardly making a point at all, bullet or otherwise. Can't wait to get to a bed somewhere and sleep. That is still 14-16 hours away I expect.

Schipol, from gate arrival through security check to reaching my departure gate, 15 minutes. Sorry, wasn't alert enough to set my stop watch. I realize that almost no one cares about the time it takes to process me through airports, but I figure that someone out there is mining data on traveler perception of airports, and this is my contribution. Plus it amuses me in an environment otherwise largely devoid of amusement--unless you consider duty-free shopping to be a form of amusement. Also I have a theory that some airports are better at this than others and eventually I hope to collect enough data to prove it, at least to myself.

This trip will have the added feature of taking a bus basically all the way around Burundi to avoid possible political things. Actually it will be one bus for about 5 hours followed by a public, shared taxi for another 3 hours. So including transfer times, border crossings, etc it should be a 9 or 10 hour trip. Should be very scenic.

30 minutes from entrance to gate, Toronto Pearson airport.

This is one of the first microwatershed projects that Floresta Haiti ever did. I think about 2005 or 2006 so it's just slightly over 10 years old. Good to see that the trees are still there. The darkish green trees in the centre and left of the photo are 'frenn' (Simarouba glauca) which is a species native to Haiti. The lighter green trees on the right of the photo and further up the slope are eucalyptus (not native). 

One of many beautiful waterfalls on our hike to install water quality monitoring equipment. Tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Airport time from entrance to gate, 22 minutes. Minor delay because I couldn't use the ticket kiosk for some reason. Otherwise a good morning so far. This trip to Haiti to work on a new (and hopefully improved) way to handle data, and a new way of monitoring water quality. This in particular I am pretty excited about. A battery operated data logger that will automatically collect information on water depth and water temperature. There are several practical issues to sort out like how to protect such a device from cows and children, but we are working on that, and the possibility of getting some really valuable data back makes it worth the effort. We shall see. I'll let you know how it goes this week.

See, this is the thing: I can be sitting here on this pretty beach, in the cool shade, enjoying a cold beverage, looking at the beautiful mountains across the shimmering lake, and just 15 minutes down the road, this fragile political situation may or may not be unfolding. It's a contradiction of the highest order.

The other day a colleague of mine was explaining how he was trapped for 4 days in a guesthouse in a capital city with nothing but the bottles of juice and bread that he had somewhat on a whim purchased the night before. Well the next four days was serious city-wide rioting so intense that guesthouse staff wouldn't even cross the road to come to the guesthouse. So there my colleague was, all alone, rationing his juice and bread. At the end of this story, he sighs and says, "Ah, Africa", conveying in one succinct phrase a deep and passionate love, and at the same time an equally passionate frustration.

While I am not much more than a glorified tourist, I have some sense of what my colleague was expressing. This place can make one profoundly happy, and at the same time drive one mind numbingly crazy.

The good news it seems to me, is that people seem pretty willing to talk about the political situation. And fairly open about complaining about the government. That's got to be a good indicator doesn't it? Isn't that what we do in democracies, complain? 

Day 5 of 8: There's something very sad about the fact that I am in Africa this week and so far I've talked more about my luggage than anything else. This may be a bad sign, I'm not sure.

On the other hand, I'm really don't know what else to talk about. Talk about work would go mostly like this:
'Had some meetings. Talked about some stuff. Agreed on some stuff. Set dates to do some stuff. Talked about more stuff."

I can barely think about writing about that, let alone imagining that someone wants to read about it.

Of course the really big topic is politics here in Burundi. Things are very tense right now with elections beginning next month (ish). But I don't feel like I can talk about that either for a couple of reasons. One, much of what I know is based on rumour and speculation. I just don't think I have any business posting that. Two, the more official news you can easily find by doing some responsible internet research yourself. I would warn you though that you will likely discover articles that say everything is great, everything is fine. Myself, I am not qualified to comment on the validity of such claims, but recommend that if you find articles like that, you keep looking for other articles with a different perspective.

I will venture to say that it feels very much like things are on a hair-trigger. For a myriad of reasons, social, historical, cultural, political, economic, even environmental, there is potential for the situation to take a turn for the worse very quickly and without much warning. So, an entire nation holds their breath, waiting and hoping. Like the Scout motto I suppose--I think it's a Scout motto--"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst". If you're the praying type, now would be a very good time to do so. If you're not the praying type, well, think positive thoughts or something. It is not an exaggeration to say that what happens in the next couple of months could be the difference between a nation with a promising future, or a terrible tragedy.

End of day 1. Flight was good, no delays, and about 20 hours which is probably the fastest I've ever made it to Bujumbura. Somebody met me at the airport to pick me up. My hotel room is clean. The electricity works. There's hot water. No rioting in the streets. Yup overall a good day.

29 minutes 10 seconds from entrance to gate. YYZ. Slower than usual because I had to actually talk to a ticketing agent rather than using a machine. Which was more pleasant than using a machine anyways, I have no complaints about the service. Just that it's drawing down my average check in time.

This is day 1 of 8. Easy trip. At least logistics wise. I expect within that 8 days there will be about 4
fairly complicated hours and the rest should be the proverbial walk in the park.

I'm trying a new luggage configuration--yes, I'm sitting in an airport and there's not a whole lot to do, so I'm blogging about my luggage. This is a 15 litre rolling briefcase and an 18 litre backpack. This is about a 45% volume reduction compared to the other system I use. Plenty of room for one week I think. And I've finally caved in and got rolling luggage. I knew this day was inevitable, but sadly it is here. Sad because I'm giving in to gravity. Resistance is futile I guess, but all these years I've felt compelled to actually carry my stuff rather than roll it.

Day 37 of 38. On the road again. About 30 hours from now I should be home if all goes well. Never assume that though. It's been a good trip--not without its stressful moments and I'm exhausted but we got almost everything done that we set out to do. This morning was the first day in about 35 days that I just lay about, appreciating the ability to lie horizontally: something I won't be able to do for the next 30 hours.