Watching TV

African TV is quite fun to watch, and here are some screenshots for you. We start with 'Big Brother Nigeria': same principle as back home, just more sex talks.


Outside of reality shows, people love soap operas: from Nigeria for English speakers, and from West Africa for French speakers. Here's a shot of a soap in Mali where this guy is trying to steal his best friend's girlfriend (he didn't get her in the end).


And finally for all my French friends, this is how TF1 will look when PPDA goes on holiday this summer ;-)

Miam miam

You have the best goat brochettes in Kigali, and needless to say I only eat that when I'm here.

A lot of you ask me why there are not many pictures of people, Congolese or Rwandans. You have to know that it's not easy to take pictures of people here. When I took the picture of my food the other night, about 45 seconds later a young man in civilian clothes showed up at my table and asked to see what I had pictured. The guy was an officer of the "Presidential Guard" and was either following me or someone in the restaurant called him up to check on me. Nice, eh?

Anyway, I am in Kigali for a few more days until I get my visa extended. In the meantime, I will be eating more goat and taking less pictures ;-)

Mo(u)rning in Kigali

Morning view from my hotel in Kigali. Today is the commemoration day for the Armenian Genocide on 24th April 1915, yes that's now 91 years ago. And it's a special feeling for me because I am nowhere else than Kigali, home to the last genocide on earth 12 years ago (strangely enough their commemoration day is in April too). The country here is still recovering from what was a violently quick bloodbath: around 1M people killed in 100 days, mostly by machetes. And this was between people living together a few hours before... Today, they're living together again. Life always goes on.

Hit the road

Over the weekend, we decided to get out of Bukavu and headed for the Nyungwe rainforest across the border in Rwanda. Well, it was a forest indeed and it rained all day, but we had a great time trekking, admiring the lush and dense vegetation, and spotting a few monkeys here and there. But monkeys are camera shy, so instead here's a shot of strange looking mammals feeding.
As my companions headed back to Bukavu on Sunday, I hitched my way to Kigali where I will be spending a few days. I got a ride with a nice gentleman (from Bukavu actually) who turned up to have played with Zaire at the World Cup in Germany in 1974... Back then, Zaire was the first ever African country playing in a World Cup tournament.

Happy Easter

We had a nice long hot weekend to celebrate Easter. Lina (from Sweden) prepared the perfect swedish meal with eggs (boiled in nylon stockings), herring, potatoes and vodka on day 1. On day 2, Alex & I made Thai fishcakes for the group. And we watched Madagascar to finish the weekend off ("I like to move it move it...").

Gone fishing

The fishing season has resumed in Bukavu and dozens of boats are cruising the bay. The boats are grouped by 3, and have no motors so people have to row for long distances. So far none have managed to catch the legendary mermaid which is supposed to roam in the lake...

Come and see us

We were staying with a friend in Bukavu, and she had to move to Goma for a few months, so we will stay in her house for now. Here's a picture taken from the garden and one to show you the view (quite nice). And by the way, Google Earth has now Bukavu in high-definition, so you can try to find the house seen from satellite. Good luck !

"Muzungu, il faut courir!"

There's been some trouble in Bukavu for the last 48 hours. The residents of the poor neighborhoods have flooded into town to protest against the Congolese army, whose soldiers have a tendency to kill people at night for money. Police have been shooting into the crowd during the demonstration and all the shops are now closed to avoid massive looting. I was actually in town yesterday when it started to boil over. A distant shot made people start running in all directions, shouting "Muzungu, il faut courir!" at me ("White guy, you need to run!"). Well,this was just after my morning jogg, so I decided to walk back instead ;-) Sorry no pictures as it's forbidden to take pictures of demonstrations in Congo. As for us, we're all safe in our Muzungu ghetto. In a word, this is not different from Paris these days (except for the shooting maybe).

Pole Pole

Means 'slowly slowly' in Swahili ('molo molo' in French slang). As you can guess, it describes the pace of life here, and they even use it for shop names... And if you're wondering how long it took to paint the letters, well it went pole pole.

Et au meme moment a Paris...

Please support the Red Cross...

... so that they keep organising parties in nice places like this, with barbecue, sodas, gin tonic, boat trips and badminton. Joke apart, these people work hard during the week so they deserve a break on sundays.