Congo Congo Congo!

On Friday I had to give a presentation in Gisenyi, a resort town on the Congo-Rwanda border which overlooks Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu is one of the largest interior lakes of Africa and is the highest (elevation almost 1500 m), and is nestled in between the 8 volcanos that straddle the Rwanda-DR Congo and Uganda borders - home of the gorillas.

The lake has very few fish due to elevated methane gas levels that are the results of volcanic gases that bubble up from the bottom occasionally - some areas of the lake are not safe to swim because these gases rise to the surface and will asphyxiate you! However, most areas are safe to swim in, and a side benefit of all the gases is that many of the nasty diseases you can catch from freshwater swimming in this area of the world aren't present.

It really is a beautiful setting - sandy beaches, an immense lake, with volcanos in the background. The highlight on Saturday was lunch - we went to a local restaurant with tables that were individual huts on the beachfront. We were told we had to pay a cover charge of ~1.40 USD, which included a free beer and music. Well, this music turned out to be a 3 hour concert on the lakeshore of traditional Rwandan dancing (with a couple of hiphop tunes thrown in) - about 30 musicians with drums, traditional instruments and a microphone they passed around. There were about 12 dancers, wearing traditional outfits - a combination of kilts and overalls, with tambourine-like bells strapped to the ankles. It was all highly choreographed, and a huge spectacle for an audience of less than 20.

On Sunday we crossed the border to enter the DR Congo, specifically their version of the Lake Kivu resort town, Goma. In 2002 the Nyiragongo volcano erupted, and within 2 hours the lava had reached Goma, running all the way down to the lake. The city was covered in 6 feet+ of lava, and today the evidence is still everywhere. Buildings buried so that just the roof is sticking out, a parking lot with 10 cars half covered - and now of course the lava has turned to gray rock, so those cars are stuck - rusted through but really immovable. People have taken the hardened lava and made fences out of it and used it as building material, and in general people have rebuilt right on top of all the lava.

There weren't really too many sights to see in Goma except for all the volcano damage, but its amazing the contrast that is immediately obvious on crossing the border that you're not in Rwanda anymore - the quality of the roads is atrocious (granted, the lava might have had an effect there!), there is trash everywhere on the sides of the roads, and things just seem more...dilapidated. To be fair, this region of Congo is currently at war (don't worry, we were safe - although fighting was going on 15km north and 20km south, Goma is the base of the UN operations, so is relatively secure...at least for an afternoon). It was also interesting to see how many mansions there were - our guide said they were vacation homes of those who'd gotten wealthy via diamonds.

The volcano isn't stable enough to be monitored, but experts are relatively sure it will blow again, and probably soon. There was smoke coming out the entire time we were there, and its possible to spend a day hiking the volcano, camp out at top, and peer into the crater and see lava bubbling below. Maybe next time!