Hey Ma, I’m in the Congo!
Actually, Toast Coetzer didn’t tell his mom that he was crossing the border into one of the most unstable countries in Africa, or that he’d be climbing an active volcano to stare into a lava lake at the top…
It’s early on a Friday morning in November 2016. A taxi picks me up outside my guesthouse in Gisenyi, Rwanda. Gisenyi is a border town – just on the other side is Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It takes minutes to get to the little border post and I join the queue. It’s easy to spot the other tourists – some seem to be Russian judging by their accents. Others in the queue work for NGOs in Goma – apparently it’s cheaper to rent a house in Gisenyi. One person is carrying an armful of flowers. Maybe it’s someone’s birthday in the office today? This isn’t just another border crossing for me. That’s because the Congo is on the other side, and the Congo isn’t just another country. The DRC is always in the “bad news” section of the paper. As if to emphasize this, an aeroplane roars overhead with the Red Cross logo on its side. Civil war has become the status quo in many parts of the DRC, but I’m here for a totally different reason – a holiday. A representative from Virunga National Park is at the border to make sure the tourists cross without hassle. The park has already organised our visas and now we’re just waiting for the right official to show up at work so that he or she can give us the final stamp in our passports. I drove all the way from South Africa to Rwanda in a Toyota Fortuner. The DRC is different: It’s not a good idea to drive around here if you can’t distinguish a government soldier from an armed rebel at 50 m. That’s why I signed up for an all-inclusive deal through the park. They’ll collect me at the border and transport me wherever I need to go. A neat olive-green Landy is parked outside under a tree, with the park’s distinctive gorilla logo on the door. An action-packed weekend lies ahead. Today I’ll climb Mount Nyiragongo and sleep over at the top. Tomorrow – Saturday – I’ll hike back down and spend the night at a hotel in Goma. Early on Sunday I’ll head out again, this time to go looking for mountain gorillas. By Sunday evening I’ll be back in Gisenyi in Rwanda. It all seems relatively simple on paper. But let’s start with Nyiragongo, which is no straight-forward mountain. It’s an active volcano. Yes, later today I’ll climb a volcano, and camp on the rim of the biggest lava lake in the world. That’s just one of several things I neglected to tell my mother the last time we spoke on the phone!