Entry: 19 May 2010 (Day 218) Place: Gatuna, North Eastern border with Uganda
Exit: 27 May 2010 (Day 226) Place: Rusumo, Eastern Border with Tanzania
We found a lot of vooma at Lake Kivu. It’s in the east of Rwanda, on its border with the DRC, better known for gloomier things, like the Rwandan civil war, the 1994 genocide and the 1st and 2nd Congo wars. But it’s also full of vooma.
An explorer to the area in 1907 described it superbly as “The most beautiful of all central African lakes, framed in by banks which fall back steeply from the rugged masses of rocks, at the rear the stately summits of 8 Virunga volcanoes.”
The beauty is that it still feels as unspoilt now as it must have been then. The lush hillsides tumble down into the lake, with its waters stretching out magnificently into the horizon. The people are laidback, fun-loving and earnest. Fishing boats are scattered around the bay, while their long poles for connecting fishing nets make them look like a fleet of swimming spiders. It lacks the arrogant, detached, resort atmosphere present in similar environments.
So, back to vooma:
Lake Kivu extends along the border with DRC for about 120 km and is nearly 500m at its deepest point, making it the lake with the 20th largest volume in the world. It was formed when the rift valley was ripped into the earth’s surface after which, 20 000 years ago, lava from the Virungas volcanoes formed a natural dam wall separating it from Lake Edward in Uganda and the DRC.
The vooma of the nearby volcanoes creates a hot spring on a peninsula sticking out into the lake. We struggled to find it, until I realized that the puddle I was standing in was boiling my feet.
The vooma also means that there are massive amounts of volcanic gases on the lakebed, which have the potential to rise up to the surface, displace all breathing air and suffocate you. A major eruption would cause tidal waves and a huge bubble of unbreathable air. Luckily this has never happened before (as it has on the only other 2 exploding lakes in the world, in Cameroon). However, sediments indicate that living creatures in the lake go extinct about every thousand years.
Nevertheless, everyone swims freely and I was able to use some of my own vooma to swim out to an interesting little island that had a perfectly kept garden and a mowed lawn, but no inhabitants. I did get nervous every time I saw a bubble, however.
The vooma is also used to power the brewery for the local Primus beer, where the boilers use methane gas taken from the lake.
On a swim back from the hot springs, Gwyn and Stephan were asked by perplexed local fishermen where they had come from, to which they chirped: “The DRC. Where can we get our passports stamped?” Amazed, the fishermen replied that sorry they couldn’t do it, but we should try in Kigali.
Having so much fun, we had left little time to get to Dar es Salaam to pick up Gwyn’s sister who was flying in to visit. We now needed to get some vooma out of the LandCruiser to drive all the way across Tanzania in a couple of days.
