Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous posts below.

We began our climb of the Ruwenzori massif on Christmas Day 1975, in the company of a Ugandan guide, two Zairois porters, and a small, noisy pig. Our yen for this adventure had arisen the previous spring when, one exceptionally clear evening in Zaire’s Virunga National Park, we caught sight of a flash of silver in the sky to the north of Lake Idi Amin. It was Ptolemy’s fabled Mountains of the Moon, said by the ancients to be the source of the Nile: the Ruwenzoris. We later learned that Stanley had had a similar experience from this very spot. He wrote in 1888 that his eyes were directed by a porter “to a mountain said to be covered with salt, and I saw a cloud of a most beautiful silver color, which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered with snow.”

It was a two-day hitchhike from the closest airport to the base. In all that time we never caught sight of the peaks, which top out at 16,763 feet. Indeed, even as we enjoyed local popcorn and cold beer in the parlor of the gracious park conservator at the base, we had only his word that, in clear weather, his windows framed a breathtaking view.

We had arranged to meet our guide, and his porter and ours, the next morning at 7 a.m. outside our small room at the base camp. We woke early, splashed cold water from our washbowl on our faces, and rushed outside: Had the conservator’s prediction of early morning clearing come true? And there they were: a jagged series of majestic snow-covered peaks glistening in the sunlight — which, within minutes, gave way to clouds.

We set off from the base camp through a strung-out village, making several stops for provisions. We had sent some money ahead the day before, and one villager had prepared a great bowl of foufou — the beaten manioc dish that takes bread’s place in the Zairian diet. At her home, chairs were brought out. We met her family, admired the homemade coffee-grinding machines and ran our fingers through the dry lakes of coffee beans in various stages of sun-roasting in the clearing around their hut. 

At another stop we gathered some mangos, then picked up some dried fish and later bottled some palm oil. Finally, two or three hours into the walk, we agreed to buy the pig in honor of Christmas dinner and to provide fresh meat for us and our crew throughout the trip. I was doubly glad of the pig’s company, since he turned out to be a slow climber, given to burrowing into the cool thick grasses beside the path. It made my own slow going less exceptional.

Before noon, we reached the handsome stone lodge where our guide Kisenge lived. Here we met his family, paid the park fee and signed the register. The register was a small book dating back to 1947 with the signature “Lowell Thomas, writer” not too many names above ours. Apparently few people had visited during Congo’s turbulent pre-and post-independence days.

It was at the lodge, too, that we slaughtered the poor pig.

After lunch, we climbed through thick tropical forest, with the trees becoming ever shorter. We had intermittent views of the spreading countryside, more and more distant below. As for the peaks, we never saw them again that day. We arrived at the first hut mid-afternoon to find a Belgian hiker. Altitude distresss had forced her to leave her party on the way up. She had with her a sweet pineapple, which we cooked with our pork to produce a worthy holiday feast for us all.

We turned in early.

The next morning, we embarked before 8 on a significantly rougher path heading steeply uphill. We encountered piles of fresh buffalo dung and heard the shrieks of colobus monkeys. Suddenly we took a very sharp downhill into a creek. The ascent of the other bank was even steeper and involved hoisting ourselves up over great slippery boulders and bulging roots, with a sheer drop-off to our right. This seemed to go on for hours, providing plenty of time for my customary internal tirade about why I keep taking on such challenges.

Finally we broke into a lovely bamboo forest thick with elephant grass and pretty flowered vines, wild bananas and white orchids.

By noon we were struggling again on a particularly steep section when we heard the voices of our guide and porters on a level above us. When we caught up, we saw they were resting amid strange surroundings: On the left-hand side of the path was a row of five tiny huts made of bamboo. In each hut were piles of beans, rice and barley. This pattern was duplicated on the right side of the trail, except that the final hut there was about three times the size of the others and included a pile of money along with the food. Our guides had already made their offerings, and they advised us to offer something as well, saying firmly that the mountain would not be happy with us otherwise. Climbing huge mountains is hard enough without making them unhappy with you. I made my offering.

Kisenge said he would tell us all about the mountain spirit and the offerings — AFTER we got safely off the mountain.

We spent much of the rest of the day, as we hiked along, having wide-ranging talks with Kisenge. His familiarity with the wider world was intriguingly spotty. He spoke of figures such as Edward Jenner and Francis Drake but seemed to know of only three continents — Europe, Africa and “America.” He wanted to know “what color” are George Foreman and Muhammad Ali (he thought Ali was English) and what languages did the black people in America speak. These conversations made our laborious approach to the second cabin pass more easily.

The cabin was in a clearing on a small knoll rising like an island out of the muddy morass into which the trail had dipped before reaching it. We spread out our bags so they’d be ready for that evening, brewed up a pot of tea and sat down to read for a bit during a late afternoon rainstorm. The minute it cleared, we hobbled over to the windows to see the peaks for the first time since before we began the hike. They were so obviously closer and so brilliant against the uncommonly clear sky that we put on our boots and sloshed out into the mud for a better view. We watched in awe for the half hour they were visible. Then we had a tasty meal of pork and beans and snuggled into bed.

The next day’s rewards were many. We spent several hours in an enchanted forest of mosses and ferns covering everything in sight, draped over one another, carpeting the forest floor and its walls and its sky. The mosses were all shades of green, yellow, brown and orange. There were huge tussocks of sedge higher than our waist. When we put a hand down to steady our footing on the cushiony path, it sank deep into whatever it touched.

As if this weren’t enough of a fairytale come true, it was succeeded by something equally fabulous when it ended abruptly at a tiny creek. We bent down for a cold drink of water and, looking up, saw that the hill above us was populated with plants that only Dr. Seuss could’ve dreamed up.

This fantastic world of giant groundsels and lobelias continued until we came to the top of the rise where we could see, stretching before us, the path climbing gently along the ridge to the final cabin. And then, just beyond, we spied the peak from whose summit we might have, at last, a closeup view of the entire Ruwenzori massif. 

We could only hope that the weather (or the mountain?) would permit us to see it.

Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. All posts are here, in reverse order below

“When we came down from Kilimanjaro (in the summer of 1975), we needed a rest. As soon as we got back to Nairobi, we boarded a plane and headed to the coast. Our next big adventure would be four days in Lamu, a tiny island just off the Kenyan coast, barely separated from the mainland by a lovely blue-green swath of Indian Ocean — just wide enough to have kept all wheeled vehicles off the island and genuine Swahili civilization still on. It was a charming stay (at $1 a night!), exploring narrow streets of the old town and walking along the 10 miles of wild beach, all of it deserted and backed by mile after mile of undulating white sand flecked with grasses. It was hard to leave, but the next step was Malindi, down the coast a bit, where we engaged for the first time in snorkeling, and found it immensely to our liking. I never realized how breathtaking the colors of the life in the coral leaf can be. Out of Malindi, we visited old Swahili ruins dating back to the 15th century at Gedi. Mombasa, further south, was also interesting historically.

“Zanzibar, the fabulous land of Zinj, was the perfect spice island. It is undergoing considerable socialist change now, and the government keeps a steady eye on all visitors: We were ushered about and given a driver for the only possible tour. We stayed in one of only three hotels on the island. But it was worth all the surveillance. The old slave caves where the overland drives ended and the wait for the ships began, the market where slaves were sold, the buildings where Livingstone, Speke, Burton and Stanley prepared for or rested up after their African explorations: all these were fascinating. But the best part to me was the agriculture. We took a tour through the countryside which made my nose swoon. We peeled the bark off cinnamon trees, crushed budding cloves, gaped at the cocoa, coconuts, coffee, nutmeg, lychee nuts, cashew trees, orange groves, lime groves, and trees of fruit whose like we’ve never seen. Zanzibar was as fertile and lovely a place as I’ve seen, had a sense of antiquity rare in Africa and smelled heavenly. Livingstone, when he was there in the mid-1800’s, wrote that the island was full of objectionable odors and should be referred to as Stinkibar. If that was true, it couldn’t have changed more.

“Dar es Salaam was next. We were there for Tanzania’s independence anniversary celebration and attended an interesting trade fair where the North Korean pavilion was the most prominent. We enjoyed the museum, which houses much of Leakey’s work. Then we made our way to Malawi, landing in Blantyre and hitchhiking to Zomba, a lovely old British university town at the base of a plateau on which we spent two days hiking. The serene forest trails felt almost like being in a U.S. state park, except for the very different mushrooms and butterflies. We camped all alone in a pretty spot within walking distance of a fine old hotel built atop the plateau in the old days when the Britishers would vacation there. This inn carried on the noble tradition of Malawi’s being the only country outside Denmark where they brew Carlsberg beer. It was a happy stay, and gave way to still another: several days on the shore of Lake Malawi, whose clear waters shelter tropical fish found nowhere else in the world. We were lucky enough to be camped next to a man who was fully outfitted for snorkeling and diving, and whose equipment we borrowed, along with his boat.

“Malawi was the friendliest place we’ve been. Our travels there were made nicer and more interesting by our frequent encounters with Malawians, who gave us rides, sang to us on buses and invited us into their homes for tea. Plus: the country has campgrounds — an common thing on this continent — and good cheap rest houses in the cities.

“Next we went to the land of ‘right of admission reserved,’ taking the plane from Blantyre to Salisbury and a very different world. Rhodesia felt like the U.S. of the 1950’s. But it offered two very compelling sights: the awesome and mysterious ruins of Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls, whose native name, aptly enough, means “the smoke that thunders.’ At the falls, we had an intriguing walk several miles along the river, just Mike and me and the warthogs, monkeys and hippos.

“Victoria Falls is difficult to fully appreciate because of its magnitude and the fact that you can’t see much of it at once, since it drops into a deep gorge. My favorite view of it was the westernmost section on a moonlit evening, with the spray hitting our faces. We also had an interesting river cruise, and visited the most educational and fascinating crocodile farm.

“The Zambezi riverwalk was a foretaste of the greatest adventure of them all: our week in the Okavango swamp of Botswana.”

“Our 77-day summer adventure began with a flight from Kinshasa to Nairobi on June 7 (1975). As soon as we stepped onto the PanAm jet, the shock of a familiar past life overcame us. There were no soldiers. The magazines were not months old. No one stared at us. The people on the plane spoke English. Even the loo felt mind-boggling, so efficient, so well-stocked, everything in its assigned place. It was almost more than we could take in.

“So was Nairobi. Situated close to a mile high, its climate is relatively cool and dry. It’s a lovely city and very modern. It had almost-current movies. It had milkshakes, milk, ice cream! To steep ourselves even more thoroughly in luxury, we took an overnight jaunt to the famed Treetops Lodge. Back in Nairobi for a few days, we enjoyed the very good museum and snake park. Then off we went in a rented car for our tour of the great game parks. We drove southwest of the city, down the escarpment of the Rift Valley and to Masai Mara, then across the border into Tanzania and the Serengeti. There we camped, frightened at first (Mike rustled up a fearsome-looking water buffalo along with the firewood), but then loving the wide-open feel of the plains, the sky fuzzy with stars, and the wild animal calls in the night.

“We crossed the Olduvai Gorge and took a trip down into Ngorongoro crater, a beautiful bowl of nature, where we came closer to the animals than anywhere I’ve been. Then Lake Manyara, where lions sleep in the trees; Amboseli, giraffes grazing under the snowy top of Kilimanjaro (hint of what was to come); Tsavo; then back to Nairobi, where we turned in the car.

“We took in one more movie and one more milkshake, then boarded a bus for Kilimanjaro and The Great Climb. We experienced several bus breakdowns, came upon a man lying in the road, spent three hours going through customs at the Tanzania border, and finally rolled into Moshi, near the base, at 7 a.m. We were able to make arrangements through the Moshi YMCA to leave that very day, because a group of three high-school guys — a Britisher, a Finn and an American — had already arranged to go up. A quick trip to Moshi’s three sparsely stocked grocery stores, and we were set. All told, there were five climbers, plus one guide (Elias, a most likable fellow), a porter for Elias and a porter for Mike and me. (We had at first poohpoohed the idea of a porter, but we were convinced by those wiser than we are in the ways of Kilimanjaro that we’d be fools to shoulder our own packs up that mountain. Thank goodness for their counsel.)

“We took a crowded bus some 30 miles out to Marangu, the starting point for the route we were to take. Then we set off. The first part of the walk is up a road through luxuriant banana-grove kind of country, with lovely, neat houses, and flowers all about. The first climber we ran into, a Scotsman, looked horrible. He said he felt worse. And he hadn’t made it. By the time we reached the gate of the park, well into the first day, we met a young couple who had succeeded. ‘It is very, very hard,’ they said. Above the Marangu Gate, we hiked through thick forest on a muddy, slippery path. The first hut was visible some distance off across a meadow. This hut was luxurious compared to later ones, with three rooms, mattresses, a fireplace. We slept quite well — for the last time before the 60 hours to come. It’s a good thing we couldn’t have predicted then how tough it was going to be — though I think we’d still have done it. We were determined. We had to be!

“The second day started out in an eerily lovely rainforest, which soon broke into a misty meadow. We reached the hut mid-afternoon. The climbing was easy — the trip is well planned that way, starting out gradually uphill to the first hut, then uphill and level to the second, then uphill and level to the third — the day that was to come.

“Anyway, at the second hut we played nursemaid to a mad German, who had been forced to come back by palpitations of the heart. And — we read all the inscriptions of failure left by our precursors.

“The third day was beautiful. We encountered strange plants of all sorts, enjoyed walking through them, and at last broke out of the clouds onto the ‘saddle’ stretching between Mawenzi Peak, (the rugged lower peak at 16,893 feet) and Kibo, the perfect volcano giant at 19,340 feet. From there, we could see the path — going straight up. That night, Mike and I slept together inside both sleeping bags in an attempt to counteract the cold that had kept us awake the night before. We almost strangled, though, from the tightness of this arrangement, and we were kept awake anyway by the verbal antics of our three companions, who were too cold to sleep. Thus it was utterly unnecessary for the guides to wake us up for the 1:30 a.m. climb to the summit.

“When the ominous hour came, Mike said he felt too sick to make the climb. We both had had headaches the day before, but he felt seriously nauseated now. The other four of us got silently (grimly?) ready. Then, at the last moment, Mike sat up, gave a great belch, then one more, and declared, ‘I think that’s it. I’m going.’

“We made mittens out of socks and plastic bags sealed with athletic tape, put on all the clothes we had and went out into the cold full moonlight. The other three had gone on up with a porter who was turned into an assistant guide for this stretch. By the time we caught up with them, one of the teenagers was too sick to go on. We watched as he turned back.

“So far I had thought the climb tough but manageable. Then it started: the most trying effort I have ever made. Straight uphill over two-foot-deep scree — volcanic gravel layered so loosely that every step is frustrating as hell. Your foot ends up sometimes several inches below where you placed it.

“Add to that the constant gain in altitude (from 16,000 to 19,000 feet that morning alone), which makes every breath a gasp and creates a tightness in the chest, and … well, soon you just feel ill. (Our toes and thumbs felt frozen too, but that seemed the least of our problems.) On part of the scree, it is necessary to go straight up; on other parts, it is wide enough to make small zigzags. While we were endlessly zigzagging up the last interminable stretch, the sun rose from behind Mawenzi. It was transporting. By this time, another of the teenagers had given up and gone back. One guide had continued up with the third climber. We were still struggling, struggling, step-by-step-by-laborious step. (I’ll never forget how encouraging was the sound of Elias saying, ‘poh-lay, poh-lay’ — Swahili for ‘slowly, slowly’ — again and again in his rich baritone.)

“And then: We made it. To Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kibo. There we were, at last, staring down into the huge crater filled with delicate snow and ice formations, giving it the appearance of housing a fairyland town: A town topped by impressive glaciers, some forming stair-step patterns. We sat at the top, sick and sore, gaping at the almost unattainable splendor. And then we started our descent — with each step down the scree now a wonderfully long slide, on our heels.

“We rested briefly at the top hut and then spent the rest of the day going all the way down to the first in order to sleep. It was 22 miles of hiking that day, but worth it for the beer someone had left at the first hut, and for the warmth of our beds that night.

“The trip was 50 miles in all. It was incredible, all right. And we did it.”

The volcano that was to be the final part of our 1975 spring-break tour is considered Africa’s most dangerous. As was typical of travel in Zaire, we had little knowledge of its particular unpredictability. Indeed, the very next school year, Nyiragongo erupted, killing scores of people — and then it erupted again in 2021, destroying part of Goma and forcing thousands to flee. 

“The next and final event of The Tour part of the trip was no less amazing than the first two: A climb up an active volcano, Nyiragongo, a 12,000-foot peak just north of Goma. We left about 10 a.m. and reached our huts near the top at about 5 p.m. It was a grueling climb but marked by dramatic changes of foliage and splendid views of the lake and other volcanoes. We ate dinner in our huts, then made the strenuous final climb to the top of the volcano. The view was breath-taking: A huge, perfectly circular bowl rimmed with sheer rock walls, filled for the most part with cool lava forming a hard black circle, and in the middle a gaping void plumed with smoke through which one catches views of huge black boulders thrown high out of liquid fire. The noise: a steady and powerful low rumbling.

“We stayed until after dark as the sight became ever more impressive. The red grew more brilliant, and the inner circle showed itself veined with tiny red lines, cracks of fire connecting pools of fire. I think for me this was the most amazing experience of all on the trip. I could never have envisioned such a sight, and never saw a better proof of nature’s awesome powers.”

“At this stage, our traveling companions returned to Kinshasa. We checked out of the rather posh tour hotel, walked to a mission we had been told of, left our Zaire money there, then hiked a few miles across the border into the country of Rwanda, which turned out to be a jewel of a tiny mountain paradise. We entered the town of Gisenyi and spent the first day walking all around it, looking for a camping spot. We finally found, through some Canadian missionaries, a lovely lakeside site, where we set up camp, took off our clothes and took a wonderful dip in the cool lake waters.

“The next day we walked back into town, buying some strawberries at the local market, getting some Rwandan francs at a bank, then sticking out our thumbs for a ride. Our destination was a town called Ruhengeri, about two hours away by a terrible mountain road. We’d been told that this Ruhengeri served as headquarters for Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, where we hoped to do some climbing. The ride, a wonderful one, and free, was in a huge truck driven by Ugandans who carried tea between the two countries. The trip was beautiful, through lush countryside sporting the hugest banana groves we’ve seen.

“When we pulled into Ruhengeri, we sought out the good sisters, having discovered already that Catholic missions are the best bet for clean, cheap beds and good, cheap food. (We had been told we could not camp in and around the towns.) Next morning, we begin a 12-mile hike out to the town that ACTUALLY was the park headquarters — no information (and no ride) being available in Ruhengeri. This turned out to be one of the most interesting things we did. The first part was on a path through banana groves and villages, the second part on a barely traveled road past more villages. When I say barely traveled, I mean by vehicle. We were part of a constant stream of foot traffic, and we have rarely felt so much a part of things, so little cut off from the majority. There we were, on foot like everybody else, carrying a heavy load like everybody else — though we were noticeable in that our packs were on our backs rather than on our heads. We were led at one point by a group some 15 girls, who were singing and dancing, and surrounded by scores of children.

“We made it to the base of one of the volcanoes, and there we camped. We found out that the hike to the volcanoes we had hoped to climb was even longer than the hike we had made that day, just to reach the base. Footsore as we were, we contented ourselves with our fine views of this most interesting string of six volcanoes, all different sizes and shapes. We had a nice evening, camping in their territory, and the next day we walked all the way back to Ruhengeri. We traveled back to Gisenyi in what’s aptly called a fula-fula, which you have to be a foola to ride in, as you’re all stuffed into the back of a truck standing up. Still, we made it to our destination, which was a mission we had noticed just outside of the city, where there was an art workshop and a guesthouse. We spent the night there, after attending mass in a Bantu language, with beautiful singing by the young schoolgirls. The next day we relaxed on a lovely sandy beach and took our last swim in pure water. (One cannot swim around Kinshasa for fear of getting all manner of horrid diseases.)

“We walked back to Goma, spent the night with the sisters there, retrieved our Zaire cash and purchased great piles of carrots, cauliflower, strawberries and huge potatoes, all grown in Kivu and virtually unattainable (or unrecognizable as themselves) in Kinshasa. We boarded the plane for an eventful trip home — with a connection in Bujumbura, Burundi, where we were almost crushed to death by people who had heard the plane was overbooked. (They were right). We got on, but people were sitting four on three seats — those who were sitting at all. It was a madhouse. It was Air Zaire. And thus we were re-introduced to Kinshasa, our wonderful adventure concluded.”

This would be the last big trip of our first school year in Kinshasa. Now we’d pour our energy into planning the summer-vacation adventure. We would travel through much of eastern and southern Africa —  and we would begin by climbing a very different volcano: Kilimanjaro. 

Note: The once idyllic part of Zaire that I wrote about after our visit 50 years ago is today a scene of horror. Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a rebel group seizes Congolese territory. The group, which Kinshasa says is backed by Rwanda, has captured both Bukavu and Goma.

April 23, 1975: “Our spring vacation was a marvelous experience. It came in two parts. The first was an organized tour, something we’ve avoided before, but which proved invaluable for seeing the things we wished to see. In the second part, we struck out on our own.

“There were eight of us on the tour, all teachers from the American school. We began with a plane flight in the wee hours from Kinshasa to Bukavu, which map lovers will find at the southern tip of Lake Kivu, in eastern Zaire. Bukavu (International!) Airport consists of a very short landing strip (upon which our 737 made a very hair-raising landing) and a very small and dilapidated metal shed. We were picked up at the airport and squired to a nice hotel in Bukavu, which is beautifully situated on a peninsula jetting out into Lake Kivu, a lovely lake surrounded by hills and mountains.

“Just as we got off the plane, the cooler and dryer air struck us. Kinshasa is muggy and oppressively hot. The Kivu area was cool and pleasant. We drove through tea, coffee and quinine fields to the city, noticing how much of the area is cultivated, another contrast to the Kinshasa, whose surrounding soil is poor, and crops are scarce.

“After an excellent two-hour Belgian-cuisine dinner and a good rest, we set out for one of our most exciting adventures — gorilla trekking. The car took us about 30 miles out of Bukavu to the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. At the entrance, we set off with guides and porters for what was in itself a fascinating and singular experience — a three-hour walk through deep rain forest. We followed the guides who hacked out paths with machetes. They in turn followed the sometimes barely perceptible trail of the gorillas, which they enlarged for us humans. Mike, who had done some reading in preparation, was able to spot additional signs of the gorillas — stripped-off bark, which they had eaten, and circular nests, plus newer- and newer- looking piles of gorilla dung. Mike said some people searching for gorillas stick their fingers in these piles to see how warm they are. We declined.

“But our excitement became greater and greater as the piles looked ever fresher and we began getting into ever denser forest, crawling along for yards at a time, halting occasionally as the three guides in front consulted with one another about alternative routes. We were struggling uphill over some particularly slippery vines when we heard a roar. Such a roar! We stopped in our tracks. The guides ordered us to turn around. We backtracked for quite a distance, thinking the roar had scared the guides as much as it scared us, wondering if the guarantee that we would see gorillas could be interpreted to mean we’d only hear them, when suddenly the guides turned to us and motioned for silence. One of them pulled me by the arm and pointed, whispering, ‘Look at the black, the black area’ and there it was: A huge gorilla sitting in the forest, looking at us.

“We gradually moved closer to the gorilla, and the guides cut additional brush to improve the view. As we watched, the first gorilla slowly got up and walked away. The guides pointed off to the right, where movement showed a second and larger gorilla, who came and sat down where the first had been. We watched this gorilla, taking pictures and constantly exclaiming to each other (very quietly) how very huge he was. He watched us fairly intently and was, for the most part inactive. Occasionally, he performed a classic gorilla belly scratch, or picked up something from the ground. Toward the end of our 45-minute observation, he seemed to grow peevish, and stood up and ‘charged,’ frightening us with his growling and the immensity of his standing body. He half-heartedly charged a couple more times, sat back down, and then with a great lurch and a final volley of yelling at us, he sauntered off into the forest.

“We have talked with others who saw more gorillas, or who saw them in clearings with better visibility. I was awed by our experience. I found one gorilla at a time an eyeful, And I felt the rain forest the most suitable setting.

“On our departure, scheduling issues prevented us from taking a boat back across the lake, and forced us onto a DC-3 which was an experience in itself. From Goma airport, we headed north through more fertile countryside and lovely villages, traveling in the VW buses which were to be our transport for the next three days, in the Virunga National Park — a fantastic and most scenic place.

“For Mike and me this was the first game park, the first time we had had that quintessentially African experience, and we were far from disappointed. I think as a matter of fact that Virunga will be hard to beat. The physical setting for one thing was exactly to our taste: a huge bowl surrounded by mountains, with Lake Idi Amin reaching down into the park’s northern tip, backed by the snowy Ruwenzori range — Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon (the largest of which we hope to climb next Christmas). This magnificent setting is home to huge groups of elephants, gazelles, warthogs, antelope of several sorts, giant lizards, fish eagles and other great birds, and, to top it off, lions. Finally, Virunga has what must be the world largest hippo population. The park is spacious as well as beautiful and was uncrowded.

Note: I thought I should check out what I had written about the hippos, and I found these heart-breaking facts: “In the 1970s Virunga recorded the largest number of hippos in the world, with 29,000 individuals in and around Lake Edward. Since then, instability in the region has led to increased poaching and a 95% decline in the size of the population.” And this, from 2005, “A new aerial survey shows that the hippo population in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo will soon be extinct due to rampant poaching for hippo teeth and meat.”

“We lived in the small buildings (of a fake hut motif) that make up the park hotel. From here, our guide would tell us each day when we would go out. We would take an early morning (as in 5 a.m.) trip, a later morning trip and an afternoon trip. Each day we saw different animals. The first lion was perhaps the most striking experience, though huge groups of hippos, in the water, on the land, and stuck in the mud, were equally interesting. We went to a fishing village on the lake and ate wonderfully fresh grilled fish.”

The last half of our spring vacation would prove even more remarkable. Though, if we had known the volcano we were going to climb was considered one of the most dangerous in the world, we might have thought better of our plan.

Over our winter break, we finally made it deep into the interior of Zaire, traveling by riverboat and train. I sent this “Christmas Trip Saga” to friends and family back home.

“Just after school closed on Dec. 17 (1974), Mike and I and a friend from school drove down to the port where our big, old riverboat stood waiting. We went on, found our cabin — neat, little double rooms with a shared bath — and then settled down to watch the port activities. Much of it centered around our boat which, we discovered, was far from complete on its own. By the time we pulled out onto the vast river that evening, we were surrounded by four huge barges populated by hundreds of people. These, we found out, were to serve as a sort of traveling marketplace. For the next five days, mixed in with the luxury of relaxing, reading, playing chess, drinking beer and sleeping, we spent our time watching the endless activity. Villagers would paddle their canoe-like pirogues out to the boat, tie on (against the current) and bring loads of empty beer cases, heaping piles of powdery white manioc and dried monkeys by the scores. The monkeys were carried like little suitcases, with their tails tied around their necks. The villagers would come on board, sell their goods, get their beer cases refilled and buy sugar, fabrics, etc., from the boat market before returning to their pirogues and paddling home.

“Evenings were lovely, with the moon on the water and the cool breeze, floating by picturesque villages and eating the good meals in the riverboat’s comfortable dining room. And oh the long hours of reading. Curiously enough, it was ‘War and Peace’ that I chose to pack. I did love thinking about Joseph Conrad making this same trip at the age of 32 and returning to his travel journals years later to write ‘Heart of Darkness.’ But I’d read it recently, and ‘War and Peace’ was the perfect length for this long, leisurely trip.

We were sorry to get off when we pulled into Ilebo. There, we planned to board a train for Lubumbashi, the center of Zaire’s teeming mining district. When we left the boat, we found that our train would be delayed for 12 hours. We strolled around town and ran into an American man who was staying at a Belgian mission outside town. He took us there, and we had an interesting conversation with two old Belgian priests, and bought several of the woven grass mats (tapis) made here, which we have come to like so much. We boarded the train that night, found we had a nice big compartment, and settled in for another pleasant stretch on our journey.

“We met several Zairois people on the trip, and found them freer and easier to talk to than we have found them in the city. On the train, we joined two new Zairois acquaintances for Christmas dinner in the dining car — they had made a special order of gazelle and fou-fou (a kind of manioc mash which you eat with your hands, dipping it into gravy). Later that afternoon, we went back to the dining car to join them for beers and assorted fried insects. It wasn’t eggnog and fruitcake, but it was tasty, and special for Christmas. The other Christmas-y time had been our walk back from the mission into the town of Ilebo to board the train. It was pitch dark, and hundreds of the tiniest fireflies were flickering in the grasses all around us.

“The train would stop in villages, and people would come running up to the windows with local specialties — tiny, sweet bananas; fish just out of the river, fresh-cooked and delicious, and huge, luscious pineapple slices.

“We arrived in Lubumbashi with almost half our vacation remaining. Travel information here is scarce, and we had heard the train could take 10 days. It took only three, and we’d be flying back from Lubumbashi. What to do with this found time? We decided to see if we could go on to Zambia. Amazingly, the consulate said it could give us a fairly quick visa, and so we began making arrangements. Meanwhile we explored lovely old Lubumbashi — quieter and far more strollable than Kinshasa. There is a fine zoo, where we spent several hours, and pleasant parks and neighborhoods. We met some Peace Corps people, who befriended us and kept our Zaire money and unnecessary luggage during our trip to Zambia.

“Zambia is quite different from Zaire. English-speaking, of course, as a former British colony, and much more ‘civilized’ in traditional Western ways — good roads and transportation, for instance. In Lusaka, we browsed in English-language bookstores, walked about a lot and ate good Chinese food.

“We met several Zambians and had good talks with them. Two young men took us on a wonderful personal tour of one of the huge copper mines, where we saw all the mammoth machines and even went down into the gaping pit. It was fascinating, and instructive to see something of the resource which is responsible for so much of the wealth of Zaire as well as Zambia (albeit hugely skimmed off by Mobutu and others of the elite).

“We came back to Zaire on a luxury bus, transferring at the border to what is euphemistically called a “taxi bus,” in Zaire, which is usually a small van absolutely crammed with people. Not comfy, but more, um, interesting than its Zambian counterpart. We had a pleasant enough flight home on Air Zaire, often called Air Peut-être (Air Perhaps) due to its dubious reservation practices, but all went smoothly this time.

“Back at home, we made a most unhappy discovery. We had arranged with several other couples to share in the purchase of a cow — a rare luxury in Zaire. We’d had it slaughtered and stuffed our freezer with our share shortly before leaving on our holiday. Alas, our refrigerator had died during our time away, and was emitting the foulest smell imaginable. The house is still permeated with it. Plus — no beef.

“Cooking here is interesting, to say the least. There is no fresh dairy, so we use powdered milk. We don’t like drinking it, but I make lots of yogurt, strained through muslin cloth. Our flour is flecked with weevils and requires multiple siftings. But we buy plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables from local women who come to our door with baskets full, expertly balanced on their heads. We do just fine.

“Ah, but that Christmas trip! We are now looking forward to Easter break, when we hope to go to the Kivu region of eastern Zaire to see mountain gorillas and climb volcanoes. And I’m already pining for the loooong trip we’re planning for this summer, across eastern and southern Africa. If only there weren’t this rude intrusion of work time between vacations! (Which does, of course, make it all possible.)”

It would be a little while after the Rumble that we’d finally begin the travels we were itching to take outside the city. But Kinshasa was providing plenty of intriguing experiences in the meantime. In November 1974, I wrote: “We are becoming acquainted with the city, which is most cosmopolitan in a kind of un-cosmopolitan way. On the one hand, there are scores of sophisticated restaurants. Le Pergola, with its lovely garden and its luscious tournedos bernaise, might as well be in Brussels. There are smoky nightclubs with smooth jazz and gorgeous, sultry Zairoises serving cocktails. On the other hand, the commercial scene is downright strange. You may well see a man’s jacket in the window of a store that is marked florist and has hair driers lined up inside. The Grande Marché is fascinating: a huge and teeming place, dispensing everything from manioc and mangoes to the latest in multi-colored padded bras.

“We are also adjusting to the reality of the rainy season. After one of the torrential storms, it’s so humid that we feel as if we’ve been placed in a pot of steam. (Ah, so THIS is the tropics!) And we continue to try to figure out what is acceptable to do and what is not. We obviously don’t want to tangle with the omnipresent soldiers. We understand that we should not walk along the river road at night, lest we be taken as diamond smugglers. And we know that travel is damned near impossible, though we will be attempting it, thanks to friends with Land Rovers, soon.”

It’s no mystery that the difficulty of travel in Zaire came thanks to the odious King Leopold II of Belgium. Colonialism was doubtless troublesome no matter who was in charge, but the French and the English did pay some attention to roads and utilities. Leopold’s version of investing in infrastructure was a cruel, continual deployment of forced labor to make the mud briefly passable — and also to mine the country’s astonishing riches to line his own already bulging pockets. (This was just one among many of the Belgian king’s atrocities.)

When independence finally came, the country’s one main artery was its mighty river. As a result, travel in this vast and varied country offered boundless natural beauty, artistic riches and cultural warmth — and almost equally boundless logistical challenges. It also offered human encounters to which we were utterly unaccustomed. The logistics required patience. The encounters required remembering that it wasn’t our customs that counted here and that it was both foolish and arrogant to expect them to.

Take the challenging logistics first: To travel almost any road, even in a Land Rover, required sometimes building little bridges over gaping gullies, sometimes barreling through water of indeterminate depth and sometimes waiting a couple of days for a “bac” (ferry) that you’d been told operated daily. It also often involved what we referred to as “calling the tow truck.” There was, of course, no tow truck. But there were plenty of able-bodied men along most roads, and they were glad to be rewarded for helping lift a vehicle out of the mire.

As for the sometimes jarring encounters: Many of the Zairois in remote villages had never seen what they called a “mondele” (the longstanding term for Europeans and thus also for us). Even for those who had, our arrival anywhere rarely went unnoticed. It seemed there was nothing we did that wasn’t intriguing. When nature’s call took us behind a bush, we’d often be accompanied. Commentary from our astonished observers was lively, and almost any move we made might be met with delighted laughter. Was this rude? Where was their sense of privacy? What I came to feel was that there was simply not an ounce of pretense. I looked up “mondelé’” and found, in one source, that its root sense denoted not just a lighter skin, but “that the African perceived the European as someone who is insincere.” I could see that. However crazy it sometimes drove me, I concluded that these folks’ behavior was the very definition of real.

Most of these lessons we would learn in earnest over time, but we got some tastes on our short trips that fall.

“Our first foray out of the city was to a village about an hour and a half away, traveling in our friends’ Land Rover. They had previously visited the family we went to see, and knew that the old woman made pottery, firing her pots in a big pit in the back yard. We had an interesting time with the large family, sitting in their thatched hut, looking at the pictures they had clipped from magazines and mounted on the walls — pictures that seemed to be of Germany, with snowy scenes. Our conversation was limited, since only the children spoke French, having learned it in school, and only one among us spoke Lingala, and that rather limited.

“But we surely comprehended their warm hospitality. When we returned a few weeks later to pick up the pots we had ordered, the family cut down their only banana stalk. We gave them sugar and coffee. They were on the verge of giving us a goat before we convinced them that they should keep it. This was difficult, since we felt it could have represented a great insult, to refuse. They seemed to understand, and we returned gratefully goat-less.

“On a couple of other trips, also west toward the Atlantic, we saw the principal port of Matadi and the immense Inga Falls of the Congo River as well as Zaire’s tiny stretch of coastline. We visited several villages along the way, seeing dancing and hearing drumming and often receiving warm welcomes. Some of the nearby villages look like deserted Grade C western movie sets or little towns in Mexico you pass on the train: hot, dusty, with spots of shade, languorous music and plenty of beer, people taking naps in the shade of buildings made of dusty adobe.

“The earth around the huts is always bare. One villager told us that this is to give the snakes no place to hide. (I find this not a bad idea, having yesterday found a snake curled up in the large planter on our back porch, as I bent to pick off a dead leaf. I grabbed our machete and killed it. Mike, on the other hand, is the one who kills the cockroaches. Huge, and so many of them they look like a rug receding from its center toward the walls if you switch on a light at night. Sometimes they drop off the ceiling while you’re sleeping. Awful.)

“For Christmas, we would really like to go ‘into the bush,’ instead of flying way off somewhere. But this is difficult, as roads toward the east are even more impassable than the ones we’ve been on.”

Happily, there was another way: The great river beckoned.

The Fight, a Fanta with Ali and Advice from Mailer

Within weeks of our arrival, Kinshasa was scheduled to play host to the fight that would become known as the Rumble in the Jungle. The heavyweight championship match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali was set for September 25 — at 4 a.m.Kinshasa time, with American television viewers in mind.

The city, I reported in a letter home, was “in a frenzy of activity in preparation. The post office is being painted, trash has been removed from its portico, lights installed along the streets and the stadium has been renovated. Workmen in new orange suits have taken up brooms in an attempt to slow the encroachment of sand onto the roads. Scores of new buses have been bought to transport fight-goers. Let’s hope they’ll be put into service afterward for the Zairois, who now crush into buses so tightly that an occasional arm or leg is seen out the windows. We often drive by one that has broken down, and stopped for who knows how long. Once, all the people inside it were singing. This too is Zaire.”

Celebrities began pouring into town. Some seemed to have a hard time grounding themselves “in this city that knows no maps, respects no schedules, babbles many languages, delights in surprises but is likelier to laugh than pay respect. Celebrity doesn’t seem to apply here.”

With fame failing to afford its usual distancing, we in the tiny expat American community benefited enormously.

“We could pack a picnic lunch and take It to the presidential domaine of N’sele and, from the front seat of a huge hall, watch Foreman train alongside the reporters and photographers covering him. We had fried chicken with longtime lightweight champion Archie Moore. We met Howard Cosell and Stokely Carmichael, Norman Mailer, George Plimpton and Hunter Thompson. On one glorious weekend afternoon, several of us TASOK teachers spent time drinking with Mohammad Ali around a table on the patio of a Kinshasa bar. We were drinking frosty bottles of the excellent lager SKOL; Ali was drinking Orange Fanta. He was delightful — charming and funny and cocky and handsome.”

When Foreman suffered a cut near his eye in training, the fight was postponed by five weeks. This delay raised fears that the rainy season would begin before the fight’s new date — a disastrous prospect, given the fight’s setting in an outdoor stadium. The pre-fight music festival went on as planned, and those who had come to perform — Miriam Makeba, B.B. King, James Brown and many others — left town soon after. But some of the writers and reporters hung around during the delay and, being in Kinshasa much longer than anticipated, grew bored. They were happy to have local company. Some of us TASOK teachers were pleased to provide it — usually during evenings at the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel. Reading back through my journal, those encounters seem surreal.

One evening, I asked Mailer to read some things I’d written and give me some advice. The next evening he delivered: “You write as if you’re afraid someone will interrupt you. You’re a scanning beam, protean, too young to be patient. You are too arch; you have to write totally WITHOUT personality first. When you can do that, THEN you inject personality.” I needed more focus, he said, and he gave me some “missions: Read Das Kapital, Part 1; take at least 3 months. Spend an hour a day on Latin for the rhythm of it.” (He, having run for mayor of New York City, told me I should become a politician, and that this would enrich my rhetoric.)

We argued about Hemingway, whose entire body of work he insisted I read. I’d read plenty of it, and Hemingway annoyed me. I’m sick of the Hemingway worship, I said. His women do little but sigh. Dashiell Hammett nailed it when he said Hemingway couldn’t portray women. “Dashiell Hammett was an ignorant bastard,” Mailer replied. As the evening wore on, and we drank and thumb wrestled (he dubbed himself the American champion), he talked about each of his marriages. Having so many wives was like living in as many different cultures. One of his wives, he said, was like me: Impatient and wanting to achieve.

On another evening, the AP’s legendary combat photographer Horst Faas told me about working with the columnist Joe Alsop, “one of the few opinion writers who actually got out into the field.” Once, as they flew over a ferocious battle somewhere in Southeast Asia, Faas looked over at Alsop and saw that he was reading a book — and yawning. “I’ve seen so many battles, you know,” said Alsop. “Battles bore me now.”

At last, the Fight arrived. Mike and I sat so close to the ring that the boxers’ sweat fell on our faces. The next day, I wrote of the “huge lights making my head ache and the fat swarm of bumbling photographers. The flags and national anthems and singsong chant of ‘Ali, bomayé!’ (Lingala for ‘Kill him, Ali!’) and the wet, squishing thump of a boxing glove — Ali’s glove, at the start, pushing off Foreman’s face a spray of water, catching the light, mushing up the face, making a dope of a brawny man. Then, leaning back against the ropes, there was no butterfly in this Ali, protecting his face against blow after blow, biding his time. And then: Pow! Pow! Pow! The heavyweight champion of the world staggered and fell clumsily to the mat. Ali had won! And, as if on script, great cracks of lightning split the sky and the rain fell, huge sheets of it, pounding the ground. The rainy season had begun.”

This fight has been called “arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century.” Estimates are that it was watched by a billion television viewers worldwide, the most-watched live TV broadcast up to that time. Yet, somehow, the city seemed to shrug it off quickly. I wrote that “Kinshasa has absorbed this huge happening, incorporating it into itself, making one more strange thread in the fabric that is Léopoldville-Kinshasa, a fabric so vari-colored that even this loud new hue has been effectively integrated.” As for us, we went back to our quiet evenings on TASOK’s campus, finding it hard to believe it had all really happened.

Happily, we had an enticing new prospect: We’d made some delightful friends — including friends who owned Land Rovers. Before long, we’d be venturing out of Kinshasa ourselves.