Eerie? Only sort of.

25 minutes and 12 seconds of high-tech wonder in a back room internet cafe on the western coast of Tanzania should be plenty of time for a few weeks worth of experience described, right? And yes, western coast of Tanzania which you armchair traveler probably didn't know existed... I did not realize, but now I know. Go get a map.

Rwanda, and travel in general for that matter has begun to shove in my face the persistent reality that I cannot take myself out of the observatory equation. That is, the quantum scientists have taken decades and centuries of evolution and research to find out what I found out in about a year: to simply observe is to fundamentally alter. I cannot look at Rwanda without seeing through my own eyes, that is. I cannot walk the streets without being called out as a white man, and cannot as such have a conversation without inherently implementing the reaction of an African man, woman, child to the color of my skin and all that the color may conceal or reveal - in their eyes, of course.

Why Rwanda? Because it's not Cambodia. It's a mountainous country full of agriculture, full of music, of gorillas, of forests, and of Africa. It's not a flat corn-less rice-field. In my mind, that is. It is a genocide far more recent than the South East Asian variety, and yet a country not wholly dedicated to exploitation of its heinous past as a tourist attraction. Not a country pulling for its neighbor's backpackers by grasping hold of whatever draw it can find beside a role as a bridge from Saigon to Bangkok. Not a country stalled in time. Not a country set around stupid little fake backpacker haunts serving terrible overpriced food in mock not-so-western restaurants that traveler joe revels in.
Which is to say, that Rwanda's not not all of these things because it's not all of these things, but simply because I don't see that it is all of these things. I, inevitably, have evolved devolved or horizontally splattered over a year of travel. I see things differently, and just thinking about my own evolution splashes buckets of confusion on my cerebellum. For, of course, to observe is to change - and the cycle of self-observation-change in its infinite spiral is dizzying.

So as a little diversion, I accepted my own observations for what they were worth, as they were all I could get, and we jumped the border into Burundi. A stark change, as the two tiny neighboring nations share heritage, let's say, but not history. The genocide took place in both, differently, and crucial in its implications on my travel the more southerly has not erased ethnic divides. The war in Burundi is just ending - a ceasefire called, as I understand it, so recently as I was already on the road when it occurred.

Bujumbura was a bore, mostly, as any capital city in Africa is the anamoly of its surroundings. Urbanites do not reflect the 8 million spread through the countryside, and aid workers in white SUV's self-serving their political-guilt consciences are enough to wrench the gut. As they sit in the most expensive bar in town overlooking lake Tanganyika, listening to their ipods, sipping their cocktails or beers, reclining in their chairs, closing their eyes as if the respite from these terrible lands that they are here to save is so well deserved, I can't help but cringe. We find it impossible to break conversation with them, for they are too busy wallowing in un-social self-pity "oh my the job I've taken." Blech.

But the people gave us a little return to Pakistan as conversations were instigated on every street corner and our agenda of errands in the city became nearly exciting: post office, market...yes! The tourist office informed us that the remnants of the civil war were limited to the hills surrounding the capital, so we drove away from the views of Congolese mountains through the remaining "chaos" and into central Burundi.
A hilltop brought drums to summons the tambourinaires, who ventured in African garb (which is to say, second hand clothing covered in dust, dirt and grime together with bare feet or heel-less flip flops) to don African garb (which is, traditional dress) and bang drums atop their heads in a splendorous display of passionate music and dance. Details would be wonderful, wouldn't they? But seven minutes and thirty seconds remain, so suffice to say this: it was one of those moments. One of those moments when I think about what I'm doing, what I'm seeing and experiencing - and tears try to fall. One of those moments when life is at its most magnificent - surrounded by hundreds of children, elderly women, and workers alike gathered to see the spectacle put on because two whities are willing to pay.

Insanity hit, and we purchased two more spanking new bikes that rattled and threatened to fall to pieces as we rode them (pushed them) over hills to a campsite near a village. A home-made campsite, that is, next to a village that may have never seen a mzungu on a bicycle before. We went to sleep with maybe a hundred on-lookers in a semi-circle around our tent, and woke up at 5:30 to the same. Not a lick of english save: "your house is very best."
This unwanted attention combined with an onset of illness (mine) and the stupid bikes was enough to drive us mad, so we finished our 60 km jaunt to Rutana, sold the damn cycles, and made a decision to push south in a rush to rid ourselves of this continent and its annoying idiosyncracies. We're finished with it.

But, of course, not just yet. Minibuses took us to Kigoma back in Tanzania, a boat up to Gombe National Park where exhorbitant fees were worthwhile to track chimpanzees and marvel at their humanistic qualities you've heard all about before, and be floored by the realization that they are, in fact real and that we were, in fact, there with them.

Two minutes 28 seconds means we came back on the workers' boat today to Kigoma, and will hop the 100 year old ferry boat this afternoon for a three or so day jaunt to Zambia. See you there.