I took an afternoon hour, yesterday, to go visit a chimpanzee sanctuary nearby that our friend Peter runs. The youngest one, above, was clearly uninterested in my advances.

I’ll upload more photos, soon. The three young chimps we played with were adorably mischievous. Even though there were five of us human visitors, we felt outnumbered by a substantial margin.

As we were getting ready to go, two U.N. gunships flew overhead, flying tight and low, bristling with armament. The loudness disconcerted all eight primates, below. Minutes later, the news came in: the Nkunda’s forces had shot down a Congolese helicopter, and the U.N. was rushing to the site to provide air support for a rescue.

There are rumors of a ceasefire, today, at the current battle lines, near Sake. Again, none of us are in any immediate danger, but tens of thousands are being displaced by the fighting. Few NGOs can get any aid out to where it’s needed. The ceasefire doesn’t mean much, yet, but we’re hoping for the best.

Related Posts:

• Congolese Plane Crashes (April, 2008)
• Freedom (April, 2008)
• News Items from Goma, Congo (July, 2007)
• More Violence, Country Club Walls Doing Fine (September, 2007)
• The Dark Night Returns: Podcast Review (July, 2008)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 2:41 am and is filed under goma, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.