I tend to forget that (genocide) everything involves regular people...

We were stopped by the DRC border patrol officer today for taking a picture at the border. "It is strictly forbidden to take pictures here. What if I go to your country and do the same?" he scorned us while holding my camera trying to delete the pictures. A few minutes later, after being released, we were laughing. "Come on Brenda, you should know better by now," Will said in his usual sarcastic tone. I'm sure I'll tell an exaggerated version of this episode one day, even when the real version already sounds scary. We've been working all day, so we haven't seen much of Rusizi yet. We walked along the river that divides the two countries and let the night fall as we stood outside Hotel Du Lac getting French and Kinyarwanda lessons from the training participants.  It might be that this is a border town, or that Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, but there is always people in the streets. They all seem to be going somewhere and most of them carry loads of things, from eggs to wood. To my surprise, we don't get a lot of attention here, as compared to other countries in Africa. Only a few children yelled "Musungus!" at us with excitement, and that was kind of cute.

"If you look to your right you'll be able to see baby volcanoes," Will says as we are driving along a buffer zone of the Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda.  We arrived last night to Kigali and today we drove seven hours to Rusizi in the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are here to train local NGOs and radio producers on how to produce a radio drama and a communication strategy that will promote the protection of chimpanzees in this part of the world. This was a beautiful ride as the landscape changed from rice to tea plantations, misty mountains and villages built in adobe; people walked all along the highway carrying all sorts of things on top of their heads.  I'm now sitting on my bed covered by a net and trying to prepare for tomorrow's first training session. I've done this all over the world, but I still get a little nervous the night before it starts. A block away militaries guard the border between Rwanda and the DRC.  "Do you think we can cross to the DRC without a visa?" Katie asked - to my surprise - sincerely excited.  I rather not. "We are staying at a hotel run by nuns, so there won't be any beer," I exclaimed a little worried. "By day two we must have figured out where to get it," Will replied reassuringly.