Happy Halloween 👻🎃
Not much to report today. We were up early because we had planned to go on a birding walk, leaving at 6am. There was a thunder and lightning storm just off the coast. We decided that it wasn’t a good idea to be in the forest in a lightning storm so we went back to bed. Others did go and said they saw a lot of birds. We spent the day getting caught up on the blog and relaxing.
There were sifakas right outside our villa and one who wanted to come inside was running up the railing.
That evening we went out for a night walk in an effort to see some of the nocturnal lemurs. We saw a frog, a Danfoss mouse lemur and an owl quite well. We saw the eyes of several sportive lemurs. While night walks sound good, mostly you just see eyes. It’s hard to get any pictures.
We have enjoyed this resort, although not as much as the Mandrare River Camp. One particularly nice thing about this camp is we can continually hear the sounds of the waves crashing on the shore and in the afternoon we always have a wonderful sea breeze.
Are you following the DR Congo/Rwanda controversy?
This is from the Daily Chatter:
On Sunday, the Congolese government ordered the Rwandan ambassador to leave the country within 48 hours.
The Rwandan government has continuously denied any links with M23 and accused the DRC of purposely escalating tensions between the two countries.
But despite its denials, an unpublished report for the UN suggested that the Rwandan government was involved with the rebel group. The report added that M23 plans to seize Goma – an important trade hub – to extract political concessions from the government.
Even so, Rwandan President Paul Kagame tweeted Monday that he had had discussions with UN Secretary-General António Guterres on how to de-escalate the tensions.
AlJazeera is covering it too:
Thousands have protested in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Goma, denouncing Rwanda’s alleged support of M23 rebels, as Kinshasa recalled its interim acting ambassador from Kigali in a further souring of relations.
The protests on Monday come as M23 have tightened their grip on the surrounding countryside.