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After a very tiring day trekking gorillas we took it easy the next day got up late and had a casual breakfast on the porch of Virunga Lodge. Kendall had brought 30 pairs of kids tennis shoes to give to a local school. It turns out the Virunga Lodge has adopted Mwimba Primary School on the side of the mountain near the lodge. Our driver along with a lodge guy drove over for a visit. We found many happy children attending this school (all 6-12 year olds must attend) learning English, math and science. We got to meet the youngest and the oldest classes. They sang songs and danced for us then we answered questions. It was clearly different than the US as far as facilities, books and probably academic level but it seemed to have all the enthusiasm you could have. Returning to Kigali we stayed in a nice hotel where an African trade conference was in progress but we just relaxed in our room because we were to rise at 3:30am to catch a 6am flight to Lake Manyara near Ngorongoro Crater. As we expected it was a Cessna 13 seater with a single pilot and no toilet. Turns out the Kigali runway was being worked on at night and we could not take off until 7. We would have loved to have had another hour of sleep. The schedule indicated it was a 5 hour flight which really was not appealing. When I asked the pilot how could the flight take 5 hours he explained that left time for delays plus we had to stop in Mwanza, Tanzania to clear customs and as usual they were adding a another stop along the way. Turns out, even taking off an hour late plus an extra stop, we arrived 20 minutes early to the 5 hours shown on the schedule and the flight was not scary at all even with Jim as co-pilot.
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