Zerofootprint’s founder and CEO, Ron Dembo, has spent the past few weeks in Africa, researching opportunities for ecosystem protection and humanitarian aid. He has kept a blog, which will be presented here in two parts. Here is part one.

Day 1, Nairobi …en route to the Congo

I land in Nairobi in the belly of British Airways, a cocoon of civilization, with a history in Africa. There is no doubt this is the developing world. There is also no doubt that this will look very civilized when I finally get to the Eastern Congo, my final destination.

It’s almost midnight and the slightly nervous taxi driver suggests that I sit up front so that there is less chance of being mugged. We pass some trees Wangari Maathai has planted in Nairobi. I think the billion trees initiative is the way to go. We should be doing this everywhere. The taxi driver shows me some trees that were planted in downtown Nairobi. He is proud of them.

He transfers me to a high-end hotel full of an odd collection of people, US soldiers in full battle gear, German businessmen drinking local beer, a few very gentle old English couples straight out of another century. Some tourists on their way to see game and the odd hooker plying her trade.

Outside, in a beautiful, well-guarded garden, I smell the familiar smell of red earth. The night noises are familiar. This could be Johannesburg.

The room is great, I sleep well and by 7 in the morning I am doing lengths in the magnificent pool. Not too shabby. Neither is the breakfast of tables full of exotic fruit and other items targeted at a European clientele. This is obviously not your typical African hotel.

Day 2, The Congo via Rwanda

I am back at the Airport almost immediately, en route to Kigali, Rwanda. We stand on the tarmac outside a leased McDonnell Douglas plane, piloted by an Eastern European who is snoozing with the window open. I hope he didn’t drink too much vodka for breakfast.

Flying over Rwanda, I am taken by how orderly everything looks from the air and how it seems as though the whole country is a patchwork of small farms. I see no forests—just gentle hills, terraced for farming.

We land and share the runway with an ancient-looking Indian Air Force bomber (go figure?), an even more ancient-looking (Russian?) helicopter with no markings and an absolutely massive UN helicopter.

I am floored by a sign as we enter the terminal. Plastic bags are banned from use in Rwanda – only biodegradable allowed! They direct my fellow travelers and others to a room where they have to dump their plastic bags and buy ones made of cloth. Can anybody imagine what effect this enlightened law would have on us North Americans if such a law covered the NAFTA block? The billions of plastic bags that find their way into our landfills and countryside would disappear! Why don’t we do something like this? No real reason. We’re just a bunch of holy Joes that tell other people what to do while we trash our surroundings.

We set out on a six-hour car ride to Eastern Congo, four gringos and a handsome young Tutsi driver, Yves.

Yves and I strike it up in French and by the time we get to the Congo he has opened up, talking about the genocide and the South African-like truth commission. This is really painful stuff.

Rwanda is almost completely deforested. It is also densely populated, with most people living in the countryside’s neatly terraced hills, every square inch cultivated. It is very clean and orderly and shows no signs of trash. People really care here.

Yet, lurking in the shadows is an unacknowledged elephant, the recent genocide. Almost a million people killed in a few months. It is almost inconceivable that this could have happened. Yet it did and is fresh in the minds of everybody here. I can’t help but wonder if there is a connection to the stress such overpopulation brings.

One thing becomes clear as we pass through the countryside. In most of the dwellings I see that there is no electricity. It would seem that most of the population has no lighting. They use kerosene lamps, says Yves, and at 80 cents a liter this is a big expense, not to mention a health hazard. There is a great opportunity here to displace kerosene with renewable energy such as hand held generators and LED lights or solar energy when it gets cheaper.

We enter a National Park called Nyungwe and immediately we can see what Rwanda was like before deforestation. It is dense, lush, jungle. We’ll be back here on our way out for two days of viewing conservation projects. I can hardly wait.

Finally we arrive at Lake Kivu and the border with the Congo. It is magnificent.

Yves departs and we are transferred to the capable hands of Dominic, a very lovely Congolese man. The border is chaos, the Rwandan side looking positively first-world compared to the Congolese.

We stand out like sore thumbs at the border, us and a handful of people from the UN and charity organizations along with a straggle of locals standing patiently in line with crumpled papers. Interspersed are shiny 4-wheel drive SUVs driven by fat cats, charities or UN staff, and then cool dudes on motorbikes, most wearing riding jackets and sunglasses, looking as menacing and yet as cool as can be. There is also an odd assortment of Japanese cars. We all wait and eventually cross a rickety wooden bridge.

After being ruffled by a thug trying to assess the contents of our car (scary), we finally get our passports back and make our way through what must once have been a beautiful resort on Lake Kivu.

We then make our way to the hotel. The grand holiday homes are now mostly dilapidated. The streets are almost nonexistent. This town was under siege very recently – occupied by the Interahamwe—a true war zone, atrocities and all.

We turn down towards the lake and into the driveway of the Orchid Hotel, a well-guarded UN oasis and a piece of the past, operated by a Belgian Family who somehow stuck it out.

I stand on the veranda, looking out at the lake – the view is stunning—wondering what life must have been like here.

We go to dinner, an amazing menu, exotic stuff—cuisses de Grenouille a la Provencal – cannelloni stuffed with spinach. It is surreal.

Day 3, Bukavu, the wild west

We’re off to a slow start today, Congo-style. We venture out of our slice of sanity into the chaotic world of Bukavu. There is a lot of hostility and suspicion here. No photos allowed, although I surreptitiously take a few.

It has the aura of a wild-west town. Makes me think Blood Diamond was quite accurately staged. We drive through most of it and stop to get a SIM card. Cell phones are very big business here. Every second shop seems to be about cell phones.

The streets are nonexistent. This place has almost no infrastructure. There is a constant stream of people on odd sorts of vehicles negotiating the potholes and each other.

We end up at an internet café and spend an hour there talking to Google, connecting back home. I befriend the beautiful little daughter of the office manager. We play games in the courtyard outside.

Eventually we find ourselves at a hotel, another oasis, on the lawn talking with various organizations about tracking gorillas, the state of the park nearby, the population crunch on the park borders and other things.

The talk proceeds slowly. People come and go. A Frenchman who is involved in a GPS project on mapping the roads drops by. Then a Swiss lady joins. She’s just been on a 10-day, 200-kilometer trip through the bush to deliver medicine—a brave soul, marching through the bush controlled by what’s left of the Interahamwe. It’s still a war zone. There is talk of gorillas murdered and other atrocities. The guy she’s with is an American, great person, deeply knowledgeable about the Congo after having lived here on and off for 30 years. His other life is in the Adirondacks – what a contrast. For a while talk gets tense as the Congolese present and the rest debate whether the UN has been complicit in supporting the Interahamwe.

It is perfect weather out here on the lawn. The view is stunning. I’m fidgety and a little bored. It is just about to end when John, the American, asks me to explain an idea regarding forest restoration, carbon credits and the like.

We are proposing a forest restoration program, to create a buffer between communities bordering the Kihusi-Biega national Park (a gorilla habitat) and their villages.

In addition to creating jobs (planting and tending to trees) and a sustainable future resource (lumber and firewood from the trees), it is this kind of project that will eventually save the gorillas and their forest.

Everybody gets very enthusiastic. The pieces are falling into place. Best of all, our contacts here are conservationists and can manage the program on the ground. We can manage the carbon value that will result.

Day 4, Congo – Kihuzi Biega Park and endangered gorillas

How amazing.

I am standing alone near the border of the Kihusi Biega reserve, where the gorilla’s live and I have a strong cell signal!!!!!

We head into the forest passing beautiful tea plantations on the way in. Ahead of us two guards with machetes cut the way. Barely ten minutes into the bush and we come upon a big silverback gorilla. He is eating leaves and berries that help his digestion – clever little bugger. He takes no notice of us, even though I am within a few feet of him. What a magnificent sight! And to think these species are endangered. We sit and observe him quietly. He continues to ignore us.

He stands up all of a sudden and heads straight into some dense bush. What a magnificent creature! He is massive!

We follow him through the bush, hacking our way through the denser foliage. There he is now with his clan. He has twins, tiny creatures holding on to their mom. She gets up and walks away, the babies on her back. She wants no part of us. I am forced to choose – photograph or observe. I observe.

Back with the dad is another female and a larger baby – quite independent and playful. He hides behind a bush. By the time our hour with the gorillas is over we trek back out of the jungle, speechless.