We rose before dawn and began driving across Rwanda, a densely populated East African country on the edge of the Great Rift Valley from which spring the headwaters of the Nile. As the sun rose above the misty hills, the roadsides filled with brightly dressed women balancing bundles atop their heads and men pushing bicycles piled high with agricultural produce. A mountainous, landlocked nation that calls itself “the Land of 1,000 Hills,” Rwanda has 12 million people who live in a country smaller than Maryland.
Our destination was the Akagera National Park, an undulating slice of savanna along the Tanzanian border that contains a protected wildlife park. The park originally covered 965 square miles, but in 1997 it was reduced in size by two-thirds to provide cropland for homeless refugees.
