Mainstory: Rescue on the Akagera

All his life, Jascha Schmid has been fascinated with stories of outdoor survival – of people who seem to live life beyond the limits and overcome the impossible. He never thought that he would one day be in the same shoes as his heroes, facing a life or death situation that would put his survival instincts to the ultimate test. But that is exactly where Schmid and three others found themselves last Wednesday, when the boat they had been navigating up the Akagera River suddenly crashed at full-speed into several fallen trees, leaving them chest-high in rapid waters and stranded amongst a circle of hippos that was drawing increasingly close. What followed would prove to be a harrowing experience for the four men as they struggled to find safe ground, make their whereabouts known to friends, and save what little they could of their equipment. It would culminate no less than seven hours later in a nail-biting rescue attempt by members of the Rwandan Air Force that saw a helicopter precariously hover over the water and lift them one by one to safety. Torn clothes and scraped limbs are now the only things left they have to show for it. Still, the day’s events are not ones that any of them will soon forget. The plan Schmid, 26, is a German national and an avid outdoorsman who decided to sail the Akagera River in Eastern Rwanda as part of a practical training component for his bachelor’s degree in Natural Resource Sciences. His goal was to map the communities that lived along the river and determine the size of the populations and their means of self-sufficiency. Along for the ride was Schmid’s friend, Jean de Dieu Sebagabo, as well as a boat driver and a ranger from the Akagera National Park Headquarters. Schmid was well aware of the dangers of his expedition before he left. In fact, he had been planning the trip for over a year and had overseen every detail, from the building of the eight-meter long boat, to determining potential campsites, to buying the necessary food and 60 litres of water. But when park officials advised him to attach a motor to his traditional canoe in case of emergency, Schmid knew it was time to brush up on his crocodile and hippopotamus safety training. Setting sail The four set sail on Sunday from Ndego, a small village at the south of the Akagera National Park, where almost immediately they came face to face with their biggest threat – the animal that single-handedly causes the most number of accidents in Africa: the hippopotamus. “We went onto the river and two minutes later, the first hippos came,” recalls Schmid. “They just dove under the boat and you could see the line of bubbles on the surface of the water. They were directly under us, and that’s a situation you should really avoid.” No less than twenty minutes after they had managed to successfully steer themselves away from the hippos, they faced their next challenge: two elephants in the water. The elephants, however, kept to themselves and the expedition continued on its way. After successfully passing a round of military questioning and enduring the inquisitive eyes of almost one hundred villagers, the four men slept through an uneventful night at Lac Mpanga. En route The next morning, the group awoke at 6 a.m. in a hurry. They had been staying in a military zone, which meant that at 8 a.m., training would begin and bullets would be flying. If they didn’t leave right then, they would be sitting ducks on the river. The crew packed up and headed back out. This time, however, instead of coming into contact with animals, they encountered no less than five camps of illegal hunters, all of whom left their fires burning and ran away at the site of the approaching canoe. “At one place, hunters left 25 kilos of smoked fish and hippo meat and it was wrapped into dried grass with branches,” says Schmid. “We took it with us and our crew was so happy to have something to eat on the trip.” They knew, however, that the hunters might be keen on exacting revenge by shooting them with arrows, so Schmid and his team left as quickly as possible. As it was approaching dark, they set up their camp for the second night, fired two shots into the air to warn off the hippos, and went to sleep. On the third day, the team made good time and put themselves ahead of schedule, so they decided to celebrate that night. “We asked some guy to go get us some Primus and Coke and for this he had to walk for two hours,” says Schmid. “But it was our last evening and we were so happy we had reached so far and nobody was injured. It was a nice evening by the fire.” Knowing that their were just three hours left to travel until they reached their final destination at Kagitumba, a village at Rwanda’s border with Uganda, the four men went to sleep that night in eager anticipation of the next day. The crash That morning began on an upbeat note. “People were washing their shoes,” recalls Schmid. “I thought, ‘Why are you doing this?’ They said, ‘Because we’re going back on land.’ “It’s like a marine who’s coming back from a trip on the ocean. They had washing powder for their socks and everything, and there were shoes and socks hanging over the boat.” But it was at that moment that the crew faced something they had never faced before. “The river split into three waterways,” recalls Schmid. “With our binoculars, we had to figure out which way was the best to go with our boat.” Where they had camped the night before, the villagers had warned Schmid of stones in the left-hand river and suggested they steer clear of it. Because the river on the far right seemed to be full of floating hyacinth, the crew decided to proceed straight ahead. “The problem here was that this waterway turned left very sharply,” says Schmid, “so we couldn’t see anything past this turn.” As the canoe advanced, villagers on the shore began waving and shouting at the crew. Later, it would become apparent that they were warning the men of the danger that was to come. The crew, however, was eager to get home and made a joint decision to keep going. It was the first time they did not stop at a village along the way and it would be a decision that Schmid would come to regret. As they turned the bend, the waterway quickly narrowed and the speed of the current increased. “We were almost at the half of the turn, when we saw that there was a big tree hanging over the water with its branches into the water,” says Schmid. “The boat driver tried to go full-speed on the left-hand side, but the current was too strong.” The boat ripped through the branches at such a speed that the men barely had time to duck. “I could have gone blind,” says Schmid. Panicked, the ranger threw his rifle into the water and jumped out of the boat to try and grab a hold of one of the branches above, but instead it broke and dumped him into the river. The branches continued to pull the boat under and within 15 seconds it was completely engulfed in water. Unable to hear each other over the current, or see each other through the brush, the men were seemingly on their own. “I couldn’t say anything,” recalls Schmid. “I was just in shock.” The crew’s barrels began to float down the river, accompanied by their freshly washed shoes and socks. As each of the men struggled to grab hold of a tree and stay afloat, Schmid noticed a patch of marshland. He motioned to the others to try and throw what equipment they could onto land. “Till this happened, til we started to really get out of this situation, it seemed so long,” says Schmid. “You sit there and just try to save the equipment you can, but you don’t really see progress. A bag is out, another bag is out, but really nothing is going on.” Sebagabo rescued the GPS and dove into the muddy, brown waters to retrieve the ranger’s gun. Schmid also managed to save his cell phone despite one close call where he dropped it into the water. “I thought to myself, ‘You’ve thrown your life away.’” Still, Schmid’s travel mates quickly began to lose hope. “The hard thing was really to keep the team together,” he says, “to say, ‘come on now, what’s the plan? What solutions do you see?’” The rescue The men proceeded to climb over the branches and onto land, but that was when they realised the land was actually an island – an island surrounded by hippo-infested waters. After his suggestion to swim ashore was dismissed by the other members of the crew, Schmid tried to think of another plan. “If we were not going to swim, we had to get rescued from the air,” he says. “Akagera Headquarters has a boat and we thought about that, but we didn’t want to bring more people who were also not experienced into the river. We saw the waterways and how it happened to us and didn’t want to bring more people into danger.” Using the GPS, the ranger gave their exact coordinates to the Akagera National Park Headquarters. But as park officials spent time debating the best course of action, the situation on the river deteriorated. It had begun to rain and the four men had nowhere to run for cover. Soon, even their boat that they had affixed with a rope to a tree could no longer withstand the pressure of the elements, and broke away, along with many of their private belongings. Immediately, Schmid used his mobile phone to call a friend of his back in Kigali, Anny Batamuriza, who proceeded to get in touch with a private helicopter company. After that proved unfeasible, she called the military. “When I was talking to the Air Force guys, I said, ‘These guys can’t even step down, they were hungry and freezing,’” recalls Batamuriza. “Those swamps, when you step down, both sides come up. So I told them, ‘You can’t even land; you have to lift them from the trees.” Once the military agreed to send a rescue team, the four men went to work trying to clear some space for the helicopter to land. “At the north part of the island, we found a swamp area about 50 square meters,” he says. “We just took some wooden sticks and tried to cut all the papyrus down.” They then lit a fire with the leftover brush and waited for the helicopter to come, but it never did. Schmid got a call saying that due to the heavy rain, the helicopter was going to be delayed – indefinitely. “You wait,” he says. “You have nothing to do but to wait, go back to the fire and put some papyrus on it. You keep the mood up and try to make some jokes about it.” Finally fed up, Sebagabo says, “We told them the rain was over even though it was not, just so they would come.” By then, almost six hours had passed and the men were surviving on nothing more than one liter of water and two packets of cigarettes between them. All of their food had perished with the boat. “I felt really responsible,” says Schmid. “I asked these guys to come with me, to join me, and they all have families, all have children.” Finally, seven hours after the accident had first occurred, the helicopter came. With its roaring blades spewing water and smoke into their eyes, the group struggled to wave their lifejackets in the air so as to be spotted. Then, they waited as someone lowered themselves out of the helicopter and told them, one by one, to jump on. “I was more afraid of getting out with the helicopter than swimming in the water or anything,” says Schmid, “because I knew they were not very experienced.” Schmid was right; for the helicopter crew, it was their third rescue attempt of this kind. Finally in the helicopter, it quickly became apparent just how lucky the group actually was; a narrowing circle of hippopotamuses was no less than five meters away from where they had been. When the rest of the crew were all pulled to safety, they were flown back to the Kigali International Airport, where with their dirty, torn clothes and bare feet, “people thought we were prisoners,” jokes Sebagabo. The aftermath As soon as his feet were planted back on solid ground, Schmid says his thoughts went immediately to his family. “At that moment, you really feel how important some people are in your life,” he says. “You think, ‘Thank you.’” But, now back in the comfort of his Kigali home, Schmid is consumed with thoughts of what he could have done differently. Should he have stopped at that last village? Should he have taken the river to the left? Should he have tried harder to think of a way out? “You have a cell phone and network and you have the chance to give it to somebody else, to just take care of you,” he says. “If I still had our machete, I think I would have tried to cut a tree over the right waterway.” They didn’t have their machete though, so they used a cell phone to get help. And Batamuriza, the first to receive their call, is glad they did. “The good thing is you’re alive,” she says, adding, “Despite the fact that it was horrible, it was a very good experience. Did you take some pictures?” Ends