Impact Marathons is a company that has been responsible for some of my most memorable trips overseas. They combine volunteering in grassroots projects with running, bringing help to communities that really need it. Their first, Nepal, was off the back of an earthquake that had devastated parts of the country, and our goal there had been to bring running water to a small mountain village outside the Shivapuri National Park. I'd spent a week with them volunteering, and then a few of us went off for a week of tourism around Nepal afterwards. It would be no exaggeration to say that they quickly became my favourite race organisers, and remain so. It's good that they're led by someone who is decent, and is focused on helping people.

In 2024 they announced that there would be two new locations coming soon, and the first of those was announced as Rwanda. It certainly peaked my interest as a country I'd not yet visited. In recent years the country has been mentioned in the media for various reasons, with contradicting stories about how safe it is. Their past is enough to give you pause. I trust the organisers though - they spend a lot of time in the countries long before anything is announced, and will know firsthand what it is like there. The Global Peace Index (produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace) puts Rwanda in position 92 of 163 - in front of countries such as Peru, Dominican Republic, Kenya, and the USA. They're countries that people holiday in all the time, and this in theory would be safer. When I saw there could be the opportunity to see gorillas in the wild, there was no hesitation left. I had to enter this race.

Background

What do I know of Rwanda? The first thing that sprung to mind is what I’d vaguely heard about it when I was younger: the genocide of hundreds of thousands of the Tutsi people by the dominant Hutus. I’d learnt a little more about it when watching Long Way Down - a television series where Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman rode motorcycles through there on their way to South Africa.

More recently, via a podcast, I’d learnt how during the reign of Queen Victoria, the nations of Europe had carved Africa up to decide who was going to exploit which bit, even though there were many countries on this continent that they already traded with. Rwanda became part of the German East Africa until Belgium took over during the First World War. The struggle between the Tutsi and the Hutus was amplified by the Germans seeing the ruling Tutsi class as superior, and even more so when Belgium started a program of forced labour to make the country profitable for them. They then instituted identity cards for the different Tutsi, Hutu and Twa groups based on the number of cattle that they owned. It reinforced an 'otherness' between them.

After the Second World War, things had improved a little for the Hutus following some changes by the ruling Mwami (King), but it increased the tensions between the people. The Hutu revolution of 1959 resulted in thousands of Tutsi deaths, and the exile of many more, as the Hutus took charge of the country. The UN then pushed for Ruanda-Urundi to be split into Rwanda, and Burundi. This led to guerrilla warfare from the Tutsis, that resulted in the execution of many more of their number, and the eventual military takeover of the country.

In 1994, the assassination of Hutu presidents of both Rwanda of Burundi led to military forces dehumanising the Tutsi people, and using fear and hate speech as they called for the deaths of all Tutsis. Since the genocide and civil war, things have gradually become more stable there. However, the FCO report the risk of rebel attacks in the Volcanoes National Park, and the Nyungwe Forest. The borders to the DRC and Burundi are areas to stay clear of too for similar reasons.

I’ve since watched The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, and have learnt a few more things. For example, drinking milk is a big thing in Rwanda; drinking milk together symbolises friendship. Sport is one of the ways they’re finding national unity, so a running event is certainly something they could get onboard with. They also spend the last Saturday of every month doing Umuganda - everyone working together for the community.

Impact Week and Fundraising

As with all Impact races there are multiple options for booking with the primary ones being 'Base Camp' (shared accommodation) or 'Summit Camp' (single supplement). They've also introduced a 'Commit to Impact' option for both types that reduces the prices by £500 by committing to raising a minimum of £2,500 for their charity partners. It's a great incentive to help raise money for them. The options here mean it's between £995 and £1,745 per person for the Impact week, which is full-board accommodation. Rwanda is an unusual one for them as this one is entirely in hotels, which if you take to be around £100/pppn (the low end of prices on booking.com), then it shows that the week is actually very good value for money, whilst also getting to help people. I'd be going solo for this trip, so I went for the 'Summit Camp' option. I could have used a discount code for this from having done multiple weeks with them previously, but chose not to as I wanted to be better supporting them. The thing to remember is that the marathon (or whatever distance you choose to do) at the end of the week is not a race, it's a celebration of the week spent in the community beforehand even if during the run your brain can slip into race mode.

This time their charity partner would be Chance for Childhood. They work with children to ensure that they all have equal opportunities no matter what their circumstances.

We don’t work alone. Together with partners, supporters, children and their communities, we protect, educate and create lasting change for every child threatened by violence, neglect and conflict.

Outside of Rwanda, they also work with young people in Uganda, the DRC, Ghana, Kenya, and Sri Lanka. In the UK they may be a charity you've come across before as they also have people raising money for them by doing other races such as the London Marathon, Hackney Half Marathon, and the Lake District Ultra challenge. For every £1 that is raised, they spend 16p on raising more funds, and the other 84p goes directly on the children. When you compare this to how some charities work, this is actually quite amazing. In addition to what they have in other countries, in Rwanda they have six projects in action such as a school for deaf children, helping rural families with disabled children raise more funds through pig farming, and in some cases providing help through both safeguarding and empowering children.

With one month to go, the changing climate necessitated additional partners that were in desperate need of our support:

• Health Poverty Action, who work across Rwanda's tea sector to focus on enhancing women's economic opportunities, whilst also supporting survivors of gender-based violence. The donations to them would improve workplace conditions, and create more opportunities for women.
• Rwanda Wildlife Conservation Association, which started off with a mission to save the Grey Crowned Crane, but has evolved into a powerful movement for wildlife protection across all of Rwanda. They work on creating reserves and restoring habitats, and are working on community projects that drive lasting change. Donations to them would go towards empowering conservation champions within local communities and expand habitat restoration.
• Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, who work at the forefront of protecting Rwanda's mountain gorilla population. The donations to them would go towards conservation, habitat protection, scientific research, and educating future generations.

With these additional charities came changes to the Impact week, and how we'd be spending our time. We'd now be visiting each of these partners to see the work that they do to help in raising awareness for their causes. We would now see the work on one of the five tea estates run by HPA, and would peek behind-the-scenes at the Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to understand the work being done there.

For fundraising they ideally want a minimum of £2,000 raised which is more than I managed when I did London Marathon for the first time. The fundraising pages were able to be set-up from around the 24th January, so I had about four months to do the best I could. Considering I don't work in an office any more, and don't really see many people, my main way of doing this was posting a link to the fundraising page on social media. As of late, social media has been very quiet, so I knew the fundraising side of this, as always, would be harder than the marathon itself. When I tried fundraising for the charity we supported for Jordan, I don't think I managed to convince a single person to donate to them. This time I'd need to really work hard at spreading the message.

I know my fundraising usually falls on deaf ears, but if you could, please consider donating to these causes via my Enthuse page. It'd be nice to be proven wrong.

Tours

With some of the Impact weeks, they also offer bolt-ons for people to do after the race day. It was suggested these would be bookable from November 2024. I checked several times in November and December but hadn't spotted anything (they probably were there though!). I then emailed a couple of times (sorry Nick for wasting your time), but hadn't heard back in 2024 as it was a busy time for them off the back of Nepal and Jordan Impact weeks. What I hadn't realised though was that they had a page specifically for 'bolt-ons' off the 'races' menu, rather than on the Rwanda page. Whilst on my desktop I hadn't spotted this, and it wasn't until mid-January I realised it was there when I viewed the page on mobile. I felt quite silly for having missed it before, and apologised to Nick for having bothered him about something that was already on the website.

Over the previous few months I'd done some research and found that a permit is needed for seeing gorillas, and they can sell out months in advance, sometimes almost straight away during peak season. I got a little nervous that I'd miss out on the chance to see gorillas, so found a tour company that sorts the permit for you as part of their offering, and booked that for just over £2,000. The majority of that cost would be for the permit on one out of the four days I'd be extending the trip for. The other days would be for travel, and a city tour which meant a lot of wasted time as I'd be heading from Musanze back to Kigali for starting this tour, just to be driven back to near Musanze for the gorilla trekking. Not perfect, but it'd have to do. It did however mean I could go ahead and book my flights - these were with Rwandair and surprisingly came with far more luggage capacity (two checked-in 23kg bags!) than I'd need. The very next day after booking, I got an email from Nick detailing what bolt-ons Impact Marathons offer:

1. Four days in Uganda for gorilla spotting and safari,
2. Two days in Rwanda for gorilla spotting and safari,
3. Relaxing two days at Lake Kivu, the stunning lake that borders Rwanda/Congo.

It was unfortunate timing, but I couldn't do anything about it. So between Impact Marathons and GetYourGuide, I'd got ten days in Rwanda. At least, that's what I thought…

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When I tried to contact Kensai Safaris via GetYourGuide to confirm pick-up arrangements as I'd already be in the country, I got a bounce back to say the message couldn't be delivered. This concerned me greatly, as I'd not long paid for the tour in full, and I found their website no longer worked either. GetYourGuide then tried to contact the tour operator and had no luck either. I searched for this tour operator on Google, and found that in the last two months, after my initial research, other people had encountered serious issues with them. I decided the best thing was to cancel the tour for a full refund.

That cancellation was very fortunate as it meant I could now book the Impact bolt-on to go to see gorillas with people I'd meet during the Impact week. I think that's a much nicer experience. Seeing gorillas in Uganda is an option I'd considered, as at $700 USD for a permit it's a lot cheaper that Rwanda, and it'd mean getting to see another country too. However, I'd read that the drive from Kampala to the national park is very long, and as I'd already got flights booked, I had to rule that out which was a real shame.

Relaxing at Lake Kivu wasn't really my sort of thing either; I'd rather be out doing something and seeing places. Option 2 was a little more expensive than my original plans with it being £2,485 with a £95 single supplement, however I'd actually see more of the country as a result as I could use the remaining two days for something else. I felt for the first of the two days there were two options:

1. Visit the Nyungwe Forest National Park and do a tree-top walk with a chance of seeing monkeys below, or
2. Go back to Volcanoes National Park to see golden monkeys.

Of the two, the first one felt like the better option as it'd mean visiting yet another part of the country and would feel like I was doing a more 'complete' job of seeing what there was to see. This left the final day for sightseeing around Kigali and Mount Kigali, with the possibility of also doing some zip-lining.

Combined, I would estimate the cost of such a trip to be close to £6,000 by the time all flights, tours, accommodation, food, and any other spending money is accounted for. It would be on the upper end of what I used to spend for two-week guided trips, but with inflation and how much travel has increased in cost in addition to that, it would actually be good value. In fact, for an experience like this, it was a bargain.

Vaccinations

When travelling outside of Europe, I find it's usually a good idea to check the UK's FitForTravel website to see what protections you might need. The easy ones for Rwanda are making sure your Hep-A, Typhoid, and Tetanus vaccinations are up to date, but it's also necessary to protect yourself against malaria and schistosomiasis. These are two that you cannot vaccinate yourself against, but there are precautions you can take.

To combat the risk of malaria, I’d take Malarone (Atovaquone/Proguanil), the same anti-malaria tablets as I had done for Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi. There would be no problem buying these a few months in advance as GSK state them as having a shelf-life of 5 years. As malaria is spread through mosquito bites, I'd also try to stick to using my NosiLife shirts when not running, and would take some fresh jungle-strength DEET spray (Diethyltoluamide) with me as well to make sure I'd have a mosquito deterrent whilst running, and as an extra precaution when visiting the gorillas. I'd recently found that once opened, DEET has a limited shelf-life (similar to how sunscreen expires after up to three years), so what I'd used previously would be no good. I decided to this time use the LifeSystems Expedition MAX as it is 50% DEET (so isn't as strong as their 100+ version) but is water and sweat resistant which would be useful for the expected climate. According to the WHO, 50% would be strong enough for malarial mosquitoes anyway.

The advice for schistosomiasis is to not come into contact with freshwater. When I went to Malawi the advice had been to be tested for this regardless of whether I'd been in Lake Malawi or not. One of Rwanda’s rainy seasons ends in May, so it could easily be a very wet and muddy trip. I'd got no intention to be bathing or swimming in any freshwater lakes or streams, so in theory would be okay here. I'd also try to stick to bottled water, or where not possible would use a bottle that has a built-in filter.

As of July 2024, Rwanda has been subject to an outbreak of Mpox Clade I, which is more severe than the milder West African Clade II. Out of the ways that this can be spread, the most likely ways to come into contact with it would be being in close proximity to someone who has it (aerosolisation), or touching a contaminated object including bed linen.

MPXV transmits between humans through close contact with lesions, body fluids, infectious respiratory particles or contaminated materials, or from animals to humans through contact with live animals or consumption of contaminated bushmeat.

There are vaccines available to prevent infection, but it seems generally the advice is to just be careful unless you're in a high risk category. To be sure, I contacted my local GP and detailed where I would be visiting, and discussed what I would need to be vaccinated against. They also advised about Marburg Virus Disease. MVD belongs to the same family as ebola, and has a high fatality rate. It’s an animal-borne disease mostly commonly associated with bats, and can come from extended exposure to infected animals. Rwanda had their first reported outbreak of this in September 2024. Rabies is another concern when doing running or cycling as apparently it increases the chances of being bitten by an animal. Mosquitoes could also transmit zika virus, which can cause complications as well. It really is a case of being prepared, and staying vigilant, and trying your best not to get bitten by anything.

Visa and Permits

For British Nationals, and people from Commonwealth nations, we don't need to get a visa ahead of time, and can get one on arrival which is valid for 30 days with no cost (see Rwanda Immigration). This means arrivals should be relatively easy, as I also don't need to prove I've had a yellow fever vaccination (though I'll carry the card from when I had one previously anyway). The only other requirements for this is mandatory travel insurance and DBS checks, but these are requirements of Impact Marathons due to the activities for the week. The travel insurance should be an obvious thing, and is something I renew on an annual basis. The DBS check I wasn't too sure how to go about, but Impact Marathons said they'd sort this for people taking part.

In order to see the gorillas I’d also need to pay $1,500 USD for a gorilla tracking permit from the Rwanda Development Board (RDB). It’s not guaranteed you’ll see them though so it can be a very expensive hike in an area the FCO recommends not to visit. I wanted to take that risk though, as getting to photograph them would be an amazing experience.

For the Nyungwe Forest National Park the permits there vary in price depending upon the activities you're doing and range from US$40 to US$100. For the canopy walk, this is US$60.

What to take

Rather than take a suitcase, I wanted to use my Cotopaxi Allpa 35 litre backpack as my checked-in luggage. For trips like this where it might get bashed around a bit more than normal, it feels like a good idea. I would need to find space to pack what I'd need for:

• a week of volunteering,
• multiple runs,
• hiking,
• wildlife photography.

The running clothes would take priority, and would be similar to what I've used for every other trip that's involved a race. This particular one would require my running backpack as well as I'd want to be self-sufficient for water during the race ideally. For volunteering, the only item I'd include would be some work gloves, in case they're needed. For the hiking portion of the trip it was difficult to decide whether or not to use my hiking shoes I'd be wearing anyway, or to sacrifice some space in my luggage for my proper walking boots. There was the potential for them to get quite muddy though on the last day. I'd already be checked out of the hotel by the time it'd be over, so wouldn't be able to get them clean before flying home. My solution for that was to invest in a Boot Buddy to clean them with. I'd not heard of them until coming across them in a local supermarket. In either case, gaiters were a recommendation for this part of the trip anyway.

The next consideration would be looking at what would reduce my chances of infection whilst in Rwanda. I tend to get bitten by mosquitoes a lot, so other than the aforementioned NosiLife shirts, I would be sticking to light colours. It wasn't until recently I learnt that mosquitoes are attracted more to darker colours such as black and blue. As mentioned previously, DEET and sunscreen would be a must, but I also decided to try out some mosquito repellent bands as well to make extra sure. My Water-to-Go bottle, rather than my flask, would also be a must to help protect against any waterborne diseases. I would need a new filter for it, and preferably a lid less likely to leak - a problem I'd had when I last used it a few years ago.

I'd also take two breakfasts with me, and a few snacks. One breakfast would be for arrival in Kigali so I wouldn't need to find somewhere as soon as I arrive, and the other would be for race day to maintain consistency with other races. During the race I'd stick to Tailwind, having now used this for a couple of marathons and ultra marathons. The advantage I find for this over gels or jelly babies is that it's not as sweet, so is easier to stomach in the later stages of a long race.

For the first time since New Zealand, I'd also need my full camera backpack so I could take my 150-500mm lens, and a second camera body with me for use when seeing the gorillas. It'd potentially be handy during the safari as well. From previous experience in Kenya and Tanzania, I know that 500mm is not always enough so it would also be worth taking a 2x teleconverter, which whilst using I'd need to 'over expose' by one f-stop to account for reduced light. Ideally this would be used with either a travel tripod, or a monopod, but I would likely be too restricted on space for this.

I would usually travel with a MacBook to use for keeping notes, and backing up photographs. As I'd be wanting to keep the weight down where possible, I would instead use my aging iPad for this purpose instead, with a pen and paper as back-up.

My flights in and out of Rwanda would unfortunately be red eye flights, meaning I'd need to try my best to sleep - something I've historically been unable to do. So, to assist with any attempt at sleep I decided to buy a travel pillow (my previous inflatable one was no longer usable after Jordan). I didn't really want to get one that would be bulk and use up lots of space in my hand luggage, so that really limited my choices. It was likely that any I picked would not be very good, but I was able to avoid another inflatable one by choosing a trtl Travel Pillow Plus. This one is like having half a sturdy neck brace wrapped in a scarf. It sounds like an unusual design, but the reviews seemed pretty good.