In Uganda, Vacation Dreams Turn to Nightmares

By Romesh Ratnesar

The tourists had come to clamber through the miles of unforgiving forest inclines, hoping at the end of it to see a handful of the world's 600 remaining mountain gorillas at play. But something else lay waiting in the Ugandan mist. Shortly after dawn last Monday, 100 Rwandan Hutus, screaming and brandishing machetes and guns, raided three camps outside the Bwindi national park, where several dozen tourists were just waking. The Hutus eventually seized 14 tourists they believed to be American and British and forced them to march barefoot into the hills. Only six returned to camp alive; the rest--including two vacationers from Portland, Ore.--were bludgeoned and hacked to death. At least one female victim may have been raped. The Hutus attached messages to the bodies of their victims, warning the U.S. and Britain to end their support of Uganda's government. Said Mark Ross, 43, a U.S.-born tour operator among the kidnapped who persuaded the killers to release him: "Execution sounds like too organized a word."

Given the killers' barbarism, it is remarkable that more trekkers were not slain. Elizabeth Garland, 29, an anthropology student at the University of Chicago, remembered to turn off her wristwatch alarm while she lay fear-stricken in her tent; the raiders never found her. Another American, Linda Adams, 53, walked a mile toward a certain death with the other captives, then feigned an asthma attack and was let go. Deanja Walther, 26, a Swiss flight attendant who speaks French, stayed with the English-speaking hostages even though the Hutus let the French-speaking tourists remain at the camp. Walther, who last September was supposed to work aboard the ill-fated Swissair Flight 111, was ultimately spared. Some of the terrified survivors left the park on a plane flown by Ross, who had to start its engine with a pocketknife.

To the uninitiated, Uganda seemed a safe haven amid Africa's killing fields. But the country has earned the wrath of the self-exiled Rwandan Hutu death squads for its support of Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government. Last August the rebels kidnapped six Westerners in the same area; three remain missing.

There was speculation that the Hutus deliberately targeted the expeditioners in an effort to cut Uganda's burgeoning income from tourism. But the real explanation may be more mundane. "They took a lot of very good gear, rain jackets, boots, backpacks," says a Nairobi diplomat. "These guys were wearing old jeans and T shirts. They were very happy, very excited with what they got." Gorilla-watching expeditions to remote preserves were once limited to the likes of Dian Fossey, the American researcher who lived for 18 years in the Rwandan forests before her murder in 1985. But adventure-holiday companies now take thrill-seeking vacationers into the jungles too. Escorted only by lightly armed rangers, the tourists are easy prey for the poor rebels.

The slain American couple, Rob Haubner, 48, and Susan Miller, 42, were considering early retirement from Intel Corp. and a life of exotic travel when they left for Uganda. They had been in Africa before. "There was no fear," says Eric Pozzo, a friend and former co-worker. "Just nothing but unbridled excitement." Grimacing at the reports of the machete killings, Pozzo says, "These are deaths that you'd not wish on your worst enemy." But in central Africa today enmity is as deep as the forests.

--By Romesh Ratnesar. Reported by Todd Murphy/Portland and Simon Robinson/Nairobi

With reporting by Todd Murphy/Portland and Simon Robinson/Nairobi