Rwanda

So finally got a vacation type experience. So much happened during my trip to Rwanda with Dad and Jessica that I’ll have to use subheadings.

Journey Down
Went to Rwanda on Saturday morning well the bus was supposed to leave at 9 am but I think it didn’t get going til well after 11am because they were waiting for the overnight bus from Dar to arrive so that people could get on our bus. That means our arrival that had been expected at 5pm in Kigali was delayed A LOT. The drive was ok – a few too many Nigerian and Senegalese music videos for my liking – but way too long. Saw some zebra by the side of the road again. The border crossing was interesting as the bus dumps us out at the Ugandan side to get stamped out and everyone crowds through this one little tiny door. Side note – first time ever we weren’t the only mzungus on the bus!!! Then the bus takes off and we have to walk over to the Rwandan side to sign into the country. As we’re filling out the paper work the contents of the bus are being dumped on the sidewalk to be ‘inspected’. Ours weren’t even look at. Though funny thing is you aren’t allowed to take plastic bags into Rwanda so you have to hide them or throw them out. Crazy eh – but environmental. Arrived at night which was scary as hell but managed to find a taxi up to the hotel really easily.
Hotel was fine, ate some dinner and went to sleep.

Day in Kigali
Woke up early to get to the tourism office by 8am for the city tour. Wandered outside and the streets were deserted. It was almost culture shock to see Kigali. After months of living in Kampala we couldn’t believe how clean the streets were, how there were no potholes, trees and grass everywhere. The boda drivers all wore helmets, had helmets for their passengers and wore bright vests with numbers on them to show they were licensed. There was power pretty much all the time too!!! I can’t even describe how strange it was. See the picture which I will hopefully remember to post here.

We wandered a bit using our limited French to ask for directions and eventually finding the tourism office. Had a ton of difficulty talking to the guards there. We were so confused because it was supposed to be open at 8 am and it was 8 and there was no one there. So the guard eventually told us to come back at 9 or 10 so we went for a walk to find some breakfast. On our wanders we found the Intercontinental Hotel aka only 5star hotel in Kigali. Apparently they have a breakfast buffet which we all indulged in. AMAZING!!!! There were strawberries awesome fruit, good baked goods and everything it was so nice. Then we took the required photos of us on our “Sunday by the Pool in Kigali” see above before returning to the tourist office where we learned that Uganda and Rwanda are in different time zones so we had showed up at the tourism office at 7am not 8am!!!!! Oddly enough there was a private tour going on at 10am which we were allowed to join. The guide was pretty good. We went to the memorial for the Belgian peacekeepers killed during the genocide. The bullet holes are still in the walls and the graffetti about killing Romeo Dallaire is still on the chalkboard in that room. It was eerie, same sort of feeling as the crematorium at Auschwitz only it was much fresher – only 12 years ago. Then off to the natural history museum before being dropped off at the Genocide Memorial.
That was one of those experiences I will never forget. The gardens outside contain about 13 mass graves with the remains of thousands in them. Inside was one of the most intense experiences of my life. The basement takes you through the genocide from the earliest seeds of conflict sowed in the colonial era to the on going justice and reconciliation process. Did you know that right before the genocide there was a $12million US arms deal between a French company and the government of Rwanda? The other people in the Memorial with us were a couple from the states where the wife had fled during the violence in the 1950s as a child and a large group of people who lost family members in the killings. At one point the power cut out and we all just stood in the dark silently – I’m talking about 30 people here – until it came back on. It was almost too much to take – no actually it was too much to take after going through the details of the genocide in gruesome detail (don’t forget this was neighbours killing neighbours with machetes etc) we were faced with a room full of family photos of the victims. I walked out of that room without looking at more than one of the alcoves full of photos only to be faced with a door to a room full of bones. Didn’t go into that room or the room of clothes from the mass graves. I couldn’t take it, neither could Jess. Upstairs was an overview of other genocides around the world – Armenians, a tribe in Namibia I had never heard of, the Holocaust, Cambodia and then the Balkins. It was getting overwhelming. The final room was entitled Future Lost and dedicated to the child victims. Walked into the room, read the first caption and immediately turned around and left – it was the only way I could get out of that building without actually crying. Only Dad managed to make it into that room. I know I should have gone into those rooms I skipped because it is the least I can do but I couldn’t force myself to do it. It was too much.
I cannot believe the contrast between the Kigali of 1994 where the images of bodies lying all over the street broadcast around the world have been burned into my mind from the media, Shake Hands with the Devil and now the memorial and the gorgeous city of today that could pass as any European city. It is mind-boggling. At the same time you find yourself looking at people wondering what were you doing in 1994?
Got some craft shopping done – which was always fun – so much stuff from the Congo.
One thing – Kigali may be a beautiful city but they need to work on their banking system. No ATMs in the country take international credit or debit cards so if Hotel Milles Collines (aka Hotel Rwanda where all those people were saved from certain death) hadn’t taken credit cards for dinner I think we would have gone hungry. Thankfully the next morning we could go to the bank and get cash advances.
Dad and I with Kigali in the background

Travel to Ruthengeri
It only costs us about $2 to take a matatu to the town by Parc National des Volcans (Volcanoes National Park). Gorgeous ride – Rwanda really lives up to its name as Pays des Milles Collines (Land of a thousand hills). So pretty though the four people in the matatu who were sick out the window wasn’t the prettiest part of the ride. On the way we passed a gacaca court being held in a field by the side of the road – a traditional court sort of truth and reconciliation style to deal with genocidaires (ppl who killed during the genocide). It is not ancient history for sure. Got to this small town and found our hotel. Then set off through the town to find the tourist office. After some misadventures and a boda ride wearing a helmet for the first time ever we ended up meeting one the guides from the park who helped us sooooo much. Olivier helped us find a driver for the next morning to take us to park headquarters and then the trail head. Ate dinner at the nicest hotel in town before returning to our not so nice but acceptable hotel to sleep.

Hiking in Rainy Season = Not the Best Plan
Next morning left bright and early for the park to go on our hike up to Dian Fossey’s tomb and where she did all her research on mountain gorillas. Unfortunately we didn’t get Olivier as our guide but meh. It took a long time on a not so good road to get to the trail head. We headed into the jungle with three Spaniards, one guide, four soldiers with guns and a guy with a machete. It was muddly and junglely from the beginning – I don’t know whether it was the altitude or the humidity but had the closest thing to an asthma attack I’ve had since high school when I used to try to run when I had bronchitis. So cool to be hiking up a volcano through the jungle in Rwanda. Remember though it’s rainy season so that meant mud and then it started to rain which meant even more mud. I don’t think I’ve been that dirty in years. When we got the top it was cool but most of the buildings and everything were destroyed during the war in 1994 so there wasn’t a lot to look at and it was soooooooooooooooooooo cold. It was probably like 8 degrees and I swear I almost died. I haven’t been that cold since last winter. The hike lasted six hours total and it definitely tread the fine line between best hike of my life and worst hike of my life. Only fell down once which was quite an accomplishment but still ended up covered in mud, cold and wet. Honestly took almost three hours to warm up again.

Jessica, the guide Emmanuel, the machete guy and I when it was raining but not yet brutally cold.


Back to Kampala
Got up the next morning with the aim of getting back to Kampala by dinner time but no plan of how to do it. It was backpacking at its finest. It started off very easy though. Seriously all we had to do was walk out of the hotel and towards the taxi park across the street when we had guys asking us where we were going and then they actually go the taxi to drive over to pick us up. We left almost immediately. We must have been off the beaten tourist track (ok definitely off the beaten track but more than usual) because it was seriously shocking to see three mzungus in a taxi – like yell and tell your friends to come look when the taxi stopped in a town shocking. One little girl about 10 got on the taxi and her jaw dropped, her eyes opened really really wide and she just stared at us for about 15 minutes. We were the first real live white people she had ever seen.
From the border which was not busy to say the least we took a special hire taxi into Kisoro then waited in a matatu for almost an hour to fill up before heading to the town where we could get a bus back to kampala. Two and a half hours in a matatu on dirt roads is not something I will do again if I can avoid it. Though unplaited Jessica’s hair aka took out the dread lock type extensions for an hour of it but with three of us doing it – me, Dad and some woman on the bus – it didn’t take as long as I hoped. The bus ride was hellishly long and we didn’t get back into kampala until 930 at night and so it was a frantic dash to the pizzeria to get some dinner. Fought with the taxi driver for almost 10 minutes when we got there because we had agreed to pay 5000 shillings and then he didn’t actually know where he was going and it turned out to be farther than he thought so he wanted more money but the funny thing was it was still only 5000 shillings worth of distance which we as residents of Kampala of course knew despite looking like the typical dirty backpacker. Ended up just putting the money on the top of his car and walking away. Ah well. Ended my Rwandan adventure with a delicious pizza in Kampala.

Top Quotes of the Trip

• “I love a man in a snake” - Erin
• “You know you’re off the beaten track when you’re the first white person a Rwandan has ever seen” Jessica
• “Oh my God – it’s so clean” – Erin and Jessica on numerous occasions
• “This has been interesting” – Dad
• “Guilt money is HUGE” – Jessica
• “Wow, I never thought that the smog over Kampala would look so good” – Erin
• “No no I live here. It’s not 7000 it’s 5000” – Erin and Jessica yelling at various taxi drivers upon return to Kampala.
• “Laggage” – Bus ticket from Kbale to Kampala
• “It looks like it’s going to rain” – already soaked Spaniard at the end of our hike to Dian Fossey’s tomb.
• “Can we afford to eat tonight?” – Everyone
• “Well, if the hotel doesn’t take credit cards we can come back here and eat dinner but then we can’t eat breakfast unless the bank lets us do a cash advance” - Dad