Dry season seems to be arriving slowly but surely. It still
rains at least once every day here in Musanze but it seems like less heavily
(it rarely sounds like the roof is going to fall in anymore!) and less
frequently…although it is raining cats and dogs as I write this, so this may
just be wishful thinking…my nose is distinctively redder than the rest of my
face though, which means there has been a significant amount of sun as well!
Thought I should give an update on the recent weekend trips I have taken with
the Canadians.
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| Lake Kivu |
Last Saturday we decided to visit the nearby town of Gisenyi
and the beautiful Lake Kivu on the D.R.C. border. We got lucky and it was a
beautiful day! We all go a bit burnt actually as we didn’t expect it to be so
hot and sunny…it was absolutely sweltering compared to Musanze! We took our friend
Mick, a nice teenager from Musanze, who introduced himself to me a few weeks
ago while I was walking in Elie’s neighborhood (he lives nearby with his family
and 11 siblings!). He has finished high school and speaks very good English and
is currently taking art lessons and trying to make money to pay for university in
Uganda (which is a apparently cheaper than Rwanda). He spends a lot of time
with me in the hotel, while I work/use the internet just talking, telling me
his hopes and aspirations for the future. He has really made me think about how
lucky I am and how much I have always taken for granted, when I see his awe and
amazement when looking at my photos from New York, London, skiing holidays and
college. Despite his circumstances (which are better than most people’s here),
he remains positive and hopeful for the future, telling me that God well help
him go to university, get a good job and travel to America (his dream)! I hope
he is right. Anyway he has become good friends will all of us (me and the
Canadians) and wanted to show us around Gisenyi, so we invited him along.
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| Animal sculptures at our hotel! |
I am very glad he came he came along actually, as he knew
the town like the back of his hand and we would have been completely screwed
without him. For example at the bus station, we were swarmed with hawkers,
trying to sell us “cheap” taxi rides, food and drink, and he just walked calmly
into the ticket office, bought our tickets and showed us which bus to take,
telling the people to go away! When we arrived (after a very bumpy,
travel-sickness/headache-inducing bus ride), he lead us to the hotel we had
decided to stay in beforehand, “The Diane Fossey” which was nice enough, with
big clean rooms and running (cold) water and relatively cheap. The funniest
part was the interesting choice of decoration…as it was surrounded by life-size
wild animal sculptures (which the guide book described as “Disney-on-acid
animal sculptures”!). After checking in, we headed into town, which was very
different to Musanze…smaller, much less built up, unpaved dusty roads, still
lots of shops and people but much more spread out. We walked for about 50
minutes in the sweltering heat to see the “big border” and then another 50
minutes to see the “small border” (which was much bigger!). Again we were lucky
to have Mick with us to show us where they were and explain that we were not allowed
to take pictures, or the armed guards would be very angry and come and delete
them! Neither of the borders were particularly remarkable, it could have been
any busy junction/crossing with lots of trucks and cars and there was not even
a visible D.R. Congo sign…just lots of hand-to-hand-trading (of foreign
currency and all manner of goods between the locals). Mick explained that goods
are much cheaper in the Congo and people bring them over to sell in Rwanda for
a profit.
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| The D.R.C. border |
In the afternoon we went to see the lake, which was
absolutely beautiful, a vast and calm expanse of water, gently lapping against
a sandy beach surrounded by the rolling green hills in the distance and a
pretty well-groomed park separating the beach area from the main road. It was
so big it could have been the sea! Of course there were no other white people
around and we caused a bit of a scene (as usual) as we waded around in the
shallow water and took hundreds of pictures! I decided to walk back to the
hotel, since I was exhausted and wanted to take a shower and rest before the
evening. Unfortunately, although I was confident that I knew where it was, my
sense of direction failed me, I got lost and ended up making an hour’s detour
into town…I had asked for directions from some hotel guards and they nodded
confidently that I was going in the right direction but I guess they hadn’t understood!
I did get back to the hotel eventually after asking some moto-drivers and
declining many offers of rides. We were all exhausted but decided to head out
in the evening to a nearby restaurant, where we had a nice Western-style pizza
and then crashed at the hotel. |
| Mick and the Canadians in Gisenyi |
Our trip to Kigali this weekend was out first “unguided” excursion but I think we handled ourselves relatively well! We knew where to go for bus
tickets this time…the scenery during the journey was very different though as
we were going in the other direction and essentially winding down through the
mountains for the whole 2-hour journey, which was absolutely stunning (but not
so great for Selina and Patricia who got a quite travel sick). I was surprised
at how large the city of Kigali is. As you drive in, you can see it extends for
miles and miles. We were staying in a house, owned by a Canadian organization
that Selina knows an someone from. It was a huge, beautiful house overlooking
the city in the clearly more wealthy area of town near the Prime Minister’s
office, all the government buildings and NGO headquarters. It was almost like
being in another world (or somewhere in California…rather than Rwanda!), with
all the neatly trimmed hedges, clean, paved and painted roads, huge houses with
flowery, groomed gardens and big security gates. I felt a little guilty…but I can’t
deny how good a real hot shower felt!
After dumping our stuff, we set off on foot to visit the
genocide memorial, with a map that a local woman staying at the house had drawn
from us. Obviously we ended up going in the completely wrong direction. Lunch
was an interesting experience…we stopped off at a restaurant on the side of the
road, asking if they were open for lunch, the waitress nodded and ushered us in
to a large room with a bar and plastic chairs and tables. There were only a few
locals sitting inside drinking. We sat for a while, wondering if she was going
to bring us menus. Eventually we saw from the terrace a truck pull up in the
car park below, then our waitress walked down and began loading up our plates
with food from large containers on the back of the truck! After she was
finished, the truck drove away and she brought up four large plates filled with
rice, beans, a few pieces of meat and some fried plantain chips. We were too
surprised and amused to complain or say anything. The food was good anyway
(pretty standard Rwandan fare) and good value (2000Rfr/$3). I am still not sure
if this is normal…but it was definitely a new experience for us!
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| View of Kigali from the genocide memorial |
Giving up on our map (the women who had drawn it had herself
admitted that Africans don’t use maps and that she was afraid of them!), we
jumped on four moto-taxis that took us safely to the memorial. The Genocide
memorial was beautiful, very respectfully and tastefully arranged, with free entry
in order to emphasize access to all and the importance of remembering. The site
consisted of a museum, which takes you through a detailed and informative tour
of all the stages of the genocide, from the history and lead-up to the
aftermath and consequences. The most moving was the children’s memorial section
which displayed along with a large photo, the name of each child, their
favorite food, temperament and how they died, e.g. : “hacked to death by
machete” or “shot in mother’s arms”. There were also exhumed skulls, bones as
well as clothing taken from the massacre sites hanging in a dark room which was
extremely eerie. The memorial gardens surrounding the mass graves outside were
beautiful. We spent several hours walking around and speaking to guides there
who were more than happy to talk about their lives and experiences (most of
them were orphans/survivors!)
In the afternoon we headed to downtown Kigali, where Selina
showed us the Union Trade Center, a new Western-style “shopping mall” that she
had visited before with a starbucks-type coffee shop full of white people using
the wireless and a huge supermarket with Western goods. Most of the imported
stuff was ridiculously overpriced (special K was something like $10!) and the
whole place was pretty garish, but I did get my dark chocolate fix and some
non-dairy creamer J
We left pretty quickly and went to a cooperative market full of local
handicrafts, wood-carvings, bags and jewelry (and quite a few imported from
Kenya). I decided to get all my gifts/souvenirs out of the way so spent all my
money in there, bargaining with the lovely (but very persuasive) venders.
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| enjoying some Western food! |
Arms full of bags of baskets and wood-carvings we decided to
get a real (car) taxi back to the house and had a nice long shower, tea and
snack break. Eventually around 9pm we set out to find a restaurant recommended
in the guide book, but after almost an hour of walking figured it did not exist,
so ended up going to a nice Western-style bar/restaurant Selina had been to
before, with burgers, pizza etc. It was full of white people and
wealthy-looking Africans drinking and listening to loud hip-hop and R&B.
Strangely enough, there was also a bakery attached to bar, which seemed to be
open all night serving locals who would stop off to buy a baguette or cake! We
waited about an hour for our food and didn’t eat till after midnight…but we are
pretty used to waiting by now so weren’t too surprised and the food was
delicious! (maybe just because we are so used to rice, potatoes and beans by
now) I had a fish brochette, Patricia-chicken, Selina-pizza and Matt- a good
American-style burger J.
Afterwards we went back to the house and chatted over tea and dark chocolate
until 3am, which is the latest I think I’ve stayed up since I have been here!
It was a really nice weekend and I definitely hope to go back to Kigali, since
we only covered a small part of the huge, diverse city and I would definitely like
to see more of it (plus I might need to re-stock on the dark chocolate!)
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