Weekend Trip to Butare and Nyanza: The Modern and the Ancient!

So a few things I never thought I’d be doing in Rwanda…Yoga (!), walking around a university campus more modern and developed than any I’ve seen in Europe or the US…and eating Chinese food!

On Tuesday, I joined Selina for a yoga session with a local cooperative of girls. They are part of an organization called “Ubushobozi” (ability), started by some Americans in 2008, where they train local young girls (in their late teens) from a background of poverty in vocational skills like sewing, weaving etc. so that they can make beautiful products (which they sell locally and at a few locations in the US) to sell for profit in order to make a living and support themselves. We had been to see them a few weeks ago (at the suggestion of some friends who we saw with their beautiful bags!) and they explained to us how the cooperative works. They girls go in every day and have a daily schedule of sewing and working, as well as English and computer lessons from local teachers. They also have weekly yoga and dance lessons. The dancing is the traditional style, but the yoga came from a foreign volunteer I think, who taught them the basics and gave them some yoga mats etc. and they absolutely love it! Anyway they had seen Selina in town last week and invited her to join them and she said it was awesome…so this week I decided to tag along as well. It was really fun…but quite unlike any yoga I am used to in West! They did have all the same sun salutations, breathing exercises etc., they just did them a bit differently…and everything was superfast! We jumped from position to position at a crazy speed and the girls seemed to love watching me and Selina sweating as we tried to stretch into some of the crazy positions! I even got a round of applause when I managed one (that I had never seen before in my life), which involved bending down, reaching one arm behind my back, one in front and joining hands between my legs and then lifting my leg up into the air! We had a lot of fun with the girls, even though they speak hardly any English. And it was great to see how much fun they have together… It really felt like they were all a big happy family! We are definitely planning on going back this week.

This weekend we visited Butare, which we had planned a few weeks back. Unfortunately Patricia couldn’t join us as her host family wanted to show her their cow farm! (Cows are a big deal here…I’ll explain more about that later). So Selina, Matt and I set out on the (long) road to Butare…which is a city in the Southern Province on the other side of the country. It is regarded as the “intellectual capital” of the country as it is home to the biggest and oldest university as well as many other educational institutions. It also has the National Museum of Rwanda and many prominent cathedrals and churches. We were expecting the South to be different to the North, but we were in no way prepared for how different! The landscape leading into the town all looked very similar, green rolling hills dotted with mud huts etc. but the actual town was like a different world! There were huge modern houses everywhere, wide paved roads, several roundabouts, street lamps painted in the colours of the Rwandan flag…and everyone seemed to be well-dressed! We almost felt scruffy! We joked that if you wanted to give someone a biased picture of an African development “success story”, this was it!

part of the university campus

Once we had found a nice-looking and cheap guesthouse and dropped off our stuff, it was already late afternoon so we decided to go check out the university. After quite a bit of confusion and wrong turns trying to figure out where it was with the rather misleading map in the guestbook, we found the huge campus on top of the hill. Walking through it felt quite surreal…it was so quiet and peaceful. The grounds are beautiful, surrounded by exotic trees and gardens and there is an amazing view of the whole city. The buildings themselves are super modern-looking, which seemed strange since this is supposed to be the oldest university in the country. But we realized (and read) later that the university was destroyed during the Genocide and subsequently completely re-furbished in 1995 and officially re-opened by President Kagame. Peeking into some of the lecture halls, they looked much more modern than the ones at my university and we could see students with their laptops hooked up, studying and chatting!

Chinese food in lunch trays!

According the guidebook, “The Chinese Restaurant” (it’s actually called that) is the best place to eat in town, so we figured we try it for a nice change from African food…and out of curiosity at what on earth the Rwandan take on Chinese would be! After some communication difficulties with the waiter and the usual hour and a half wait, the food came. And it was pretty much the same fried noodles, beef, rice and vegetables that we are used to. The funniest part was that Matt and Selina had ordered set meals (noodles, beef and vegetables) and they came in metal prison cafeteria-style lunch trays with each food type in a different compartment!

The next morning we went to see the biggest Cathedral in Rwanda, which was huge and beautiful but strangely had three sets of pews going out in three different directions from the alter…which made us wonder how the priest can give a service facing all three sides at once! We also went to see the national museum, which was really interesting and packed with information about the history, traditions and culture of Rwanda. There were traditional weapons, tools (I never knew there were so many types of hoe!), instruments (one with strings made from ox nerves!), clothes (mainly loin cloths and capes made of black tree bark and animal hides before cotton came in). One of the most interesting things I remember reading was a description of the tribal belief in divination. There are many many differ forms, but one involves a diviner placing the client’s saliva into a bird or bull’s mouth and then whispering into its ear the question they want the answer to. They then kill it, open it up and decide the answer based on the arrangement of the inner organs!

Biggest cathedral in Rwanda

In the afternoon we got a bus to the nearby town of Nyanza, which used to be the royal capital of the ancient Mwami Kings! Interestingly, their history is somewhat mysterious and there are many gaps and unknowns, since the only evidence of the Kingdom’s existence before the 15^th Century is based on oral history. Though we rather stupidly got off the bus too early in town and had to walk about 5km uphill in the sun to get to it, the museum was great! It was an hour before closing, but we were told the tour would only take about 45 minutes. A young Rwandan lady, who looked as if she was dressed for a special ceremony in a beautiful silk wrap, and spoke perfect English, gave us a guided tour of several types of restored Mwami palaces. When I say palace, this is a HUGE structure made of hay, straw and bamboo thatched together make a kind of dome (sorry I was too cheap to pay the fee to take pictures…you can google it!) Inside felt very spacious but cozy at the same time! We had to take our shoes off and it was basically one huge space with a few thatched partitions and the floor covered with straw mats. There are separate areas for men and women of course….the women being the King’s many wives, who come one at a time when invited accompanied by their ladies in waiting. The King’s bed was ridiculous, it took up about quarter of the whole palace! The guide made a clearly tried and tested joke about it being “King-size”.

Behind the palace were two much smaller almost identical straw and hay structures...one for the “milk girl” and one for the “beer boy”, responsible for the King’s milk and beer respectively, both of whom had to be virgins!

Rwandan ceremonial cows (not taken by me)

Afterwards we saw the cows. Now I knew that cows are highly regarded in Rwanda, and if you call someone a cow, it’s a complement suggesting they are intelligent! Apparently cows are a symbol of both power and wealth…the more you have the wealthier/more powerful you are. So as you can imagine the Mwami Kings had quite a few! They’re not just any cows though, their special Rwandan cows with a deep shiny brownish black coloring and both males and females have huge long curved horns. They do appear rather regal…not like our black and white milk cows! Traditionally they were used for purely ceremonial purposes and never milk or meat.   

We left quite satisfied at having our fill of Rwandan culture and history and jumped on a bus to Kigali. We were quite tired when we got there, ready to be soon on our way home to Musanze. Unfortunately what we didn’t realize is that the buses stop running at 7pm! We got there just after 7.30…So that put a bit of a kink in our plan, but we figured we would just find a cheap hotel nearby and return in the morning. Unfortunately the bus station is not in the nicest area of town, so the selection of hotels was not the most appealing. But we sucked it up and got a couple of rooms in rather dingy, institutional-looking motel with broken toilets and headed to a nearby buffet-style restaurant as we were starving. The food was cheap and edible normal buffet stuff- rice, beans, chips etc. But unfortunately it didn’t agree with Selina who was up all night with food poisoning in the miserable stuffy hotel…

our not so luxury hotel...

So not such a wonderful end to what was otherwise a great weekend…but even Selina agreed it was a really good trip! It was so interesting to see the huge contrast of the city of Butare. It really reflected how much the rates of development can vary even in such a small country…