Leah’s Travel Page

I’ve arrived in Rwanda! Along with the five other people I’m travelling with, Zach, Charles, Sam(antha), Lindsay and Steph. The bus ride here was actually not that bad, considering what it could have been. That being said, it DID involve 24.5 hours in the back row of a coach with seats whose reclining function didn’t work, so they kept on bouncing back and forth. Since the Kenyan roads are so abysmal – and that was the part when we were trying to sleep – it felt rather like trying to take a nap on a rickety wooden roller coaster that didn’t slow down at the station for three hours. Another analogy that came to mind at the time – during a particularly rough period when I’m sure I lost several layers of tooth enamel – was the feeling of sitting on top of a jackhammer. Nonetheless, I probably mustered a few hours of decent sleep, interrupted by a 4am border crossing into Uganda, where it was so pitch black that Lindsay tripped over a foot high curb and fell right into an open sewer! Luckily it had rained recently, so the stench wasn’t too bad! And, at 4 in the morning, that’s just about the funniest thing that can happen. We stopped again in mid-morning in Kampala and then reached the Rwanda border at about 4pm. It was really lucky, because Canadians and Americans don’t need visas to enter, so we saved a bunch of money. And the landscape driving from the border was absoutely stunning – Rwanda is just as beautiful as I’d heard, with amazing steep green hills and beautiful valleys filled with tea fields (and roads in FANTASTIC condition – better than Vancouver for sure!).

It had just gotten dark when we arrived in Kigali at 7, so it was a bit chaotic getting off in the terminal – some people we had befriended on the bus ride made us all panicky telling us to grab our luggage quickly so no one ran away with it, and then we were sort of shoved into cabs to get to our hotel, which was called Hotel Gloria, and turned out to be the sketchiest place in the entire world. It was just kid of this big barren room with a small desk and a couple of rooms leading off of it, and there were a bunch of weird men standing around in the ‘lobby’. Not only that, but they’d given away our reservation and only had two beds, which was actually kind of a blessing because it gave me the creeps. So we were told the name of another hotel nearby- Hotel Kigali – which turned out to have space and was totally secure (it didn’t have running water the first night, which was annoying, but they fixed it by the next afternoon- it was out for the whole neighbourhood)…Phew, it was a bit hectic that first night for sure. But we were tipped off by some other mzungus at our hotel that there was an all-you-can-eat buffet right around the corner for only 500 Rwandan francs…less than $1 US!!! Naturally, we’ve gone there every day since.

The next morning I woke up and got my first view of Kigali…not at all what I had expected! The whole city (only about 250,000 people I think) is sprawled out very dramatically over 3 or 4 big hills, with roads going in all kinds of crazy directions and brown houses built up and down the hillsides. Our hotel costs only about $9 a night, including breakfast, so we’re definitely able to live on the cheap here! We set out that morning for the Tourist Office to ask questions about various destinations, and bumped into another Canadian named Jen – she just finished up her job as a MuchMusic VJ, you might recognize her as the one with the short red hair. She’s been in E Africa since January too, almost the same places as us, doing various journalistic things…And she’s freelancing an article for the Toronto Star/Globe on the “New Rwanda”, which we may very well be referenced in! I’ll let you know more details if it comes out. We met up with her again for our 500 FRw dinner and then went out for drinks afterwards – it was great to talk to another North American who’d gone through the same experiences as us!

We spent that afternoon at the Kigali Memorial Centre, and brand new museum (2 years old) about the 1994 genocide. It was an unbelievably well done exhibition, and of course really emotional, but I learned so much from it. It was multimedia, so there were videos of peoples’ testimonies who lived through it, and boards with the history of what happened before, during, and after it (for you Canadians, there was a whole section on Romeo Dallaire). Then, the second floor had a display on some of the other genocides of the 20th century (Cambodia, Holocaust, Balkans, Albania), and outside there was a burial site of 6 mass graves where 250,000 victims were interred, whose bodies were found in Kigali alone. One woman who was at the museum (she was African, but I don’t know if she was local) left the museum sobbing uncontrollably, supported by her friend. Some of the videos, displays and descriptions were so difficult to watch – especially when you contrast it to the Rwanda of today, which is so unimaginably different and peaceful and friendly and safe, much more so than any other place I’ve been. Looking at the human and physical landscape, I just can’t rectify the past with the present of the country – I have so much respect for and am so impressed buy the people here. They have overcome so much heartbreak and devastation, and I have absolutely no idea how they’ve done it. There is some evidence of the genocide in the physicality of some people; it breaks my heart to go into a store where the vendor has massive scars on their face, or a pass a fairly young person begging on the street who has no legs…I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. But for the most part, you would simply never know otherwise.

Another thing about Rwanda is how friendly the people are! Some particularly like it that I ca speak French to them, but even others – for example, we have dinner plans tonight with a group of people we met yesterday at the 500FRw buffet (can you tell yet that I’m obsessed with this place?). Yesterday we had lunch with a British guy who’s a student at Oxford in African Studies (Mom, Dad and Adam: he lives at 62 Woodstock Road!!), who just came running up to us on the street to say hi! And when we were at the bank getting our money out (which is almost IMPOSSIBLE to do here – note to any future travellers, get out all your money in Nairobi or Kampala!), we met an expat from Chicago who offered for us to stay in his 8-bedroom house, and a local man who insisted that he drive us to the Memorial because otherwise he was simply not being a good host to these visitors to his country! It’s really awesome how genuine everyone is! Basically, the whole impression of yesterday was that is was just a great day – man I love it here.

This morning we slept in (Well, Zach and Charles didn’t – they went for a walk around and played some pickup basketball with local kids who thought they were hilarious), and then went to spend a relaxing morning at the Hotel des Mille Collines, the name of which you might remember from the movie Hotel Rwanda. Even if you’re not a guest there, you can sit by the pool for free, and go swimming for $3. It was crazy to be at such a remarkably historical site – although it’s not the same building that’s in the movie at all!

Anyways, tomorrow we’re heading south for Butare, which is supposed to have an amazing National Museum. I’ll update you next from there! Bye!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.