2:44 AM – Maggie is asleep next to me. I just got off the phone with my family and I can’t sleep so I’m writing. We’re stopped in a small town and at almost 3:00 in the morning : in the foreground there are men running up to my window and tapping on it and proffering sticks of fried beed. These people area really tireless. In the background a man wearing a tan raincoat is dancing to reggaeton coming from one of the shops. He’s oblivious to the bus that just pulled up – content to mingle with the music and the dust and the darkness of the night.
The rest of the night I was captive to my imagination – thinking about all I’d experienced in Africa, about what Rwanda would be like, about not being with my family, about wondering if our stuff is going to get stolen. The countryside looks the same in the dark – all I feel are the bumps of the dirt road and all I see is dust being spewed from under the bus. Its 4:50 and we’ve been driving for a few hours now. There is a film of dust in the bus. I can taste it in my mouth.
The night capitulated to the inevitability of day and I was graced with the beauty of the Rwandan countryside awakening outside my window. I watched the sun come up through the early morning mist and haze, over the gently undulating landscape – it was bright and red and powerful.
I nudged Maggie awake.
“The sun is rising.”
She opened her eyes and smiled. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever witnessed.
We weren’t yet in Rwanda “The land of a 1,000 hills” but already the landscape was changing – it was breathtaking. Hills as far as the eye could see and then the hills reached up gently and kissed the awakening sky.
“How are you doing?” Maggie asked me, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“I’m okay. Havent slept a wink and my leg is killing me.” The leg where I tore my hamstring was on fire, absolutely throbbing. I don’t know what it is about certain bus (and even worse, matatu) seats but the angle of the seat was terrible and I was in pain.
“I can give you a Vicotin for the ride back.” She offered.
“That would help.”
We arrived at the border 5 hours later – at around 10:30. Suddenly everyone started getting off the bus. Maggie and I had no idea what has happening.
I grabbed my bags and started to walk off.
“Leave your bags.” The conductor commanded in broken English.
I wasn’t comfortable with this. We were supposed to leave our bags on an empty bus?
We did as we were told and got off the bus. We were the last to get off and as soon as we got off it drove away.
WHAT?!
We watched as the bus with all our stuff drove down a street and past a slew of other trucks and buses.
Someone yelled that we needed to exit Uganda before entering Rwanda. Someone handed us a yellow piece of paper. We filled it out with our passport information and then waited in line for 15 minutes. We got checked out of Uganda and started walking on the no-mans-land street our bus had gone down that connects Uganda and Rwanda.
As soon as we passed the gate we were swarmed with money exchangers.
“I give you good rate!”
“I give you 730!”
“Mzungu! Change here.”
There had to be 60 or 70 of these guys. They were all over Maggie and I but we barged through.
Finally we got to the Rwanda border and there was a money exchange counter. I’ve done enough travelling to know that the border exchange rates are terrible, but Maggie and I made them compete against each other until we got a decent exchange rate. Oh yeah, they don’t like Uganda shillings so we had to use our spare USD. We drove the money changers from a rate of 760 to 775 and changed about $200 each. It was tough – they speak KiRwandan or French in Rwanda – we were just beginning to encounter the troubles we’d have with absolutely no common language between Rwandans and us.
Maggie and I hadn’t eaten since the night before so we got some chappati and mondazzi and then wandered around looking for our bus. We finally found it – but – they had taken everyone’s stuff out and laid it against the side if the bus.
This is funny – so Rwanda is apparently a super environmentally friendly country – they weren’t checking the bags for guns or drugs or something like that – they were checking them for plastic bags. Under NO circumstances can you bring plastic bags into Rwanda – they take this very seriously. So random.
The drive to Kigali was incredible – the bus weaved in between gigantic hills that had been terraced to make them agriculturally productive. The combination of all the terraced hillsides created a pituresque amalgam of manmade and natural beauty.
We got to Kigali at noon.
We didn’t speak French or KiRwandan.
We didn’t have a place to stay.
We didn’t have a map.
We didn’t have a schedule for what we were going to do (although we had a couple vague ideas).
We pulled out a Lonely Planet guide for East Africa. There was a Rwandan tourist office.
“Lets just go there.” I said. “They can help us figure stuff out and they probably speak English.”
As soon as I said that a man came over to us. “Where are you going?” He asked.
Maggie and are naturally guarded with anyone approaching us, but we needed help.
“We are trying to get to the tourism office.”
He smiled. “You can take a bus. Right this way.”
We followed him to a couple matatus.
“You can take any of these into the center of the city.”
We were waiting for the hammer to drop. For him to ask for money or tell us to give him something or give us a brochure for a hotel. Nothing. Just a wonderfully nice man. How pleasant. That was just the beginning of the wonderful demeanor of the people we met in Rwanda.
The matatu conductors were relentless, however, one of them grabbed my wrist so hard he turned me around as I was walking. I glowered at him. I don’t do well when people touch me. It’s a pet peeve.
Finally we got in a matatu and headed off for a section of town we didn’t know. Nobody spoke English. Finally a man got on that understood broken English and he said he was getting out at the same place we were.
We got off the matatu and still had no idea where the tourism office was.
We approached man with badly stained teeth and he spoke broken English and was very kind and showed us to the building.
The lady at the counter, “Peace” (what a cool name) told us about the different attractions Rwanda had to offer: gorilla hunting, volcano trekking, genocide sites, genocide museums, lakes…etcetera.
We had heard good things about the volcano treks and decided we wanted to do the two-day trek up Karisimbi mountain which is 14,783 feet high and located half in Rwanda and half in the DRC. To put that in perspective – Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa, is 19,931 feet - - so Karisimbi is no joke.
Before we could do Karisimbi we had to get more money (it cost $250 per person and we only exchanged $200 at the border). Rwanda is weird in this regard – it’s the only place I’ve ever been to that doesn’t have ATM machines. We set out from the tourism office looking for a bank when we were approached by a nice, well-spoken, genteel-looking boy (maybe 17 or 18).
“The guard told me you are looking for a bank.”
We nodded.
“I’d be happy to show you.” He smiled.
He took us to the bank where we were able to withdraw money through an incredibly complex and annoying process.
Afterwards we were walking out.
“Thanks (I forget his name now) – we really appreciate it.”
“Yes no problem.” He said. “But I do have one favor to ask of you. My parents were both killed in the genocide and tomorrow is the day the killer is set to go on trial – I want to go but I don’t have enough money for the bus trip. It costs 4,800 Francs ($10).”
Now here is a tough situation. The kid was really nice and helpful and well put together (he was wearing a designer scarf for Christ sakes!) and its true that everyone in Rwanda was touched by the genocide and it was believable that he lost his parents – but what are the chances that his parents killer was to be tried tomorrow?
I knew I was being had…but for $10 I didn’t think it was worth it to grill the guy about his story. What if he was telling the truth? Then I’d feel terrible.
Maggie and I gave him 5,000 Francs each.
“Good luck tomorrow.” I said. “I hope justice is served.”
“I hope so too.” He smiled.
We walked back to the tourism office with our money. “Oh, Karisimbi is on waitlist.” Peace said. “You can’t climb that until next Thursday.”
Wish she told us that before we withdraw an additional $500 from the bank. Oh well.
“Can we climb Bisoke?” I asked. Bisoke was the second tallest volcano, further in towards the Rwanda side. It was 12,172 feet – still pretty serious elevation but was only a one day trek.
“Yes. You can do that.”
Great. Maggie and I elected to make our way to Kiniji (where the volcanoes are) without a guide because guides were a lot of money and we’re pretty experienced at travelling around via public transportation.
With the rest of our day we decided to visit a genocide museum in an outer province of Kiniji. To say the museum was sickening is an understatement. The genocide that took place in Rwanda was possibly one of the most horrific incidents in ALL of humanity. I say this because over 1,000,000 people or 1/8th of Rwanda died in the massacre. And it wasn’t like the slaying of the Muslims in the Balkans, or the slaughter of non-Arians by Hitler – these people all killed EACH OTHER. Literally neighbors killing neighbors. Friends killing friends. Husbands killing wives. Brothers and sisters killing each other. I am not exaggerating. The fear was so pandemic and so deep that people didn’t trust others they had known for their whole lives. The pictures and the stories of how brutually people were slaughtered were unreal. After the memorial we walked outside to a mass burial grave that contained over 240,000 people.
240,000 people brutually murdered and buried beneath where we were walking. 240,000…its hard to understand.
It was a moving experience - this didn’t happen in the 1940’s when my grandfather was a young man. This happened in 1994 when I was 13 years old. I struggled to bridge the logical gap between the kindness of the Rwandan’s I’d met earlier in the day with the savagery of what took place not long ago in this small country.
Afterwards we took boda boda’s back to our hostel (which had NO running water). All I can say about Rwanda is that the aftermath of the genocide hangs above the city like a dense, heavy fog. EVERYONE…and I mean EVERYONE knew someone that died in the genocide. The city is quiet. You can’t talk about whether you are a hutu or a tutsi. What your religion is. What your political orientation is. The fabric of this country is indelibly scarred with the memory of what happened 15 years ago. It’s an imprint that will never leave Rwanda and its people.
Maggie and I ate dinner reflecting over all we’d seen.
“Maggie have you noticed how many amputees there are?” I asked.
She looked around. Almost at any instant you’d see someone with an arm or leg missing. They were everywhere. Often times during the genocide if you weren’t killed you were disformed. They hacked off arms and legs like they were nothing and today, 15 years later these poor souls were still walking around hopelessly disfigured.
Maggie and I watched as the light faded away from the city. Kigali became queit, almost ominous. There was no nightlife, no raucousness – just silence – as if the city was still penitential over the brutality of 15 years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment