Rwanda

A week with my Mum! We jointly decided to meet in Rwanda, for mutually beneficial reasons. For Mum, she gets to see Rwanda, a place that she has wanted to visit since 1994, and for me, I get to visit a different country in East Africa.

Things I didn't realise about Rwanda:

1)How tiny it is! Really small, like the north west of England, or equivalent.
2)How hilly it is. 'The land of a thousand hills' as they call it. Very different from Northern Tanzania, which obviously has mountains (Kili!) but they are few and far between and very much landmarks. In Rwanda driving through is like being in Postman Pat's van going over the hills.
3)That they don't speak Kiswahili. Annoying, as I am just about getting to grips with it and am back to being completely deaf again.
4)The extent of the genocide – I just about remember the news coverage from 1994, and the graphic pictures, but when you realise just how small the country is, you begin to realise that absolutely everyone living in the country at that time was affected. Something that is really hard to comprehend, no doubt impossible without living there and being able to speak to the people.

After a short flight from Kilimanjaro airport, I was met by Mum in Kigali, along with a woman called Pascalina who inexplicably told me her name repeatedly, 4 times. Pascalina passed us onto our driver for the week, Patrick and we drove off for a tour of Kigali.
Now that really didn't take very long. For me, I was overwhelmed by just how developed it was. All very neat and tidy and well maintained roads which people don't drive along like lunatics, and getting used to the hills. But after that, there really isn't anything to see in Kigali at all.
The one 'attraction' that they do have is the Genoside memorial. An excellent remembrance of what happened in 1994, filled with information notes, videos, pictures and artefacts from that year that give testament to what happened. I won't try and recount it here, other than to say that it is almost entirely unbelievable what occurred, and how preventable it would have been, and mainly, the hope and peace that there now is in the country.

After visiting that, and randomly driving into the courtyard of the 'Hotel Rwanda' hotel, Patrick whisked us away into the countryside. The drive to Ruhengeri was about 3 hours and really reinforced the meaning of a land of a thousand hills. Really beautiful scenery and people along the way. I'd like to think that I could recognise a marked difference between the Tanzanian people and the Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis, but I really can't. They all look amazing to me. Patrick was very helpfully pointing things out to us along the way, but my questions were much more about the people and their way of life, how many children they have (about 7- 8 in the villages) how the orphans have coped since the genocide, how people make a living (mainly subsistence farming- about 90%) and things like that, to try and gauge the difference between Rwanda and Tanzania.

The main noticable difference whilst driving along is just how clean and tidy the place is. This can be attributed to 2 things, firstly, plastic bags are banned in Rwanda, and it is actually enforced, so you don't see any around the place, in ditches etc. Secondly, on the last Saturday of every month every citizen has to spend the morning cleaning a certain area of their town or village (or Friday if they are not allowed to work on the sabbath). Such a good idea, so simple but not only does it make a beautiful unspoilt country, but also helps to build the community spirit in the areas where it was all but destroyed 16 years ago.

Ruhengeri is a small market town of not great note, other than it is on the doorstep of the Volcanoes national park, which plays host to about 15 families of Gorillas. Clearly, we couldn't visit Rwanda without going to see the Gorillas!
The next day we rose early and drove up to the briefing, where our driver fought for a good group for us and we were briefed about what to expect. The two golden rules were: don't get closer than 8m, and don't use the flash on your camera. We were put into a group with 6 Americans, 3 nice, 3 not so nice, and set off. It was about two hours fairly easy hike initially through farmland and then, once inside the park, through bamboo which was being cut down ahead of us. We had a guide, some optional porters, a group of trackers and our own personal armed guard in case the and elephants decide to get a bit friendly. After the trekking we came to a clearing and were asked to leave all bags, food and drink and take only our cameras as we were very close to the family.

It's hard to explain the how it feels when you come face to face with the gorillas for the first time, but I guess privileged would sum it up quite well. I don't know if we were particularly lucky or not, but the family we visited had a giant Silverback who was more than happy to allow us to watch him playing with his sons and grooming them. We spent an hour with them, which went very quickly, but we really felt like we had spent some quality time with them. They are very playful creatures, the boys fighting just like human siblings, although with a little more chest beating than is common amongst their cousins. We got lots of photos and then spent the rest of the time just sitting watching them, making sure the Silverback didn't come too close! Very satisfying. Must watch 'Gorillas in the Mist' now, really.

The next day was similar with a trip to see the Golden monkeys. Very funny animals who live in the bamboo trees. The trek to see these was much shorter and we were there in 20 minutes. Again we had an hour with them. They were much harder to photograph as they are pretty agile, so you'll have to take my word for it that they are there. This time our group was 4 Germans and the two of us. For some reason English people seem to be a bit scarce in Rwanda and we didn't see any others the whole trip. Due to the early morning we had finished that excursion by 9.30, so Patrick drove us to a lodge for morning coffee. It was very nice sitting in the gardens pretending we were really staying there, and Mum spent some happy time bird watching. I sunbathed.
After that we went to a trade fair in the stadium where I bought some earrings and Mum bought tea and coffee, then we watched some traditional dancing before heading back for another of our many meals in the hotel. Good food, but we really did exhaust the menu in our time there!

The third full day was also spent in the Volcanoes National Park, this time doing a hike to the top of the second highest volcano, of which I forget the name (Bisoke). Though at 3,711m, not a small climb. That said, they had very much prepared us for the hikes to see the gorillas and monkeys, both of which had been very light hiking with not much height gain. Also, with having conquered Mt. Kili the month before, I felt no trepidation about climbing a mere sub 4000m peak.

How wrong I was.

We were both completely unprepared for the hike that day. The guide the previous day had said it would be about 3 hours up. When she said up, we didn't realise that she literally meant straight up the side of the mountain. Not like Kili at all, no nice meandering paths to get you accustomed to the altitude. Not at all. Instead a sheer climb up steep muddy slopes. No man made steps, no nice benches to sit on, no long drop toilet, just us and the mountain.
Mum and I were sharing a day bag, and as this was a longer day we had 2 litres of water, a packed lunch, walking sticks and numerous spare layers in it. I was the designated carrier up the hill, but after about an hour it became clear that the $10 it would cost to hire a porter would be money very well spent.
After about 2 hours of this high CV work out along with a good thigh and bum workout, the guide said we were almost half way up. What! That could not be possible. We started quizzing him about the altitude we had gained so far and mentally working out how much further that meant we had to go, surely he was lying. Surely.
The answer was yes, he was a bit, and then when we came out of the rainforest into a grassy clearing, we realised that there really couldn't be all that much further to go. We were right, it was 20m. We were both exhausted, and very happy to see the crater lake emerge from the cloud before us. An hours picnic was next whilst we girded ourselves for the trip down. Whilst quicker, this had its own obstacles.
Mum's knees being two of them. The natural steps really were steep, ie for the two of us not particularly long limbed creatures, well over knee height. On the way up this was a work out, on the way down it was more of a tumble down a mud slide. Somehow I managed to stay upright, but I think I was the only one. Most people were filthy by the end after several falls, and Mum was lead down the whole way by a porter. She would like me to point out at this stage though, that she is 61, and no one else on the hike was over 35.

The hike took us 7 hours in total, and we were both whacked by the end, though we made a mental note that our guide fell asleep on the car ride down.

The next day took us to Lake Kivu. The hotel we were in Ruhengeri had been nice, but the one at Lake Kivu really was something special. It was on the shores of the lake, with a private beach as well as a swimming pool and beautiful gardens. I was very much looking forwards to 3 days relaxation and sunbathing. Unfortunately this was slightly dashed by the rain, but I got a couple of good sessions in.
The rain wasn't the only disturbance though, the other was the presence of a UNHCR conference in the same hotel. Cue outrage from all the other guests that a public authority such as that would stump up for a weeks retreat in one of the smartest hotels in Rwanda for all of it's Kigali staff. Almost unbelievable. This outrage apart, they were also pretty speedy when it came to the meal times. If you timed your arrival at dinner just 5 minutes late it was like there had been some kind of ram raid on the kitchen and there were mere scraps left. Unfortunately we only realised by the second night that we could eat in the bar and order a la carte instead, much preferable.

Other than enjoying the view, the most notable thing we did at Lake Kivu was a morning trip over the border to the Democratic Republic of Congo. We had to buy visa's, of course,and Patrick was not allowed to drive us into a different country, so we had to walk across and one of his friends picked us up and drove us around. We were in the city of Goma and the contrast to the Rwandan side was palpable.

It was clearly much poorer, more crowded, dirtier and overrun with UN staff and troops. We were really not allowed out of the car, as they considered it too dangerous, and Patrick's friend took all our photos for us, as people would not react well to tourists taking them. Goma had also suffered from a lava flow over the city in 2002. This was clearly still evident and there were piles of lava rubble everywhere, and most roads were unpaved.
The public beach on the Rwanda side had been a place of volleyball, swimming and sunbathing. In Goma it was basically a cross between a market and a laundry.
There were 'guns not allowed' signs everywhere and the main form of transport other than UN Landcruisers were home-made wooden bikes for transporting goods. Pretty ingenious actually, but probably not the sign of a wealthy country. A really interesting trip – good to see the difference a border can make.

That evening we fought to stay awake for the world cup final (one of us won this battle, the other didn't!).

And that was really the end of the trip. The next day we drove back to Kigali slowly, exactly retracing the route we had come in and saw it all again. Still as stunning the second time around. Due to flight issues I had a night in Kigali that night, but Mum started her laborious trip home, so she saw me to my hotel room and we said a quick but tearful goodbye.

A night in Kigali on your own is not a particularly thrilling prospect, unfortunately, so I bought some picnic food with small change and watched the best that the 3 channels had to offer. Not much. Early night in preparation for my 4am wake up call.

The flight home (is Arusha home?!) was pretty cool, as on the approach we had an excellent view of Mount Kili and Meru and the pilot allowed all 7 of us that were on the flight into the cockpit to take photos.

Back to work!