Alright, the bus ride from hell. We left our hotel in Dar es
Salaam at 4:30 in the morning, sharing our cab with a Tanzanian family who were
way too weirded out about sharing a cab with a couple of mzungus. When we got to the bus depot, I started to
get a little worried about finding the right one as it was a veritable
clusterfuck and it was way too early to use my formidable Africa skills. Abdul had thought this through though and
arranged for our driver to point us in the right direction. We waded through
said clusterfuck until he pointed us towards a bus. The driver said to us “Burundi?” to which we
replied “fuck no” (apparently it’s really dangerous right now, and you’re only
allowed a three-day visa anyway). Thanks Mr. Driver-man, swing and a miss. Our actual bus was two spots over though, and
plainly marked ‘Kigali’ and so we got on. When we approached the luggage hold
we were shouted at in rapid-fire Kiswahili and eventually understood that there
was no room for our bags down there, which was confusing as there were about
five people on the bus. But it’s always worrying having stuff down there, what
with random thefts and so on, so we happily agreed to keep them with us. When we sat down though, we were told that we
had to pay for the privilege of keeping them up in this part of the bus. We said no, we were fine with them being kept
below and were not about to pay for a situation that had been forced on us. In extremely broken English (and smatterings
of Kiswahili) two workers said that the hold was full and demanded money from
us. We insisted that this was not our
fault and that we weren’t paying jack-shit.
But, unsurprisingly, they persisted. It went on and on like this for
probably about fifteen minutes, and it ended with me shouting at the guy and
then proceeding to ignore him. After a
while he got tired and left us alone, but we were irate. Africans are always trying to get money out of white people in any way that they
can, like it runs through our blood or something. Along with a number of other things, this is
one of the reasons I are very ready to finally leave this continent. It was not even 6AM, we were tired and not
excited for our day and a half bus ride, and these fuckers were trying to get
us to each pay an additional 30,000/= each for the privilege of keeping our
bags up top, because the baggage hold was too full of cargo that had no right
being on a passenger bus. We were
rightly pissed off, and our trip was off to a smashing start.
I’ll try to spare the mundane details, but here’s a brief
breakdown of our 36-hour bus trip: it was hot, sweaty, bumpy, and bathroom/food
stops were infrequent and not properly announced. When we did stop to get food
or use toilets, we were never aware exactly how much time we had before the bus
would leave without us (and there is no doubt in my mind that it would have)
and the ‘toilets’ were disgusting and crowded.
We were also apparently the first white people in the world to have ever
travelled from Dar to Kigali because, more than almost any other point during
my eight months in Africa, people would not stop staring and gawking at us. By
about 5PM I had finished the book that I had started that morning and boredom
started to set in. Sleep was not a possibility as the road was so bumpy that
every thirty seconds or so all the passengers would be jolted into the air as
our driver sped over a pothole, not bothering to slow down. There were also
speed bumps every two minutes which infuriated me to no end. Why place speed bumps on the country’s main
highway unless it’s passing by a small town or pedestrian busy area? Like many
other things in East Africa, it makes no sense and there is NO reason for it.
Every time we stopped to drop someone off or pick someone up, our bus was
swarmed with people selling all sorts of shit, usually young children, and when
their eyes met my window and got a glimpse of my white skin, they shoved and
pushed each other to get at me. I feel
bad for these kids that are basically forced into spending their free time
hawking random food and goods.
Regardless I wasn’t in the mood to entertain them and usually just
closed my eyes and waited for the bus to start moving again. At about 10:00PM the bus stopped in some
hole-in-the-wall excuse for a town. I
estimated that we must be near the border by this point, and Abdul, who had
arranged the bus for us, said that it would drive straight through the night,
without stopping for us to sleep. Still,
I had the feeling that we were settling in, but when I got off and asked the
driver how long I had before we left again, he said “5 minutes” so we rushed to
use the toilets. After about fifteen
minutes, when no one else was back on board yet, I let my grumbling stomach
convince me to go hunt down some food for Hillary and myself. As I approached
the various food stands that were be frequented by hoards of bus travellers
like myself, I was, predictably, swarmed by requests from various vendors to
choose their respective stands. I picked
a friendly looking chap and dealt with the random jeers and behind-my-back
jokes that the dozens of Tanzanians around me were laughing so heartily
at. I wanted chips, plain and simple,
but while he was frying them up he convinced me to get some egg with it. What the hell. The end product was an
omelette of sorts, which he started to put on a plate before I said that I
needed it to go. So he dumped it in a
plastic bag, poured some suspicious looking chilli sauce in with it, handed me
two toothpicks (utensils, obviously) and sent me on my way. I picked up a couple of sodas and, proud of
my decent success, returned to the bus to show our dinner to Hillary, walking
with the swagger of a Masaai warrior after a successful hunt. It was slimy and
difficult to eat out of a plastic bag using toothpicks, but it was actually
quite tasty. We then noticed that our driver seemed to be sleeping, and seeing
as how we had been stopped for at least half an hour, we found unoccupied seats
to stretch out on and attempted to get some shut-eye as well.
We slept until 6:00AM.
I was surprised and pleased with myself that I had actually managed a
solid few hours of sleep because I am a really picky and light sleeper. Without a proper bed, I’m useless (unless I’m
drunk, then stick me anywhere). I was jolted awake when we flew over our first
speed bump of the day (the first of many) and I started to think about the
border crossing. Getting into Rwanda as
a Canadian is not as easy as it was a year ago.
Stephen Harper has made a lot of enemies across the globe during his
stint as our wonderful PM, and the Canadian image is suffering greatly from
it. We had done what I was told we
needed to do by applying for entry visas online three days earlier, but without
a piece of paper in my hand, I was nervous.
We arrived at the border a couple of hours later and put our game faces
on. Border crossings in Africa are never fun, and even less so when you’re not
sure if you’ll get across successfully. The exit from Tanzania went fine, and
we exchanged our money into Rwandan Francs (rather illegally, we’re fucking
rebels shiiiiiit) when we found someone who would give us a half-decent rate.
Then the sketchy part: entering Rwanda. When we finally made it to the front of
the lineup at immigration, they glanced at our Canadian passports and asked me
where our visas were. Shit. My heart sank. I told them that we had applied online three
days ago, and gave them the tracking numbers that the Rwandan government
website had given me. They did not look
impressed, and I was genuinely afraid that we would not get in (for which I had
no backup plan). They made some phone
calls and eventually told us it would be fine. We waited nervously for more
confirmation, but after a nerve-racking thirty minutes, the proper forms (or
something) came through and we paid our $30. (Thanks for that by the way
Stephen. It would have been free if you
weren’t such an insufferable twat.)
With that stressful ordeal behind us, we rushed to meet up
with our bus, worrying that everyone would be angry at us for stalling
them. Luckily for us though (sort of)
they were just starting to search everyone’s bags. We identified ours and opened them for the official
to check through. They didn’t do a very thorough job though, and I was left
wishing I had snuck in that kilo of cocaine I had my eye on in Dar (seriously,
I could have gotten through with fucking anything;
one wonders why they even bother checking if they aren’t going to do a decent
job). After that was over (no body-cavity search this time, damn) we boarded
our bus, happy that the end of this hellish journey was within reach. From the border to Kigali it would be less
than 3 hours. That is, if the bus had
left right away. For the next 2 plus
hours, the bus did not move. Some new passengers were joining us and they were
apparently using the bus as a cheap way to transport cargo, and there was a lot
of it. Every time I looked out the
window to see what the gee-dee hold up was, I saw half a dozen workers
transporting huge sacks and boxes of who knows what from behind the bus to the
luggage hold. Every time I thought
“there can’t possibly be any more” two guys carrying massive loads came into
view. I didn’t mind it for the first
thirty minutes, was getting a bit anxious at the one hour mark, became irate
after ninety minutes, and was downright furious when we had been sitting there
for two hours. There was nothing we could do however, but just accept our fate
of arriving in Kigali much later than anticipated. When we eventually got going, the scenery
around us changed instantly and dramatically. Rwanda is known as the “Land of a
Thousand Hills” and it rings quite true.
The countryside was beautiful, and my anger towards the jackasses with
forty tonnes of cargo quickly evaporated as we rolled over the lush green
hills. Another immediate change was that
the roads were absolutely sublime. It was the first pothole free tarmac I had
seen since South Africa. I couldn’t help
but think how awesome it would have been if I could have somehow justified
bringing my longboard (obviously not even close to worth it, but Rwanda made me
miss that sonofabitch). They also drive on the right side of the road in
Rwanda.
 |
| My best attempt to get a picture with beautiful Kigali |
I occasionally stopped daydreaming about bombing hills on my
longboard and was randomly struck by sudden bursts of realization that I was in
Rwanda: home of one of the most horrific genocides of the past twenty
years. While watching a group of kids
wave at the bus from their parent’s road side shop, I couldn’t help but picture
what this scene looked like exactly eighteen years previous, when, in some
parts of the country, the roads were littered with rotting corpses that had
been carelessly hacked to bits by ruthless machete-wielding morons. It also got
me thinking about how strange it is that Rwanda has basically built their
tourism industry from this horrific event.
I mean, sure, some people come to Rwanda to trek the mountain gorillas
(though it can be done with higher success rates and more easily in Uganda),
and the country is also worth seeing for the fact that it is generally
considered the safest and least corrupt nation in Africa, but there’s no
denying that most people come to Rwanda to see the genocide memorials and learn
about the people’s reactions to it.
Hell, that’s why I convinced Hillary to bus across god-awful
Tanzania. We couldn’t afford to trek the
gorillas, and didn’t have the time to visit the national parks and lakes of the
country (and we were sick of animal-viewing by this point anyway).
After finally arriving at the main bus park, we were
promptly escorted by a very persistent taxi-driver into his car. He assured us that he knew where our hostel
was (he didn’t, he had to phone them), and we soon realized that we had been
ripped off quite a bit (5000 Rwandan Francs, about $10, when getting a
moto-taxi, or boda-boda, would have cost us each 500), but after sitting on a
bumpy, sweaty bus for the past 36 hours, we couldn’t possibly care less about
losing out on a few bucks. We barely haggled and set off for Discover Rwanda
Youth Hostel. On the way, I noticed that
there were many large groups of people marching with banners and wearing purple
clothing and armbands. This turned out to be because we had arrived on the Friday
at the end of the week long anniversary of the start of the genocide. Exactly eighteen years before we had arrived,
the genocide was just kicking off. It was quite a heavy introduction to the
country, even if we had picked Rwanda to travel too mainly to learn about the
genocide.
Our hostel itself was fine; about average as far as the
African hostel experience goes. It was a
bit pricey at about $15 per night, but Rwanda is a very expensive country by
African standards. It is actually meant
to be the most expensive country on the continent, which is why we planned to
spend only three days there. Our activities in Kigali were honestly nothing to
write home about. We spent the three
days trying to avoid spending money, which unfortunately meant eating at the
dodgy Chinese place up the road more times than we would have liked. The
interesting thing about Rwanda though is how they play by the rules. There are no corrupt officials (or at least
we didn’t meet any, which we did daily on ever other stop in Africa), and
nobody breaks the law. Some of you may remember my horror stories of reckless
boda-boda drivers in Uganda carrying up to four people at a time and driving on
the wrong side of the road through dense traffic. Well, they have bodas in Rwanda as well
(called ‘moto-taxis’), but these guys are legit. They all carry two helmets (one for the
passenger) and refuse to take more than one person. I had heard from other backpackers about the
legendary law-abiding that took place in Rwanda, but I was very sceptical. I had spent the past six plus months avoiding
cons and money-grubbers at every corner, so I was not ready for the lack of
such annoyances. Upon reading my blogs
about Uganda, when Hillary came to meet me in Africa she assured me that there
was no way she would be riding a boda. I told
her that they were virtually unavoidable, but she held firm to her conviction. Turns out that I was right (as usual), but
Hillary was able to ease into the experience by visiting Rwanda first. We
eventually got to experience the read deal in Kampala, but that is for the next
post.
We met some decently interesting people in Kigali. I talked
at length about the NHL playoffs with this one guy from Nashville (this was
back when both the Canucks and Predators were still in the running; shut up I
don’t want to talk about it), and also shot the shit with a pretty interesting
guy from Montreal. Most of the time
spent at our hostel though was devoted towards trying to avoid this older
British guy who did not know the meaning of “SHUT THE FUCK UP. SHUT THE FUCK
UP. SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!” He was staying in our dorm, and for the first thirty
minutes of conversation, it was bearable, pleasant even. He then began
dominating the conversation, and turning every topic back towards how he’s
spent the last few years living in Botswana and how this apparently makes him
the fucking president of Africa. He must have been at the age where senility
kicks in because after a while his stories just started to loop. We hear about how people from Botswana are
allegedly the “laziest people on Earth” no less than five times within an hour. We heard him dominating a conversation the
next morning at breakfast, repeating the exact same shit as he had spewed to us
earlier and eliciting similar amounts of eye-rolling. He seemed like an alright guy,
but at the same time he was the sort of person that just makes you wish that
everyone would slowly burn to death and you would never have to come in contact
with another human being again.
Seriously, fuck that guy.
And now for the unpleasantness, and the reason for our trip
to Rwanda. Eighteen years ago, all the horrors of colonization and forced
racial separation that occurred pretty much across the map in Africa during the
19th and 20th centuries came to a fever pitch in Rwanda.
The Belgians who had colonized the area earlier had separated the indigenous people
into two groups, called Hutu and Tutsi.
The idea behind creating a distinction was complicated, but essentially
it was because when the Belgians eventually left, they wanted to hand control
of the country over to a group of people that could be trusted to not cock
everything up. To them (and unfortunately, to a lot of colonizers) this simply
meant “as un-black as possible.” The
distinction was made on the basis of many characteristics and factors, a few
being height, width of nose, and how many cows a man or his family owned. (This
makes me feel a bit inadequate what with my zero cows. Sorry, this topic is gross so I’m probably
gonna throw some bad jokes in here and there.) When the colonizers left and
power was placed in this hands of one forged ethnic group, the other began to
resent the situation, and I think rightly so. One group of people was being
favoured for no real reason, and it caused a surge in ethnic tension. This conflict of course evolved for many
years in the 1980s and early 90s, but to make a long story short let’s just say
that it soon got a liiiiiiitle bit out of hand. On April 6, 1994, an airplane carrying
Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntarymira was shot to
the ground as it was approaching Kigali’s international airport and both men
were killed. The violence started immediately following this event. The
repressed Tutsis began violently attacking any and all Hutus that they could
find, and over the next 100 days, a messy genocide unfolded. An estimated 1,000,000 people were hacked to
bits by machetes in the streets of Rwanda, and the world did absolutely fuck
all to stop it. The situation is of course much more complicated than I have
made it appear in this paragraph, but for the sake of brevity, and also for the
sake of not vomiting up the Subway sandwich I just ate, we’ll leave it at that.
It was an absolutely horrific event, and the scars have
lasted for a long time. The people of
Rwanda have taken it upon themselves to never forget that this happened, or why
it happened, and their efforts to deal with its aftermath in a positive way are
inspiring. The Kigali Genocide Memorial
is free to visit, and so that’s what we did.
Upon entering the building (which was absolutely packed with people), we
were immediately greeted by a 30-something woman absolutely losing her
mind. A lot of people were crying, but
she was violently convulsing as if she was having a seizure. She was being carried outside by three men
who were having a hard time containing her.
I think that she was re-living some vivid, disturbing memory of 1994,
but I can’t be sure. The memorial itself
is very well done, and holds no punches.
Blame is shared fairly throughout the exhibit, between the colonizers
that created the artificial divide, the international community that turned a
blind eye, and of course the perpetrators of the crimes themselves. After
walking through the exhibits of still photos and stories written of the event, we
entered a hall in which hung thousands of photos of Rwanda men, women, and children
who had been killed during the slaughter.
It was a dimly lit room and the sheer number of photos was overwhelming,
and emotion got the best of me. Those
that know me well might recall that I’m somewhat of a robot. I didn’t cry when any of my grandparents
died, nor when my cats died, and only a little bit when MJ died. However, sitting in this room with the faces
of thousands of people staring at me, who had been violently murdered and
sometimes raped, for no reason other than that they belonged to a different
artificial ethnic group, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I sat and soaked it in
for a while before I had to leave.
Luckily for me, the next room contained an exhibit with real human bones
and skulls that had been saved from the wreckage, and were kept by the genocide
memorial society and put on display so that would-be genocide deniers could
stand face to face with the hard evidence.
We thought we were finished but there was a second floor
(yayyyy!) and so we marched up there, gleefully anticipating what goodies awaited
us. What joy I felt when I rounded the corner to be greeted with gigantic
letters reading “Children’s Room” and spent the next twenty minutes reading
personal stories of various kids that had been killed. Their methods of death were detailed very
well, and were presented on handy little information boards along with their
favourite foods and activities. It was
not a fun time. The final part of the exhibit was one I was not expecting. It was a more holistic look at why genocide
happens, and included analyses of several genocides of the past century. Included were all the ones you would expect:
the Nazi slaughter of Jews and other groups, the Armenian genocide, and Pol Pot’s
reign of terror in Cambodia, but it also gave me some new information. I had never heard of what occurred in Namibia
in the early 20th century, to name an example, and having just been
there a month previously, it shed new light on my experience there and my
feelings towards the large German population of the area.
Having finally seen all that the memorial had to offer, we
solemnly left and flagged down a couple moto-taxis back to our hostel. Nothing
too exciting happened in the days that followed. We did try in vein to secure last minute
permits to trek the mountain gorillas, the supposed highlight of many a trip to
Africa, but it was not to be. Said
permits generally need to be arranged months in advance, and the various
tourism agencies that I emailed were not responding. At a minimum price of $500 per person though,
I was not overly upset about my failure in securing the permits. It was time to
start planning the last leg of our trip that would see me return to Uganda (one
of my favourite countries that I've been to so far) and Kenya, if only to catch
my flight from Nairobi. This meant yet another lengthy bus ride across the
pothole-filled roads of Africa. We opted
for an early morning bus, and woke up one morning shortly after 4:00 AM to
catch a lift to the bus station. The roads were empty, which meant higher
speeds, and we were each loaded with 20 kg of crap.
It was an intense ten minute drive to say the least. When we arrived at the bus station, and after
making sure that our bags were being stored in the baggage hold and not stolen,
I noticed a familiar face. Abdel was
there, kayak and all. I had met Abdel
months earlier in Uganda. He’s been
living in Rwanda for the past two years and makes occasional trips to Jinja to
kayak. It was really strange to run in
to him, but it immediately got me excited for my return to The Hairy Lemon,
even though it was to be brief.
The bus to Kampala was something around twelve hours and was
nothing too exciting. (After the journey was detailed in the beginning of this
post, nothing is worth writing about.)
The border crossing has legendary status among Africa backpackers as
being one of the longest and most painful in Africa, but it was fine. After
shooting all around Southern and Eastern Africa, I was finally back in a place
I knew and loved: Kampala. This time
though, I would actually have to stay in a hostel
(what am I? a backpacker?) instead of Hollie’s friend’s sweet digs, but it
would be fine. Anyway there’s Rwanda for
you, in all its strange glory. My next
post will be a (hopefully brief) detailing of my return to Uganda and Kenya,
where this whole crazy trip started. Stay tuned and, as always, keep it classy.
