Adventures in Rwanda

Adventures in Rwanda

24^th November 2006
When I think "Rwanda", I think "Genocide". Rwanda's horrific past is just overpowering.

But, Rwanda is more than the Genocide. Today, it is a lively country making great strides towards economic reforms. With the help of a ton of aid money from guilty countries, it has fantastic roads, a recovering education sector and is attempting to remold itself as an the IT capital of East Africa.

This piece is going to be all about the interesting times me and some volunteer buddies spent in Rwanda. The genocide will not be mentioned here, but does gets its own piece over here.

Getting there

Taxis, boda-bodas and buses got us from Mukono to Kigali, the capital city if Rwanda.

Anyone how tells you the joy is in the journey, not the destination is lying to you. I'm beginning to hate the travel in Africa. Traveling along a bumpy road with a psychotic driver is just not fun.

What made the trip to Kigali especially bad was the Nollywood movies. "Nollywood" movies come from the land of Nigeria and are notoriously bad. Well, I think so anyway. Most Africans seem to love them judging by the enormous numbers of them that are churned out from Nigeria. They are poorly filmed, poorly acted and have practically no production values.

What made the one we watched on the way to Kigali even worse was the Bugandan overdub. The movie was filmed in English, but every so often the audio will cut out to be replaced by a single guy doing the overdub. Which means you couldn't really watch the movie due to the Bugandan overdub, and couldn't really tune it out and get some sleep as the English would always draw you back. Ugh.

Staying in Kigali
We caught an over priced taxi to our accommodation that was somewhere between an hotel and a backpackers.

We ate just about all of our meals there. The meals were very nice with such diverse dishes as toasted sandwiches, spaghetti bolognaise and even (a slightly disappointing) steak.

We spent many hours at the hotel, talking about everything and nothing, as my good mate Rowen used to say.

It was during such a talk-fest that I got a super photo of Spike. Sorrrryyy bud!

After a good night sleep, we wandered out in the town itself. At one point we were looking slightly lost and a bunch of kids came up to us. They were quite insistent on a) giving us unwanted help and b) insisting we pay for the privilege. They continued to swarm around us like flies, even when it was obvious we were not going to give them money.

All of a sudden Spike, let out a roar and the kids left in a hurry. One of them was attempting to open her camera case and pilfer her camera. Little shit.

We also got swarmed by people as we entered the city center. One guy was very obnoxious and kept on bugging me to change my currency with him. I told him that had I already changed it at the border, but he just kept at it. I told him to go away, which he did, only to return a few minutes later to try again. I told him that even if I did have money to change, I would never deal with him.

Later on, we needed to hire a private taxi to get somewhere. Chris returned with the same guy that had been harassing me. I looked at him, scowled, and said, "No. Not you". Five minutes previously, I had been his "good friend", but now I was hit with a, "Fuck you, you motherfucker". Lovely.

When we were waiting inside another taxi, I was scrolling through some of the pictures I had taken on my digital camera. The taxi driver said something to me in French that I didn't understand and then held out his hand. I assumed he wanted to see the pictures, so I held it out for him to see. He tried to grab it, and I pulled it back and said "Neda Ssebu", which is Lugandan for "No Sir". Why I was talking to a French speaking Rwandan in a dialect of Uganda still eludes me. I assume he would of passed my camera to his mate on the outside of the car, who would of taken off. He tried a similar trick on Monica later on.

The guy was a bit of a fool all around really. His taxi ran out of fuel not once, but twice. Idiot. It meant our trip to a memorial was much delayed. We spent about an hour or so of waiting in the Rwandan countryside. That itself wasn't so bad though. As long as I have a bunch of juggling rocks and some staring African kids, I can keep myself amused.

The money changer, the pick pocketing kids and the idiot taxi driver are all fairly typical Rwandan experiences. I've come across lots of that sort thing in Africa, extremely pushy locals, but nothing on this sort of level. It was all a bit much really.

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(c) 2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
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