Rwanda - Been There, Done That!

I love travelling. That should come as no surprise seeing as we are spending a year in Uganda, have lived in China, and frequently find ourselves away from home. It is our hope to travel at each break while we are in Uganda and have easier access to another part of the world. Seems silly to not take advantage of another piece of the world that is on our doorstep.

We have just returned from 5 days in Kigali, Rwanda. While Rwanda is beautiful, it’s not because it is in Africa that a place is super exciting. Kigali is a big city. Lots of parks, very clean, fresh air, but I think it’s like going to visit Drumheller. Everyone goes to Drumheller to visit the dinosaur museum but once you’ve spent the day there, it’s hard to find enough to fill the next three.

After the 45 minute flight to Kigali, we entered a lovely airport with no signs as to where to go to get a visa. We had our entry forms and as we were filling them out, a man in a suit came up and

grabbed Corey’s passport right out of his hands. Corey grabbed it right back and told him to keep his hands off his passport. Turns out the man was a visa checker and needed to see our letters of admission from the government before we could go any further. He initialled our papers and we were allowed to buy a visa and go through immigration to get our luggage. It took a little longer than expected because Bree had applied three times and had never actually received an admission letter. She had printed all the documents to say she had applied. A woman took those and disappeared and we waited. She could have gone on her lunch break and we would have still waited without knowing who she was or where she was. The passport grabber told Bree that it was ok and she went to pay and he told her to go to the immigration desk. “Before I pay for the visa?” “No. Pay first then go.” Exactly what she was doing.

The hotel had arranged for a pick up and we were whisked to the Iris Guesthouse. I would just like to say that if you are a driver and picking up mzungu, it would be nice to have some sort of commentary about the place instead of being on your cell phone all the time. We had that in Tanzania as well so that is just an Eastern Africa thing maybe?

The hotel was unbelievable. We booked a 2 bedroom apartment and it was three times the size of our home in Kelowna. It reminded me of a casa in Mexico: slate floors, three bathrooms, big bedrooms, upstairs patio, surrounded by huge trees and so nice and cool. It was perfect. Until the toilet overflowed because the arm on the float broke and water went everywhere before Corey could get the water turned off. He went to tell the front desk clerk and she said “oh” and that was it. I then went 15

minutes later to ask about getting it cleaned up and she said someone was coming. But not within the next 30 minutes… Then when we went out, I asked about the toilet being fixed and she said that someone was coming later. When we got back it still wasn’t fixed so Bree asked the front desk manager who was now at the desk and he had no idea what she was talking about it. He was most upset. It was repaired within 15 minutes. Sigh.

Monday afternoon after we checked in, we walked into town. I had located the Tourism office on the map in my book so we headed there to get a city map. Kigali touts are very aggressive. Each corner we were assaulted by paperboys and people selling phone cards, jackets, jeans, maps, postcards and even possibly themselves. In Uganda, they ask if you want something and when you say no thank you, they move on. These ones keep walking next to you and repeating the same thing in a variety of ways. One guy got so close in my face that I was startled by his proximity. I

was incredibly uncomfortable and not so happy when we got to the location of the tourism office and found the building demolished.

We went into the Nakumatt mall, pushing the taxi drivers aside who were blocking our entrance (how can I buy groceries and need a taxi to get home when you are stopping me from even going in???) and asked about getting a map there. Yes, there were maps in the book section. Great! So in we went and were told at the book section that they were all sold out. Out we went. Luckily there was a coffee shop in the mall and we were able to have a coffee milkshake. I always feel better after a coffee milkshake! We decided to see if the bookstore up the street had a map so we pushed our way through the touts and climbed through them in front of the bookshop (“Books! Maps! Postcards!”) to see if they had anything. I found several postcards but stood at the counter for 10 minutes without any of the 6 clerks coming to sell them to me. And they didn’t have maps either.

We headed back home and decided to see if the Hotel Mille Collines (the one from Hotel Rwanda and Sunday at the Pool in Kigali) had a map. We met a lovely concierge names Fiable (Reliable) and he gave us a map, showed us what was around, told us how to get to the post office and then walked us to the gift shop to buy postcards. When they told him that they were sold out, he offered to go into town and buy some for me. He also gave us his number to contact him if we needed a driver. It was like a little piece of heaven and an angel had come to soothe my angry heart! Recharged, we followed the back way to the post office and got stamps, postcards, and then walked home. We ate an amazing dinner at the hotel and booked a driver (not Fiable but the same gentleman who picked us up, Fidele (Faithful)).

Tuesday, we were picked up by Alfred, the owner of the car company, to be driven to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum and two memorials 30km south of town. Alfred either yelled into his cell phone or completely ignored us. When we actually started asking him questions about the city, he put in his ear buds and turned on the radio to drown us out. I had to ask him once to stop looking at his cell because he kept weaving into oncoming traffic and then he was dozing off as we drove to the villages. A nightmare.

However, the museums and memorials were powerful and heart-wrenching. The museum has over 250,000 people buried there and the two other memorials have over 45,000 each. That is just a fragment of the people who were slaughtered during the genocide. The statement that affected me the most said: “Genocide is not a single act of mass murder; it is thousands of acts of individual murders.” Haunting. The two guides at the Ntarama and Nyamata are survivors of the genocide. The two churches are locations where the people took shelter by the thousands and were betrayed by their priests. In Ntarama we were actually led down into the crypts where there are thousands of bones piled on top of each other and each coffin has over 250 skeletons inside. There is one coffin under glass and it contains one woman with a baby tied to her back. She was impaled after being raped by over 20 men. It is only 20 years ago that this happened. It doesn’t seem possible. Rwanda is now one people – no Tutsi, no Hutu, no Twa. Just Rwandans. The distinction was originally made by the number of cows the individual had, not even real tribes.

Wednesday we arranged to have Fidel come to pick us up at 9 to explore the craft markets and other museums of note. I had asked Martine at the front desk to tell me where we should go in Kigali and she had nowhere to suggest because we had already been to the memorials. I had my trusty map though and there was a tourist information board identified on there so that was going to be our first stop. The office was in a big office building and the man helping us had nowhere to suggest apart from the memorials either. But the map did show where the craft markets were as well as all the coffee shops. We started our eating tour at Brioche where we had yummy pasties and coffee before heading to the shoe market cooperative. We were hoping for leather shoes but found a rubber boot factory that was out of production. We did spend a lovely 30 minutes chatting with the owner who has family in Montreal but who has never been able to secure a travel visa for his wife to visit their daughter and family there. We then tried finding Rwanda Nziza, a craft cooperative that was under the big yellow Tusker sign, or so said their webpage. We drove past it 3 times as the sign is now a green Heineken sign and their shop sign is dark grey on black so you can’t read the name. Even the boda drivers had no idea where it was. That’s saying a lot.

We went to the Presidential Palace in the afternoon and asked Fidele to contact one more craft market that sells weaving and tapestries while we were exploring. I showed him in the book and said “Do you know this place?” He said that he did. “Can we go after here? Is it far?” “Oh. I don’t know it, I can just read the name of it.” There was a number with the name so I asked him to call. We had a great tour of the never-ending palace filled with secret rooms and a balcony big enough for a helicopter so that the president could escape easily. It even has a chapel and Pope John Paul II preached there when he was visiting Rwanda. Ironic that the president had such elaborate escape and hiding systems at his home and his plane was shot down in the next field as it was coming in for landing just before the genocide got really nasty. We saw the wreckage. We also saw where he kept his giant python. The following president lived there but the current president actually lives the next block over from our hotel. Beautiful grounds. Lots of guards so we didn’t get any photos.

When we got back in the car and were heading back into town, I asked Fidele if he had called the weaving market. “No. I don’t have MTN.” I wonder how long we would have driven before we would have realized that we were heading back to the hotel! We then decided to go to another coffee shop near the tourism office and we asked him to go back along that street so that we could look for it. He tried to go back into the parking lot of the tourism office but we caught him in time to continue along the street. When I told him the name of the café, Shokola, he said that it was not in that area. He drove to another location nearby but certainly not on the same street. We ran through the rain and entered the coffee shop.

“Where is the bathroom?” asked Bree. “Down the hall.” So off Bree went and back she stormed. “Do I need a key?” “Yes.”

“Can we get to the bookshop downstairs without going outside so

that we don’t have to get wet?” “Yes, down these stairs.” So down we go and into another coffee shop below. “How do we get to the bookstore?” “Outside and around the corner.” Through the rain. Sigh.

The next morning we decided to walk around a bit to explore the city further. We knew about the touts and were going to be strong. There were also little shops that were highly recommended for unique clothing and Rwandan handicrafts and the websites even had maps. How naïve we are. We did go into one shop and each time I stopped to look at something, the woman would come and stand right in front of what I was looking at, between me and the item. I asked her, “Do you have to stand so close to me?” She replied, “Yes.” We didn’t buy anything!

As it was early on a Thursday, there were fewer touts and we had our ‘go away’ faces on so we weren’t as bothered by them. We decided to have coffee milkshakes again before ending our walking tour at the post office. Corey ordered samosas which came in an order of 1 or 3. “I’ll have the three samosas

please.” He returned with 3 plates of 3 samosas and fries. Don’t even ask about Bree wanting a chocolate milkshake with a banana (he came back to make sure she really wanted the banana bread mashed into her milkshake) or my coffee milkshake which was a vanilla milkshake with a shot of coffee. Don’t deviate from the script please.

 

The post office has a box that is for ‘local’, one for ‘foreign’ and one for ‘unknown’. I hope my postcards that were put into the ‘foreign’ box were dropped in the right one. I didn’t ask what the unknown box was for.

We spent the afternoon reading on our balcony. It was a lovely afternoon and I read “Y: A Novel” from cover to cover. Well worth the read if you are looking for a great Canadian story.

Our time at the airport was just as funny… I was yelled at by the guard to “make line” when I was standing next to Corey before we went through the security screening. Bree was asked if she was sure there was no laptop in her bag. Sure? I was told to go to the next ticket agent with a big sweep of arms and hands but when I got there, she wasn’t ready for me because her computer was down. That’s why she hadn’t made eye contact and called me over. So the guy next to her tssst-ed me (a lovely sound, as nice as being whistled at or snapped at) and called me over. I told him that she had our passports and he tssst-ed me again. She gave me back the passports but not my papers so I asked for those back. “Which?” “The papers I gave you.” “Papers?” “Yes, the ones on your counter please.” “These are yours?” Sigh. I had the same conversation as we left the other counter with the guy who had tssst-ed me. “Papers?”

We went through emigration without the guy actually even looking at us or saying anything to us. Not sure how he managed to know we were the same person as our passport. We went to the café and sat for 20 minutes before the 4 men at the counter stopped laughing and playing with the espresso steaming wand and came over to see if we wanted anything. We sat in the comfy chairs in the corner (they were the only ones left) and we had the joy of a young couple who sat with us on each other’s lap. The chocolate croissants that were in the display cabinet took so long to come we thought they had forgotten and we had to gulp them down to get through the next layer of security. (“Laptop? Sure?”) The women’s bathrooms were beyond anything I experienced in China. Then we sit in the gate area and suddenly everyone gets up because one attendant made a hand gesture that meant “get on the plane.” We weren’t asked if we were heading to Entebbe until we were outside and heading to the plane.

Rwandans in Kigali are not friendly. There are always exceptions but we didn’t encounter many. They even make the obtuseness of Ugandans seem minor. Ugandans always smile. Rwandans never do. We did eat some amazing food though: lunch buffet for 3,000 francs ($4.50) at Afrika Bite and Lalibela, two meals at Khana Kazana, three meals at the hotel restaurant, and one dinner at Heaven where I had banana flower salad. It was delicious!

I don’t regret returning to Kigali and travelling out of Uganda. However, my advice to anyone thinking about going would be to spend a day in Kigali before and after going to the Virunga Mountains to do a gorilla trek. Don’t just go to Kigali unless it’s just a long weekend or you need a few days of fresh air. My lungs loved it. Ironically, Corey had massive asthma attacks because the trees that were in bloom were pollinating and there was no smoke and burning garbage to mask the allergens! He breathed a sigh of relief when we got back to the hazy air of Uganda!! We spent a lot of time laughing on this trip and all agreed that it could have been one day less. We do “tssst” each other now and bark to “make line” so we have some funny memories to share. Enjoyable but not an experience to be repeated.