Well – I have now officially learned the diverseness of this tiny little country. This weekend I went camping in the Savannah (yes this really does exist) and saw an elephant, giraffes, hippos, crocodiles, impalas, buffalo, birds of many kinds, baboons, monkeys… and the list goes on. It was really fantastic, but quite the adventure. So prepare yourself (especially to my parents) because this was far from being the most organized or safest adventure I have ever been on**…
** I would like my parents to note that I am returned safely with all limbs and no problems. So, no matter how bad things sound, remember I’m safe, so it doesn’t matter any more…
It all began with a jeep. There were seven of us in total on this trip… The German, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Belgian, the American, the Quebecoise and me. I realized about half way through that although only two of us actually came from the same country, the four which originated from Europe had all grown up in closer proximity then the other Canadian and I. The language spoken was English, but it was certainly only my first language, since the American had grown up speaking Hindi (although now, her language of comfort was English).
The jeep was a seven seater, so we were certainly safe from that perspective. However, it took us only five minutes of driving before one of the famous Butare rainy season downpours hit and we realized that the windshield wipers (which had worked fine 10 minutes earlier when the man who rented us his jeep had shown us how to work them) were broken. We pulled over, tried to get them to work, but no cigar. Then, out of nowhere they started working again, and we celebrated, and continued along our way. The rain stopped and everything seemed fine, until, of course, the rain started and the windshield wipers didn’t. Alex, the German, and the driver, braved the rain and the lack of windshield wipers and continued. However, due to the hill like nature of Rwanda, we soon found ourselves going up a mountain which was now heavily covered in fog, with no windshield wipers, and surprise, surprise, no lights! (we had also tested to see if these worked, which they had, and later we realized we just didn’t’ know how to turn them on). We pulled over for a bit, trying to get the windshield wipers to work, but again, no luck. So we cleaned the widow with a towel, and continued on until we had to do the same thing again. It was a slow process, but it worked out in the end.
The lights were not a big deal, until darkness came (here it comes at 6 everyday, since we are so close to the equator). Then we had no lights and constantly had people flashing their high beams in our face to let us know we didn’t have our lights. It was also a Friday night, which is a busy time to try and get into Kigali, and we were stuck behind a bunch of trucks which were having a hard time getting up the hill. This is very common, since they are so heavily loaded and the hills are so steep. Usually you just pass them, but it’s easier said then done since you have to go around the truck by briefly risking your life in the lane of opposite traffic. It’s best to go when there is no one coming, but it’s hard to tell when that time is since the sharp turns every few hundred meters seriously limit your ability to see.
Needless to say we made it into Kigali, and then into the district where our hostel was just outside of Kigali (the name of which has escaped me), parked our car in a very small space and congratulated our driver on getting us to Kigali unharmed!
We proceeded to having diner. We looked around for a place to eat, trying to avoid ‘mélange’ which is what we eat everyday and consists of a buffet of mainly carbs which you are able to take as much as you want of as long as you get it on your plate the first time you go up to the buffet (the trick is to make a mountain on your plate). Most Westerners don’t like this food, I don’t mind it so much, but didn’t mind the idea of eating at another restaurant.
Well we showed up, it was in a hotel, and the prices were insane (between 4-6$ when a mélange can be around 0.50$). Nonetheless we ordered our food, found out quickly that they in fact did not have any of the food we wanted and that their chef was at home sick. We found this out about 30 minutes into sitting down. No matter, we all ordered something else, and hoped it would come soon since we were so hungry. Unfortunately, the food didn’t come until 3 hours later, and by that time 3 of us had to be back to the hostel since the rooms we were staying in had a curfew of 11pm. Alex and I went back to the hostel to talk with the manager and beg him to let us stay out a bit longer so we could actually eat. He was drunk, and agreed reluctantly. We went back to the restaurant, ate, and came back right away. In the end perhaps the early curfew worked out for the best since we were having to leave so early the next morning. But all the same, this was my second time in Kigali, but my first time with friends – and a part of me was really hoping for a night out on the town!
The next morning we woke up, packed the jeep, filled the radiator with water (otherwise it overheats) and crossed our fingers that the wonky battery would not do us wrong. Luckily we were fine and we headed into town to buy some food for the weekend of camping (which in the end consisted of some cheese, peanut butter, jam, white bread, and groundnuts (like peanuts unroasted)… oh, and some banana liquor of course). Then we went to eat breakfast. This I have to talk about just because it was so funny since we ordered “an omelet, with some bread.” Now, you would think this means an omelet, with some bread on the side to go with it. But when our food came we had an omelet with bread cooked inside of it. Hah!! It was actually really yummy so I didn’t mind, but all I could imagine was the people in the kitchen cooking saying “those crazy muzungus, bread with omelet, what are they thinking!?”
We drove the 4 hours or so to Acagera National Park, close to Tanzania, where we were going to spend our weekend. It was a fairly uneventful trip and the landscape changed so much from dense forest hills to spread out flats. Who knew such a little country could be so vastly different from one side to another?
We turned off to go up the 28km dirt road which led to the park and, oh! Surprise, surprise, we had a flat tire! In the middle of a village, not many cars around…. Hmmm… We took off the spare tire from the back, looked for the jack and realized it was broken. (the man had shown it to us before also, but the people who had checked it didn’t realize it was missing the top part). So we went on a search of someone with a vehicle, but luckily a taxi-van came down the hill, we flagged them down, and begged them to help us with our spare tire. Which they did (thank God), and we were able to continue on our way. But upon further checking of the other tires we realized they were all quite old and in battered condition – and we were about to go on off beaten roads to look at animals. Let’s just say the rest of the weekend was continued with a sense of possible tire flats and doom if that happened.
Luckily, it did not.
The safari was amazing. It was absolutely beautiful, and we camped on the top of a mountain overlooking a beautiful lake. We saw an elephant (which has been my dream, so yay!), and zebras, giraffes (we got really close to one too), buffalos, impala, about 15 hippos… in all we were quite lucky compared to most tourists since we got to see so many animals. It was completely worth it. The entire time felt so surreal, is it really possible that giraffes exist? I still can’t tell if the weekend actually happened or not – or if I just dreamed all those beautiful animals, trees, plants and landscape.
I did the drive back from the park to Kigali. This time, thank God, not hitting a motto-taxi driver like I did last time I drove in Africa. Actually, I managed to make it the entire way without hitting anyone of anything! Plus it felt really great to be driving a jeep in Africa, kind of made me feel like some NGO worker with some important logo on the side of my car. Maybe one day…
In Kigali Alex took over for the rest of the drive. Everything seemed to be going extremely well until we went around a curve passing another vehicle and then the police (which are all over the roads) pulled us over. Eeep. One was a police officer, the other a military man carrying the oh so popular, cheap, and easy to find AK-47 in his hand. The police officer tried to explain that we had passed the truck when there was a solid white line, which was illegal, and meant we had to get a ticket (which are quite expensive here). We tried to pull the ‘we don’t know what’s going on, we are only mzungus in some strange country!’. The police officer seemed ready to let us go but the military man just started yelling we had done something wrong. They asked for Alex’s license and went to write up a ticket. A few moments later however, they came back and said they would let us go. Lucky us Alex’s license was in German and was probably far too confusing for them to actually figure out what information to write down to give us the ticket. We managed to make it to Butare with no stops and no car troubles from there.
We had so many car troubles, and had bent the bar of the roof carrier of the man’s jeep that we thought we were going to be asked to pay for everything. We agreed that most of it was not our fault, except for the bar, and that we would pay that back. We said we’d offer 20,000RWF (about 40$) and be willing to go up to 35,000RWF. However, he had been so stressed about lending us his jeep for the weekend that he didn’t care that the tire had gone flat (I think it was going to happen soon anyway), or about the windshield wipers, or the bar. He was just so happy his jeep was back. He took 20,000 for any damages, but I think he would have let us give him nothing. He even drove us all back home he was so relieved. Another lucky for us I suppose, since we thought we were going to be really stuck for cash.
This was a wonderful weekend it was so nice to be camping again (although we were supposedly supposed to see hyenas and leopards in our campsite which we didn’t). All the car troubles worked out in the end, so to me it was just a gong-show which ended ok. Now I really feel like I’m here and I’m excited for this weeks tasks. My to-do list is a full page long, with notes and everything. On Sunday some new volunteers are coming from America and the house is going to be full. I’m starting to really feel comfortable and adapted here and am super pumped for the next 3 months.
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