Rwanda -- part 1

I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable after our return from Rwanda. Reading about genocide in a book simply is not the same as walking the streets of Kigali and imagining the chaos that took place there 12 years ago.

Seeing the mass graves, bones, skulls, etc. was unsettling. More than that though, I'm feeling a sense of shame that while I was enjoying 7th grade, a million people were killed in the span of about 100 days. Even worse, the international response was to essentially ignore the genocide. Even the Catholic church condoned it.

Anyway, we visited Kigali, Kibuye and Ruhengeri. We visited the tourist office in Kigali on Friday evening and found out we were no longer on the list for Saturday. Apparently since we had not paid for our gorilla permits, they dropped us in favor of someone who was paying. The lady put us on the list for Monday even though that caused the total number of people to be 41, one more than allowed. She said she'd have to remove someone's name. The lady took our $375 apiece and we were set for Monday.

Since our itinerary shifted, we spent the night in Kigali at the Hotel Isimbi and had dinner at a Greek restaurant across town. Saturday, we rode a daladala style van (but thankfully with nobody standing) to Kibuye. The road had many twists and turns but given the fact that this is the land of a thousand hills, the continually curving road is understandable. We rode moto taxis to our hotel to drop our stuff and then pretty much walked all the way back to townto check out the Sunday mass schedule for St. John's church. On our way back, we enjoyed some mighty fine bottles of Coca-Cola. When we were almost back to the hotel, we decided to check out a really long hike that took us out to the end of another peninsula. Ultimately we rewarded our efforts with a nice swim in Lake Kivu.

Sunday, we attended mass at St. John's and boarded the van back to Kigali. Once at Kigali, we purchased tickets for the bus to Ruhengeri and ate some lunch. For the ride to Ruhengeri, the tour company had an actual bus. Not a large bus, but at least everyone had their own seat and there was no overcrowding.

At Ruhengeri, we stayed at the Hotel Marahaba, apparently the best hotel in town. Unfortunately, there didi not seem to be any hot water in our water heater for some reason. We took a hike to the top of the hill by the post office to try to get a better view of the volcanoes, but apparently there are some important communications towers up there that are guarded by the military and it was not ok for us to be up there. We were surrounded by local kids who had led us up there, so they didn't do anything but escort us back down. The views of the volcanoes were not that spectacular anyway as there were too many trees. I had goat stew for dinner that night. Not too bad.

On Monday, we visited the gorillas. The park has eight habituated groups-five for tourism and three for research. Eight people are allowed in a group, but our group only had five. The other couple with us had just retired from the organic food business. Ever heard of Silk brand soy milk? Yeah, we met the guy that invented it and took the company to the top. He said that they had the best selling chocolate milk in the country at one point, and it wasn't even milk. He also told Alison to tell her friend that drinks Silk, "Thanks for sending me around the world." Too funny.

More about the gorillas and Rwanda in my next post.