Rwanda

I took the night bus to Kigali Thursday night. It was a pretty pleasant trip since we took a Kampala Coach bus, which has comfy reclining seats and only 2 seats in each row. I sat next to this Ugandan businessman who lives in Kigali and he told me that he had left Kigali at 9am Thursday morning, got to Kampala at 7, did his business, and was now returning to Kigali on the 10pm bus. That is SO much traveling! I was able to only sleep a few hours on the bus, but I remembered to bring a hoody this time so I didn’t freeze to death like I did when we rode the bus to Lake Bunyonyi. I highly recommend Kampala Coach Buses rather than Horizon Buses.

I walked across the Rwanda-Uganda border at around 6am, while it was still dark. It was extremely cold and rather eerie. After getting stamped in on the Rwanda side, I was able to watch the sun rise. As we drove the last leg of the trip to Kigali, I watched the Rwandan countryside pass by and it is breathtakingly beautiful. The sun was shining through the morning fog over the rolling hills of Eastern Rwanda. Absolutely amazing! I couldn’t help but smile.

We arrived in Kigali around 9am. This trip includes 4 Brits, 3 Swedes, and 2 Americans. Only the 2 Americans weren’t med students, but I felt rather confident that if anything happened to me, I’d have plenty of medical expertise to help me out. There are quite a lot of mzungus traveling together and we manage to attract a lot of attention. We were meeting 2 other British guys who I’d met one time in Kampala. They are working in a hospital in Kigali and we were able to all stay at their house for the weekend. We first exchanged money at the UTC and hung out in a very Western coffeehouse called Bourbon Café. It was very nice. Then we spent the afternoon at a pool by the house we were staying at. It was incredibly relaxing after being on the move for almost 12 hours. I was able to try Chinese takeout for dinner (this was the first time I had Chinese in Arica). The evening was spent hanging out with friends, exploring Kigali a little, and enjoying Kigali nightlife.

We all woke up and just hung out in the morning. The Swedes made breakfast for us Saturday morning. It was great. Then afterwards we headed for the Kigali Memorial Centre, aka the Genocide Museum. It was a somber afternoon. There were headsets that guided us around the museum, which included a section on the Rwandan Genocide, a section about different genocides that have occurred all over the world, and a particularly difficult section dedicated to the children who died in the Rwandan Genocide. Then outside there were gardens and mass graves. I think the museum is very tastefully done and is a must-see for anyone visiting Rwanda. Then to continue this experience, we had a late dinner at Hotel des Mille Collines aka Hotel Rwanda. It was almost surreal to look up to the roof as we were eating and to know that that’s where Paul Rusesabagina would have jumped from to commit suicide. I had such mixed feelings from enjoying the company of friends and amazingly delicious Western food and then knowing the reality of what happened there in the hotel and in Rwanda in general. I highly recommend the steak sandwich at the hotel though; it was incredible. The rest of the night was spent hanging out and continuing to enjoy Kigali.

I had to leave very early in the morning to make it back to Kampala to pick up Claire and then head back to Sembabule. Claire spent the weekend in Kampala and was kind enough to do a bit of grocery shopping for me so I didn’t need to do it when I arrived in Kampala. Let’s just say the trip back was… a bit difficult. I was on the road for about 17 hours. We had a blow out, well actually 2, about 45 minutes away from Mbarara (which is about 2 hours west of Masaka). The driver was going to continue driving with our blown tires if it were not for one incredibly outspoken Ugandan woman who demanded that we stop. Initially I didn’t know what had happened; I figured we had hit a big rock and since the driver was still going, there was no problem. Not so much. The driver finally pulled over and they worked on changing the tires. That took a while. Then there was about a solid hour on the drive between Masaka and Kampala when I thought we were going to get into an accident and I might die. Our driver drove like a madman. Considering that we had blown 2 tires already, I would have thought he would have driven a bit more carefully. Not the case. Since there’s a ton of road construction between Masaka and Kampala, the roads are really bad: lots of potholes, giant holes, speed humps, gravel, etc. He was flying over all the bumps and the bus honestly felt rather unstable. I finally reached Kampala around 4:30pm. I ran for the new taxi park to meet Claire. We sought out a bus and departed for Masaka. At this point, my behind was a bit flat and sore. We got to Masaka after dark and then had to undergo the process of finding a taxi to take us to Sembabule. A bit of wandering was involved, but we finally found a mini sedan (seats 7 comfortably). The driver ended up stuffing 14 people into this vehicle and off we flew toward Sembabule. Claire and I were sitting in the back row… my body hurts. Then when we tried to pay the driver, we were told the money was fake… so that was a bit of a debacle and we aren’t sure if this bank note is real or not. But finally around 10pm, we arrived in our room in Sembabule, utterly exhausted and grossly dirty.

Overall, I’m really glad I was able to go to Rwanda this weekend. Aside from the horrible trip back, I had a lot of fun! Kigali is amazing. It is so different from Kampala. The streets are clean, organized, and they drive on the right side of the road. The boda drivers all wear marked vests and marked helmets. They are required to carry an additional helmet for their passenger and only 1 passenger is allowed per boda. It is so much safer to ride bodas in Kigali than Kampala. Only flip side is the potential of getting head lice but given the alternative (my brains smashed all over the road), I’d rather get head lice. The other issue with Rwanda is the fact that I cannot speak French at all. That makes communication with people nearly impossible. I’ve heard that they are trying to move toward having everyone learn English. I hope to go back to Rwanda someday and to be able to have time to explore it more (after learning some French).

8pm Bedtimes

So the last time I blogged, I spoke too soon. Starting Saturday morning, power shut off... and has yet to come back on. So at least 5 days without power. Thus leading to the 8 o'clock bedtimes. I can't tell you about today's situation because I am currently writing from Kampala and will leave tonight for a long weekend in Rwanda!!!

Last weekend was pretty quiet, since there was no internet. Claire and I managed to use all the power on our computers on Saturday, watching Glee, so Sunday was a day of reading, sleeping, and resting. This week has been a bit different at work because we had a Regional Meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. This meant that all the staff from Mubende came to Sembabule and we met as a Central Region to discuss our Family Planning and HIV/OVC projects. It was rather exiting to have everyone all together. We had a ton of stuff to work through, which made for long days of work. Which was made even more difficult since we didn't have power in Sembabule, but it was also fun. My role during the meeting was to help lead the discussion on changes that need to be made to our M&E tools, the translations that will need to be done (English to Luganda), and presenting data from a survey of private family planning practitioners we did in September. Then after a bit of chaos, I headed into Kampala. And I'll be leaving on the night bus with several friends to head to Kigali.

PS: to anyone who wants to still send me mail (which is not at all saying you need to or should), please do so sometime this month or I may never receive the package and it will die a slow, sad death in the Ugandan Postal Office. Because if you don't already know, my date of departure from Uganda has been moved up due to family reasons and I will be back in the USA earlier in December rather than 2 days before Christmas.