Rwanda Part II: Presidents and Primates

Sept 6th-8th

Our decision to wake up and make our way to the football stadium was an easy one: the prospect of seeing political history first-hand was more than alluring.


We arrived at the stadium and joined a long queue winding around the block. We were the only white people in the line: there were thumbs-up of approval but also mutterings of mzungu (yes, it's used in Rwanda as well) and confused looks.

The line was not moving so Erik went in search of another entrance and came back shortly with a smile on his face. We left the queue and made our way to Erik's find.

The guard ushered us into a line with other Caucasians. Erik's safari-gear and my torn camouflage shorts did not coincide with the suits and gowns worn by the other people in line. Nevertheless, we were still searched by security and let onto the stadium grounds. People were filing up the stairs, making their way to their seats within the stadium. We questioned several people as to where the general public could sit but were informed that it was already full. We then tried to follow the other foreign guests but were promptly asked to show our invitations which we obviously didn't have.

We were then led to a field with a projector screen where hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were anxiously awaiting the inauguration to commence. A young child handed me a Rwandan flag and we sat in the dry grass and waited. Erik started to feel uncomfortable and said that some Rwandans were being hostile. He suggested we try to get into the stadium again. I refused. As interesting and historic as sitting in that stadium would have been, we did not have invitations to sit among the foreign guests and I wouldn't feel comfortable unjustly occupying seats for Rwandans who truly believe in and love this man. He was their President, their hero. Not ours.


After a small argument between Erik and myself, we agreed to leave the grounds and watch the inauguration on television instead. Chez Lando, a nearby bar and place mentioned by the witness testifying in the war crimes tribunal in Arusha, seemed like a good venue to watch the celebration. We cracked open our first 720ml beer at 9:30am and by the end of the ceremony, we were really into it.

Following the Presidential intoxication, I mean inauguration, we boarded a bus to Ruhengeri, now known as Musanze in post-genocidal Rwanda. Ruhengeri is the jumping-off point to Parc national des Volcans, the Rwandan portion of the Virunga Conservation area, partitioned between Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. This region is the only place on earth where you can see Mountain Gorillas. Currently, between the 3 countries, it is estimated that only 700 of these majestic primates remain despite rigorous conservation efforts.

We managed to find a guesthouse which only cost us 2$ a night, the only provision was that Chris and I share a large single bed: we preventatively constructed a blanket barrier between us to prevent one another from crossing onto the other person's half.

We had one day to kill before our Gorilla trekking adventure so we had planned on visiting a scenic lake but unfortunately confusion prevailed and Erik got separated from us, so we just decided to drink beers instead.

They call Rwanda Pays des Milles Collines (country of 1000 hills) and the landscape is incredibly lush and beautifully picturesque. And nothing is more beautiful than the landscape of the National Park: with its cloud-covered volcanoes and dense green forests. The remote mountainous environment and abundant vegetation make it the ideal habitat for these 400-pound animals.


We had hired a driver and 4x4 which is bewilderingly not included in the 500$ price-tag of the permit and it picked us up in the morning. The nausea-inducing, rock-ridden road leading to the National Park gate was lined by many charming villages and waving groups of children. The fact the Rwanda is only 26,338 square kilometers (the size of Haiti) and the population is roughly a quarter of Canada's makes the population-density of the country staggeringly high.


Our driver had arranged for us to visit the Amahoro group, the third largest of all the groups in Rwanda. We were joined by Nell, an American traveler; and two other couples. The 8 of us were led through the bush by several armed guides.


The hike itself wasn't that difficult but the thickness of the vegetation and volcanic mountains made it quite a remarkable experience. After an hour-and-a-half of steady-climbing, we reached the group of trackers (the men who locate the various groups of Gorillas).


We left our belongings with the trackers and approached the Amahoro gorillas, armed only with our cameras. We were permitted to stay with the group for no more than one hour, were to avoid loud noises, getting closer than 7m; and to avoid flash photography. If, however, the gorillas get curious, they are allowed to get closer to you, but on their own terms.


Needless to say, standing a few feet away from a 450-pound male Silverback Gorilla is an incredibly exciting experience. What makes observing these animals so incredible is how close you are to them and how indifferent they are to your presence despite your proximity to them.



The similarities to human behaviour and interactions are really remarkable and the sheer size and power of these animals is indescribable.



The hour spent with these beautiful creatures past way too quickly, but I said my silent goodbyes and considered how privileged I am to have been able to do this.


God forbid, but these Gorillas may not be around in 50 years if poaching escalates or war breaks out in this fragile region.


We were later dropped off in Ruhengeri but found out there was a night bus leaving to Kampala, Uganda in less than an hour. We decided that it would be beneficial to take it and said farewell to a country with so much to offer, so much promise.


Typically, when someone mentions Rwanda, the first thing that comes to mind is the genocide. I do understand that it plays a huge role in the country's politics and social consciousness, but when I think of Rwanda, I will think of its beautiful people, landscapes and the incredible Mountain Gorillas, who I hope will remain in the misty forests of the Volcano National Park for centuries to come.

Rwanda Part I: Genocide and Gorilla Permits

Sept 3rd-6th

While Rwanda had been discussed, it was never part of our original plans. Erik had always planned on going and we decided to join him. We caught a bus at 5:00am and took it towards Ngara, Tanzania. Around 25km from the Rwandan border, we had to exit the bus and catch a taxi to complete the trek.

The cab driver tells us that it will be 15,000 Tsh for the trip and 3,000/ person but he will need to pick up two other passengers. We promptly agree, waiting a few more minutes for more people is fine by us.

However, thinking we're idiots, he starts speeding towards the border, completely ignoring other people in need of a ride. After a hasty arrival to the border he thinks he's been very smart. We hand him 9,000 shillings and he immediately starts bitching. We tell him that we agreed to 3,000 per person and that we were also willing to pick up two more people. It was him who was unwilling to stop and we were therefore not going to pay any more.

He starts pouting and says he is going to get the police so we tell him to go ahead. The border police come and we explain the situation. We agree to give him 12,000 Tsh but refuse to give him the full amount: it's more about the principle than the money.

We leave the driver behind, once again feeling swindled at a border crossing and make our way across the bridge separating the two countries. We briefly admire Les Chutes Rusumo and make our way through customs.


As we're being checked at the border, the officer questions Chris about his oranges. Chris states that he will eat them before he enters and the officer looks at him with a bewildered stare. It turns out he was actually referring to the plastic bag the oranges were kept in, because plastic bags are apparently forbidden in the country (for waste reducing purposes). We all had a good laugh and then made our way to Kigali.

On the 3-hour bus ride we observed what looked like a Kinyarwanda (the language they speak there) stand-up comedy routine between the bus attendant and a belligerent woman obviously pissed about something.


We arrive just as the sun was setting and set out to find a guesthouse. We searched in vain but we eventually met a Belgian couple who drove us to a hostel. The hostel was relatively expensive so Erik managed to haggle a nearby hotel down to a more reasonable price.

Kigali is a beautiful city and is the most developed we had seen since South Africa. It seems to have turned itself around since the genocide 16 years earlier. What isn't beautiful is the cash withdrawal situation: no banks accept Canadian debit cards. Luckily Erik had enough US currency to exchange into Rwandan Francs, to at least cover our dinner.


The following day we go to the National Parks Office to see if they have any Mountain Gorilla permits available. We had talked to a couple the night before and they had tried but to no avail. There's still no harm in trying. We show up and ask the woman at the desk if there's any availability in the next couple of days. Erik's window of opportunity is only until the 8th because after that he has to make his way to Uganda to catch a flight back to the States.

Gorilla permits are typically booked months if not years in advance and are incredibly hard to come by if you show up last-minute. Regardless, we posed the question. Miraculously she had 3 spaces available for the 8th of September! Erik and I had planned on doing it from the beginning, but because the opportunity was so incredible, Chris decided to join us despite the whopping 500$ US per permit.

The woman at the office was going to hold the places for us as long as we would pay that same day. Since no ATMs were compatible with our cards, we went to Banque de Kigali and try cash advancing from our credit cards. I try first and it doesn't work. I try again. No luck. Fuck. I have the opportunity of a lifetime and I can't access any of my money!

Chris tries and it works for him. We later find out you can pay for the permit by credit card, but neither Chris nor mine work. Thankfully Erik's does and the birdman does me a huge solid and lends me the money. Everything was set: we were now going to see one of the rarest animals on the planet!

To celebrate, we were going to party it up!


We started it up with a delicious steak dinner at Chez Robert seated next to a dignitary from the DRC. Not too shabby. Our dinner was accompanied by a delicious Skol beer. We had originally thought that the 500ml beers in most of Africa were big but in Rwanda we were humbled by their Skol, Primus and Mutzig beers, all coming in 720ml bottles! A beer-drinker's paradise. Or demise, depending on how you look at it.

Our next stop was a small bar frequented by locals and travelers alike. The prices were great but the 100% male demographic wasn't our style considering the women in Kigali are absolutely gorgeous. It's like the Montreal of Africa.

We then made our way to Carwash and met some Peace Corps or NGO workers but got bored of the venue and their company and headed to another place. We accidentally stumbled on a place called Papyrus and it was great: the music was good and it actually was quite packed. By this point all 3 of us had run out of money except for our emergency taxi money. Erik had befriended a girl who had offered to drive us to another club. We agreed despite our lack of funds and we were off to Planete Club.

Erik used our taxi money (which wasn't enough even to get one of us into the club) to get all 3 of us in and we commenced to dance. Dancing this intense has not been seen since Kevin Bacon and Patrick Swayze in their heyday. A Canadian UN worker bought us beers and the girl we met gave us a lift back to our hotel. Who says guys can't go to bars without any money and still have a good time?


On a more solemn but absolutely necessary note; the following day we made our way to the incredibly emotive and powerful Kigali Memorial or Genocide Museum. We purchased the audio guide and it was the first time in my life that I have ever read every single caption and watched or listened to every piece of media in a museum. I was captivated.

There wasn't an overwhelming amount of information and the presentation wasn't graphic, gratuitous or sickening. It bluntly explained and exposed what had happened, who was to blame, both perpetrators and the rest of the world who failed to intervene; and gave a human face to the more than 1-million Tutsis who were savagely slaughtered by the Hutus.

It was devastating to see how terrible the world can be and how ordinary people could become murderers and turn on their own family and friends. I had no idea how sinister the methods and how determined the orchestrators were to wipe the Tutsis off the face of the earth.

It sickened me to see that it was the Belgian colonialists who had created these ethnic divisions in the first place, classifying Hutus and Tutsis based on the number of cows they possess (unfortunately I am not even kidding), favouring the Tutsi minority and ptting people who have lived harmoniously for centuries, against each other in order to maintain superiority. All colonial powers established such favouritism and divisions in order to "divide and conquer".

France's role in providing the genocidaires with arms prior to the systematic killings and their unintentional facilitation of fleeing perpetrators was also highlighted by the museum. It also mentioned the dismissive response by the UN at UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire's pleas to send more troops to Rwanda. Dallaire stated as few as 5000 troops could have halted the genocide.

Somehow I managed to make it through the entire museum without shedding a tear, that is until I reached the final room of the museum. In it were pictures of children with their names, ages, favorite foods, toys and the names of their best friends: in most cases their parents were listed because they were too young to have friends of their own. At the end of each child's favorite's list was a concise, heart-wrenching sentence describing the way they were brutally killed.

After staring at these poor dead childrens' photos and wondering why am I so fortunate to have been born in a country without war, I left the interior of the museum. On my reflective walk through the gardens, the audio-guide stated that those very gardens now serve as the final resting place of over 250,000 murdered Tutsis. The government had moved many of the victims from outlying mass graves to the more dignified memorial gardens.

Such a waste of life., so much evil and suffering.


I returned my ear-piece and sat in front of the fountain next to Chris. Neither of said very much because we were still trying to grasp the magnitude of what had unfolded 16 years ago in the very city which we were now visiting.

The museum was closing and as we waited for Erik, we noticed the grounds of the museum were surrounded by soldiers armed with automatic weapons that would make anyone nervous. A large group of African men in suits walked towards us and when they were close, one man stated: the honorable Kenneth Kaunda, former President of Zambia.

Chris and I quickly stood up and the former President extended his hand to each of us and said he had come to educate himself like we had. We said it was an honor to meet him and I chimed in that he had a beautiful country (we had been there you know!). Who knows, maybe our picture shaking his hand may have ended up in a Zambian newspaper.

After the former president and his entourage entered the museum, Erik finally came and joined us. We told him what had just happened and I'm pretty sure he was quite jealous. It was not the first time we saw heavily-armed soldiers in Kigali, they were standing literally at every street corner. Also, the night before we had eaten next to a diplomat from the DRC and today we shook hands with the former President of Zambia. Something big was definitely happening in Rwanda.


It turns out that the weekend we showed up in Kigali was during the re-inauguration of Rwandan President Paul Kagame: the same president who led the country out of the shadows of ethnic genocide. He was going to be inaugurated the next day at the football stadium, watched by millions of Rwandans and Africans alike and attended by diplomats and heads of state from all over Africa.

This was going to be huge and we were right in the middle of it!

Tanzania: The Finale

Aug 31- Sept 2

Chris and I left Stefan's place before dawn and made our way to the bus station. It was only a few minutes before Erik arrived to join us. The bus ride was long, dusty and required us to wear the seat-belts provided in order to avoid hitting our heads on the roof of the bus. The soreness that resulted from this bus ride was actually far worse than that which we felt after climbing kilimanjaro!

Yeah, that bumpy.


Chris had contacted a couchsurfer in Mwanza and she was going to meet us at the bus station when we arrived. We had finally arrived to our destination after dark and followed the directions of a random guy yelling mzungu at the top of his lungs to the white girl he had seen earlier (our hostess). Her name was Trine and she only lived a short distance from the bus station. Trine had just recently started a contract with a company that operates a blood-bank in Mwanza and is affiliated with another company in Norway. Her contract was for a year and she was given the privilege of spending this year in the future home of a government official.


This home was originally supposed to be shared by Trine and another worker who had prematurely abandoned the idea and Trine was therefore left in this palace-of-a-house all by herself. Each room came equipped with its own bathroom and king-size bed. The birdman got his own room and Chris and I shared another. Aside from the couchsurfing picnic we had in Namibia, this was going to be our first couchsurfing experience in Africa. The bar had been raised exponentially high!

Trine worked during the day so the three of us were left to our own devices. Erik had a friend in Mwanza who he had met at an International Law competition (Erik is studying law at Columbia University in New York City) and this friend was going to show us around his city.


We were going to meet him in the town center and for some reason we opted to walk rather than paying the 20 cents it would have cost to take a daladala. After walking over 6km and asking many people for directions, we finally arrived at our meeting place: Food Square restaurant.

Erik's friend's name was Lucky and I had actually met him in Arusha the morning we left on our safari, but hadn't really had a chance to get to know him. Lucky was also studying law and had represented Tanzania at the International competition in Washington D.C. where he had met Erik, who was representing the US.


That day, Lucky served as our guide and showed us around Mwanza and his university: Saint Augustin's Catholic University. Lucky was a blatant over-achiever (in the most endearing way possible) and he beamed with pride as he showed us around and introduced us to his faculty, fellow students and the projects he was working on. St Augustin's holds the distinction of having the largest library in East Africa and Erik was impressed by the Law section, while Chris and I just pretended we knew the books he was showing us.

After we finished our tour of the school, Lucky showed us his flat and introduced us to his girlfriend and her family. If he ever decides that International Law is not his cup of chai, he would definitely make an impeccable ambassador for his country.

After our leisurely day at Saint Augustin's campus, we picked up several items to contribute to the feast that Trine was preparing with the help of her security guard. She had managed to acquire and kill a live chicken. What's interesting about this is that Trine is a vegetarian in Norway on the grounds of the inhumane treatment of animals by most, if not all of the farming industry in the western world. Conversely, even domestic animals are allowed to roam free in Africa. So this meal was kind of a big deal.

We had told her about Lucky and she invited him as well. Fortunately for everyone, Lucky knew how to de-feather and prepare a freshly-killed chicken and he also volunteered to do all the cooking. An international lawyer and a great cook; we were all smitten. Our evening was spent sipping on wine, enjoying our meal while talking and laughing. We all had an amazing time.

The following day we met Lucky in the afternoon and he escorted us to the reason why Mwanza even exists: Lake Victoria. Not only is Lake Victoria the second-largest fresh-water lake in the world, but it is also responsible for the term Mzungu, which we had been called since northern Mozambique.


Mzungu means to go around in circles and this describes the first Europeans ("Dr Livingstone I presume") who had come to Africa in search of the source of the Nile; literally circling Lake Victoria in search of the exact origin of the world's longest river. Over 100 years later and we still get to keep the title!

We spent our afternoon sitting on the banks of Lake Victoria, sipping our final Kilimanjaro's and admiring the scenery and the bizarre Bismarck Rock.


Later that day we met Trine near her blood-bank and got her attention by yelling mzungu at her in child-like voices. We then made our way to a lake beach-club, sat together and cherished our final day in Tanzania.


Although the lake is absolutely gigantic and looks undeniably inviting, most of it remains un-swimmable due to the presence of Bilharzia bacteria due to its shallow depth and relatively calm waters. While local kids do swim in it, the prospect of peeing blood (a consequence of the bacteria) did not really appeal to us.



As we sat above the water on a small dock extending out from the shore and watched the setting sun brush the water with golden accents, I realized just how much I was going to miss this country: its people, wildlife, landscapes, beaches and culture were unparalleled. If I ever return to Africa, Tanzania is one the places that I would definitely return to without hesitation.


The following morning we were starting the next leg of our journey and follow in the footsteps of our European forefathers: we would be circling Lake Victoria in search of the source of the Nile. We had been called Mzungu for over a month by this point, it was now time for us to earn it!