Kigali

Joey and I woke up early the following morning, hoping to take care of a couple things in Gisenyi before heading back to Kigali. We successfully registered my phone but failed to meet up with John and Safari. We wandered around where they said the "factory" was and eventually found it but nobody was inside. We tried to call and text Safari but to no avail. So we hopped on a bus and as we were leaving the city both John and Safari tried to call us and we told them we were already gone. Too bad. Things had gotten weird the night before but for the most part they seemed to be friendly, hospitable guys.

The ride to Kigali was beautiful as expected. At one point, though, the road had been washed out/collapsed due to some heavy rainfall. So for about a two kilometer stretch we had to get out of the bus, walk along the road and then below it through the mud as construction crews tried to clear the mud and make it possible to repair the road. It wasn't too bad but I did feel bad for a woman in front of us who was on crutches. I saw one person try to help her, though her pride chased him away. As we boarded a new bus and pulled away from the washed out area, another bus came speeding around a corner, on the wrong side of the road, and was inches away from clobbering into our bus. In fact, the bus took off our side mirror and sprayed glass and mirror over quite a big range. A huge argument ensued, the police came over and they even busted out the hand cuffs when people weren't complying with their orders. Our passengers quickly reboarded and then we sped off. I saw the other bus driver recede into the distance, still arguing profusely with the police, evidently proclaiming his innocence--thought I find it hard to see his point of view considering he was going pretty fast in a congested area and driving on the wrong side of the road.

Once in Kigali, Joey and I took a series of shared mini van taxis to the area of town that Peace Corps had booked rooms for him and some other volunteers. We were returning to Kigali for a little Peace Corps conference on malaria that Joey was attending. We showed up at the hostel and I was hoping maybe I'd be able to crash on the floor of his room. That wasn't going to happen so I ended up getting an over-priced bed in another dorm room. It was a bit steep but this way I wouldn't have to be too far from Joey and the other volunteers.

Joey, myself, and a few other volunteers decided to wander in search of a beer and some food. We were staying in a pretty ritzy neighborhood (around a bunch of embassies and the presidential palace) so the options were somewhat limited. After about 15 minutes of wandering we found a "blue bar," so called because the front and walls were painted blue to advertise it as a place that sold Primus, the most popular beer in Rwanda. We hung out there for a while, played some card games and ordered some surprisingly good brochettes of goat. I'm normally not a fan of goat and I was quickly not becoming a fan or Rwandan food but this turned out to be one of the better local meals I had there. After a few rounds of brochettes our number was getting pretty big so we decided to roll over to another bar that had some pool tables and a dance floor. Well, it was a Tuesday so the place wasn't exactly hopping, and the beers weren't exactly cheap. So we stayed for a little bit before heading over to a bar in the transit neighborhood of Nyabagogo. We danced a ton there and I was able to do some awesome mirror dancing for the first real time since leaving Cameroon. I guess I was a bit of a snob, though, as one volunteer asked me how I liked mirror dancing and I replied, "Too bad the mirrors aren't full length."

The next day, Joey woke me up before he left for his Peace Corps session and gave me his Rwanda travel book. I'd had a few ideas for stuff to do that day so after breakfast and a shower at the hostel and taking care of some internet stuff, I headed over to the main Genocide Memorial. I'm finding it difficult to describe the memorial. I'd just finished reading "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," a book about the Rwandan Genocide of '94 and the bulk of the memorial was very similar to the events and numbers in the book. A lot of the memorial involved a walkthrough on the second floor detailing the events of the genocide--how it started, background, how it progressed, the aftermath, and then a few hopeful, human stories. The bottom floor, though, had some artifacts from the genocide: torn, blood-stained clothes found on bodies; machetes and clubs used in the killings; photos of people missing and never found; and the bones and skulls (some caved in) from some victims. When I walked into the last room with the bones I broke down and started crying. I'm not a person who cries easily but something about the unsentimental, almost spartan way that the bones and skulls were presented was a bit too much for me. I did however, make myself sit down in that room and regain my composure in the room, I didn't want to run away from the facts and forget or pretend that I was in a peaceful, shy little country without a dark history. I wanted to accept it before I left.

After the memorial, I need to sit down and relax a bit so I went to the city center and a cafe there. I got some coffee, a little bite to eat, and read for a while--Chinua Achebe's "There Was a Country," about the brief, tragic nation of Biafra, in southeastern Nigeria. I also talked to my parents for a bit there and eventually headed back to the hostel to meet up with the other volunteers who were finishing their sessions for the day. Some of the volunteers wanted to go to a Chinese Restaurant right next to the hostel, and I was not very excited by the idea--especially as I'd be in China in a little over a week and a half. I didn't want to be the stingy, arrogant guy who didn't want mediocre Chinese food and, while Joey may have been in the same boat as me, he seemed to really want to hang out with his volunteer friends so I said alright and had an incredibly mediocre plate of stir fried noodles.

After that, some people wanted to just go back to the hostel and have a beer but the beers there were twice the normal price and I didn't really feel like hearing more Peace Corps Rwanda gossip so I declared I was going back to the blue bar from the previous night and Joey decided to join. So the two of us walked over there and watched a soccer game on TV that turned out to be quite interesting. We also attempted to talk to the sullen, silent, waitress who eventually told us her name was Giselle. She was almost always silent and seemed annoyed to be serving us. I wasn't sure if there was a language barrier or not, as she seemed to know a few phrases in English and French and she was equally non-communicative in Kinyarwanda with Joey. Eventually she overcame her shyness and talked with us a little bit, but she was still pretty reserved. As we left we said we'd be coming back to her bar another time which she seemed embarrassed about because it wasn't her bar and I think the owner was standing behind her.

The next day while Joey was in his sessions I went to the West African/Muslim neighborhood in Kigali that Joey had told me about. I was expecting Garoua, the seedy, eventful, heavily Muslim capital of Northern Cameroon, and found something more akin to a Rwandan neighborhood with a few mosques and a little more street activity. I was thoroughly disappointed and walked around for about 30 minutes before giving up on finding something interesting and left. From there I went to the main market in Kigali and was also disappointed. There was next to nothing of interest there for me and I couldn't even find a good soccer jersey or something. So I walked around a bit and eventually found a little restaurant to have a soda and some food and read at. I was getting seriously sick of Kigali, it's blandness, and lack of flavor. Sure it was nice, paved roads, palm trees, a couple tall buildings and nice foreign restaurants, but there was nothing for the casual traveller to do there. Somewhere in mid-afternoon I went back to the hostel and watched a little soccer and talked about the teams with a Rwandan there. I eventually moved outside onto the patio and then started talking with a 21-year-old named Bonheur who it turns out worked at the Memorial. He was a really nice guy, very informative and with a quick wit. Our group slowly got larger with a couple other Rwandans, some Ugandans, a Dutch guy and a Brit. 

I spent a couple hours chatting with them and waiting for Joey but finally around 7:30 he called and said he was again getting more Chinese food with volunteers at another restaurant. He invited me to come along but both of us knew I wouldn't be doing that. So instead, I went back to the blue bar, ordered a beer and some brochettes and started talking with a Congolese guy named Jean-Baptiste. Jean-Baptiste and I talked for a few hours about politics, aid, Congo, Rwanda, among other things. He seemed a bit upset when I didn't want to have more beers with him but wanted to get back to the hostel because I'd just found out that Joey had left his orange bag in the back of a taxi. In that bag he'd had tons of documents but more crucially, his computer. Well, Joey was a bit upset, understandably, and I think we both agreed that had he not gotten Chinese food he wouldn't have left his bag in the car afterwards. Maybe I was the only one who thought that.

Bonheur was still there on the patio as well, hanging out with some Rwandan friends. I started talking with him again and we switched to French--partially because I wanted the privacy of the other volunteers not being able to understand our conversation but also because Bonheur was more comfortable in French than English. He turned out to be the only Rwandan I actually spoke about the genocide with and he had some illuminating comments and points of view about it. His message wasn't so much "forgive and forget" but "most people want to just move on and make a new future." 

After Bonheur and his friends left I started talking with some of the volunteers again and got quite angered by one volunteer there. She seemed to me to be incredibly opinionated in a small-minded, not-fully-understanding way. She decried the corruption, apathy, and political system of Rwanda, and while I argued she simply dismissed my points with a wave of her hand and saying "well you've only been here for a few days." Finally after she kept doing that I looked at her point blank and asked "Have you ever been to another African country?" "No," she replied. "Then you have no frame of reference or room to speak about the politics here." She looked a bit stunned and most other people got a bit quiet before Joey tried to help, "being to another African country helps put Rwanda in context…" She also seemed to blame the genocide on the Rwandans themselves which, while having some validity, ignores so much of the intricacies, causes and problems, including the interference of the Congolese and French on the side of the genocidaires. She spoke with the naivety of somebody unknowingly without the shadow of a grasp on reality but with the certainty of somebody who is far to young and inexperienced to be that cynical. I can't say I was in love with Rwanda, in fact I wasn't a huge fan, but I certainly had respect for the country and it's people. To come from one of the most brutal horrors since the holocaust and build a country firmly on the road to middle-income and with tons of promise, I couldn't help but admire it a little bit--even if I was a bit bored at times. This girl reminded me of some of the volunteers and attitudes I'd despised and avoided in Cameroon. I avoided her the rest of my time in Kigali.

The next day, I decided to entertain myself by going for a run. It was a bit drizzly when I set off in the late morning. About two blocks from the hostel the drizzle turned into a steady rain and another half a block after that it was a full downpour. So I found some shelter under an awning at a gas station and stood around for about 45 minutes while the rain continued. Once it died down again, I tried to run a bit further but my heart wasn't in it anymore so I headed back to the hostel after another few blocks. I then read at the hostel for a while and messed around on the internet until Joey & Co. got back from their malaria sessions. That night we got some more beers, brochettes, and grilled potatoes at the blue bar. Some other, older volunteers were in town for their one year anniversary in country and they were all heading to a bar called Sundowners. The beers were a bit more expensive than normal but the atmosphere was festive, there was a DJ, and it had a huge outdoor area. We stayed there late in the night, until it seemed like closing time was rapidly approaching and then headed back.