Mo's turn: On the Road to Rwanda

Most of what you've been reading is Nathan's attempts to shove his thoughts into words. But that, of course, is only half the story -- and Mo's usually more insightful anyways. Here's her take on our last 24 hours.

So after a pretty eventful bus ride out of Uganda, we’ve finally made it to Rwanda. Nathan and I were unable to get tickets on the “executive” bus between the two countries, so we ended up having to travel on what essentially was a death trap on wheels. We were crammed in three people to a row, with the bus being so full that latecomers were stuck standing in the aisle for the 10 hour trip along bumpy and windy roads. I don’t know how much better the executive bus would have been, as we took one between Nairobi and Kampala and were still given the free African massage (aka having your internal organs reorganized by the bumps on the road and lack of suspension in the bus). Definitely an experience to remember. I’m glad we chose to do that over flying.

Because we’re traveling by road, we had to get off the bus and cross the border on foot. As Nathan and I made our way across, I couldn’t help but imagine what the Rwandan / Ugandan border must have looked like exactly 13 years ago to this month with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the genocide, set up in camps trying to make their way across. Despite everything they’ve been through, the country seems to be rebuilding itself at a remarkable rate and although we haven’t spent that much time here yet, it seems that for the large part, people have been able to put the past behind them. Most of the refugees returned and they seem to have brought back lots of new immigrants with them. We’ve met quite a few people from the Congo and Uganda. It makes communicating pretty interesting as people are forced to try and speak with each other in what is often their second or third language. People also seem a lot friendlier here to foreigners than in Uganda, and I feel like we’re also getting extra special treatment from people when they find out we’re Canadians.

Rwanda is very much as I had imagined it to be. Lots of rolling green hills and with a far more European flare to it than any other country that we’ve visited so far. However, I am surprised by how few people speak French even though it is one of the official languages. In part that’s because French is not taught until secondary school and very few Rwandans make it that far through the education system. Unfortunately, many schools were destroyed and a large percentage of teachers were killed during the genocide, leaving Rwanda with an illiteracy rate of over 50%. This afternoon Nathan and I are heading off to the genocide memorial site, so we’ll get to find out a lot more about it. There are genocide memorial sites all over the country, some left in the same condition that they were in when it ended.

Tomorrow we head off to the town of Ruhengiery so we can get ready for our early morning gorilla trek on Saturday. In typical fashion, Nathan and I have decided to try and track the furthest, but largest, group of gorillas. We’ll probably end up having to hike/crawl through the brush for 5-6 hours and potentially climb up to 3000 meters. I’m sure Dian Fossey would be proud =). It should be worth it as there are supposed to be up to 30 gorillas in that group. I just hope that we only run into the animal variety!