Tanzania

Wednesday 6th April 2016 – That night we dozed in our seats as bar music played loudly nearby and the lady behind us made alarming noises in her sleep. At 5am the lights came on and soon we were on our way again. As we neared Rwanda the countryside became more mountainous and huge-horned cows grazed by the roadside. The bus itself was going to Burundi, so about 20kms from the border the four of us travelling to Rwanda (Alysa, me and two Congolese students) were transferred to a waiting taxi. As we pulled up to the border post it looked like a huge party was going on. There were pavilions, music, heavily armed guards and hundreds of brightly dressed Africans milling around. After brief enquiries the Congolese told us that the presidents of Rwanda and Tanzania were on their way to hold a ceremony at the border. This certainly added a new dimension to proceedings! We skirted the main crowd to try to reach some border post offices, not noticing we were about to cross a roll of red carpet when an important looking official put his hand on our shoulders and asked us what we were doing. We explained we wanted to cross the border. He replied it was closed and we should come back in two hours. A few minutes later the presidents arrived in a cavalcade of identical shiny, black SUVs and the ceremony began. Leaning against the perimeter fence were three presidential guards decked out in full green body armour and touting immaculately polished sub-machine guns – the perfect photo. I obtained what I thought was permission from an official (in the form of a thumbs up) by gesturing at my mobile phone and then towards the guards. As I lined up my shot the guards came away from the fence and started walking our way. We definitely weren’t allowed to take photos. I immediately lowered the phone and gestured apologies. Fortunately they thought I was innocently trying to snap the scenic hillside behind them and a sticky situation was avoided, although with Alysa furious next to me the phone was sheepishly pocketed for the rest of the day. After a couple of hours the dignitaries left, the crowds dispersed and the border post opened again. Our bus arrived in Kigali just after dark whereupon a short taxi ride brought us to Auberge la Caverne, a budget hostel picked out from our aging guidebook. The sign pointed uninvitingly down a dark path off the main road and I went to take a look while Alysa looked on apprehensively. The hostel was suffering a power cut and we exchanged greetings with the receptionist in near darkness. Electric light could hardly be said to do much for the ambience of the weary old place but after a 24 hour journey anything would do. I went to get cash from an atm in town while Alysa enjoyed a cold shower by the light of a flickering neon tube. After filling our bellies with pizza at a place nearby we returned to sleep soundly until the morning.

Thursday 7th April 2016 – Left the dump that is Auberge La Caverne and relocated to the much nicer albeit more expensive Okapi Hotel up the hill. Today was Genocide Day, a national holiday to remember Rwanda’s darkest period. On April 6th 1994 the Rwandan president, a Hutu was assassinated. In the early hours of the next day Hutus began massacring the minority Tutsis. In a little over three months a million people were dead. We wanted to know more about what happened and took a walk to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial which has a museum on the subject. As we neared the museum our path was barred by soldiers. They told us that the presidents of Rwanda and Tanzania were performing a ceremony at the memorial and we should come back in a couple of hours. We knew the drill and returned to our hotel to watch the solemn ceremony on TV. That afternoon we toured the museum, a chilling reminder of what the long term consequences of colonial misrule can be. The children’s room in the museum was particularly heart-wrenching; blown-up photos of toddlers and infants with details of things like their favourite food or toy and finally the manner of their death, usually a machete to the skull. As we left we saw a group of Rwandans singing quietly by one of the mass graves, no doubt remembering loved ones interred there. We walked back in a sombre mood still trying to fathom how such madness had descended. That evening we researched flights to Sri Lanka and planned our route into Uganda.

Friday 8th April 2016 – After a quick stop at the bank to replenish our dwindling stash of dollars we caught a minibus to Musanze, a town close to the Ugandan border. We arrived around midday but were told there were no busses to the border until 4pm. When the bus arrived just after 5pm we wondered whether we would have time to cross that day. We needn’t have worried; at the border everything went like clockwork and within half an hour of handing over two crisp $100 bills for our visas we were in Uganda – our final African country. The bus dropped us at Kisoro, the first town over the border and we stayed at a little guesthouse called Ian Point right next to the bus station. Back in our room we did a little dance to celebrate crossing our final land border in Africa. We went to bed tired but happy; tomorrow we would travel to Bwindi National Park, home to the mountain gorilla.