Uncharted Territory

 

Our adventure has now officially started, we’re here at a local rest stop at the top of the first major climb out of Kigali and I’m face down in the engine of our Land Cruiser helping to search for the radiator cap which was explosively ejected from the top of the radiator when it was removed to add some water as we were overheating.  I’ve nicknamed our aging Land Cruiser the Antichrist in a nod to one of my favorite movies of all time, The Gods Must be Crazy.  Andrew eventually spots the cap wedged into a narrow spot between the fender and the suspension and we use a stick to free it .  Unfortunately the aging Land Cruiser won’t start and we have to do a running start to get it going again but we are soon on our way again. 

Leaving the hotel in the morning after checking out we had two stops to make before we headed into the mountains; visit to the Rwandan Genocide memorial and a local market. 

We pulled into the large traffic circle at the base of the hill and were stunned by the sight of literally thousands of motorcycles buzzing in all directions and parked in clusters on the street corners. Jayson noticed that all the motorcycles were the same and the passengers and drivers were wearing all the same red helmets - then we figured it out - Motorcycle taxis! The Kigali roads are so congested that it makes more sense to ride a motorcycle than to have taxis. And clearly some government official has some deal with the brand as the vast majority of the taxis were the same bike. 

The new malaria pills are amazing compared to the last ones I took on my bicycle journey in 1988 to North Africa, none of us have experienced any symptoms after 4 days of taking the pills unlike the horrible flu like symptoms I experienced for weeks on end  back then (shameless plug here if you haven’t read the book you can get it at Talewinds: A coming of age memoir of a 13,000 km journey by bicycle through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East https://a.co/d/fWLx9GU)

After another security check at the entrance gate to the memorial we entered the gates and made our way to the ticket entry office.  There is no entrance fee but donations are encouraged and there is a $20 per person charge for the electronic tour guide to explain what you are looking at.  

I had been to the Yad Vashem holocaust memorial in Israel so I had a idea of what I would see but the fact that the memorial is also a cemetery where over 250,000 people who perished in Kigali in the genocide are buried gives it more gravitas.  A large section of the memorial is also dedicated to explaining in detail the steps and things that have to happen to culminate in such a tragedy in the hope of getting people to realize that these types of things do not happen overnight but arise from a series of events fuelled by colonial thinking, radicalization, racialism and ultimately need the power of education and the media to succeed. 

The roots of the genocide are firmly rooted in the colonial rule of the Belgians and the Catholic Church who created the conditions by dividing the society along racial and ethnic lines.  Rwanda was historically a country with many different and diverse ethic groups and to make ruling the country easier the Belgians declared early in their rule that there were only 3 types of Rwandans, Hutu, Tutsi and the original aborigine people who were thought to be the original inhabitants of the country.  They crafted an arbitrary law that declared that anyone who owned more than 10 cows was a Hutu and anyone who owned less was a Tutsi, issued identify cards and declared that certain facial features also put someone in one category or another.  The Belgian’s ruled through the Tutsi minority further causing divisions.  

The harms of colonization on local populations is one of the greatest wrongs in recently recorded history, the memorial gave me new insight and parallels into why happened in our own country with our indigenous peoples.

It’s sad how even members of my immediate family have fallen victim to the false tropes peddled by Trump and his ilk and their propaganda machine Fox News who are leading the US down a road that could lead to civil war.  It’s a short trip down from naming your enemy as the “woke mob” and the “radical democrats” to massacres in the streets and small towns and we need to wake up and stop feeding the narrative - this is not just harmless speech, all of it is ultimately a form of hate speech. 

The memorial is a very moving experience and you can only take pictures outside, inside the pictures you take are mental and like the many survivors of this tragedy, these mental pictures of things seen and heard will stay with you for many years after the visit, the disbelief that humanity and especially the supposed “leaders” of this planet could just stand by and watch this happen in broad daylight, just like what is going on in South Sudan and in Ukraine this moment and in countless other parts of the world.  

This is what travel is supposed to do to you, to open up your perspective and opinions to other realities 

The visit to kimironko market was as local an experience as you could hope for.  We tried to stick together with our guides but we’re constantly being dragged off in all directions with pleas to visit my stall, take a picture, where are you from?  It’s was impossible to refuse all of the requests and we all left with something, some more useful than others.  

Our way out of town after the visit to the market was a flowing ballet of cars motorcycles, people and bicycles all trying to jockey for position, the entire width of the road being used to full advantage, no wasted space. It seems as if nothing is too large or unwieldy to be carried on the back of a motorbike taxi or bicycle, 15 foot long pieces of aluminum, table saw, a mattress, a large hot water tank, bundles of 13 foot lumber, pots, pans, cases of full water bottles, a bundle of watermelons that must have numbered at least 40 or 50 in a burlap sack. a towering stack of cartons eggs, all being deftly navigated with Aplomb through the packed streets.

Leaving the city proper we started the steep climb into the mountains, past cultivated fields and roadside nurseries growing every type of plant imaginable, the simple local mud brick and block homes are tucked into the hillsides following the steep topography, the tin roofs sloped in one direction or the other to shed the heavy seasonal rains blending with the colour of the surrounding hillsides. The terraced hillsides remind me of photos I’ve seen of SE Asia with the rice paddies.

The driving made me wish for the 20km/hr drive in the city.  Careening down the twisty mountain roads with steep drop offs on both side, the road seemingly only having one place it could have been constructed on the narrow ridges.  Our journey is marked by regularly placed mile markers on white concrete posts and Jayson and I engage in a game of “spot” wherein the person who first spots the next marker ahead is allowed to punch the other in the shoulder, a game my sis and I played for many long drives to “country” in Jamaica where we grew up.  After half an hour Jayson has proved that youth has the advantage of vision and speed and my shoulder is sore. 

Leaving Rwanda’s second largest city Ruhengeri we begin to climb again into a forest of Eucalyptus trees, this is a region of volcanoes and the evidence is all  around us in the basalt walls that divide the farm fields, built from the ubiquitous volcanic stone that litters the area from volcanic activity of eons past.  Even though their houses are literally built of compressed mud and yards are essentially dirt and rock, the pride in one’s surrounding is evident as I witness people sweeping the sides of the roads, yards and doorsteps. There is little garbage on the roadsides and cultivated areas are kept well organized with well delineated boundaries between farm and houses. 

It’s primarily women in the fields with hoes, irrigating by hand with buckets dipped into ditches and throwing the water into the fields.  We pass by many local brickyards where the earth is being made into compressed bricks, the main building material of choice.

The roads get significantly worse as we approach the border with Uganda, the Antichrist shaking from side to side and the windows rattling, giving the impression that they will fall out of their frames.

After clearing immigration at the Uganda border which consisted of a single room brick building, it was time to say goodbye to the Antichrist and we transferred our luggage into another vehicle that would take us to the lodge we’re we are staying for the next two nights.   I’ve nicknamed this one the Green Banana. 

In Uganda they drive on the left so that was an immediate difference.  The country makes Rwanda look like another world, the life looks a lot tougher with more garbage, less cars and just generally more poverty and pollution.  Everything feels black and covered in grit and grime.  

We turned off the main paved road onto what can only be described as a cross between an dirt track and a path, bouncing and rattling along, flanked by a variety of structures ranging from small mud huts with their walls burned black with soot from cooking fires to modern looking houses with tile roofs, people are everywhere, it’s surprising how many are dressed in suits.  The roads wind up higher and higher into the mountains, lush valleys below filled with crops and the villages get smaller and smaller, soon no more than 3-4 houses and little else. 

It’s the last climb up to the lodge and we’re in super low gear trying to make it up the hill, after starting on the dirt road more than 4 hours ago, the going has gotten progressively worse, Andrew confirmed that this was the “main road” and we’ve been on little more than a goat track for the last 2 hours  and the van is struggling to make it up the last of the steep hills that lead to the lodge.  

Clearly we aren’t making any headway so “everybody out” is the order as we walk behind the van our feet sinking into ankle deep dust as fine as talc as the van struggles up the hill with just our luggage.  We have to do this 2 more times before we the last climb up to the lodge and we enter through the gates at a quarter to nine. 

Our African adventure is clearly underway.