Uganda and Rwanda

Bumps across three countries...

Imagine disorganization. Two guys sitting on the floor playing cribbage without a board at the bus station. Memorizing their counts.

“The bus from Dar was late yesterday”, we were told “and hence you have to go catch your bus from Arusha, and you’re going to Arusha by buffalo.” Buffalo is another bus company. Almost 3 hours late, we finally boarded our bus to Kampala. On this journey, we went to the north of Tanzania, across the west of Kenya and finally the east of Uganda – two crazy border crossings.

The roads could compare to the surface of the moon and the driver to a rodeo rider.

The good thing about being completely exhausted the day you board a bus for a 24 hour journey is that you can pretty much sleep through anything. Alon swore he saw, a few times, my whole body going up in mid air, and falling back on my seat still asleep. We had a 3 hour stop at Nairobi to fix some problems with the bus, and I was told about this stop the next day. I slept through it and didn’t realize it. Alon, in turn, managed maybe 6-7 hours of sleep and feasted on the green of Kenya.

At 4.30pm, we reached Kampala, capital of Uganda.

---------------------------------------
Mayhem in Kampala

Kampala is and has the feel of a big city. And when we reached Kampala, I immediately loved it and realized that I had missed the feeling of big cities and the energy you find in them. It is crazy, chaotic, full of people, pollution, noisy and vibrant. A visit to the old taxi park and where you board buses for onward journeys to Uganda is a must! That place was absolutely delirious! I couldn’t help thinking while walking with our bags and all our valuables in that place, that it was a terribly bad idea to do so… We escaped alive. Alon was singing the “I love Education” song he learnt at TCC, and I joined him as we made our way through the madness of crowd!

On finding there was a casino in Kampala, I couldn’t ‘restrain’ my traveling partner from excitement and we thought a visit was a must. I limited myself to a little loss and then concentrated on the Barça-Inter football game, whereas he was a little more adventurous, unfortunately with not much good luck.

While in Kampala, I went to the Rwanda Embassy and was told that they needed 2 working days to process my visa without which I would not be able to cross the border. I didn’t want to waste two more days in the capital, and so we decided against Rwanda, until we changed our minds later during the trip.

-----------------------------------------------
Sun and Pineapples in the Nile… and then thunderstorms

As we boarded off the bus, someone shouted “Alright, we’ll have one hardcore team on one side and one non hardcore team on another”. Alon, Brad and Jenny rushed towards the hardcore team side. The Spanish guy and me looked at each other, shrugged, smiled and unsurely made our way towards the hardcore team. The hardcore team would have the smaller raft, i.e. we would feel the force of the river a lot more (and that we did!).

I had a different idea of rafting in rapids. I thought that we'd be in the rapids the whole time having to carefully maneuver the raft with great skill and strength. I was wondering how I would cope in the hardcore raft for 6 hours. But, it’s different. You go at great lengths in calm waters and then at stages, you hit the rapids. And when you’re rafting in tranquil water, it’s absolutely magical. We were surrounded by green hills, the sky was blue, the Nile was absolutely gorgeous, and the water, as we tested it, was perfect. We could go in for a dip as many times as we wanted!

The rapids, however, are a different story. We went through six grade V rapids and they were absolutely exhilarating, thrilling and scary! The highlight was when the raft flipped upside down and we all fell in the water. I got pushed away by the current and was under water long enough to wonder if I would ever be able to come out. When I finally did, I was pushed right back in by the current again and again, until a girl on a canoe got hold of me. Although really scary, it was awesome! The others expressed a similar sentiment. Our best achievement was when we went over a waterfall, paddling in perfect unison, to come out of it flawlessly. Our guide was full of praise.

My favorite moment, however, was lunch on the Nile. We went in for a swim and then in the raft, we were served pineapples. The sun was shining, I was in Uganda, in the Nile eating pineapples. Perfection

After the sunny lunch, the clouds began to gather, we heard thunderstorms and it started to pour. The people in the raft suddenly turned silent, and we all began to paddle incessantly and hard, to keep the blood pumping and warmth in our bodies as the rain considerably cooled us down.

We scraped through alive and in fine spirits.

---------------------------------
Lake Bunyoni

When things are disorganized and usually late, you sometimes make plans with the anticipation of being late. As we boarded the bus from Kampala, we were actually hoping we would reach Kabale late. The universe, of course, doesn’t work like this.

We reached right on time at 2am in the morning, and at that moment, I had the most unforgettable moment of our trip. As we stepped out of the bus in the middle of a deserted town, around 10 boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis) started their engines and sped their motorcycle towards us to surround us. We told them we wanted to go to lake Bunyoni and they quoted 15000 Ugandan Shillings. Alon, in the middle of all these boda-bodas, at 2am, gave them a huge smile and started shouting “15000???? Oh, no, no, no! Guess what I have!! I have THE BOOK!! Let’s see what THE BOOK says!”… and then he dug into his bag, flashlight in his mouth, and took out the Lonely Planet and turned the pages until he reached the Kabale section – “AHA!!! The book says 4000 Shillings! Now who’s willing to take us for 4000 Shillings?” Nobody moved from the boda-bodas, and nobody said anything. He enquired again, and we just got nods in the negative. The negotiation process started, the boda-boda guys reminded us of how dangerous Africa was if we decided to walk on our own and didn’t use their services, but we didn’t budge from 4000. This went on for sometime, and we finally agreed on 6000 Shillings. And so, at around 3am, we got dropped off at a resort near the lake, and with a couple of flashlights, we were walking the area in the dark, knocking on gates in search of accommodation. We finally found a reasonably priced resort that would let us pitch our tent in their garden. In that resort, we would come to be known as the people who reached in the middle of the night.

Lake Bunyoni, off the town of Kabale, is in the south of Uganda, not too far from the border with Rwanda. It is a very green hilly region with a beautiful lake that you can swim in (apparently one of the deepest lakes in the world) and there are many small islands in the lake. Very serene and a great place to do some leisure trekking, walking and rowing. After the craziness of Kampala, this was perfect.

Kabale is also close to Buwindi national park, and we thought that from there, we could arrange a trip to that park to see the endangered gorillas. We unfortunately found out, that the license for it had to be arranged in Kampala before coming here and it would cost a lot of money to arrange transport and pay the park fees to actually make it there from Kabale. A lot of complications. Everybody we spoke to who had seen the gorillas described it as one of the best experiences in their lives and certainly one of the best experiences in Africa. On this trip, there were 3 things I really wanted to do – go rafting on the Nile, see the gorillas and get to Rwanda. And now, it seemed that I wouldn’t be able to do 2 of those 3 things. It is at that moment, as we munched on lunch at Edirisa, a really nice hostel/volunteering organization/café (they have the biggest samosa I have ever seen!), that we thought why don’t we try and cross the border to Rwanda and see what happens?

And so the plan was formulated…

------------------------------------------------
An Israeli attempts to smuggle an Indian to Rwanda

The plan was that Alon would stay in the Ugandan border while I attempted to get my visa, so that in case I can’t get through to Rwanda, he wouldn’t have to pay for the Ugandan visa again. As he sat on the pavement, I walked towards the Rwandan Immigration Office.
I enquired about the visa and the officer asked me what passport I held; he immediately notified me that I had to apply for a visa at the embassy and that I couldn’t get a visa here. I told him that a few of my friends that were not in the list of countries that didn’t need a visa for Rwanda had earlier been successful in acquiring one at the border for a fee of 60 USD. He told me that there was nothing to it, and that I couldn’t get the visa. I think there was genuine disappointment in my face, as I asked him what could I do? He ignored me for a while, then kept silent and finally broke into a sarcastic smile, saying that ok they would grant me the visa. He then asked me what I intended to visit in Rwanda and complimented me on my French. Only at the border, I was already falling in love with the mannerisms of the Rwandans.

I went back towards Alon and attempted a horrendous jump with clapping of feet and we both started jumping. Alon cleared the formalities in no time. We decided that we would christen this experience as the “Israeli that smuggled an Indian to Rwanda”…

-------------------------------------------------
The genocide, Rwanda and its people…Le pays des milles collines

In 1994, almost 1 million people died in Rwanda within few months as we, the rest of the world closed our eyes and ears. The hutus wanted to exterminate the tutsis whom they referred to as cockroaches. The streets, towns, cities, villages of Rwanda were filled with corpses. Every one I had spoken to who had been to Rwanda on this trip, said it was really a nice place to travel in.

When we reached, we lost our bearings and were a bit overwhelmed. The roads in Kigali are good, the infrastructure is quite modern, there are pavements everywhere, you don't get hassled after every thirty seconds; when you ask for directions, they either say they don’t know or they direct you the right way without asking for money or follow you for half an hour… we thought, THIS IS NOT AFRICA!

And when we thought about it, most of the people on the streets, in the malls, in the coffee shops, at the bus station, inside the bus, either witnessed, took part in or had someone close bear the atrocities of the genocide. And what’s remarkable, I found them to be the nicest people if compared to Tanzania and Uganda. I don’t know what they feel inside (whether a craving for revenge or not), but on the outside, they were helpful and kind, and it seemed genuine.

We visited the Murambi memorial where they preserved the corpses of thousands of Rwandans that were killed. You can actually walk through the corpses of children, women and men and see their skull smashed or split by a machete. The whole experience was very strange, and left me numb. The children section in the Kigali Memorial with poster-size pictures of the children along with a small message pointing to their hobbies, favorite food, etc. and the manner in which they were killed (one of them read “smashed to the wall”) teared me up.

I am now reading the book “Shake hands with the Devil” which is the memoir of the U.N. officer posted in Rwanda just prior to the Genocide. The book is really good.

I’m glad I got the opportunity to go to Rwanda and I’m very impressed by the Rwandans in how they managed to develop in the last fifteen years.

I would recommend this country of a thousand hills to anyone who would like to explore Africa.
-----------------------------------------
Pics link to Uganda and Rwanda