A Weekend of Camping

I love camping and it had been a long time since I went. I enjoy the whole process of it especially in a new place. I like the setting up of the tent, building a fire, cooking, hiking, and waking up in the morning to see a great view. On this trip, I was not let down on any of these. There was a long discussion on where we would go and finally we decided to go to Byumba in the north, about 50km from the Uganda border. I went with 4 of my good friends here…one of them has a car which makes travel much easier. We all packed into the German car and headed for the hills of Byumba. As we got closer, you could feel the temperature drop and the hills getting steeper. On our ride there, we stopped along the way to admire the views…it was so beautiful. We stopped in the town before finding our sleeping site to get some more food. I was excited when we walked into one of the stores and they were selling popcorn. As we were walking back to the car, it began to rain…

As it was raining, we drove around trying to find a place to set up camp. I got worried because our plan was to use fire wood to cook and setting up camp in the rain is no fun. I fell asleep and after about an hour, we stopped. I stepped out of the car and got a little worried again. This area was very hilly so I was just imagining sleeping up a hill. We finally found a great spot and it felt like the whole community came over…at one time I looked around and counted close to 40 kids looking on with wide eyes. We began to set up camp and the rains stopped. Cooking started. This was uncomfortable. Surrounding us were many children that you could tell were very hungry and here we were cooking a good meal. It got dark and the children began to leave. We ate our delicious meal and then crawled into one of the tents for a night of talking.
We woke up at day light and all the kids gravitated back to our camp. Our spot was so beautiful in the morning light. 2 of my friends took the 1 hour round trip journey to get water. It was so steep and I couldn’t believe that these people have to make this journey everyday.

We packed up the car and drove a little distance to begin our hike. On our trip, there were only 2 of us that we not Rwandan. As we began our hike, both of us had a long conversation about our frustrations with being foreign and figuring out our role in this poor area. This conversation started because we didn’t know what to do with the fact that we were able to eat 3 good meals and there were people around us that sometimes don’t even get one. It was a very heavy feeling.

The hike was so beautiful. We climbed up the terraced hills and saw many great views.