Vacation to Real Rwanda

I had a very professional tour guide for the first leg of my vacation and he insisted that I call this journey, the vacation to real Rwanda. He leads tours around Rwanda so I was lucky to have him as my guide. Before we left on the journey, I went to visit one of my girls in Kigali. Her family has a beautiful home with a garden. I met her mom and brothers. We were talking about many things and had a wonderful visit. Her mom has breast cancer just as my mom had a few years ago. It’s sad that the treatment in Rwanda is not the same as the US. Her mom was so beautiful and I loved spending the time with the girl in my family with her family.

This journey was to the southern province in Rwanda. The first stop was at one of my girl’s house in Gitarama. She was so cute. She kept calling and telling me to practice good time management so that I would be there on time. I was very impressed with her when we arrived. She cooked a Rwandan feast! I ate sooo well. It made up for the many, many meals that I’ve had there were not so appetizing. I enjoyed talking with her father, listening to one of her brother’s sing and dance, and the courage that one of her sisters had in practicing English. I was also just good to spend some time with her. After the visit, they took us to the bus.

Our next stop was Butare. I have been dreaming about coming to Butare ever since that I found out that they have a real ice cream shop! It’s a project by an ice cream shop in New York that employees local women and teaches them English and business skills. It felt so good to eat ice cream…it’s one thing that I miss. The next day we went to visit another girl in my family. We tried to contact her the day before but only reached a sister living in Kigali. The sister told us that she would contact her and have her meet us at a market close by. The message never got to her so we went searching for her. The only information that we had was that she lives in a community of child headed households. That means that in the community, the children raised each other. We finally found her! She was so surprised which added to the excitement of the visit. I also got to meet some of her brothers and sisters. The house was so nice with an amazing view. We even worked on reading the book that she checked out from the library. Our next stop before getting on a bus was the National Museum of Rwanda.

He hopped on one of the local buses for the amazingly beautiful ride to see another one of my girls in Nyamagabe. She had to leave the village a little early because her mother was in the hospital so I was so happy to meet her mother and see her healthy. The girl in my family sang a song for all of us that was so beautiful…she has an amazing voice. From Nyamagabe, my friend and I began our hike to Nyanza. This is the part that he calls visiting the real Rwanda. We hiked through the countryside of Southern Rwanda. Along the way we I would yell good afternoon in Kinyarwanda to all the people that we passed. Some of the kids were excited to see a muzungu and others ran in fright as I approached. We met some kids playing soccer. I stopped to play with them for a few minutes…I think they were impressed with my skills. Our destination for the day was my friend’s land and home of some of his family members. He’s been there many times and knows the area well. There are 2 secret waterfalls along the way that were beautiful surprises. I could not believe that there was so much water in the dry season. We even met a man that diverted some of the water from the falls so that his land could get water in the dry season…it was impressive. I was also impressed by the way people farmed in the area. There was so much water! They work all year to make sure that they have water even in the dry season. Trenches were dug and lakes made. I think the Southern Provence is the land of the pig. We kept seeing children chasing pigs. The first day we hiked about 18 km.

We slept for the night in the quiet village. There was no electricity in the village so most all activity stopped at nightfall. We woke up early in the morning, had tea, said our goodbyes, and hit the trail. On the trail we found an old small bicycle toy and we said that we would keep it and give it to some kid to enjoy along the trail. After a few hours, we came to a fork in the trail. There were a group of people there so we asked which way to travel. He told us that we was headed in the same direction and would join us for the journey. He said that it would be about an hour to the market that he was headed to sell wood. We learned many things about this man along the way. Every day, he travels to the market that’s open on that day. He sells a bundle of wood for 300rwf which is about 50cents and only enough to buy 2kg of potatoes. Sometimes he says that he gets lucky and if the market is close, he can make 2 or 3 journeys. He told us that he has 4 kids and that his wife left him…can you imagine just 2kg of potatoes to feed 5 hungry people. He also told us that he recently found out that he’s HIV positive. When we reached the market, we bought him some local sorghum beer and gave him the toy we found earlier to give to his children. He left him at the market (well we did physical, but his story still remains with me) and continued our journey.

We still had a few hours until we reached our destination. Everyone that we would asked about the time would tell us something different. It became very funny after awhile. The most exciting part of the last leg of the journey was finding a woman making veggie samosas. This came after climbing a hill that I thought would never end. The samosas were awesome…that also might be because we just hiked over 30km! We finally reached our destination in Nyanza, the King’s Palace.

The palace was cool. They had both a replica of the traditional Rwandan palace and the one that was built by the Belgians. I enjoyed learning about the traditional Rwandan palace. They are round and have 3 polls sticking out of them to represent that it’s for the king. There would also be homes with the 3 polls all over Rwanda that signified that it’s one of the king’s women. At the kings palace, there were many of the buildings…one for the king, one for his wife, one for making beer, one for the milk, and others that I can’t remember their uses. The king would sit at the entrance with his queen (the queen is chosen by the king’s mom). People would come to greet him and ask questions throughout the day. He would also be entertained inside his home.

This vacation was awesome but very tiring…we hiked around 55km in 2 days!