WEATHER: Hot and dusty
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting news we are staying in dorms for the next 3 nights
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Feeling a little shady after last night
BUYS OF THE DAY: Didn’t spend a cent today – how cool is that
WORD OF THE DAY: Struggle Street
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Baboons
CAMP SITE RANKING: We are staying in a mission for the next 3 days so not technically a camp site but a ranking would be 4 out of 5 stars
Talk about feeling a little shady. After Jo and Sean getting me to bed at 3am, I woke at 5.15am on our tent floor with no mattress and no sleeping bag and freezing cold. I still had on my same clothes and these I stayed in till we reached Ruhengeri. Nothing like getting some wear out of clothes by wearing them 2 days in a row. Needless to say I was still drunk, but I soldiered on and helped with the dismantling of the tent and getting all our stuff to the truck on time. My mattress and sleeping bag were in Jo and Lil’s tent, so not really sure how they got in there. At this point Afke is still not speaking to me, so I am still not sure what transpired there. We had to pack our lunches today, as we have a big travel day of getting to Rwanda via Kigali and the Genocide Museum. The bread here is really sweet, so I didn’t pack any of that and just did a salad with a banana and a popper. I really couldn’t give a toss at this point after only getting 2 hours sleep.
So as Afke is still not speaking to me, she moved to the only other spare seat next to Jools. So this gave me a spare seat to spread out on and get some sleep. We were a little late in leaving camp, as En couldn’t find her camera, so there was a big search, tent unpacked, bar checked and after about 30 minutes they found it in the camera bag, of course!!! This made me do a quick check of things and I had my camera, but not the t-shirt money, but for some reason I gave this to Sean for safe keeping so nothing was missing from my end! Phew. We drove back through town on our way out and stopped at the shirt man to collect all the shirts that we ordered last night. They look pretty cool and they only spelt Em’s name wrong, so monies was paid and we were back on the road.
We drove for around 1.5 hours to get to the Ugandan boarder. We had to hop off the truck, get our fingers and thumbs scanned and our stamp, and then we crossed over to the Rwandan formalities. There were a few worried people that only had tracking numbers like I did and no letter, so they were a bit concerned that there would be an issue ( this is why I did my in London to be sure), but they didn’t have any problems. If anything it may have taken a little longer, but they all got through so that is the important thing. The whole process took around 1.5 hours and then we were back on the road. Welcome to Rwanda.
As we have now crossed into Rwanda, they drive on the opposite side to Kenya and Uganda, tough switch for Chris! We also had to wind our watches back an hour and start to practice our French, as this is one of the main languages spoken here. Damn French have been everywhere haven’t they!
We drove for another 2 hours to get us to the capital of Kigali where the Genocide Museum is located. The museum was built by 2 English guys who wanted to have a place for people to learn, morn and recover from this terrible episode that happened I their country. It is also a burial place, currently there are 700,000 people buried in mass graves on the site, to give them a final resting place. A lot of the bodies were found just in farmland and by the side of the roads, and still are today, so it is somewhere that they can be bought to. What makes it even more shocking was it happened in this life time, in the 1990’s. It is a real tragedy it came to what it did. In 3 months a total of 1 million people were killed. No one was spared, babies, children, mothers, fathers, the older generation, it was horrific. They had no qualms killing the children as they were the future, and they tried to wipe them all out so there would not be a new generation of Tutsi’s coming through. The museum was broken into 3 sections, the gardens outside that were dedicated to various groups, the ground floor inside the building where all the information was about the lead up, during and the recovery after. We had personal hand held guides, so we just walked through the whole display at our own pace. Some of the pictures were very graphic and to see children, these small people of the world who we should be protecting were heartbreaking. They had 3 rooms also dedicated to those murdered. The first room had over 2,000 photos of those who were killed, the next room had skulls and bones of some of the recovered bodies and the 3rd room had clothes and belongings that were found in some of the mass graves. The third section upstairs was a small area of other genocides that have happened in history including the Armenians, The German Nazi reign, Cambodia and also the Sarajevo conflict. And in the last room was a dedication of the children killed. They had 2x1m pictures of children on the wall and a plaque with their name, what they liked to read, their personality and then the last one was how they died. I think it was the last thing I expected to see on the plaque and some of them died quite horrifically not to make it too gruesome, but we are talking like set on fire, a knife through the eyes, bullet to the head, and this is of children of 5-8 years old. Just shocking. We got 2 hours here, but I think you could certainly have 3 if you wanted to read everything and watch all the videos they had playing of survivors talking of their experiences. It was a very sobering experience. I would have been 18 when this was happening.
So back on the road for the last part of the drive of 2 hours getting us into Ruhengeri around 4pm. As didn’t have tents to unpack, we were shown the dormitories that had 15 beds in each. So we were split into 2 groups and we grabbed a bed each. The first thing I did was have a shower. I was terrible dusty from the roads and it is really fine stuff and my feet looked like they had been walking in mud. The shower was freezing, but exactly what the doctor ordered and I instantly felt better. Amazing how being clean will do that to you.
We had some time to kill before dinner and the boys wanted to have a game of soccer with some locals. As we drove in we saw what looked like junior team training. So we walked over, and they were in the middle of training, but there were a lot of children just around the stadium with a ball, so Sean and Paps asked if they wanted to have a knock around which they did for around 15 minutes and then decided to play an impromptu game, it got as far as getting the teams sorted, Real Rwanda and Spain, and then the coach from the training came over and said that they were just about to use the whole field for game, and they want to join them. It was a shame, as the other kids aren’t allowed to play unless they have trainers, so it would have been fun for them, but the coach had the final say, so they joined the trainers. It was really cool to see them out on the pitch, but after the first 10 minutes they were sucking in some big ones. In their defence we are at 1765m, so maybe the altitude has something to do with their fitness as well. After an hour, it was 2-2, so they had a penalty shootout and Paps team beat Sean’s in the shootout. What a great experience for them.
Dinner was served of vegetable soup, spaghetti bowl and pineapple and passion fruit for dessert. Chill time again, but to be honest we are all knacked and most of us were in bed at 8.30pm!! Remember we wound our clocks back an hour, so it really was 9.30pm, but I guess that is still early. Some people went to the bar for 1 drink, but I was just so tired, so I decided to tuck up in bed and blog write. We have a free day tomorrow, as our Gorilla permits are for Tuesday, which is great that we all get to go on the one day, as there was talk that some would go on Monday and others Tuesday. There were some optional tours that could be done tomorrow, but some of them were quite expensive, which is mainly the park fees that pump up the price, so there are only 7 people doing something additional tomorrow, the rest of us are going to just chill and get diary’s, washing, internet and things organized. It will be nice to have a day off the truck.
Tomorrow we see the Gorilla's
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