Rwanda

sorry this one is sideways I don't know how to turn it around.  

We arrived at the Tanzania/Rwanda border sitting 4 in front/4 in back of a sedan.  The driver actually had to reach over the lap of one of the middle passengers to change the gears.  It was squishy… and I’ve been on Cameroonian transportation for the past two years.  Fortunately, the trip was shorter than we thought and we were happy to pile out and make our first border crossing on foot.  We got stamped out in Tanzania, walked across a river, stamped into Rwanda & boarded a bus for Kigali, the capital.

We were not in Tanzania anymore… and certainly not in Cameroon.  Rwanda is clean and fancy.  Plastic bags and street food are illegal.  Moto drivers wear helmets and carry a spare for their passenger.  I say single passenger as Claire and I were literally laughed at trying to board a moto a deux.  Buses leave on time, sell tickets in advance and only let as many people board as there are seats, incredible. 

The moto ride to the hostel was sort of terrifying since the fancy paved roads mean much faster speeds.  I think it would have been like riding a moto around NYC, something I thought would be cool and am no longer interested in.  The motos were also not game for balancing bags in their laps/handlebars like the Cameroonian motos , so I had a very precarious center of gravity with my giant backpack strapped to my back tipping me backwards as I clung to the sides going up and down the hilly Kigali terrain.  But, if I had fallen off, no biggie, I had my snazzy Rwandan helmet on. 

We met up with some Rwandan Peace Corps Volunteers which was a ton of fun.  Alma was an absolute rock star, taking us under her wing & showing us an amazing time in Rwanda.  She  took us out to Musanze to attend one of her coworker’s wedding the following day.  It reminded me of a Cameroonian ceremony in that everything started later than you could have thought possible and we were obliged to drink lots of Fanta.  (I enjoyed this part since another noteworthy fact about Rwanda is the numerous flavors of Fanta that exist.)  Nobody seemed to care that the dressiest we could manage was pagne dresses and our recently acquired shower shoes from Zanzibar. 

The next day we continued on to Lake Kivu.  Our first afternoon was rainy and we ended up drinking beers and eating fish under a lean to, the only shelter from the elements at the “Bikini tamtam.”  I was wearing my “Limbe” pants so naturally wound up meeting a Cameroonian.  However, he was a fancy footballer from Yaoundé so we didn’t really have anything in common. 

Alma and her friends naturally knew all the places to go.  We stayed at two church hostels which were super cheap and ate lots of delicious food.  At night you could see the volcano glowing in the distance.  Our last day was beautiful and we got some sun at the fancy lakeside resort before boarding an overnight bus for Kampala, Uganda.