Rwanda

Trying to catch up peeps sorry for the massive delay!

We arrived in Kigali on the Sunday evening, it turned out that the locals had pointed out a $200 a night hotel for us.. not within our budget, so we asked for directions a cheaper guest house! We found one close by for $13 a night, very basic but the beds and sheets were clean. Not long after we had checked in the heavens opened and a thunder storm began.. (eek). The hotel owner showed us where to go for food, which was a basic Rwandan buffet, but for $3 it was a bargain meal! That evening I went to sleep amid crazy crashing and banging from the thunderstorm outside

Breakfast was included in the room rate was made up of unlimited coffee (yay!) 2 bananas and 4 slices of white bread . We met some other travelers a women from Uganda and a man from America and we chatted about the must sees in Rwanda and where to stay in central Kigali.

The nuns

We were recommended a $10 night mission guest house – (run by the catholic nuns) in the middle of Kigali, so we took our stuff and jumped in a quick taxi to there. On arrival we were told no room at the inn but we were then whisked away to another part of the church to another nun! We checked in their for 6000 RW Francs, ($9/£4). The nun spoke no English and my French seems to have vanished from my mind but we understood that she didn’t want Lusajo and Monika to stay together in a room . The room was very basic, and turned out that the nuns were not as good at cleaning as we might have hoped…

The convent room!

Rwanda is made up of many hills, so every time we left the hostel we had to climb a massive hill into town. There was a huge difference between the centre of Kigali and the centre of Moshi, it was like we had a arrived in the West!! The scenery was so different, no chaos, everybody busy and the cleanliness in the streets was amazing.. no dirty feet for a few days!!

The Genocide memorials

We headed straight for the hotel des milles – the sight where the original hotel Rwanda happened, the film is actually shot in South Africa After the resolution of the conflict the hotel was rebuilt into a classy tourist hotel which doesn’t represent the hotel in any way but appears to be a huge tourist attraction.

The sight of the original hotel Rwanda

We then headed to the Genocide memorial museum, we tried to walk there and ended up in totally the wrong direction, – and we realized the guidebook recommendation of taking a taxi was a good one!

The memorial museum was amazing, very moving but a fantastic memorial to the 2 million victims and somewhere that Rwandans can go to pay respects to their families. The gardens of the museum where lovely very peaceful. Within the museum gardens are the mass graves of the victims.. very shocking to see but good that their is somewhere official for their burial.

I learnt so much about the genocide and how it started, there were 3 tribes in Rwanda, the two major ones the Hutus and the Tutsis. There are more Hutus than tutsis. You can see the difference visably in the people, the tutsis have a thinner lighter coloured face and a larger nose. The Belgians during occupation of Rwanda encouraged the separation between the tribes and created a class system that eventually caused the civil war. The war could have been stopped as soon as it started if the UN and the west had got involved, but instead the West used its forces to rescue westerners from Rwanda and the rest is history...

We all decided we wanted to take a local bus so we enlisted the help of the local police to help us! It turned out it would not be the last time we needed them for this trip.. more later.. anyway after much discussion we got on the local dallah dallah home!

The missing money..

At the mall later that day Monika realised she had money missing from her bag.. around $400! After re-tracing our steps in our mind we realised it was taken at the hotel the previous night, I decided it would be a good idea to enlist our local police friends again.. we ended up getting taken to the police station, Monika and I in the front and Lusajo along with 9 other officers in the back! Very surreal experiance. There we bumped into many other prisoners.. all women very bizarre ! I was pleased I wasn't on my own! We gave statements and was then told to head to the police station near our hotel in the morning! The next morning we ended up spending the day at the police station, with the police officers we confronted the hotel! All too no avail and no insurance pay out either!! I wouldn't recommend getting arrested in Rwanda the jails are nothing to write home about!!!!

The Ntarama Church

Later that afternoon we headed to ntarama church, this is the famous church where tutsi's were hiding from the hutus and advised they were safe within the church. Then one night following a tip off from the priest the place was grenaded and the whole 5000 tutsis inside where killed.. the remains there were very disturbing but a reminder of exactly what happened at that spot.

The clothes left by the dead.. Apologies for the shocking photo..

Inside the church where 5000 Tutsis were killed by the Hutus

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Apologies for the shocking photo.. blood of children smashed against a wall in the nursery - shocking sight

Grenaides where used to kill the tutsis, their marks still remain

Some of the sculls remaining from the mass killings.. - Apologies for the shocking photo..

The church memorial - 5000 Tutsi's died at this location

Kigali to Gisenyi

We bid the nuns a farewell and headed to the coastal town of Gisenyi. We booked into an equally cheap mission place and went in search of the beach! We found the beach at a very plush hotel. We ordered a drink and enjoyed the luxury for a few hours!

Leaving Kigali

Gisenyi - Hotel kiev

That night we ate in a local place.. after I had finished my meal Lusajo told us that the chips were alive and he had just found the remains of an animal in his food URGH!!!

The next morning we explored Gisenyi and ended up at the Congo border.. Monika and I were very tempted to head over just for the stamp and to say we had been but Lusajo, the voice of reason decided that it wasn;'t safe so we should just stay in Rwanda! So I just got the photos at the border sign..

The border to the Congo

A sign as you leave Rwanda to go to the Congo boarder

Overall Rwanda is an amazing place to go and visit, even without seeing the famous Gorillas at Parc de National - $500 for 1 hour with them meant I was priced out of going - but I am happy with my giraffe sightings on my safari and the $500 in my pocket! The genocide memorials were very horrific and it was stunning to think all of this happened only 13 years ago, but what a fantastic turn around for a country who truly understands the word forgiveness...Now the return back to Moshi...