Rwanda impressions

As I sit here along the shores of Lake Bunyonyi, I will attempt to sum up my thoughts on Rwanda. Here are a few points on the country :

In physical appearance, it ranks among the nicest, prettiest countries I've seen! Everything is so green, thick beautiful vegetation. It's all so well kept also, trimmed lawns, clean... They even have a national cleaning day - last Saturday of the month - where everyone apparently willingly and excitedly cleans...

Kigali, being their capital , is huge and developed with tons of high buildings and offices and everything you would need with its own bunch of subburbs. They say it's the country of a thousand hills and I believe it! Even the capital is spread between hills and valleys. Most of the other towns consist of one, maybe 2 main roads, never much more then 1-2 kilometres long.

They have no street food. No street stalls at all. Apparently it's illegal to sell things on the street, you must have a shop. Which makes sense, because we once bought fruit from the first gang of women we saw sitting on the street, and yet 20 minutes later they were all packed up and gone, with a military man roaming around... I guess that's how they stay clean, no one there to dirty the streets.

Their national park (at least the one we did) was gorgeous and again - clean. Seems silly to say but in Ethiopia, all along our hikes and street sides there were water bottles on the ground. Even our guides would throw their water bottle to the ground during our hikes in national parks. In Rwanda - not a single piece of anything on our hike... I even had a banana peel which I asked if I could throw in the nature (animals will eat it, no?) and I was told to hold onto it until the end for a garbage.

The people try to be very helpful. Unfortunately language is very limited, be it French or English. They like to give directions when they have no clue where something is, but they try! They ask where do we want to go when we barely hesitate in our step.

I've actually gotten even more stares in this country compared to all the other ones I've done. Thing is, I really don't think they mean any judgement from it... They just don't see it as a social faux pas. One lady even turned herself over in the bus to have a better view of us, looking without breaking eye contact for about an hour. Kids like to follow, but their lack of English means they follow in silence, or laughing amongst their friends. (I'll attempt to get some videos of this onto Facebook...)

Many people blame the French and the Belgians for their genocide, basically saying they brought in the thoughts of racism when imposing the Hutu and Tutsi identity cards and then chosing one group as the educated leaders... They are now rebelling against those roots and learning English in school instead of French. The older generation we could communicate with in French, and the younger in English.

The general feel of Rwandans are, as mentions, very restrained, a certain somber feel for the people... A lack of liveliness. Not as willing to chat or not as many smiles. Serious people.

That's Rwanda in a nutshell!

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The lake itself here is absolutely gorgeous. We sat around the dock, soaked our feet, enjoying an outdoor shower with a view, and went for a walk to "town" where someone served us fries in what seemed like their living room. Beautiful, relaxing, and yet we've got ants in our pants so we're probably going to move on tomorrow to something more activity oriented. Unfortunately, a tour we were looking forward to doing on and by the Batwa people is too expensive. Our lovely lonely planet said it was 30$ per person. Turns out it's 60$ per person plus at 45$ transportation fee. Quite the price different. LP failed us again...

FYI that last picture is of the many voting booths set up outside in Uganda. Line ups at all of them. I wish my voting booth had those views! Also, the government blocked Facebook and what'sapp for the day. Lol yep, it can do that! Apparently a bunch of people were already arrested for trying to buy votes at voting stations. Our shared taxi driver guy stopped in every little town along the way to yell out from his window his support for Museveni's re-election. All the stores and restaurants were closed. Streets are dead. Elections day is a big thing here!Read more