Southeast Africa

Once we left the city, we immediately learned once more why Rwanda is called the country of a thousand hills. There were hills everywhere we looked. The roads were in really good condition, and there were even street lights installed in very short intervals, making driving at night a breeze. The biggest risk from driving at night is usually from livestock being on the road and the drivers not able to see them on time. It hurts both car and donkey or cow when they crash. With lights everywhere, this risk was significantly reduced.

It was difficult to find a spot that was safe to pull over at while still offering a great panorama. After some hours of driving, we felt we found a good spot. Anne jumped out of the car to take the picture while I remained in the car with the hazard lights on. Once she returned to the car a minute later (the spot wasn't as good as it seemed), I accelerated to make it up the slope we were on. Or rather, tried. As I was doing that, the red battery warning light went on in my dashboard. The engine was dead.

Well, neither of us are mechanics, but we knew that rolling a car could be helpful in trying to restart the engine. So, Anne jumped out again, grabbed some bystanders in the vicinity (mostly kids), and pushed the car sufficiently up the hill so I could make a u-turn in a curve. Once the car was lined up with the downhill slope, she jumped back in and off we went. It was a big hill, but across 1.5km of downhill rolling, we did not manage to restart the engine. Since powersteering had gone, as well as proper braking, I really did not feel safe rolling too fast because I never knew if I would be able to make the next turn without activated powersteering.

We came to a stop at an uphill section and called Frank from the agency to ask for advice. He said he would immediately dispatch a new replacement vehicle, but it would take a few hours. We had driven for 2.5h by the time we broke down, even though we only covered 86km in distance. That's because of the many twisty roads in Rwanda, and a general top speed allowance of 60km/h, a velocity that is quite hard to achieve in many spots and we were mostly going 40-50km/h.

We had hoped to lock the car and grab some lunch, somewhere, while we were waiting, as it would take at least three hours for the replacement vehicle to arrive. Unfortunately, the car had died completely and absolutely. The hazard lights were fading more and more until they turned off, and with a last *click* the doors unlocked and would not lock again. This meant that one of us was forced to stay with the car, as we couldn't just take our luggage out and leave the car there.

Generally speaking, not a lot of small businesses are listed on Google Maps, a tool which we have grown to utilize a lot to find specific venues. For some unexpected reason, I had discovered that in the tiny village up the road there was a restaurant. It had no opening times, pictures or reviews listed, which is always a reason to approach the matter with a bit of doubt. So, I agreed with Anne that she would stay behind in the unlocked car and I'd go and grab some food for us.

After walking uphill for about a kilometer I found the spot that was listed on GMaps. It looked more like a deserted village bar, but when I approached the woman behind the bar and asked about food, she led me to the back. She didn't speak any English, and only a little bit of French. She introduced me to the chef, who exclusively spoke Kinyarwanda. The kitchen was a tiny place, maybe 2m x 2m. There was a charcoal grill on one side, and some meat on the other side. A few bananas under the counter. And that was it. No running water or electricity.

They had meat skewers, grilled bananas, and alcohol. Nothing else. I ended up ordering a few meat skewers and a few bananas, because both Anne and I were starving. She is vegetarian, and I try to be very conscious about the meat I consume, but when out of options... The next challenge was transporting the food. They had no infrastructure to prepare food for takeaway, and I ended up wrapping out skewers in some napkins we found somewhere in a remote corner of the bar.

Hence I made my journey back to the car, this time attracting a lot of local stares, and many people who passed me yelling out "brochettes" (the local term for the skewers) in utter amazement - no idea why... Some elder ladies who came up the hill got very active upon seeing me, and were excitedly shouting at me in Kinyarwandan, pointing downhill first and then at me again. I suspected they were telling me that they had just moments ago spotted Anne at the bottom of the hill when they passed the broken down car there.

I made it back to the car, and was surprised that suddenly there was a crowd that had formed around the car. As I got closer, I discovered that there was a group of around 15 kids of all ages that had assembled around the car, and Anne had gotten out my Bluetooth speaker and was playing African songs for the kids. Some of them they were singing and dancing along to, and others they didn't know. It seemed fun, though I could tell that Anne was tense, as her door was open and the kids were all over her.

I climbed into the car, and immediately had a bunch of people showing up on my side of the car, begging me for money. Once I managed to tell them that I wouldn't give them any, they left, but more kids showed up. At some point we had around 30 kids crowded around us. Not too many adults, fortunately, because those that stopped just begged for money. I made a few more calls to Frank and found out that the replacement car was almost with us.

Once the car arrived, Sam, the replacement driver, tried to fiddle with the batteries, but we had to shut down his attempt. We still had three hours of journey ahead of us and only 2.5h of daylight left. We had to leave immediately if we wanted to enjoy anything of our accommodation. So we changed our luggage from one car to the other, loaded in Sam, who only barely managed to hire a local guy to watch the broken down car in his absence, and dropped him off at the next town 20km down the road. From there, we continued on our planned itinerary.Read more