Western Province

After we drove around aimlessly looking for a nice spot to work from, we headed toward the unrated guest house. The access road to it was rather dodgy and very steep. When we arrived at the guest house it turned out to be a construction site. I left the car to see if I can find anyone to talk to, but no such luck. I had already begun turning the car around in the steep dead end road when someone who seemed to be in charge approached our car from the side.

He was the owner of the guest house and invited us in. There was a construction site all around us, and there was no internet, but he could prepare a table with chairs and some drinks for us, which is all we needed. I backed into the driveway, parked the car, and we set up office inside, away from the blazing heat of the sun.

Seeing how there was no internet we had to Hotspot from my phone, which was sufficient for Anne to have her first call of the day, and I managed to get some work done as well. However, after a bit more than an hour, the connection suddenly dropped dead. It appeared as if the closest cellular tower was malfunctioning in a way, because it worked fine in one moment and not at all in the next. All of the people at the construction site had been eyeing us curiously, and now we were just making it even more interesting for them.

Two muzungus (white people) show up out of nowhere, whip out their laptops on a construction site, have a few calls, and pack up again an hour later 🤣

Since we couldn't work anymore due to lack of signal, we packed everything back into the car. I got into the drivers seat, turn the ignition, and... Nothing! Our second car had died as well. At the very bottom of a very steep hill, at the end of a private driveway, and we had no signal to call anyone ourselves. After laughing and despairing at the same time for a second or two, we managed to communicate with our host (who only spoke French and Kinyarwanda) that our car had broken down and we needed some mechanics. We couldn't reach the rental agency either (due to lack of signal), so we were entirely depending on his help. He placed a call and said something about ten minutes.

Surprisingly, after around ten minutes, a super run down car blasting very loud music pulled up to the driveway. The initial surprise at the timeliness quickly got surpassed by the surprise when three greased up mechanics jumped out of the car and immediately got to work. We had no languages in common but the problem seemed obvious to them and they jumped into action immediately. They first tried to jump start our car, but to no avail - our car wouldn't start, but some lights lit up, which hardened our suspicion that it was a battery issue - again.

Ultimately, they had to remove our battery and swap it with theirs, which finally did the job. Our car was still a bit shaky on its legs and constantly lost the charge to stay turned on. They said we'd have to stay there at the bottom of the hill pressing the gas for the next twenty minutes until our battery has had a chance to recharge a solid amount. We paid them the equivalent of 15 USD for their quick help and off they went. After some ten minutes or so of mindlessly pressing the gas every five seconds we managed to put the car into gear and whip it up the steep hill, back toward the hospital.

Once we had reached the hospital, we were too afraid to turn off or even idle the engine, so I remained in the car and continued to mindlessly press the gas pedal while Anne went inside to find out about her results which were more or less due. Long story short, the results were not ready, but they offered to call us with the results. An offer we would've appreciated to receive three hours earlier 🙄 Instead of waiting around any longer we decided to continue onwards to our destination for the next few days - Kibuye, at the Eastern shore of Lake Kivu.Read more