argh where to begin... i was a bit hesitant about going to Rwanda to begin with... the price suddenly dropped from $500 to $370 then back up to $600..... for one day... well 1 hour really... to spend with the mountain gorillas.. after a bit of umming and arring... i finally decided to go, the bus there, well we were told a 30 hr bus ride, we got to the bus station really early because our tuk tuk driver misunderstood our time.. we couldnt even eat breakfast! so we left the house in a rush and then our "allocated" seats which got changed on arrival had a broken window! uh 30 hrs on a bus without a window.. i dont think so, (the africans dont seem to find it necessary to have windows open) it gets stuffy!!! anyway i fought and argued with everyone, bit hard with the language barrier, but we got good seats in the end.. we had to sleep in the bus overnight.. it stopped and everything.. not very comfortable, anyway when we got to the border we had no idea what we were supposed to be doing, so we were sort of just wondering around, got pushed in the right direction eventually so that all worked out fine! BUT at the border i saw a Bank of Kigali ATM so i thought well i only have 20,000TSH on me (less than $20 and not valid in Rwanda) so i better get money out.. well my ATM card wasnt in my hand bag... or back pack.. or big bag! so we messages Mama.... and it was sitting at home on the bench (i blame tuktuk driver for being early) so i still had my $600 due for the gorillas, then accomodation and food and whatever else we decided to do. But we moved on.. Meg could pay and i would pay her back.. so we kept on moving along on the bus FINALLY after 2 hrs at the border doing pretty much nothing!
well so much for arriving in Kigali in the morning.. we got there at 8pm.... and my god Kigali is huge!!! we had no idea of where we were.. it was dark.. we cant speak French (they speak french and also rwandan or whatever its called) after once again getting pushed in the right direction.. a "taxi"... if it even was a Taxi, We soon found out that we were unable to identify a real taxi from normal people offering you a lift.. so you sorta just had to wait for someone to say taxi? and then hope you were safe.. anyyway i had a few places to stay written down.. 4... we tried 2.. both booked out.. on the 3rd we got lucky.. but Meg only had a few Francs from the border.. and we had to pay for the taxi.. accomodation and food... which was impossible, so we paid the taxi what we could.. kept enough for our first proper meal of the day and i gave the people my passport as payment for the night. the place was alright.. it was called "One Love" bloody expensive though! but i think alot of our money went to their charity.. supplying artificial limbs for people at no cost! so i guess a good reason. anyway this was thursday night...
So Friday we ventured into town... well walked.. in the complete wrong direction.. eventually got a taxi to take us to a place to change our money over ( i cant spell it beaurou? no idea) we paid the taxi then walked to the Bank of Kigali.. well....... first incident of the day! (many to follow) Megs ATM card didnt work.. wasnt accepted for some reason.. so we asked what was up.. they said try the bank down the road... so we did, we thought it would be all fine.. it had internation ATM available here, blah blah blah.. well didnt work.. so we were a little bit panicky.. we had less than 10 000 francs to our name.. but meg remembered she had a credit card at the hotel so we went back there, picked it up and went back to the bank and tried to get money out... sure go ahead right...? wrong!!! it didnt work.. we were literally in Kigali with 2000francs to our name ( enough for 2 plates of chips) and that was it... but for some reason the guy tried again on a euro machine and it worked... so we got the money in euros, changed to US and some of that changed to Francs.. ugh confusing! well after this we thought we should book our return ticket for monday (meg wanted sunday) so we got another taxi to the bus station, went to TAQWA the bus line we went there with.. but they told us we could either leave tomorrow or the following week... so heres the next problem for the day... we had the gorillas on Saturday.. so that was out.. and we had school on Monday AND there was no way we could afford to stay in Rwanda for an extra week! well after much consideration.. weighing up all our options ( including travelling through 3 countries) we decided to check out flights.. so we got our lovely taxi driver ( who tried to rip us off) drove us to a shopping centre and just hung around ( we had alot of travelling and we needed a car... public transport is a bitch when you have no idea what your doing) the first place we went to wanted US$500 for a one way ticket to DAR, then we found 2 other places that both quoted US$386.. so we went back to the hotel, got my passport, ate lunch, paid accomodation and then booked out flight home for the Tuesday!
We then needed to pay the remaining $600 for our Gorilla Trekking permits so we decided to go to their office which unknown to us at the time is 2hrs away!!!! so the guy took us to another tour operator who could speak English.. he told us of this, but new the guy we had been speaking to so he called him for us.. now.. and only now we were able to tell him where we were staying so we could be picked up at 4:30am the next morning, (i forgot Mama gave us a ZAIN sim card which was supposed to work in Rwanda... it didnt, so we had no communication with anyone! and we were also meant to be staying with Mamas friends daughter, didnt happen) but finally, gorillas was sorted, the rest of the day we TRIED to unwind but kinda hard when you just paid an extra $386 you kinda couldnt afford!!! so anyway off to bed we went then woke up at 4am the next day!
we got ready but apparently we were supposed to be ready at 4..? first we heard. great start to the day! but our driver was nice, and the drive was beautiful, so many green hills!! and the mist was bellow us.. it was really beautiful and the 2 hr drive went to quick! but we arrived at Musanze (the base) to meet up with everyone else and get out permits.. well our permits were late, no suprises with out luck, and when i handed over a $100 bill it had a 3mm tear in it, the guy tried to return it and i give him a new one.. kinda hard when thats all i had, anyawy apparently we also owed him an extra $25... that we didnt have! but he let that slide as long as we paid it later... we still havent.. but we were split up into a group with 6 others... a few swiss girls.. and 2 old americans and 2 AUSTRALIANS!!! the first aussies we had met outside the volunteer group in 4 months!!!! and they were from Geelong. My god their accents were hilarious! typical aussies! they were an older couple, but they reminded me of Mum and Dad.. it was nice! :) so we were off to see the AGASHYA group.. it had 25 gorillas and 1 silverback.. lots of babies!!! it was only a 40 minute walk through the jungle! i thought it would have been alot longer because they choose where you go on your fitness level so i thought because we were young they would assume we're fit.. they didnt.. thank god!!! haha but our guide Fransiour?? worked with Diane Fossey and he was so funny, would act like a gorilla and make their noises, he was really weird!! haha
So when we got close to the group we had to drop our bags and just go in with our cameras so we got our glimpse of 3 gorillas almost immediately, it was pretty amazing, they were just eating bamboo.. we had to try and keep a distance of 7m, and the fransiour tried to make sure this was done, but once arrogant american didnt really want to listen.. but we walked around a big tree and there was sooo many!!!! including the silverback.. they didnt really seem to care that we were there.. not sure if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but i dont no.. they didnt do much haha.. ate? i saw one pooing.. took a photo.. i had a young one beat its chest at me.. well not sure if it was actually AT me.. but it was a bit scary! the mother and babies were cute.. i saw the mum give the baby a kiss on the head.. very cute.. oh and i almost forgot to mention. they had SEX!!!!!!!!! the silverback and a female!! it was kinda gross to watch.. but i took a video.. show you when i get home! haha... the hour was just long enough.. for me.. Meg didnt think so... you couldnt sit down and my feet hurt a bit... it was a good experience.. but i still think it was a lot of money, when i get home i will watch Gorrilas in the Mist again... maybe i will understand how special they are a bit more...
We spent the rest of the afternoon just relaxing, not doing much.. we were tired!
Sunday we were planning to go to the Memorial centre ( for the genocide) but we met an Australian lady.. Kim, she was pretty hippie.. again older (3rd australian in 2 days) but we went and had lunch as she was able to tell us some pretty cool things about Rwanda.. like the last Saturday of every month everyone gets together and cleans their town, they discuss issues of buildings or things that are needed (our driver briefly explained this on Saturday) and you can tell.. Kigali is soooooo clean!!!!! nothing like Tanzania.. especially nothing like Dar!!! Their government is 52% women, the highest in the world ( dont quote me on this.. just what Kim says) but her next 2 stories are the ones that got us really listening.. she wasnt afraid to ask people about the Genocide.. whereas Meg and i felt intrusive to ask.. but here is what she told us.. Hutu and Tutsis were decided on appearance and how many cows you owned, if you had alot of cows, you were a Tutsi, if you were tall and had a thinner nose again, Tutsi... but if you had less cows and a wider nows and shorter you were a Hutu. (belguims did this i think) so apparently Tutsis were superior and this is how it was seen for a while, until the Tutsis wanted independence, then some how the belguims changed their mind and the hutus were better and Tutsis needed to be destroyed, well a radio station was made and on this they started off quite suttle in the need to murder Tutsis, then it became a way to target them and they would name people and say it was in the Hutus duty to destroy them, no one did anything to stop this radio station.. and well the whole genocide really. Kim had talked to 2 girls who worked at our hotel.. the girl who took our orders everynight, she was so beautiful, just had a nice friendliness to her! anyway... her story! she was 12 when the genocide occured and her family and herself were all tied up in their living room, she watched as the Hutus decapitated her family, one by one... when it got to her they tried, and thought they must have just killed her without fully decapitating her.. well she later woke up covered in blood, took each member of her family outside and buried them, afterwards she ran into the hills and hid, drinking the water from the leaves... another waitress walked in on her mother being held by Hutus, her mother told her to run, she was 5... she ran... and went back a few days later, and sat with her dead mother and waited for help!
We walked to the Kigali Memorial Centre that afternoon, 45mins.... and just in the last 100m it started to rain, i was walking faster than Meg because for some weird reason she likes to be caught in the rain, but a guy was telling me to run, so i did, and we both went into a guards tower thing and waited... wow it was stuffy in there!! anyway we were pretty much at the Memorial centre, but the rain was so heavy and apparently it was closed. so we had no choice but to wait out til the rain eased then head back home... so that was a waste of time!
Monday!!! we made it to the memorial centre. it was moving, and im glad i went.. but seriously it left you questioning everything!!! people were killing their neighbours and their friends just because they were Tutsis!!! in the mueum they had skulls on display and some of them had been bashed in horribly!!! there was a video of a guy on trial.. he was smirking like a high school boy getting yelled at by the teacher while his friends were around, but he was talking about murdering people.. and calling them by name!!! there was just so much their! so much to read!! rooms full of photos as a memorial to people who had died.. the last section was the worst!!!!
I thought it had ended.. but i was ahead of Meg and i just kept going.. into a section dedicated to children who were murdered... there was a boy who was tortured to death.. these were like kids 12 and under alot around 5yrs.. one was 17.. a 9 month old baby was macheted to death in her mothers arms, alot were shot, one was simply pushed up to a wall.. in this section, it had their name, their favourite food or drink or something, their charactertics and how they were murdered, they had photos larger than real size.. and there was one little girl Ariane, in her photo she had big beautiful brown eyes! and she was murdered by having her eyes stabbed out, then she was stabbed in the head, ugh that was the worst moment for me!
there was also mass graves outside, you could look in one and see the coffins,
but yes its safe to say neither Meg or I were in the mood for much after that.
Also after hearing how they were defined, Hutus and Tutsis, i found myself looking at everyones noses and their height, because half the people we walked by, or even the taxi drivers were probably murderers or had family murdered, and you can just imagine people hiding out in the hills! it was horrible but yet i found it more interesting than the gorillas.
Well thats all about Rwanda really, we flew home in a small plane, and it was nice it only took an hour not 30.. and stangly being back in Tanzania, felt like home.. it was familiar, i was very suprised by that!!!
oh yes, in my last entry i made a mistake the Big 5 is, elephant, leopard, lion, buffalo and black rhino... but still saw them all.
oh and yes the president of Tanzania wants to build a major highway through the serengeti (not good) will probably happen though!
thats about it i think...
i'll try and write again sooner!!
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