Falling in Love with Rwanda
South West, Rwanda - Day 2
Alarms went off, breakfast was eaten, and right before 9 AM we checked out of our hotel (Chez Lando) and met James, our guide for our tour of Rwanda. Before leaving town I asked to stop by an ATM and pulled out about $200 USD. You get a weird feeling when you are at the ATM and punch in $200,000 for your withdraw amount. Apparently $5,000 RWF notes were the largest the ATM had and I got forty of them. I stuffed the wad into my wallet and ran to the car.
Katie and I really enjoyed watching the scenery of Kigali fade into rural Rwanda. We traveled through several villages, and saw hundreds of people. Lots of women in beautifully patterned and brightly colored dresses, and men in stylish suits. For a moment I thought this was the most dapper people I had ever seen, but James reminded us that it was Sunday and that everyone was wearing their Sunday best. Some children would see us in the back of the vehicle and wave at us and we would happily wave back! Even though most people were dressed up, there was still work to do. Women had babies wrapped up on their backs, with large bundles of one thing or another on top of their heads. Men pushed bikes packed high with things to sell in town. We saw people transporting sugar cane, bananas, chickens, black tea, and milk. Others worked the fields. Rwanda's main source of money and work is agriculture.
In the middle of our drive, we stopped at Butare where we walked through the Ethnographic Museum and learned about Rwanda's history and the tribes that hunted and farmed the lands. Before leaving town, we stopped for lunch at a place that was a small self serving buffet style restaurant. In one of the pans was half pasta half what I thought was a cheese sauce. After coating my pasta in said sauce, one of the ladies that worked there told me I didn't have to put everything on top of each other, I could get a bowl. I don't need a bowl for my cheese sauce! It was at about that time she informed me that was porridge that I had put on my pasta. We laughed, we cried, and I ate some really weird porridge pasta.
Back in the car, it wasn't too long before we were weaving up and down the roads of Nyungwe Forest National Park. With the Forest came a misting fog and lots of military guys. Apparently Rwanda and Burundi haven't been getting along well lately and the Rwandan army is posted in this border area to make sure there isn't any trouble. Soon we ended our journey at our lodge (Emeraude Kivu) on the shores of lake Kivu. We dined on beef samosas as we watched several groups of night fishermen working and the lights twinkling across the lake from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwanda Facts
Umuganda is a national day of cleaning. The last Saturday of every month, Rwandans are required to spend 6 hours cleaning the country (And it shows! This is easily the cleanest country we have ever been to!)
Rwanda is just a few degrees south of the equator and because of that the temperature barely fluctuates throughout the year
The four seasons of Rwanda. Long Rainy Season (March - May), Long Dry Season (June - September), Short Rainy Season (October - November), and the Short Dry Season (December - February)
Only 15% of Rwanda is covered by natural flora. The rest of the rural areas are made up of farmlands and any land that cannot be farmed is usually used to grow eucalyptus trees for lumber
