Land of a million smiles and a thousand hills

This post will include a description of my three days, three nights -trip to Rwanda, some practical tips and a bit of facts for the ones of you out there who were like "What? Where's Rwanda?"

There it is. :)

Couple of basic facts:

Capital: Kigali, with a population of ~1,2 million

Population: ~12 million

Area: ~7% of Finland's area

People living under the poverty limit: ~50 %

Currency: Rwandan franc (1 € = 772 RWF)

Visa: apply for advance on the Rwanda High Commission's website about a week before your trip and pay $30 at the airport. 

Official languages: Kinyarwanda, English, French (neither of the latter ones really in the countryside, though, so be ready for language barriers)

Notable things in history: Genocide against the Tutsi (1994)

Other interesting things about the country:

- littering is illegal and plastic bags are banned

- the country is safe, ever for wazungus (= white people) like me and you are actually able to walk the streets after dark 

- Rwanda has been accepting refugees from DR Congo, and are currently receiving 1,000 refugees a week from Burundi 

- the concept of umuganda is enforced by law, which means every last Saturday of the month everyone works to clean the city or work on the environment (we noticed people working to fill the potholes in the streets in front of their house, something I've never witnessed Kenyans do...)

- Rwanda has had a steady economic growth of an average 7,5 % ever since the civil war ended in 1995 and it's estimated to continue

- Rwanda is one of the few countries to have made huge progress in their efforts to reach their 2020 Millennium Development Goals, for example they have cut down child mortality rates, increased literacy

- Rwanda mainly exports coffee and tea to Finland and imports heavy machinery from Finland.

We arrived late on Labour Day eve to Kigali after a 2h 40 min flight from Nairobi (with a technical landing in Entebbe-Kampala, Uganda).
We stayed at the Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel in Kigali before and after our day trip to Gisenyi - they also have a hostel in Gisenyi, but it was overbooked. EXCELLENT staff, clean rooms and all the essentials you might need, for about 15-35 €/night. I recommend it warmly for all backpackers!

Early Labour Day morning we got on the bus to Gisenyi, which is a small town located on the shore of Lake Kivu and the board of DR Congo in West Rwanda. The bus trip on the quality roads (something you only see in Nairobi, if even there!) took 3,5 hours. We used Virunga Express, which I recommend for a nice travel experience (comfy seats!). Sit on the right side for the best scenery on the way there. :) The tickets were around 5-7 € one-way, if I remember correctly. The bus stops every hour along the way, so you can make a quick run to a toilet if you need to. 

The country side is absolutely beautiful! The photos I took didn't really show how lovely this country is. The small villages we passed showed a calm and modest way of life. We saw people working in the tea plantations and sugarcane fields, carrying vegetables on their heads, women dressed colorfully (not your urban style, that you see in Nairobi), kids smiling and waving... I just sat and listened to music while watching the scenery and I couldn't imagine that this is were the atrocities of the genocide actually took place, not so long ago...

The travel advisory warns travelers about going to Gisenyi, since the town is right on the border to DR Congo, and things there can escalate fast. Well, we had a very lovely and safe experience, so don't trust travel advisories blindly.

Gisenyi. Look! No trash in the streets!

We had a very chill day in Gisenyi. After arriving (on schedule, I might add), we managed to find a hostel with available rooms. The staff at the Shadow hostel weren't as professional as in Kigali, and they didn't really speak English or French. Luckily we happened to meet the manager who spoke French, so Oona, being Swiss and fluent in French, managed to get us everything we needed (read: working wifi). Afterwards we headed off to a restaurant recommended to us, the White Rock. Since Rwandan food is pretty similar to Kenyan (rice & beans), we went for an Italian lunch. 

Lake Kivu is a great source for methane gas in Rwanda.  

The Avenue of Cooperation, parallel to the beach.

I wish we had had the time and money to go over to the Congo-side. The visa is apparently $105 for Finns...
TIP: Hikers should go trekking on the Congo-trail (31 km) or hiking on the volcanoes! From what I understand, Gisenyi is not that far from Volcanoes National Park, which is popular for Gorilla trekking, which is supposed to be the animal experience of a lifetime. However, the gorilla pass is as much as $750 + the price for the safari including guide, trips etc. ($150-300). Way out of our budget but if it fits in yours, do NOT miss out on that!  

Sunset in Gisenyi.

Red sunset over Congo.

Early next morning it was time to hop on the Virunga Express again. This picture is taken from the bus on our way out from Gisenyi.

 I really enjoyed going to Gisenyi even if it doesn't sound like much (a day-trip with 7 hours on the bus, Italian food, seeing the border to DR Congo and walking on the beach). Since it was Labour Day, everything would have been closed in Kigali anyway, and after 3 months in Nairobi, it felt good to see some nature - even if it was from the bus.

 My aptitude for daydreaming was induced by the beautiful scenery on our way back to Kigali, made even dreamier with fog, soft rain and low-hanging clouds. It's rainy season in Rwanda, so it had rained heavily during the night and it rained a bit all morning. The clouds were hugging the hills we were driving around and over on winding streets. At some point a cover of the Lynyrd Skynyrd-song, Free bird, came on and I genuinely felt happy.

When we arrived back to Kigali around 11 am, we checked in at Discover Rwanda Youth Hostel and drove around the city with motobikes, the cheapest and fastest way to get around the city. We had a list of restaurants from a friend of mine, but it took some time finding them. Eventually the first place we found was the Papyrus, which we wanted to go to the least, as it was Italian again, but the food was good! 

TIP: Other restaurants to visit: Sole Luna, Serena Hotel, New Cactus, Khana Khazana (Indian), Republica, Heaven (I heard it's amazing, but expensive, ~100€/2 pers.), Bourbon Cafe (good coffee, check cakes for freshness), New Cactus. For more restaurants, check out EatOut.

A must-see site in Kigali is definitely the Main Memorial Genocide Museum. Brace yourself, though, since it is very touching. I didn't want to pay extra for photographing, so I don't have pictures to show. 

In case you're not quite sure on what happened in Rwanda, I'll explain it in a very simplified way: 

Belgians colonized Rwanda, declared some people as Tutsi and others Hutu (based on looks, facial features, how many cows they had, etc.) and favored the minority Tutsi. The people of Rwanda had been living in peace up until that point. Rwanda gained independence in 1962. Hutu's aggression towards Tutsi ultimately lead to a brutal genocide, where the goal was to eliminate Tutsis completely. When the international community heard of what was happening in 1994, the UN gave orders to stand back.

TIP: Movies you can watch about Rwanda: Hotel Rwanda, Sometimes in April and Shooting Dogs. 

At the museum they first had a section describing the events leading up to the genocide, with video interviews on the few survivors of it. It was heart-breaking to hear stories of people (some my age) losing every member of the family ("There were 60 of us, and now I'm the only one left"), seeing their loved ones killed right before them, being betrayed by a Hutu-neighbor... 

Then there was a video viewing room, where the same people told their warmest memories of the loved ones they lost. There was this guy, maybe a bit younger than I am, who recalled a memory of the last meal his mom made him, before she was killed. He was trying to hold back tears and said that passion fruits now have another meaning to him...

After that, when your emotions are already running high, you walk into a section with bones...

But the section that made me cry was the kids' room (If you have difficulties reading about brutalities towards children, just skip this paragraph). 

There were last pictures of children as young as 18 months, and a small plaque with facts about them: their name, age, favorite thing to do (play with sister), description of their character (smiley, playfull, daddy's girls), their last words ("Where can I run to, mom?").... and the way they were killed (smashed into a wall, slashed with a machete).... I've never cried at a museum before. Now I have.

What is incredible to me is that this is all something that happened a little over 20 years ago, and every family in Rwanda was touched by this in one way or the other. It absolutely amazes me that they have managed to find a way to live in peace and rebuild their country together. It truly shows the capability of the human mind to overcome difficulty. Incredible. 

We walked in silence through the memorial site outside of the museum, where 250,000 people are said to be buried. Rwanda has an official week of mourning April 7th, but as the atrocities went on for the whole month, people had brought flowers to the memorial site pretty recently, as some of them were still fresh. Many of them had a note saying: "Never again".

After the Museum we took a trip to the Milles Collines, the actual hotel where the events portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda took place, but to our disappointment there is nothing historical about it, as it's a luxury Kempinski hotel nowadays.

The rest of the evening was quite low-key - we had a bite to eat at a Mexican place and enjoyed a couple of local beers at the hostel. 

All in all, a very good but extremely emotional Saturday.

On Sunday we wanted to see a bit of art and we actually ended up seeing up to four different art galleries. They're not that big, so it takes about 10-30 min. to see everything. Local artists mix urban and Western styles with local ones, and it's an okay variety.

 If you're looking to buy something, it would be nice to do it at these places, since they support the local community in various ways.

The galleries we saw were Niyo Arts Gallery, Imeka Art Gallery, Ivuka Arts Studio and Jego Arts. 

We walked from studio to studio and got to see the real way people were living, behind the paved main streets. The rain had stopped before we arrived to Kigali, and it was 27 degrees and sunny.

I haven't been to many African countries but Rwanda definitely tops the list for me. I was wondering about the level of services (people get medically evacuated to Nairobi for the smallest things) and the nightlife (for which Kampala in Uganda and Nairobi in Kenya are famous) but we talked to this one expat-tattoo artist who vouched for them both. I could really see myself staying in Kigali some time in the future. Better get back home and study some French! :)

TIP: The way to the Kigali International Airport only takes 10-15 minutes from the hostel and as the airport is quite small, 1,5 hours gives you plenty of time for security checks etc. Compare that to Nairobi, where it takes 2,5 hours to get to the airport from Westlands, Nairobi due to heavy traffic, and 1 h for the security checks and so forth... 
Coming back to Nairobi it took an hour to get out the airport because of the health checks (in case you have Ebola...), passport/visa checks and getting the luggage. Phew.