I'm in Rwanda!! And I'm alive!

Yesterday I crossed one of the most dangerous borders in the world (which I didn't know until I'd crossed it) and the only dangerous thing about it were the looming baboons who looked as though they would jump on us when we were crossing the bridge in no-man's land!!! And I would have been able to cope with that as I've had my rabies shots!

We got on the bus at 5.15am in Mwanza in Tanzania which is on lake Victoria (the 2nd largest freshwater lake in the world). At about 5.45 we saw a Mzungu! It was very exciting. He got on the bus and ended up sitting right in front of us. We were going with Ally's coaches which was (at around ten pounds for a nine hour journey) was quite expensive, had windows, lights, booked seats and only about twenty people on it when we started off yesterday morning.

It turned out that our fellow Mzungu (the first one we'd met in almost two weeks) was called Sean and, although American, had lived in Paris for many years and was now living in Beruit and teaching at the university there (is that how you spell Beiruit...? I don't know... life goes one)

The bus journey continued to be quite cosy and I did a lot of bartering out of the windows with my new found swahili! All three of us can now do full transaction in Swahili.... it goes something like this

"Mambo (how's it going?)"

"Poa (good thanks)"

"Habari (how are you?)"

"Nzouri (fine thanks), Shillingapi? (how much is this?"

"Moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi, mia, elfu. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, 100, 100."

"Asante sana (thank you very much)"

"Kayeri (bye then)"

See...... fluent after only a week and a half! I can also say palachichi(avocado), ndeezi (banana), ng'ombe (cow), twiga (giraffe), tembo (elephant) and lots of other random words!

I am now regretting this as I am thinking in English, Swahili, Kinyarwandan and French here in Rwanda and I am rather confused.

The first time we tried to cross the borded we walked down the wrong road whilst resulted in a walk of shame when we had to walk back up the huge hill we'd just come down whilst all the locals laughed at us as we made our walk of shame. They don't just laugh at you either, it's a huge, fake belly laugh that lets you know quite how stupid you are.

Anyway, half way up this hill I decided that the litre of water I had just drank was probably not the best idea as I had to walk through no-man's land to get to Rwanda and they have a three-four hour daladala journey on which there would be no toilet stops... so I faced a rural public toilet!

It wasn't pretty. It was a hole in the ground with two bricks either side to stand on (yuk). I thought I'd cracked it after the bumpy squat toilets on the train but not so.... a warning to all users of squat toilets... you don't know what's going to pop out of that hole... rats, snakes, whatever. I vow not to eat or drink ever again in order not to use on of those.... it was hell!

Anyway, where was I... oh yes... Tanzania.

So... after making it back up the hill and people thinking that I was married to Sean and that Lucia and Cait were our children (how insulting) I we went through customs to stamp out of Tanzania. To get to Rwanda from Tanzania isn't too tricky, you just have to walk a couple of hundred yards down the road, across a bridge and you're there. It was rather unnerving as we had been told that there are a lot of bandits on the particular border but then the view from the bridge of a huge waterfall was so beautiful it was sad just to walk on by... I stayed for about ten seconds!?@!?!

We were then greeted by a man sitting under a tree on a bench with a pad of paper in front of him who 'Tsked' at us. I thought he was either a drug dealer or a money changer, but, not so. This man sitting under the tree was actually a border officer and was the first point of call before we could go through customs. And guess what... being a British citizen... my visa was free!!!!! HURRAH!!!!

So then we got to the other side hassle free and went to the bureau de change which was actually situated in a shed. 2,500 francs roughly equal to 5 USD and so 1,000 Rwandan Francs is equal to about a pound.

I decided that we should then try and find some food (and cait some cigarettes as it had been three days without a fag by this point) and we went to a local shop.

this proved to be a very unpleasant experience as the girls working in the shop were so unhelpful. We were trying to speak a mixture of French, Swahili and English but they weren't having any of it. (I suppose it didn't help that I did an impression of a goat to check that the meat in the samosas was indeed Chevre and).

After waiting for the daladala to leave for about an hour and a half, Cait went and gave them what for (go Cait) and then next thing we knew some lovely Rwandan ladies were bundled into the daladala with us and off we went.

the scenery in Rwanda changed instantly the second we crossed the border. the terrain was so much more green and the villages more clean. There were banana forests everywhere and it was just so much more breathtaking than Tanzania which is not a country I warmed to particularly. The ladies on the bus started singing at one point and carried on singing traditional songs (some of which I think were rather sordid) for about an hour which was absolutely lovely. One of them even convinced the daladala driver to drive us right up to our hotel! AMAZING! Also, when one of the other women called us Wazungu (plural of Mzungu) she corrected her and told us that we are all brothers and sisters. It was just such a lovely moment and I could tell that I was going to like this country a lot.

We got to Kigali at around 9pm and after a bit of wandering around we found a cheap hotel for 10.000 RWF for four people! Bargain... (even if we did make sean sleep on a piece of foam on the floor whilst we all squeezed into the tiny bed)

Kigali seems such a rich city compared to everywhere else we've seen here. The people are dressed mainly in Western clothes and we've seen only one beggar woman the entire time. I know I can't expect the whole country to be developed like this with completely paved roads, traffic lights and street lamps but it really has restored a little of my faith in Africa. We went to the bank to change some travellers cheques when we said goodbye to Sean and it was very impressive. It's brand new and set over probably about six stories... something unheard of. I'm so shocked at how developed Kigali is. It's like being in a mediterranean country... with Africans!