Bonjour!

I greet you from the land of gorillas and a thousand hills, Rwanda! I was slightly sceptical i'd even make it this far, given that i'm still feeling a bit weak and shaky from whatever illness I had a week ago. Still hasn't quite been cause for a clinic visit though which is good since it would probably be horribly expensive, but a combination of various hydration solutions, anti-biotics and the occasional paracetamol is keeping me going. I'm even managing to eat once a day now, a big improvement! I reckon a good tropical health check-up when I get home should do the trick.

So, after a lot of persuasion and occasional begging, we managed to get a dala-dala to take our group of ten from Mwanza to the tiny town of Risumu, right on the Rwansa-Tanzania border. This involved driving all day over terrible dirt tracks (we lost 3 of our hub-caps to the cause, the 4th was kicked off the vehicle by our driver as a preventative measure/in frustration) and at one point entering bandit country, where our group was joined by two compulsory guards armed with AK47s. Driving along we asked them if people were killed along this stretch of road often. ''Daily'' was the stony-faced reply. Apparently the bandits shoot at the vehicle until it's forced to stop, leaving the inhabitants of the car to jump out and run for their lives and the bandits to loot the vehicle. Needless to say we were pretty thankful when we reached the end of the bandit's territory unharmed. We spent the night on the Rwandan side of the border, after the usual filling out of forms, stamping of passports required to leave Tanzania. We crossed the border, only to walk a long stretch of no-mans-land which included a bridge suspended above one of the most impressive waterfalls I've ever seen. Walking away from the country that has been our home for so long was a truly emotional experience, and the first night spent in Rwanda was a quiet one, trying to adjust to a new exchange rate, language and even an hour's time difference! Everyone kept slipping into Kiswahili when talking to the hotel staff, and it is still going on to be honest. A difficult habit to break, simple words like 'asante' (thankyou), 'habari' (how are you) and pole (expression of sympathy for a multitude of small trials) have become embedded in our daily behaviour...

On Thursday morning we caught the first bus (well, perhaps the second, there was no way anyway was getting up at 5AM) into Kigali, the capital. Four hours of leg-cramping, claustrophobic, sweaty hell. But so very worth it. The landscape was absolutely beautiful, miles and miles of green hills rolling out in every direction. The only sign of the country's tragic past was the legions of pink-uniformed prisoners, convicted or accused of participating in genocide, out on the roadside involved in public works such as construction of new roads or planting trees. Some of them were disturbingly young. It's so easy to forget this was a recent disaster. with some of the murderers being women and children.

Entering Kigali itself was surprising, for it's a truly modern city. Cars made AFTER 1980! Fountains and well manicured gardens! Traffic lights!?! Bizarre and almost difficult to deal with. Coming back to England will truly be a shock. My favourite thing about the city so far is the prime mode of transportation, Taxi-motors. They're really just motorbikes distinguished from other bikes by the rider's green helmet. The passenger also gets a spiffy green helmet too. They go incredibly fast and are particularly interesting at night. The drivers often have no idea where your destination is, made all the more amusing when you hop on one along with the rest of your friends, then watch as one bike peels away from the others, to take a 'shortcut' and that passenger arrives half an hour after everyone else at the destination, as it's transpired the driver was actually just making it up as he went along. Andy, one of the volunteers, rode behind me today and took plenty of 'action shots' so I've got some really funny pictures to show everyone when I'm home.

This morning we visited the Genocide Memorial Museum, which was just too disturbing and tragic to write much about. Basically what happened in this country just a few years ago is incomprehensible, and the international community just standing by, and even at one point withdrawing the few peacekeeping troops that were stationed here is sickening. I'm visiting the churches that came under siege for holding refugees tomorrow. Some of my friends are going to a technical institute where the murdered bodies have been preserved but I don't think I could handle it.

All in all I'm in love with Rwanda so far, the only problems are that it's comparitively expensive to Tanzania, there is a baffling mix of Kinyarwandan, English, French and even Kiswahili here that makes it difficult to hold a conversation with a local, and the perpatrators of genocide ('genocidaires') are still wandering the streets which is pretty chilling....but the views! The views alone make it worth every minute!

Such a beautiful, tragic country.

- Ruby xxxx