Traveling home from Rwanda April 2005

The major problem with travelling home is the mindset one can get into. It is one thing to be ready to leave and quite another to have already left, except for the body, which lingers until your ride comes. It is best to ‘discover’ that you are scheduled to leave on the morrow and only then to bend your thoughts in that direction. The decisions regarding ‘what goes and what stays’ are probably only marginally poorer than that provided by deep deliberation.

Judging by the eclectic assemblage of clothes that adorn the population, many people appear to lighten their load by giving away t-shirts and sweatpants. A nice shirt I saw in church read “I’m too sexy for my hair …That’s why it’s not there.” I’m not sure she could read English. T-shirts with commercial appeals are the most common of course, followed closely by European football clubs and American supermarkets.

I was able to pack all that I had left in one of the two suitcases with which I had come primarily because I dropped off donated and requested items in Kibogora: blood pressure cuffs, used eyeglasses, drugs, DVD’s, ketchup and brown sugar.

I was scheduled to be taken to Butara from Kibogora the morning of the 26th April. This was done to allow me to catch a ride with the Ogden’s (Dr. Frank and Carol) who were coming up from Burundi on their way to Kigali to swap cars with David Sudell and bring back some building supplies and a Burundian surgeon, Dr. Kaganga, to work at Kibogora for a while. If this sounds complicated, it pales in comparison to the actuality. Travel in Africa is typically complicated enough to tax your logical capacities. In addition someone is always coming up with a last minute request or problem to add to your ‘to do’ list on arrival. I was to be ‘on the porch’ at the Hotel Ibis in Butara at 5:30PM. There was no plan “B.”

I was driven by the hospital’s driver, Innocent, the three hours from Kibogora to Butara, the old capitol of Rwana-Urundi colony prior to the 1963 independence. He speaks little English but we get by with an argot of several languages. We worked our way out of the Kiva Lake area, past Gataca Church (which has it’s new roof) up the road to N’amasheka and to the paved highway in about 45 minutes. From there we started to climb. This is the tea-growing area. Huge farms are seen with the typical green “cushions” of tea plants, row upon row, going up impossible hillsides. A man from N’amesheka was brought in Saturday after a tea branch he was pruning with his ‘ponga’ snapped back into his eye. He noted that his vision deteriorated for two days before coming in. He has a well-developed cataract now and is blind in that eye.

We rapidly enter the jungle at the top of the grade and run into several military patrols. They are said to be there to prevent poaching in the jungle. Rwanda has published the plan that they will turn the entire area into a tourist destination, limit access by road (thus adding about two hours to the six that it now takes to get to Kibogora), and build some tourist hotels. The reason most people think that they are there is to prevent infiltration from Hutu rebels in Congo. Whatever the reason, we enjoy it while we may. The temperature drops about twenty degrees and we stop for several troops of colobus monkeys, black and white along the road but not much taken with becoming photographic subjects. The two hours consists of good roads winding up to impressive overlooks before descending into a liana-choked forest. Gangs of men pile logs along the road. None of the logs shows the marks of anything but a ponga. We do see a couple of men gleaming with sweat in the morning coolness, at a makeshift saw-pit using the deep gully at the side of the road to take planks off a 3 foot wide mookwa log.

We still see people with huge head loads. Very different from rural Zambia or Kenya, both men and women carry on their heads. This leaves their hands free for other loads and balance. Some of these loads are huge bulky bundles of leaves or lumber. Some are just silly: a single umbrella or hoe. They are most usually carried on a head ring made by each person out of banana leaves. They are quick and easy to construct and frequently discarded on the road at the end of a trip. Not surprisingly, posture here is excellent. The next step-up in mass transportation is the wheelbarrow. This vehicle bears no relation to any similarly named item from Lowe’s. It is of home manufacture, with a solid wooden tire on a wheel scavenged from some vehicle. The bed is made of sticks, roughly shaped to make a platform that is canted slightly at the front end by about 10 degrees. It is used by typically two-men to carry wood, potatoes, charcoal or produce. One pulls and the other pushes. I saw a gang resting on the long hill going up to Tyavo last week and motioned that I would like to try to move it. The pusher, a very muscular young guy who was streaming in sweat and heaving huge breathes, gladly realized the “Tom Sawyer” potential and let me have at it. The handles are widely spaced and sturdy. With the help of the puller, I was able to get it up to trotting speed fairly quickly but it was quite unstable even so. I was able to get another hundred feet up the hill before quitting (to my own credit without tipping the poor thing over). We took pictures of each other to good-natured laughter from the spectators. (What will these bazungu do next?)

Travelling on Rwandan roads is enlivened by taxis…of the two-wheeled persuasion. Even very poor roads will have a bicycle or two with a plank seat behind the driver. These affairs may be quite gaudy with reflectors and whip-antennae. They are reminiscent of a Schwinn I lusted after in third grade. Paying passengers are expected to help push the taxi to get it up to speed before hopping on (sidesaddle in the case of women…how do they do that?).

All travel in Rwanda will bring you to a genocide memorial or three. These may be simple cross-marked slabs of concrete at ground level like in Kibogora or large affairs such as at Kigali. The most chilling I saw was up towards Kibuyi north of Kirambo. It consists of a concrete mausoleum built into the hillside and extended perhaps 50 feet. The front is about 15 feet wide and is glazed and barred. It is lined with shelves and skulls. The shelves behind the front recede into the darkness gleaming with stacks of femurs and an occasionally naturally preserved mummy. No accurate account has been made but the best estimate has been that about 1.4 million of the 8.3 million people of Rwanda died in the period from 1994-1998.

Eventually we got to Butare and I got a tour of the National Hospital, a typical rambling affair of covered walkways and ramps. I visited their Newborn Intensive Care and was interested to find a two-month-old who looked pretty good. She was however suffering from a narrowing of her aorta that will in time make her heart fail. There is no cardiac surgeon in Rwanda; much less a pediatric cardiac surgeon nor any of the infrastructure needed to accomplish the surgery.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking the main street after going to the national museum. This however was a bit of a disappointment. As the power was off, the tour was thus by flashlight and the legends were in French. I had gotten a room at the Hotel Ibis, quite plush actually. Screens on the windows and electricity (at least from 6AM until 11PM) and everything. Frank, Carole and company showed up on time and we went to dinner. Carol observed to me that “TIA,” “This is Africa” and that in ordering food one needs to “ask for what you want and eat what you get.” We have a quite nice dinner of talapia and retire at about 9:30PM.

We start at 6AM sharp to get to Kigali. Frank has to pick up another doctor coming in, drop off two of us and swap cars with David Sudell. I catch the plane on time at 4PM. It will be 28 hours before I am in Atlanta, 22 hours of that in the air. My travelling companion is Nathan Thompson, the son of a Congolese / Rwandan/ Burundian missionary (depending on which country had not evicted him at the time). Nate is a senior med student at U. Washington and will be graduating in June after spending a six-week surgery rotation with Frank. He had been in Burundi for the week. We are able to share a flight to Nairobi and Amsterdam. We part after a prayer session in the airport. He still has a 12-hour flight leaving an hour after mine.

The rest of the trip is lot in sleep, reading and contemplation; this was a good trip indeed.