You know how disquieting it is to receive the notification that your flight has been cancelled, but I was only bemused when I got that notification while ON the flight in question, from Harare to Kigali. I was flying on Rwandair, and the services were by far the most deluxe of any of the other airlines I flew on. For the first time, there was WiFi on board--or at least for the first half-hour of the flight (then it crapped out). So I opened my email and found the message notifying me my flight was cancelled.
Actually, it's only since I've been back that I figured out what happened. I think Rwandair must provide separate flights to Kigali and Dar es Salaam when a lot of people are travelling. But if there aren't so many, they combine the two flights.
So, unexpectedly, I found myself in Dar es Salaam. I am a little ashamed to admit that I didn't even know what country Dar es Salaam is in and didn't find out until a couple of days later. Now that I have found out, I can proudly add Tanzania to the list of countries I've "visited," even if "visited" only means I've been in a plane that touched down on a runway there.
From there it was a short flight only to Kigali, but we were late. And wouldn't you know, getting into Rwanda turned out to be challenging. I always expected Zimbabwe would be the difficult country to get into, but Zimbabwe is a cakewalk compared to Rwanda. I thought I had a great head start because I already had received my visa via the internet before arriving there. But no. The questioning was quite aggressive and intimidating. They wanted to know the address of EVERY place I would be staying my ten or so days in Rwanda, including phone numbers. I was stymied.
Just when I thought that maybe I WOULDN'T get into the country, the immigration guys abruptly changed his mind and let me through. I scampered before he could change his mind. It was already 10:30 or so at night, and I worried that my new host, Charles, would have given up on me.
In the underdeveloped countries I've been to, it's startling how you walk out of the airport and right onto a busy street. It seems like the airports are right IN the cities. Kigali is like that. I walked into a crowd of pedestrians, looking for perhaps a sign with my name on it, when I encountered a worried-looking man who turned out to be Charles. Apparently he'd been approaching every white woman coming out of the airport for an hour and a half saying "Are you Ann?" and had so far only received blank stares. We were both relieved to see each other.
I felt like I knew Charles already, because we'd exchanged so many emails. He was every bit as kind and pleasant as I'd expected, and we bounced through the potholed streets in a truck that almost matched Jack's in Cambodia for disreputability. It was in REALLY rough shape! I was actually kind of reassured that I had indeed found a place that needed help and was clearly not a money-making outfit.
Charles drove me to "my" little house located on the grounds of Les Enfants de Dieu school, and I barely took the time to brush my teeth before crashing. I wanted to be ready for my first day of genuine volunteering in Rwanda.
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