The road out of Kigali

     It was somewhat of a relief to leave the Genocide Center, though in Rwanda you NEVER leave the Genocide far behind.  We did leave Kigali (pronounced CHigali in the local dialect) behind as Moses, Jackie, Emma, and I headed northwest.  The countryside was VERY beautiful.  There has been a bountiful rainy season there, and the grass was green, the crops were flourishing, and the cattle were fat.
     Rwanda is known as a country of a thousand hills, and those hills are spectacularly beautiful though they make for challenging roads.
    I think the thing that struck me most about driving through the countryside was that what we Americans think of as Africa is about as naive as those foreign visitors we occasionally encounter at home who expect to find herds of buffalo, Indians in eaglefeather headdresses, and covered wagons in the U.S.  Outside of the national parks, Rwanda didn't seem "wild" at all.  Every inch of

space, even that on very steep, very high hills was cultivated to the max.  Terraces were built into every hillside, even those so steep it would feel like you could fall out of your field any time you swung a pick there.  There is so much more undeveloped private land home in Wisconsin than there is in central east Africa--at least the parts I saw.
     




















                                                                                         And there are SO many people.  Everywhere. 

Einsteins in waiting?

In the fields, on the roads, in their yards, in the villages, everywhere.  To my rural eyes, it was astoundingly crowded.  And this is in the deep dark heart of Africa, near the "source of the Nile," literally the "heart of darkness."  And of course the poverty.   I'd see these tiny children tending herds of goats or cattle, or gathering sticks for cook fires, and think:  "What if that child has the brain of Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawkings?  What if that child has the potential to be a great painter, composer, athlete, poet?"  There is no way their talent could be cultivated here, no way at all, and maybe it was nasty of me, but I felt an acute sense of waste.
     And the other thing that impressed me was how BUSY people seemed to me simply engaged in the business of living.  Gathering wood for cooking seemed to be a full time occupation.  People are not permitted to cut live trees, so you see old men and children carrying loads of long dead sticks for apparently long distances.  Gathering WATER is equally labor intensive.  It seemed as if the typical African family doesn't have running water in their homes, and so they are obliged to travel quite some distance to a community well somewhere and carry water home.  These big yellow jerry cans could be seen everywhere, being carried by people on their heads.  Can you imagine what the weight of, say, 10 gallons, of water would feel like on your head, neck, and shoulders?  And we westerners don't have a clue as to how we'd manage without a refrigerator or a clothes dryer.  But there it was obvious that food must be prepared and eaten right away, and clothes needed to be hung out on bushes or grass to dry.  And everyone needs something to SELL.  Bananas for example.  I even saw several people with cages filled with live grasshoppers taking them to market.  Seeing all this was sobering, to say the least.  But on the other hand, EVERY ONE appeared to have cell phones.
     We were headed to the area of Volcanoes National Park, near the bustling city of Ruhengeri, and we did arrive at our hotel--the Hotel Muhabura--in time for a late lunch.  It was a nice oldish hotel, rather simple, but very comfortable.  And it had WiFi service so excellent I was able to phone Scott and catch up with news from home---and, oddly enough, news from Zimbabwe, which he was following closely but which I didn't have access to.  
    But what was most notable about Ruhengiri--and what was referred to everywhere--was the legacy of one of my heroes, Dian Fossey.  It was high in the Volcanoes that her research camp was, and it was the Hotel Muhabura where she kept a room for when she came down the mountain for the occasional necessary contact with civilization.  MUCH more about Dian Fossey later.