Rwanda
The last days in Tanzania we have been facing our first tough and steep
hills. A constant up and down, going up sometimes as slow as 5km an hour and
down as fast as 50km an hour. It was beautiful though, the views amazing!
After more than a week we arrived in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.
Kigali is a big city with 1 million inhabitants, the city is quite
modern and developed compared to what we saw before and prices are no longer
cheap but rather normal European prices. When we came into Rwanda it was a
sudden change…houses like the ones we know back from home with little gardens
and fences…the locals were again excited to see “mzungus”, the children came
often running after us up the hills and a few times even pushed me up. The
traffic got worse though…trucks, buses and cars seem to overtake where they can
even in the middle of a corner and we saw many near crash situations as well as
a few crashed trucks and cars at the side of the road. There is a little sidepath
for the pedestrians. The bicycles (including us) and motorbikes seem to switch
between road and sidepath wherever there is space…but that does not always go
so smoothly…So once when I got off the road where a car was coming full speed
and another car was overtaking, I had to go for a sudden stop because the
sidepath was busy with pedastrians. As a result though a local cyclist crushed
into me. His bicycle fell over and the avocados (which where on the back of his
bicycle in a huge bag) where rolling over the road. Everyone was laughing. The
children were telling me “I am sorry” but in the same breath “Give me money”.
The begging got worse in Rwanda, even though the country seems much richer.
We went to the genocide memorial in Kigali today… The stories and
pictures of the genocide are horrifying and sad…a whole room in the museum was
dedicated to all the children that died, being shot or even burned alive. And
this happened only 20 years ago and the whole world was watching and doing
nothing to help. It is unbelievable though to see how quick the country got
back to its feed after such a tragedy.
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