On the road #7 - Rwanda
Note: This post was originally shared via TinyLetter, a lovely and now-defunct newsletter platform.
Greetings from Tanzania!
Here are a few stories and photos (at the bottom) from May in Rwanda, where my friend Ilona came from Belgium to join Evan and I.
Thereâs several new people on the list this month and as well, anyone with a hotmail account didnât receive Aprilâs dispatch because I failed to reduce the photo file sizes enough (donât worry, Evanâs now coached me thoroughly in the difference between kb and mb). So, Iâve included a .pdf of Aprilâs email from Ugandaâtext and photosâif anyone would like to catch up.
Rwanda is small: We crossed from Uganda, its northern neighbour and reached Kigali, the capital, after riding for a day and a half (130 KM). The rule of thumb is that Rwanda is about the size of Belgium, but that comparison may only be close at hand because Belgium (and prior to that, Germany) colonized it.
We waited for Ilona at the airport, biding our time watching upper-class Rwandans, the occasional backpacker and a few nuns hug and greet their welcome parties. Ilona may be little but her bike box wasn'tâwe (Evan) made quick work of ripping everything out of its packaging and stuffing it in the trunk of the tiny âtaxiâ so we could ride back to the guesthouse while eating the Belgian chocolate sheâd brought.
Sitting on our beds in the Islamic neighbourhood, we hatched a plan to loop clock-wise around Rwanda. During the few days before we started cycling, we made guacamole in the room, or salads with veggies we could find down the road. We sobered ourselves at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, found a crappy helmet for Ilona at a supermarket, and ate buffet lunchesâa nation-wide specialty!
Navigating out of Kigali, Ilona sprayed her arms and legs with sunscreen as a crowd of Rwandans stared without expression. Barely free of the city, both her and I got punctures. Men on bicycles, men on motorbikes, men on foot and men selling hard-boiled eggs from plastic buckets crowded around, touching our bikes, laughing, talking about us, picking the best vantage point for scoping out whatever piece of bicycle equipment or body part that most intrigued them. We joked many times throughout the trip that Ilona might need another vacation after her âholidayâ in mainland Africaâs most densely populated country. Doing things all day in the public eye can get tiring, for me at least.
Ilona was quickly taken with the lush hills, everywhere cultivated, and the smiling kids, equally frequent. The parts of Rwanda we spent time in are so ubiquitously green and pretty that itâs easy to forget that they are.
By the time we entered Nyungwe Forest we were ready for some time away from people. Africaâs oldest montane forest offered quiet views of dense vegetation that looked like broccoli from afar and a scraggly cycling Frenchman. Yves crossed our path heading towards Burundi and carried a machete for clearing camp spots in the bush.
Imagine this: Youâre in Rwanda and you know a little bit about the genocide, enough to know that much of the killing was done with machetes. Each day cycling, you see men, women and kids walking with machetes and sickles for their farming tasks. You wonder âisnât that unnerving for them, how do they get on?â But continue the agricultural duties they must.
We were told that the trick is how the machetes are carried. Thereâs a passive way and an aggressive way. As for Yves, he had tied white string around his blade, apparently to indicate that he came in peace.
Much of the time, the three of us shared a room along with three bicycles and all of our bags. And there were other ways in which Ilona adapted. Iâd warned her the food would be basic outside of towns, but she still soldiered on through days of eating little else beside bananas and mandazi (like an unsweetened donut). Sheâd take Evanâs many questions and was patiently bemused with the âhighâ level of attention him and I give each other. She fell right back into the vagabond routine of not knowing where or when a nightâs sleep would come, until you found a reasonable place (or any place, as the hour crept closer to sunset). In short, she hit the ground running (or biking, I guess).
But, it was time to split up to get some one-on-one time. After the three of us took a ferry up Lake Kivu, Evan stayed behind while Ilona and I travelled up part of the Congo-Nile Trail, the subject of this route report on bikepacking.com. It oscillates between lake level and hilltop, with âbase campsâ set up along the way where paid camping and good food are available. All day, the views are fabulous, when youâre able to take your eyes away from the rocky, sandy track.
Let me talk about how seriously Rwandans take safety. Ilona and I didnât pay to camp on the trailâfor cost, yes, but also for interest, and because we didnât plan well enough to roll up at base camps at dinner time. The first night we spent on church property (where the Reverend taught Ilona how to do grace, âAmen!â) The second night we persuaded a man with a big house to let us pitch our tent on his front lawn, overlooking a bend in the road where the village and its inhabitants clustered. As dusk fell, it seemed the man might be drunk, albeit a gentle drunk. At dark the security teams came.
First we were introduced to Victor, who was to âtake care of us.â He left.
Then, after a long shouting match in Kinyarwanda between the man of the house and a stranger on the road, a team of four (!!) men came, knocked on our tent and politely explained to Ilona en Francais that they were the village security team and would be watching over us all evening. These four men hung out, awake, around the tent from 9 PM to first light. They asked permission from us to leave at around 5:30 AM, assuring us that âit was safe now.â Safe from what?
A second team of three other men came as we were packing up, and had us sign our details into their village visitors log book, including the name of our mother and father. Then we were welcomed back another time, thanked for visiting, and finished our trip on the Congo-Nile Trail.
This trip was different than the time that Ilona and I cycled together in Central Asia. Rwanda seems the antithesis of arid, vast tracts of plateau with few people, that we'd gotten to know each other in on our first trip. What stayed the same was the comfortable, easy moments of spending time with a friend who you know will say exactly whatâs on her mind. It helps a LOT when youâre faced with myriad little decisions and obstacles in a day of living on the road in a strange land.
While Ilona and I were thoroughly enjoying our last few days of riding together, smitten with every woman who warmly greeted us as they walked down the road, Stan the Bicycle decided he was over it. He vomited out all of the bearings in his bottom bracket and gave an ominous creak, signalling the end. We only had a few days left on our visas, the only mechanic we knew in Kigali was out of the country, and then there was the issue of getting a new bottom bracket for an older mountain bikeâŚ
Somehow, it all came together but sadly, it was the end of riding for Ilona and I. We stuffed our bicycles in the back of a small bus, got a receipt with our names printed on it (Yrona, Megen) and were shuttled back to Kigali. Amazingly, Evan had a few hours before his flight back from Nairobi to Kigali (heâd been there for work) and in the nick of time he found a bottom bracket in a bike shop. To add to that, we got hooked up with a clandestine British mechanic who installed it in his Kigali living room. So the show goes on, this time!
Ilona and I ended up having as many days off in towns as we did cycling. We spent them drinking coffee or sweet tea and getting her stocked up with custom tailoring. Done on antique machines with wax-cloth from Congo or Nigeria, it was truly exhausting (but fun) to choose patterns out of the thousands offered.
Our visas expired the day before hers but by the time we left her to her own devices, Ilona was a Rwanda pro. She had the bases covered: where to find the neighbourhood boulangerie, buffet, tea, and tailoring stall. And, the knowledge that the men on the motorbike taxis arenât to be fearedâthey even give you a helmet!
Thanks for reading, and weâll hit you up next month with an update from Tanzania, where weâll be cycling until September.
Hope you are well, Megan and Evan
