56 bus riding hours and 12 passport stamps later, i’m back in kenya. what a great weekend. lets go back to saturday…
i got up early to catch what was supposed to be a three hour bus ride from kigali to gisenyi, rwanda. like everything in africa, it took considerably longer. playing on the radio were recognizable gospel melodies in the vernacular, kinyarwanda, interspersed with french rap. gisenyi is a nice little town on the shores of lake kivu. apparently its where wealthy rwandans go for holidays, although it has its share of poverty too. apparently lake kivu has compressed gas under the water, that one day will rise to the surface and kill everyone in the vicinity. hopefully not in our lifetimes. went to the market and climbed part way up a mountain where i made friends with some local children. then i took a taxi moto to the border with the democratic republic of congo (drc).
the drc is unfortunately not in a great place right now. they’ve been embroiled in civil war for, well, basically since the europeans arrived, but especially the last few decades. five and a half million people have been violently killed there in the last decade, making it the deadliest conflict globally since world war two. gdp per capita is currently dead last in the world. very recently the infamous lord’s resistance army (lra) (brainwashed child soldiers on hard drugs) from northern uganda have been massacring entire villages in the drc. trying to get into the country was anarchy in itself – about 50 people pushing and shoving their way to one little immigration window. i was polite at first but soon realized that i’d be waiting there all day if i didn’t get aggressive. the change in road quality crossing from rwanda to the drc was almost as bad as crossing from alberta to british columbia (haha) – it went from fantastic to absolutely terrible. no garbage (rwanda doesn’t even allow plastic bags in their territory) to a veritable garbage dump. i walked the one kilometer into the city of goma.
goma is half mud, half lava. there is a huge volcano that erupted a few years ago that buried half the city (including the airport), so that half is still digging out. i only saw one mzungu (white person) all day that wasn’t inside an armored united nations vehicle. we ended up having quite the discussion. he works in conflict resolution, in close collaboration with the upper leadership (like presidents) of the surrounding countries. i got the impression that he doesn’t get to talk to mzungus very much. he seemed desperate to talk about american politics; i obliged. anyway, this guy told me where i could find the market, because literally no one spoke even one word of english.
so i got a taxi moto bike to go to the market. no helmets in the drc. in fact, no rules whatsoever, haha. the market was great. it started pouring rain so i hung out there for a while. used up my extra drc currency before leaving by taking the taxi motos to the far end of town and back. at one point the guy started going the wrong way and when i indicated to turn around he did so very abruptly, and we lost control and crashed into a woman in a yellow dress, knocking her into a huge mud puddle. he kept driving. so that was my half day in the drc. took the late evening bus from gisenyi back to kigali.
next morning i got up extremely early to catch the bus to kampala, uganda, a nine hour journey. decided to go just to kampala, and then get a ticket from there to nairobi later that night so i could hang out there a few hours. went to about four different bus companies before i found one that had a night bus.
i liked kampala. i went to the market which, anywhere in africa, is always sufficient to supply enough chaos for one day. then i went to a shopping center where, after searching for forever to find someone to change some money for me (i couldn’t use my debit card in uganda and all the forex places were closed) i had the most delectable indian food i have ever had in my life for dinner. even got to watch professional indian cricket on a big screen. made me seriously stoked to go to india soon, as if that wasn’t already the case! there were tons of asians in kampala. evidently many came back after idi amin made them all leave. then i caught the night bus back to nairobi.
