Visiting a Rwandese orphanage, part one

In June of 2006, I traveled to Rwanda with two friends of mine to go “check out” the adoption possibilities and what type of humantarian work we could do as “just moms”. We stayed in Kigali, the capital, but one day, we drove to Gisenyi, about 3 hours away on some pretty twisty, turny roads. We ended up going north to Ruhengeri, which is the launching point for the folks who go to see the mountain gorillas. That excursion is somewhat tempting, but the cost pretty much ensures I’ll never do it – it’s $400 for you to climb up a mountain and watch gorillas for one hour – pretty dang pricey! You do get accompanied by well-armed guards, since interahamwe (Kinyarwanda meaning Those Who Stand Together or Those Who Fight Together and were the group responsible for the genocide in 1994) are known to frequent the area. Anyway, I was warned before we left that the road was really curvy – and I just don’t “do” curvy roads. I spent the whole trip mostly staring straight ahead and trying not to move my eyeballs ‘cause it made the dizziness and nausea worse. At home, I would just take over driving, since I am much less nauseated in the driver’s seat. It was bad enough I thought about talking to our taxi driver, Marcel, about taking over but I never did.

It was a BEAUTIFUL drive. It is some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. It looks very tropical – many banana trees, many rolling hills “quilted” with gardens, green everywhere you look. The hills are AMAZING! The “land of a thousand hills” (mille collines)is a slogan well-deserved – they are everywhere and are just gorgeous. We passed many trees that are different than in the US, especially in the west. There were evergreens, jacaronda trees (a kind of eucalyptus that you could smell as you passed), the banana trees I mentioned and many others. We also passed rice paddies and tea fields and then field after field after field of cabbages, potatoes and beans. I find it interesting that in a place where things obviously grow so well that there is so little variation in what they actually DO grow. It wasn’t until almost our last day there that we saw any peppers or onions. I did see a few sweet potatoes as loads on people’s heads or on the backs of bicycles, but the vast majority of the time it was sacks of potatoes or beans or baskets of cabbages or tomatoes. The houses are small and without electricity for the most part. In the evening, the entire country smells like a campout. Dinners are cooked over a wood fire, sometimes outside and sometimes inside the homes. There are no discernible chimneys, but smoke rises through the tiled roofs in broad fashion, so you can see an entire roof top smoking. I LOVE the smell and know when I go camping later this summer it will remind me of Rwanda. I also wonder what breathing in all that smoke does to their lungs . . . Smoking cigarettes is rare – too expensive, I’m sure – but they are still being exposed to an awful lot of smoke. Anyway, the other thing we saw EVERYONE carrying was water. Even little kids 4 years old were carrying small plastic jerry cans filled with water. I watched people fill water from brown streams, to clear mountain streams, to a local spigot in the middle of town, but they all carry water (not just the women!) I also know am a spoiled, spoiled American . . . . I love to travel, but I love my “amenities”, like running water, electricity and Internet access . . .Even if I were to live in Africa, I’d still want those things. Much of the rest I could do without for a while . . .

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