Didn't get to posting yesterday (we didn't do that much anyways). We had originally planned on spending our final three nights here at the Mille Collines, but once we arrived, prior to heading out to Ruhengeri, Cave & Kuntz went to the Mille Collines to confirm our reservation and found out that all of the amenities were closed for remodeling. They got us reservations at the Stipp, but then the hotel was forced to give our rooms to the government. We ended up staying in some large homes that weren't quite finished (landscaping, painting, ect) that are owned by the Stipp. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry I didn't get a chance to make a post yesterday; we were very busy. Yesterday we drove down Butare along with a journalist from Boston who is here to do a story on the genocide and Rwanda's reconciliation. Along the way the mountains gave way to wide valleys with large rolling hills. Butare is Rwanda's second-largest city and was the former colonial captial of the Belgian territory of Rwanda-Urundi. In 1962 the capital was moved to Kigali because of its central location. Butare was the largest city at the time, but today Kigali is many times larger. After walking around [View Full Entry]

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This one's probably going to be pretty long; I've got a lot to explain. Saw President Kagame's house last night. Lots of soldiers with assault rifles guarding it. Came to the realization today that nearly every business in downtown Kigali is guarded by a security guard with a shotgun. Woke up this morning and got on the bus to the Kigali Genocide Center. The center includes a large museum similar to the Holocaust museum in D.C. There are also 15 completed mass graves, as well as two that are still open and being filled as bodies are found. There are currently [View Full Entry]

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Left Ruhengeri this morning to make a few stops in the area around Kinigi, the town closest to the Verungas, on the road to the DRC. On our way out we saw two trucks of soldiers headed to the border. The Imababazi group from yesterday had seen a convoy of seven trucks full of UN soldiers also headed to the border. Hmm. We stopped at a Batwa settlement a couple miles outside Kinigi. The Twa are a race of pygmies that live in Rwandas forests. They make up about 2% of the population. We watched them perform a dance, and once [View Full Entry]

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Woke up this morning at 5:15 to see the gorillas. After an hour car ride to the national park office, we signed in and were put in a group with a dual American/Rwandan citizen who lives in Richmond. We were assigned our two rangers, who told us about the family of gorillas which we were going to see as well as about the mountain gorillas in general. Volcanoes National Park is right up against the borders with the DRC and Uganda. Both the DRC and Uganda have national parks on the other side of these borders. I use the term "national [View Full Entry]

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Observation: Red Eminem shirts are really common here. Question: How does a four year old Rwandan living in a remote village 45 mins walk from the nearest road end up with a "Hillary Duff 2005 US Tour" shirt? We went to a crafts associations today in a very remote village about a two hour walk from Ruhengeri. After working our way down from the mountains into a giant valley, we walked the last 45 mins on raised dirt paths between 8-10 foot tall beanstalks. Saw another Project Rwanda bike- that makes four so far. The fgirst thing we did was make [View Full Entry]

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Last night after dinner all the water in Ruhengeri ran out. It came back on at around 3 PM today. According to some of the locals, the water goes out once or twice a week during the dry season. We left this morning for Imbabazi orphanage, which is in a very remote part of the country near the Congolese border. We drove an hour down a paved highway out of Ruhengeri, and then moved on to a terribly made dirt road which basically consisted of volcanic rock with some gravel to "level" it out. On the way we saw lots of [View Full Entry]

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Uraho! Amakuru ni mesa. Rwanda is great. I once again slept a lot last night, a solid 10 hours. Woke up feeling like I got hit in the back of the head with a brick though. Heh, bricks. I'm fine now. I think it was mostly dehydration. This morning we left in our small group of just 6 of us (Mickey, Dann, Mary, Kelsey, Ms. Overbo and myself) to go work at a brickmakers' association about 4 miles outside Ruhengeri. Greg (our Rwandan friend from Amahoro Tours) gave us a lift, after we pushed his land rover a couple blocks to [View Full Entry]

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Slept a solid 11.5 hours last night. Toally wiped out from going 48+ without any sleep. We left the ghuesthouse at around 10 this morning for Ruhengeri. Lucky for us, the road between Kigali and Ruhengeri is one of the few paved roads in Rwanda outside the capital. It was quite a trip. Rwanda is called the land of 1,000 hills, but it should really be called land of 1,000 mountains. The topography is ver similar to that of Colorado. The travel experience was similar to the mountain passes in Colorado was well, excepting the fact that there was two-way traffic [View Full Entry]

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I'm writing from an internet cafe in downtown Kigali that has what is perhaps the slowest internet in the world! Took a solid 9 minutes to load this page... Anyways, we certainly arrived safely. All three flights went fine, and the transfers were pretty smooth. I closest we came to trouble was some drunk lady who claimed to know us. She claimed a lot of things. I had my bags searched in Brussels, but the guy was pretty nice. Beautiful scenery on the way down- lots of wildfires burning in Sudan. Ah, Rwanda. What a beautiful country! Customs were quick and [View Full Entry]

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