Gisenyi sits on the coast of a ginormous lake, Lake Kivu. Lake Kivu shares borders with Rwanda (to the south'ish), Congo (to the north'ish) and Uganda (to the east'ish). We booked two nights in the guest house of the local Presbyterian church (roughly 2000Rwf a night - or about $4 a night) and took the "Virguna Express" bus for a little over a 4 hour ride to town which cost us 2800RwF one-way (Yes, in total it cost us little more than $30 for a full weekend trip, including transportation and lodging). Luckily, since we are fabulous assistants and sometimes have assistant ESP, our hotel was literally 54 seconds from the bus stop and thus the center of town - such as it was.
After an adventurous jaunt that actually took us past the infamous Stipp Hotel (aptly named of course) to the border of Congo (oops, we missed the street signs) we ducked into a little backyard bar, sat under a African version of a cabanna and had dinner. As we walked back, RA2 failed to pay enough attention on the unlit road and walked into a hole. Oh yah. INTO a hole, which came up to about her ribcage. While she's extremely luky she didn't break anything, she did take most of the skin off her left leg below the knee. Rather than reacting to the shock and pain of the fall like a normal person (tears, perhaps) she instead freaked out and yelled at everyone who tried to comfort her, ask her anything, or even speak. Public apology: SORRY ABOUT THE YELLING AND THE SWEARING. It was bad. Luckily the volunteers here are of a kindly and forgiving nature, and Ian patched her up with what was available and then took her for Rwandan medication (beer).
After the exhausting day of working all day, traveling on a bus and walking all over Gisenyi we turned in for the night, excited for a day of sunbathing. Saturday brought with it a fantastically sunny day. RA2 discovered a great little pastry shop and ran into 2 traveling Austrians, Manuel and Helmut. Manuel took her to the pharmacy for supplies and fixed her leg up properly. Austrians are required to take a first aid class when getting their license, and according to their good samaritan laws, anyone who doesn't stop at the scene of an accident can be prosecuted. At this point, RA2's leg definitely looked like an accident scene.
RA2: Well, you saw my leg before, Ian fixed me up.
Manuel: Yes, I saw. I meant to ask you about that - was he drunk at the time?
No, but, thank you Ian, you are an Irish angel.
RA1 slept in a bit later and found a fun little cafe that brought you the most amazing chai tea (100RwF - $.20) that has ever graced her mouth and chapati bread (100RwF - $.20) kind of like naan bread, but more fried and a bit sweeter. So - yes - less than $.50 for breakfast; it was clearly a sign of an amazing day to come. Ian had discovered a nice hotel a few minutes from our guest house that had a great private beach, so we wandered over to the Lake Kivu Serena Hotel.
The garden and beach area provided some of the most beautiful views of Goma, DRC. We felt like we had accidently found a tropical paradise in the middle of sub-saharan Africa.
We totally considered sending that picture home as a postcard: "Many needy orphans here. Please send cash."
It's hard to explain what a change this hotel and beach were from even our hostel. The streets of Gisenyi, like Kigali, are lined with kids asking for money, tiny EXTREMELY inexpensive places to eat or purchase necessities, lots of dust and little commerce. This was like - America, basically.We ordered some scrumptious Rwandan coffee blendy/icey drinks and headed out to the garden.
RA1 got restless and ordered a beach chair (3000 RwF) and sunbathed for a few hours and RA2 did the same in the garden.
Funny enough, since someone promptly stole RA1's chair as soon as she stood up to get out of the sun for a bit - they didn't charge her (told you: amazing day). The sky started to look foreboding, so we headed in to the hotel's posh lounge/lobby and waited out a wee rainstorm.For dinner, we had discovered this amazing restaurant that was quite literally an alley way that had been sectioned off, filled with chairs and turned into a restaurant. They were serving three menu items: a buffet (in Rwanda, a buffet is when there are several food options, like at home, only you don't go back for seconds - you pile ONE plate with AS MUCH FOOD AS POSSIBLE. it's an art we haven't yet perfected, but give us time), roasted corn on the cob and omelettes w/ fries. We opted out of the buffet and all ordered a cob of roasted corn, omelettes w/fries and some sort of 'tea.' Our tea came quickly and was some sort of concoction that tasted a bit like cider, a bit like fermentation and a bit like vinegar. We are still unclear if it was alcoholic or not. Our food came within 15 minutes (a RECORD in Rwandan service times) and the food was filling and so tasty. We went back to the guesthouse full and ready for an awesome sleep. Most of us were planning to wake up at 6am the next day to take a day trip to Goma in the Congo (RA2 had to opt out due to gimp leg - everything about the Congo is RA1s story! RA2 is going to go sometime in the next few months with the new volunteers). Then - we came home to a surprise.
Our room, that had been full of just us, was now full of women we didn't know. Which in most cases would be totally fine, but in this case we were ready for a good long sleep and it appeared these women didn't sleep at all. Ever. We weaved our way through the women to brush the teeth, change into pjs, pack for the Congo trip, etc. Finally, when we were all tucked into our beds, happily under our mosquito nets, we realized: the other women are not going to stop talking. Dutifully, RA2 flipped off the lights. The talking continued. An hour or so later, we were blissfully asleep in a sun-filled-day-induced coma. Then, 4am happened. A phone rang, a conversation started. It ended about 25 minutes later and we breathed a collective sigh of relief for our almost two more hours of sleep. Then, 5am happened. The door to the shower room, which redefined loud and creak, was opened and closed approximately 74 times. RA1 was, awesomely, sleeping right next to the shower room door. Around 5am it was apparently time to wake up because the radio came on - from someone's cell phone - the conversations started and there was no escaping. The apocalypse of loud talking had just bombed our room and we were not getting a full night's sleep. We grumbled out of bed and two of us set off in search in breakfast and perhaps a quiet place in the road to sleep and the rest set off to the border.
The border of Rwanda and Congo is surprisngly small and quiet. We arrived around 7am, quickly got exit stamps from Rwanda and headed to the Congolese side. They speak French only (ONLY) in Congo, so one of our tripmates was translating everything with the border guards. They checked our Yellowfever cards and filled out our entry visas for us. After 5 of us had finished and paid $35 to cross, the office realized they had ran out of copies of visas for the last two of our travelers. We waited while someone took a donkey to the nearest Kinkos, waited 47 minutes for copies then slowly walked back (I'm only guessing at the reason for the delay of course) and we finally set off into Goma around 8:30am. I must say - for the Congo, which I pass judgement and expectation on purely from the news, photos, Heart of Darkness and Poisonwood Bible - it was rather unsurprisingly normal. Normal for African city standards. We wandered in to the middle of town, found a little restaurant and ordered breakfast. Breakfast in Congo is: tea, bread, and cheese. Simple. Filling. Awesome. Our friend, Stefan, talked to one of the restaurant goers (who was drinking a Primus at 9am - he rocked) about getting up to one of the villages that was still covered in the volcanic rock that had covered a majority of the city about 10 years ago when one of the volcanoes erupted and sent lava flowing in to Goma. He did the following things to make our trip awesome and as painless as possible: found someone to exchange our RwFs for Congolese Dollars; Found 7 motobike drivers to drive us to the village; Negotiated a fair price to take us to the village, wait for us to look around and then drive some of us to the border the some of us back to the restaurant. Again, he was a rockstar.
We hopped on motos and took one of the most beautiful rides through Goma and up into one of the villages. The roads are littered with volcanic rock and the dust/dirt is pitch black. We arrived to the middle of the village which was about a 1/2 a square mile of just huge volcanic rocks. A local (and about 60 local kids) circled the curious group of muzungus - yes, it transcends borders - to tell us the story of the volcano's eruption. The lava in the area we had been standing in was over 10 feet deep. The area we were in is the last are to be rebuilt and the rocks from that area were continously being used in rebuilding efforts for walls and fences around houses.
It started to sprinkle a bit and as we rode away from the lava rocks, I had a realization: I was riding on a motobike, down a hill covered in volcanic rock and it was starting to rain - the old me would have been angry at the rain and worried about falling off the moto; the new me that is slowly emerging here in Rwanda thought that it was perhaps the single most awesome moment of her life.
Half of our group headed back to the border to catch a 1pm bus while the other half headed back to the restaurant to say thanks to our friend who hooked up the entire trip for us. He invited us in for a Primus (at 11am - I love Congo) and stayed to chat with us for a bit. He suggested ending our day in Goma with a walk down to the harbor. Reaching the harbor we saw that Gisenyi looked just as epically grand and beautiful as Goma did from the beach. There were lots of boat taxis offering rides to Bukavu (another Congolese volcano town on the lake) and some little lakeside restaurants. We also saw about 60 Congo families participating in the worldwide phenomenon of "Sunday Laundry" on the beachside. They were using a beached boat as a clothes line and shouting "French? Bonjour! English? Hello!" at us as we walked by. We ducked in to a nice hotel near the border for a quick restroom stop and some tea. It was clearly catering to the muzungo crowd that we could see that most guests were aid workers and humanitarian organization volunteers. We made it back to the Congo border around 3:30pm, came back into Rwanda, exchanged some of our Congo money back to RWFs, discovered we had totally been had by the money exchange man and hopped on motobikes back to the guesthouse. Grabbing one last delicious chai tea for the road, we happily slumped in to our bus seats and set off on the 4 hour ride back to Kigali.
We had never been so happy to fall into the Favor Guest House beds and call it a weekend.
That fermented tea drink was probably kombucha. I brew it at home and it tastes exactly like that.
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