DAY 66 SUNDAY 12th FEBRUARY 2017. KIGALE, RWANDA

Swansea versus Leicester tonight. Football: it is endless, omnipresent and inescapable and the ONE thing everyone in Africa knows about my country.

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I dedicated today to the Kigale Genocide Memorial and Museum – and very sobering it was too. Enough to consider for one day as a tourist in Africa.

The one aspect of Rwanda that commands the most respect is the fact that they have faced their appalling crimes and the horror of the 1994 rampage of vicious slaughter and the madness that inspired it. The Genocide Memorial is a testament to that honesty. It is a museum and graveyard, for over a quarter of a million Rwandan bodies – of men, women, children and babies – are buried on the site. It sits just above the valley bottom behind the main ridge of the city, overlooking the shiny towers and glass of the banks that pile up over the opposite hill top. It’s a well designed museum with gravitas but not overtly sentimental; it allows the facts and stories to speak for themselves. And they are so appalling that they cry out incredulously. Man’s inhumanity to man has seldom been better expressed than in those 100 days of 1994; man’s violent animal instincts seldom more exposed. Alongside the museum of events in 1994 is a more general exhibition of genocides of the past 100 years, and it does nothing to elevate the dignity of humankind – Namibia 1907 (see last year’s journal January 27th), the Armenians, the Serbs, the Jews, Cambodia and Pol Pot – millions of people butchered in the last century for imagined ethic jealousies instilled by evil, crazed politicians. And my over-riding thought at the end of the day: that mankind doesn’t learn by its folly, horrors and hatred. To this day it votes for hate-fuelled policies and bigotry. Do not fool yourself that Trump’s rhetoric is far removed from that which I learned today; or of 1933 in Germany, or 1907 in Namibia or the Armenian, Serbian, and all the other hatred and genocide of the last century. They all started with the same bragging pride, sectarianism, fanaticism, blame, untruths and manipulation of the ignorant.

My world travels do little to inspire confidence in the future of mankind on this planet.

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Germany colonised what is now Rwanda between 1895 and 1916, then during World War One the land was occupied by Belgian troops, who in 1923 were given a mandate by the League of Nations (league of self-interested rich nations…) to govern Rwanda-Urundi. The mandate was soon turned to colonial occupation, which lasted until independence in 1962. During this time the Catholics (never far from the seat of these conflicts, it seems to me…) influenced education in Rwanda, increasingly teaching a racist ideology that the Tutsis were a superior group. ID cards were introduced in 1932 to further discriminate between the previously peaceful peoples. Believe it or not, anyone owning ten cows or more was classified as Tutsi; with less as Hutus. (There were also the Twa, a small tribe of peoples who lived quietly in the deep mountains, whom we know as Pigmy, now something of an insulting term). The racial delineation of Hutu and Tutsi applied to the descendants of those first classified peoples in 1932 and the division began, encouraged by the Belgians, who instituted forced labour to build roads and infrastructure, favouring the Tutsi minority. By the 1950s the Catholic church was further instrumental in encouraging the divide, the (Belgian) bishop supporting the division of the largely invented ‘race’ discrimination, portraying the minority Tutsis as oppressing the majority Hutus. Jealousies festered. There were massacres in the late 50s and in 1967 the first prime minister led a party for the emancipation of the ‘oppressed’ Hutus with fascist policies, persecution and ethnic cleansing. During this time 700,000 refugees left the country and formed a Patriotic Front, the RPF. They invaded in 1990 and civil war followed.

The Hutu ‘Ten Commandments’ of 1990 read just like the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s: racial purity, division of business interests, social divides. The then president, a Hutu, intensified the hatred, while making specious peace moves in peace conferences, meanwhile quietly pushing through the biggest Rwandan arms deal ever – with a French company guaranteed by a loan from the French government – for $12 million. On April 7th 1994 the (Hutu) president was killed when his plane was shot down by a missile as he approached the runway at Kigale – the wreckage falling in the ground of his own palace, and Rwanda turned into a nation of brutal, sadistic, merciless killers and neighbours rampaged against neighbours, colleagues on colleagues, family on family, fuelled – as always – by propaganda and a ruthless media (heard that anywhere recently..?).

In one story related on screen in the memorial museum, a woman told of her neighbouring family: all the children played together and the fathers were godfathers to one another’s children – until the killing started, when the one father caused the slaughter of most of the children of the other. He was a ‘GOD’father and he failed his GODchildren whom he had stood in church and vowed to protect! Can anyone explain to me as an increasingly convinced atheist how you can justify these actions and then profess to be Christian and go to ‘confession’..? Sorry for the aside, but it constantly staggers my belief in humanity. The vast majority of the killers were ‘Christians’ – Catholicism is a major influence here – and presumably believed they had authority from their god for this slaughter, and felt justified in bashing out babies brains against walls… Catholic churchmen and women weren’t blameless, although a few stories of bravery stand out. One ‘Father’ with 2000 people sheltering in his church, gave the command to bulldoze the church – with his congregation inside; others are known to have collaborated and at least a couple of nuns were tried and found guilty of war crimes… One church, convent and school became the killing centre for 20,000 people and another church saw 10,000 raped, abused and killed. Terrified people took refuge in churches and other Christians threw in grenades to destroy them. Religious belief becomes more impossible to me the more of the world and mankind that I witness.

Over a million innocent people were butchered by their friends and neighbours in three months. The UN and the world shamefully withdrew, and now admit their inaction exacerbated the incredible suffering. The general of the UN forces reckoned that 5000 soldiers could have controlled the outrage, but they were never sent. Tens of thousands were tortured, mutilated, raped and murdered; babies were dashed against walls, children cut apart by machetes, women forced to watch their children killed by bludgeons filled with nails, raped and then killed themselves, others intentionally raped by the HIV positive. Tens of thousands more suffered bullet wounds, infection, starvation, disfigurement. 300,000 children were orphaned and 85,000 children ended up as heads of families of orphaned siblings. A UNICEF report reckons that 80% of Rwandan children experienced a death in their family in 1994; 70% witnessed someone being killed or injured and 90% believed they would themselves be killed.

This didn’t happen in the Middle Ages: it happened 23 years ago. It’s put a new light on my observations that Rwandans have a reserve and detachment from me as a tourist…

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The efforts to reconcile all this – and so many survivors and perpetrators are around me as I write – have been impressive. 12,000 local community courts were set up, called Gacaca, meaning ‘grass’, to investigate the crimes and bring together the accused with the survivors, many of whom only then found out what had happened to their family members and, in some cases, were able to trace their remains. It stands as one of the most comprehensive attempts to bring reconciliation in modern social history, bringing together those involved – on both sides. There are many very moving stories, not least of the sense of forgiveness inculcated by the process of the open local courts. The political perpetrators were tried under a UN resolution for crimes of genocide and many are still in jail around the world. As recently as 2013, they were still being brought to justice by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Some extraditions are still sought.

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My visit was emotionally disturbing and ultimately disillusioning. As I wrote above, nothing changes despite the horrors. Trump vilifies innocent Moslems and Mexicans; Brexit thrives on fear of immigrants and outsiders; Shias and Sunnis; Arabs and Israelis; Catholics and Protestants; and at any time, about fifty religious wars rage around the world: MY religion is truer than yours’, ‘God is on MY side’. Huh. The language of hate never really changes and as times get hard, people look inwards, close ranks with the known and fear the unknown, and pull up the drawbridges. No, my travels don’t make me look at the world with much hope… We are really only animals with a thin veneer of learning and civilisation and deep-seated Darwinian instincts for self-preservation.
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By coincidence, I had an email from Rico while I was at the Memorial. The cafe at the back – and by then I needed refreshment – had a wifi connection and I had the iPad with me to look for just that for the first time in some days. Rico, now in South Sudan, was working in Rwanda in 1994 and admits it was a deeply emotional time. I’m going to copy some of his email here. It adds so much to what I saw today:

‘…Reading about Rwanda reminds me of my intense time there during and shortly after the genocide. I was based in a place called Gikongoro. You most likely pass through there after you have left Lake Kivu behind at Cyangugu, (now Kamembe where I stayed three nights ago. JB) at the border, a narrow bridge, with the Congo.

I did spend time in Cyangugu as there were quite some child casualties, caused by special land mines, designed to attract children. If they picked up their new found toy, it would explode. Many kids lost limbs and the sight in at least one eye. It was of course also the (bottle-neck) border crossing to Congo. Tens of thousands passed every day, prompting us to set up refugee camps in and around Bukavu. I was working for the “Fund” (Save the Children) that year.

The road to Gikongoro goes straight through the forest, but no more elephants there! I remember the small but refreshing waterfalls coming from the mountain sides. I always enjoyed travelling through the forest, despite the long lines of people escaping the massacres walking to Congo.
We also supported many displaced people camps deep into the interior. We always used the main road from Huye to Kigali. The capital is so much unlike Kampala or Nairobi. However, as we were always a bit in a hurry and while the road was sometimes littered with bodies… we never looked for an alternative route.

Anyhow, many memories come back, it was definitely my most emotional year. 1994!’

Rico’s memories also give me an insight into the number of wheelchair-bound amputees I have seen in the past days… I don’t find people here interact much, so it was an introspective day filled with melancholic thoughts on mankind.

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Well, I’d better try to end my entry a bit more upbeat! It was a warm, humid day and I walked a lot, leaving the bike in the hotel yard. This city is SO quiet and SO clean.

I need to think about the next three weeks, for there’s not much more than that left of my journey now. Sadly, I won’t meet Rico again on this trip, as he’s going to northern Congo next. I am thinking of keeping the little blue bike in his garage in Kitale for another winter trip, having started to bond a bit more with it and having invested SO much in it. It’s silly to sell it again without trying to get to Ethiopia! So we’ll get together again, all being well at the end of the year. Meanwhile, I have pretty much decided to head round the south of Lake Victoria through Tanzania back to Kenya, mainly because I fear the rains may be coming in the middle of Uganda by now. But I think before that I will ride back to Lake Kivu as I enjoyed the scenery and riding there so much. So tomorrow I am heading back to Kibuye and that lovely view of the lake from the faded hotel balcony…

DAY 67 MONDAY 13th FEBRUARY 2017. KIBUYE, RWANDA

Some rides and places are so good it’s worth repeating them. That’s what I thought when I set off from Kigale this morning so that I can enjoy the road south that I took last week and the ride through the forest that I so loved a few days ago. I hadn’t expected the bonus of a wonderful ride today as well!

I was quite content to leave Kigale, a fairly tedious city without a lot of attractions. Quiet and orderly, clean and disciplined – but not very engaging. The guest house was basic and very ‘concrete’ so I was happy to get back into the countryside. Rwanda’s roads are so quiet and empty that I rode along very relaxedly back to Muhanga, the town where I slept on Friday. From there I was onto new roads for me, a fine road to the west, over a surprisingly high range of mountains, terraced and cultivated from the bottoms of the valleys to the tops of the hills. I rode slowly and in delight, happy that I’d decided to ride back to Kibuye. It was only a seventy mile day but a very fine ride.

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Stopping to take a photo of an intricately terraced valley, I was soon surrounded by a crowd of local people, who seemed to appear from nowhere. It’s always like that in Africa: you think you are all alone, and then someone pokes a head over an embankment, appears through the banana trees, walks round the corner carrying a load. I took my photo, laughed with the group of mainly young men and children; one young man keen to try on my goggles – and then began the demands: “give me money!”, or food, or the clothes off my back, or cigarettes. It seems no Rwandan can resist the chance that my capriciousness might just render something for free! Rico concurred that this is a very Francophone problem in Africa, and he has probably more experience than me by now. He wrote, ‘If somebody doesn’t give to you what you consider to be entitled to, then you must demand it’. A couple of Rwandan people to whom I have mentioned this endless frustration, have independently put forward the opinion that the French (and Belgian, in this instance) paid money to their colonial subjects while the British taught them how to earn it. I wonder if this is the root of the habit? It really DOES get irritating and it is pervasive in Rwanda, an otherwise fine and proud country. However, I try to rise above it because this is such a lovely country in every other aspect, not least the cleanest through which I have ever had the pleasure of travelling.

My, that was a magnificent ride, on empty, high roads in grand scenery, twisting and curling about the mountains. But I am even more delighted with my decision to return to Kibuye by my walk this afternoon, out onto one of the straggly, convoluted headlands by the small town. It is a splendid place, is Kibuye! Steep wooded slopes fall away to the calm lake, the sun was softening into the late afternoon, making a silver pathway across the water into which a series of large fishing canoes, tethered three together like trimarans with long poles arching out fore and aft from which nets will be winched and lowered, paddled smoothly, their crewmen chanting rhythmically to maintain their strokes. The evocative noise of the chants carried far across the gleaming water as the paddles dropped rings onto the mirrored surface. Small islands dotted the lake as it disappeared into distant haze that obscured the Congo such that one could imagine this to be a great ocean, not an inland African lake. As I sit later on the darkened terrace of the hotel, with a view worth hundreds more than my fifteen pound accommodation bill, I can make out the lanterns of those heavy plank canoes winking in the night, the same vessels I watched paddle so picturesquely below my wooded headland.

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When I stayed in the Eden Rock Hotel last week I enjoyed my best night’s sleep of the trip. I am back in the same room, with its balcony above the tranquil bay and the scattered wooded islands. Most of the hotels hereabouts are expensive and really no better placed than this one. I was remembered and welcomed back and I have no doubt that by morning Munvaneza, the handsome, kindly security man, will have my little blue bike gleaming again, as he did the other day. When a service is done so willingly, with such a wonderful smile, it becomes a gift rather than a merely mercenary activity. He was delighted that I recollected his name.

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Bicycle taxis are more common here than the ubiquitous motorbike ones. Out in rural areas I see so many straining cyclists, frequently resorting to pushing their heavily laden Chinese cycles up the long slow hills. With either passengers or goods, they ply the roads, a padded seat on the rear carrier, often piled high with heavy branches of green bananas, milk churns, sacks and bags, crates, firewood, baulks of timber, doors and frames, stacks of plastic chairs, water containers, crates of beer and soft drinks, trussed pigs and goats, dangling chickens, steel rods dragging the road behind, crops, tables, furniture and all manner of goods. And you may have kilometres to push, sweat and toil uphill to enjoy the rush down the other side. All this for a few pence each day.

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Rwanda and Uganda would be a bird watcher’s delight. I’m sometimes sorry I know so little about them, for I see some startling birds. There are many vast raptors swooping about the hills and valleys on sharp updrafts; exotically hued birds flitting about the bushes; ungainly storks and herons, hideous vultures, pretty darting finches with bright heads, dazzling shiny birds, the brightest feathers imaginable and, today, the smallest birds I have ever seen. I doubt they were as much as two inches from beak to tail tip. Tiny, tiny birds, smaller even than hummingbirds. Nature has many extremes on this continent.

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In a country in which the majority of the populous has no access to power and which is having to harness the noxious gases of the lake to generate electricity, Kibuye town council (one supposes) has installed modern lamp standards out into the beauties of the headlands and along the dust tracks frequented only by goats, pedestrians with the habit of sleeping when darkness comes, and an occasional expensive 4X4 with headlights. The result is useless waste and light pollution. It’s even more ridiculous than Harberton being bathed in light through every night when nothing but cats on the prowl are moving! Maybe it suggests ‘sophistication’..? I have seen these new lights in many rural villages and towns in this small mountainous country. I wonder if they will be maintained or left to wither like the plumbing in every hotel and guest house in which I have stayed in the last couple of months. Not ONE bathroom has worked fully! Loose taps, broken shower heads, terrifying electrics, blocked drains, loose lavatory seats, ineffective flush mechanisms, leaking joints – I’ve seen it all, everywhere. Africa in general has a problem with maintenance – or lack of it… Instead of fixing things before they break, they are left and become unmendable. It’s a sort of mental blockage shared by all Africa.

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Pulling into a garage leaving Kigale, eight under-employed mechanics were much entertained while one of their colleagues effected an oil change on the little blue Suzuki for me. I have ridden about four and a half thousand kilometres (2800 miles) so far. I’m used to the bike now, and it’s getting me around cheaply and reliably. It’s certainly an easier bike for a ‘senior citizen’ to ride, and sufficient for the distances that I need to cover in these relatively small countries. I wouldn’t want to be riding round the big expanses of southern Africa on it though. Yes, it’s doing quite well on the whole.

DAY 68 TUESDAY 14th FEBRUARY 2017. KIBUYE, RWANDA

A day of rest today, not, I hear you mutter, that there’s much from which to rest! It just seemed, as I gazed at the lake over breakfast on another sunny morning in Africa, that leaving this lovely place was unnecessary for a day. It’s not often that I find places like this: tranquil, exotic, beautiful – and affordable! So I stayed. Time allows: I have just over three weeks left of my safari and only have to get back to this side of Kenya.

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About twenty kilometres south of Kibuye I turned off the sweeping tar road onto a bad rock and gravel track that climbed through the steep terraces towards the Gisovu tea estates and the Bisesero genocide memorial, about six or seven miles off the road. At Bisesero many thousands of Tutsis put up resistance against the Hutu killers, gathering en masse on a mountaintop and using spears and rocks to defend themselves. Of course, the resistance failed: the ‘genocidaires’ were armed with guns and grenades by the manipulative Rwandan government, courtesy of France… Many thousands of people were butchered on that mountain in the rural landscape that looks so charming today. The complicity of the French government in arming the butchers and orchestrating the genocide can’t be ignored, nor the evil machinations of the Belgian Catholic church in fostering the sectarianism, or the folly of the UN in choosing not to interfere. These all can be seen, with hindsight, to have caused the horrific massacres. The stadium in little quiet Kibuye was the scene of another mass killing of thousands. It was everywhere. To this day French diplomats do not join in the commemorations at the genocide memorials in April, although all the other diplomatic missions are represented. That seems significant.

The Bisesero memorial is built on the adjacent hillside to that on which the battles took place and climbs the steep slopes with three ossuaries, each split into three sections, to represent the nine communities of the locality. Hundreds of battered skulls and leg bones stand testament to the abomination of April 1994. You can see the machete cuts, the bullet holes, the crushed bones from the nail-filled clubs. You can see the skulls of children and adults. You can see the charred skulls of those burned to death. It’s thought-provoking indeed. At the summit of the hill is a mass grave of tens of thousands of people whose only crime was to be judged of a ‘wrong’ tribe of peoples, despite being the former brothers and friends of the opposing warriors… The world is full of evil. And it doesn’t go away…

…Glinting on an opposite hillside a mile away are the tin roofs of a massive camp of Congolese refugees, fleeing political infighting and civil war in the country across the lake. It made even more of an impact, looking across from the bones of the memorial to the waste of thousands of displaced people confined to a refugee camp by such similar jealousies, sectarianism and self-interested politicians. Mankind does NOT learn. We are no better than animals in the final assessment.

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I began to write a short time ago, down on the narrow beach by the calm lake, with a Turbo King at my side. Suddenly a HUGE storm and torrential rain crept up behind me. Fortunately, I was under a large sun umbrella. Soon I ended up standing on the log table as the rain cascaded and bounced all around. It’s been threatening all day, and in fact I cut short my ride to the tea estates because I could see rain clouds gathering and don’t choose to ride on sandy, earthen tracks in the rain if I can avoid it. Thunder is rolling very atmospherically around now, deeply reverberating above the lake. Maybe it will clear the air for a bright day tomorrow… I’ve said it before: I don’t care if it rains while I am drinking my evening beer. These storms are usually short-lived and reduce the humidity. A kind young waitress rescued me with a dripping umbrella so that we could run splashing across the flowing road to the hotel.

DAY 69 WEDNESDAY 15th FEBRUARY 2017. NYANZA, RWANDA

Perhaps If I had realised the quality of this hotel I’d have been embarrassed to bargain so hard with the manager. (Perhaps..!) I seem to be in the best hotel in town, a ‘real’ hotel; new, I should think as it hasn’t had time to deteriorate yet… I have a pleasant modern room with a balcony with an extensive view across the western mountains. There’s a large swimming pool set in well kept gardens with a thatched bar, a proper dining room, waiters in smart uniforms, green grass (not dust!) and all the accoutrements of a proper hotel. £16 B, and then, Andrew the manager, eventually threw in the other B with a laugh! So long as I do it with big smiles, it just about always works!

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All the roads I have ridden today, 150 miles of them, are roads I rode last week. Sometimes it’s just worth riding them twice for the sheer pleasure of the scenery, the sweeping, curling roads and the joy of being in a very beautiful part of this African continent. I had a good day, and today I quite enjoyed the little bike.

The road through the Nyungwe national forest are some of the best fifty miles of East Africa, twisting and climbing to 2500 metres through lush, dense forest of towering creeper-hung trees covering steep slopes above and below the road. Monkeys scamper about the verges and here and there huge vistas of misty ridges thick with trees are disclosed between the foreground trees. There’s a refreshing smell of dampish undergrowth and brief showers are frequent but so localised that I seem to avoid them, each one little more than a condensing cloud dropping its new rain back onto the forest below in an endless cycle. Maybe this is what the world was like before we built roads and concrete hotels, just this exuberant, luxuriant greenness?

The approaches to the forested area, down along the silver lake to the west, are pretty striking too, with panoramic expanses of terraced mountainside peppered with small brown homes with their brown pantiles or shiny zinc. Growth is prolific, bananas, cassava, coffee, tea, vegetables, onion fields, even rice paddies in some of the low flat valleys, backed by sharp ridges. The water sits still below, calm and misted, Congo pretty much invisible across the looking glass lake. People wave or stare dead-pan; it’s a toss up, some are excited, some completely expressionless, whatever my reaction. I can’t really make head and tail of the Rwandan people. In one area I was like a passing celebrity: everyone, young and old, waved and smiled; a few miles further on, laughing at such extravagant reactions, I passed into another area entirely, where people stared blankly and no one returned my smiles. I can’t account for it. In the friendly region, fortunately also the most beautiful, where tea cloaked the hills and gentle blue eucalyptus leaves made a magnificent and photogenic counterpoint, I stopped a few times, unable to resist another photo. Each time crowds gathered, mainly small children, for school had finished for the afternoon and they have long roadside walks home, but with adults, hoes across their shoulders, babies on backs, too. They crowded round excitedly, watching and commenting, joking with each other at the cheerful expense of the old granddaddy on the motorbike. It’s just a shame their waves always turn in a reflex action into an outstretched palm and the Rwandan National Greeting: “Give me money!”, often abbreviated to just “…money!” I keep reminding myself that these are uneducated people who have been taught this irritating habit because, at some time French people have done just that: paternalistically and imperiously handed out pennies to the natives. Since entering Rwanda this has become a sort of soundtrack to my travels: choruses of “give me money! Give me money…”

And in other stretches of the beautiful road, totally blank reaction… It’s beyond me. Not a smile, not a wave, just a stare… But no one means harm by it, it’s just the way they are, it seems. Sometimes it is difficult to be such a casual observer of foreign cultures, understanding only a little, knowing few of the influences and social habits, comprehending manners only in reference to my own instincts or comparing to other, disparate people.

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All day the clouds have gathered and dispersed, leaving me dry, but chilly on the heights. Apprehensively, I have watched great blue storm heads gather and disappear. I suppose the seasonal rains are on their way. An email from South Africa today tells me how much it has been raining this year. Happily, here a thousand miles north, I have not actually been properly wet in all these weeks, only a couple of brief showers not even worth getting out the waterproofs for. Here, a couple of degrees from the Equator, altitude makes the difference. As I write, I am sitting in the hotel garden beside a thatched bar complete with pool table – and the inevitable British Premiere League football on the box. I have had to race back to my room twice for long trousers and then a fleece. I am determined to eat my supper beneath the stars!

In effect, my journey home began today. From now on I shall be travelling generally eastwards, back round the bottom of Lake Victoria to Kenya, to return the little blue bike to Kitale for future travels.

Crikey! The first of my supper just arrived: a mixed salad. It is HUGE, a plate piled high. At this point in my journey, it’d probably be entirely sufficient – without the spaghetti I ordered! My appetite reduces so much on these journeys. I had a night of fitful sleep last night punctuated by bad dreams, then I remembered: I took my weekly malaria prophylactic yesterday. It’s known to affect some people with psychotic disturbances. The British Army has been fighting against all sorts of accusations from soldiers affected. Still, having suffered cerebral malaria – and only survived, according to the hospital specialist, because I’d been taking anti-malarials, I guess a night a week of disturbed sleep is acceptable. “Yes, well, you’d probably have died last week if you hadn’t been taking the prophylactics..!” I can still hear charming Pakistani Dr Ijaz in Bedford Hospital when I complained that I had contracted malaria despite the pills. But I am tired tonight, after poor sleep and 150 miles of fine roads and fresh air.

I’ve spotted a road on my tourist map that avoids riding all the way back through the capital city on my way to the south east of Rwanda and the Tanzanian border. I must try to find out if it’s a viable route. Mile upon mile of gravel and rock isn’t a short cut…

Episode eleven is below this post of photos!

DAY 62 WEDNESDAY 8th FEBRUARY 2017. RUSIZI, RWANDA

More of a mixed bag today. The morning was magnificent but by late afternoon I got in a bad mood. You’ll have understood by now that one thing that irritates me is when I feel I am being cheated or ripped off. All my innate stubbornness comes to the fore and I get pissed off! I made the mistake of thinking I might stay at the edge of the large national forest twenty miles from where I am tonight, until I realised that Rwanda is into fleecing the tourists like Uganda. I viewed several hotels and guest houses all of which had cranked up their prices (I left one with a sarcastic shrug, “I don’t want to buy your HOTEL, just a room for the night!” They wanted over £100 for nothing special at all). Another one showed me rooms of much lesser quality than I have used for the past four weeks for double the prices I have paid. Then I saw a bus full of white tourists and I understood that this is the policy where there are captive tourists. To take the 200 metre-long canopy walk – which is just some ropes slung at treetop level, fun to see and do but still just ropes at treetop level – is charged out at £50!! It’s TWO HUNDRED metres long! That’s a pound for about every eight steps you take or £2 a minute! I have done a fine treetop canopy walk with Wechiga in Ghana for about £2.50! A three hour ‘nature walk’ in the national forest is £40. I bet the guide gets about £2.

The result of all this – and then some kid demanded money, as has almost everyone I’ve stopped near today; he got the full brunt of my irritation – was that I rode away angrily, deciding that I’d have to make for Huye, the next town I intend to visit. It was over 60 miles away through the wonderful forest (where I can see as many primates as I would on a £40 walk). Thank goodness, I stopped and told myself that I was acting irrationally (I do sometimes!). I turned in the road and made my way back to the end of the lake and the scruffy towns of Kamembe and Rusizi, (which could be the same place with changed names…) for they were only twenty miles away and I was sure I could find some sort of accommodation here. I have. It’s faded and ratty but the staff are very friendly.

There’s a slight troglodyte feel to the stained hotel, built into the side of a steep valley, my room having its only window under a fifteen foot balcony of the bar above. Right in front, not much more than a couple of hundred yards away, rises the other wooded face of the river valley, with tall houses clambering amongst the trees. Over the small muddy river that is the end of Lake Kivu is a rickety bridge. I am looking at the Democratic (haha) Republic of Congo across from my room. Not far to the left is also the border to Burundi, neither country one that I can safely enter these days. So near yet so far thanks to African politics, corrupt leaders and internecine wars. The tall houses, that look expensive despite the fact that Congo is pretty dark at night, are probably those of the corrupt politicians, ready to be the first to leave and claim they were actually innocent.

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It was a glorious morning when I left pleasant Kibuye. Sometime overnight, Munvaneza the hotel security guard, had done a magnificent job of washing and polishing my bike. It positively gleamed! He was pleased to be rewarded £3 for his effort. He probably doesn’t earn that in a day. It was cleaner than it’s been since it arrived in that truck from Nairobi. I’m bonding a bit better with it now. It’s still unexciting to ride and far too underpowered, and the seat is terrible, but I am easier with it now. I am so grateful for Rico giving me a pair of handlebars that are exactly the ones on my old African Elephant! One thing I DO appreciate is its lightness. When riding off road it is so lightweight and manoeuvrable. I’m beginning to think I just might keep it for another year. I still want to visit Ethiopia and having invested so much in this little bike, I guess it’d make the journey. A bit slowly, it’s true. I’ve another few weeks to decide. I’m wondering about a two-centre trip next time: southern Africa (Lesotho!) and Kenya/ Ethiopia. We’ll see…

*

It’s very confusing that these fine new roads that sweep and glide through the reshaped hillsides of Rwanda are not actually on the tourist maps on which I am relying for information. I felt completely lost by late morning: the lake was on my right, so I knew I was going south and I knew that when the lake ended I would be at the last bit of the country, but I really couldn’t get much idea of what I was looking at from the colourful but uninformative map in my pocket. However, it was a magnificent ride through the heavily cultivated mountains. At last, about twenty miles later than I expected it, I found the junction that led me to the tip of the lake, Burundi and Congo and, to the left, into the forests and over the hills to Huye. I turned right to see the end of the lake…

Here again were tea estates cloaking the hillsides so prettily. Tea and coffee are Rwanda’s main exports and currency earners. I rode off into one estate and watched many workers pulling at the top green leaves and tossing them into baskets slung from their shoulders. Their multi-coloured clothes made for great views, but as soon as the camera came out, so did a lot of jokes at my expense (by their tone) and the incessant demands for money in the one English phrase known to all, “Give me money!”

I’m finding it difficult to relate with the Rwandans. You have perhaps read that between the lines. Firstly, it’s a matter of communication, for outside tourist areas few people speak even French, let alone English. Then there’s the matter of everyone seeing me as a source of money in this Francophone country. Whenever I do stop and try to engage, hands come out palm up and demands – literally demands – are made: “Give me money.” After a time, it begins to rankle. As I ride everyone is ready to return my smile and give me thumbs-up, but if I stop, so many of them demand money… Of course, I generalise, as I have spoken with many charming folks too, but those who speak English are, of course, educated, and the educated don’t demand alms… It’s making me miss the Ugandans, almost universally charming and polite, with pride that’d never stoop to pointless begging, like almost all of ex-British colonial Africa but so familiar in every French African country I have toured. I have been thinking of returning to Uganda despite the driving! I did like that country. I have to get back to Kenya eventually and I feel that riding right round Lake Victoria might be tedious and rather flat. Well, doubtless I will make the decision on a whim as always!

*

There’s a genocide memorial in just about every village and town through which I pass. Maybe they serve to remind the populous of the terrible events and keep any repetition at bay. It impresses on me just how widespread the carnage must have been, for some of these memorials are in villages that must have populations of mere hundreds… Imagine the horror. It’s difficult. These people were neighbours, colleagues, schoolmates. Suddenly they became enemies to be annihilated, bludgeoned, stabbed, burned to death in churches. It is said that children as young as ten took part in the murders. Many of the people I pass on the road; who wave and give me thumbs-up, are murderers, and killed their friends and neighbours, defenceless children, terrified innocent women and weak old people. Mass graves are to be found outside almost every village and town. It’s a sobering reflection on mankind.

I asked amusing Renee, the young man who’s been looking after me since I found this somewhat grim hotel, where he’s from, for he has a narrow, ascetic face and a tall skinny frame. Many Rwandans are noticeable by their very small stature – most of them reach my shoulder at most – and squarish faces. “Ah, we have different tribes,” he explained. “We have Batwa (pigmy), and Hutu and Tutsi… I am Tutsi.” It was, generally, the Hutus who slaughtered the Tutsis in the genocide. Renee is, I suppose, young enough to have been no more than a baby during the 1994 rampage that reduced the population by about a fifth in a little over three months. He must have escaped.

It was Renee, with his rather earnest enthusiasm at helping a real foreign guest, that persuaded me to search no further tonight. He gushes with eagerness to help in a refreshing manner. By staying here I can still enjoy the ride through the national forest tomorrow, even if I won’t be partaking the canopy walk or guided tours. In the few miles I rode in the forest this afternoon, I saw large numbers of monkeys! And the canopy walk’s a bit like standing on a hill anyway! I’ll ride over a lot of hills tomorrow on my way eastwards.

Funny how one person or event can make the difference. Young Renee, in his almost pathetic desire to help, has made the evening better. “What do I have to do round here to get some warm water?” I asked before supper. He had forgotten to turn on the water heater. Several times over my not very memorable tilapia supper he gave me updates, following me to my room later and pushing into the bathroom to run the shower tap to prove that I could now have a hot (warm!) shower. You can’t remain disgruntled in the face of such ardent zeal!

DAY 63 THURSDAY 9th FEBRUARY 2017. HUYE, RWANDA

Oh dear, I’m on the slippery slope. Today I started my first beer before five o’clock, but only so that Sandrine, the lovely and conscientious server can go home earlier to her little boy. She insists that she must stay until my supper is served as she’s the only one here who can speak some English and I might get a bad impression. I tried to explain that I am the most flexible guest but to no avail. It’s her job – her duty – to make sure I am looked after. Sandrine is tall and slender and the first Burundian I have knowingly met. She’s very charming.

*

It took me almost six hours to ride from Kamembe to Huye, Rwanda’s second city; well, it’s not much more than a town really. The distance was a mere 75 miles, but the road was spellbindingly lovely. It passed through the extensive mountain tropical forest and climbed up to about 2500 metres, curving and winding amongst more impressive piece of road building. Rwanda is certainly a place of scenic delights. This was the best ride yet, over and through all that incredibly abundant greenness. I stopped often to gaze across the vast density of it all. Plenty of L’Hoest monkeys, with their white chin beards played and groomed by the road, not very concerned about the piki-piki rider that sometimes stopped to watch. Sadly, the chimpanzees were rather more shy. Apparently, you do sometimes see them from this road, so said John, with whom I chatted for some time at the park visitor centre.

John was driving and guiding a family of Americans, their tens of thousands’ of dollar holiday perhaps making up for some of the paucity of mine, in Government revenue. I spotted their receipt for US$240 on the book in front of the park officer for their brief canopy walk. John was more in tune with my form of travelling, it seemed, comprehending that I was as likely to see animals from the road as from an expensive guided walk!

Of course, my conversation with John was FAR more valuable to me than any guided excursions, even if we’d spotted chimpanzees at 200 metres! John is a Tutsi by birth and opened my eyes to so much I have been seeing – as he waited for his rich clients. “We are no longer Hutu and Tutsi,” he said, “just Rwandans. What happened must never happen again. You are right, the memorials you see are to remind us…”

Rwanda is very impressive in many ways. They suffered a terrible tragic, horrific event, and they have faced it down: are still facing it down. John gives much credit to the president, Paul Kagame, who’s been in power for 14 years. He is astonishingly advanced in his social politics. “On the last Saturday in every month we have Umuganda when everyone must take part in community activity from 8 until 11! You MUST do it. Even the President, if he is in the country, he takes part. At the least, one member of your family must be seen there. You must have a very good excuse not to attend: maybe you have to take someone to the airport or something, but if you are found driving about without a good reason, you’ll be fined by the community! And when you’ve been to the airport, you must stay there and join the activity before you go home again. We clean the streets, pick up rubbish and those things. Then, and this is even more important that you attend, we hold meetings; meetings in the community. We sit together and we discuss our problems: ‘I have a problem with this man…’, ‘there are difficulties with these land issues’… We discuss it together. We must never be Hutus and Tutsis against each other again. We settle our differences. And each month, if he is in the country, the President will visit a different district and community. It is announced and you must be there -maybe in the local stadium, or the mayor will choose some big place – unless you are unable and can have a good reason. The President, he comes and he asks the people, ‘have you any problems?’ And there’s a microphone, so you say, ’yes, I have a problem with this man… He is claiming my land!’ The President, he will ask, ‘have you spoken with your chief?’ ’Yes,’ replies the villager, ‘I have, but nothing has been done!’ Then the President will call on the chief to stand and explain! And if there’s no satisfaction, he will say, ‘very well, this will be investigated from Kigale!’ Also, the police, the army, they will help needy people. If the community says ‘this old man has no house’, or this old woman’s place is falling down and she has no children to help’, the army or the police, they’ll go and build a house even!”

As to the wonderful cleanliness (SO much cleaner than my own disgusting, litter-smothered land), it’s the responsibility of bus drivers, if they see a passenger throw a plastic bottle or rubbish from the window of his bus, to stop and make the passenger retrieve the discarded items. Wow, we could do with some of this imagination from our government.

Africa has always needed benevolent despots. Maybe here it has one? One can only hope he doesn’t continue until he’s 94, like other well known criminals, as he’s only in his late-fifties… Then in April, the anniversary of the atrocities in 1994, the whole country shuts down in commemoration. “For some people the memory is too strong and they leave the country,” said John. “April is a very quiet time for us. We remember. There were even small children killing. A small child killed his mother because she was a Tutsi. His father was Hutu and the boy sided with him…”

That child will be in his mid-thirties now, with children of his own. How can anyone live with that memory..?

My conversation with John, cut short at last by the return of his clients who’d looked at the tops of trees for £50 each, not into the depths of the human psyche as we had for that half an hour, was SO very valuable to my understanding of this small country and its recent appalling history. To have this trauma, this unimaginably horrible hatred, this incomprehensible tragedy – and to FACE it! I have so much respect for what I am witnessing in Rwanda. It even softens, to some extent, my dislike of ‘give me money’; but were I to attend one of the President’s public meetings, I feel I might out up my hand and ask him why, if he has created one of the cleanest countries it’s ever been my pleasure to travel in, he can’t stop the endemic, habitual demands for money from white-skinned people? “Yes,” said John, reflectively, “family members even killed one another. We must never let it be forgotten. It must never happen again. Our president is doing well. We respect him for his work in bringing us together. Those memorials you say you see everywhere; it happened in every community, however small…”

*

Tonight it was the turn of Sandrine, a Burundian refugee, to tell me some of her story. Her father was an army officer – on currently the ‘wrong side’ in little Burundi, where a few ruling families feud and murder for control in the sadly African fashion. Sandrine and her baby boy (father typically absent) and her brother managed to escape to a refugee camp here in Rwanda. Her father is somewhere in Kampala. (I passed a huge refugee camp on the way here this afternoon – but THAT one is for Congolese refugees…). Sandrine began to study medicine at the university in Bujumbura, but what with babies and politics, she has ended up working in a cheap hotel in Huye, Rwanda. “Oh, when I go home and I have nothing for my son, I sometimes cry. But what can I do? There’s nothing at home in Burundi… Here they pay me 25,000 Francs – a MONTH! (£25) But at home, what can I do? In the evening I must pay 1500 for a moto to get to my home. It’s far! And the ‘padron’ of this hotel, she give me sometimes money for the fare but not always. In the morning is OK, I can get the bus, 500 Francs… I was working in a job in the American embassy in my country. A lady, she saw me and saw I was good to working with customer relations, and she say, maybe I can get you work there. But then we had to leave. Men would come to my house and beat us wth sticks, my brother and me, because our father was gone away…”

Half the world lives with these dilemmas.

*

Up in the high mountains, I was riding on the Congo/ Nile river watershed. For Nyunguwe park claims to be the REAL source of the Nile. Water falling on the western slopes flows into the Congo and the Atlantic, on the east to the Nile and the Mediterranean. Seventy per cent of the rain that falls on Rwanda, falls on the Nyuguwe mountains, that reach to roughly 2500 metres in altitude. About two metres a year falls. Today, small localised showers could be seen all around, just a cloud at a time, fortunately, none of them over me! Scientists believe that these mountains were one of the only places in Africa to remain green during the last ice age, and thus the area has an impressive diversity of species and flora. Interestingly, begonias and impatiens are indigenous here, those delicate popular British garden annuals. There are also 140 species of orchids in this lovely park area.

*

All in all, a very satisfactory day! I reached Huye, very relaxed, about four in the afternoon, and set about looking for a place to stay. I tried a couple of smart hotels on the main street through the small town, both asking £25 or £30 and then wandered off, as is my wont, into a pleasant suburban side street. Here I found signs to guest houses and soon pulled into one: a place of newly built round houses. Sandrine welcomed me. The price is a very modest £10 for an en suite large semi-circular room (where to put the lavatory pan hasn’t been well answered in this configuration!). The place appears new and unoccupied. There’s a restaurant that conjured up some grilled rabbit (!) and I ate early so that Sandrine could get home to her child. Now it’s only 8.20 and I reckon there’s not much to do but go to bed!

*

Wherever I ride in Rwanda I cause a stir. It’s odd this, for there are tourists in Rwanda these days, although I have yet to see any independent travellers, only those on organised tours, even if just a family with their own guide. Not many seem to try to see Rwanda on their own. I realised that being on the motorbike makes me very accessible to the people, especially with my open-face helmet. I become a sort of public property, so unlike the average tourists, seeing Africa through glass and being seen, detached, behind that same glass. I am very much part of the landscape, exclaimed over as I pass, waved at, thumbs-upped at, yelled at, pointed out to babies and smaller siblings, commented upon and inspected when I stop in villages for tea. While it can get wearing, it’s fun too to be such public property, a representative of the mzungu race at close quarters. It’s very immediate and, since I love to try to understand my fellow people of other cultures so much, it’s a wonderful, immersive, immediate, intense and sometimes funny way to travel! I’m happy I’m not seeing the world through a tinted window but am out there in the dust, sun, rain, stinks, weather and mobs and multitudes.

DAY 64 FRIDAY 10th FEBRUARY 2017. MUHANGA, RWANDA

A cultural day, today: an ethnographic museum, the last King’s Palace museum and the National Art Gallery. What’s remarkable is that outside South Africa, there are so few museums on this continent south of the Sahara, and certainly almost no ‘museum culture’. There are some faded old places from colonial days here and there, generally looking very sorry for themselves with total lack of investment, but few others, and new museums are a rarity indeed. But all these Rwandan are initiatives from the past 15 years or so.

The Rwanda ethnographic museum has an impressive collection of the culture that was washed away by the TV and Coca Cola generation. It made me think, looking at those quaint old black and white photographs of people dressed in goat skins, beaded loin cloths, traditional headdresses, with braceletted arms, spears and all the traditional accoutrements, now totally gone except for tourist performances – it made me think that the later photographs were taken within my lifetime… Older ones dated from the early part of the 20th century, but there were a lot from the 1950s too. It’s like when I watch old Ealing Comedies: those whimsical kids in shorts, pudding basin haircuts and school caps could have been me. I don’t FEEL that old! A recreation of a chief’s hut and a fine collection of iron spearheads from the 18th and 19th centuries were the items that most impressed me. That woven grass and reed hut, so beautifully constructed, would have been seen in villages within my lifetime. How Africa has changed; all that tradition and culture wiped away by exposure to the cheap cultural and material values of American media now so prevalent. Of course, those times weren’t all good and cosy, much of that life was arduous, cruel and harsh, life expectancy short, disease rampant. Trouble is, in Africa, it still is, and it’s not improved by the aspirations created by the new world view people now have. Every day I tell people that unemployment is a world problem, not just – as everyone thinks – a Rwandan or Ugandan one. “Oh, in your country there’s work..!” I hear this every day…

*

The king’s palace in Nyanza is actually a rather ugly 1930s bungalow – with some fine local art decorations on fireplaces and friezes. On a hilltop, it must have been pretty impressive to those in the mud and grass huts around. Until, that is, the king went on visits to Belgium and came back realising that his palace was a mere colonial style bungalow. So he started to build a fine hilltop villa with balconies, terraces, sweeping staircases, terrazzo floors and all the rest. Unfortunately he died before it was completed and his son, the last king, who ended up scarpering to USA leaving a republic, never lived there either. Now that’s the national art museum, filled with a worthy but not very inspiring collection of ‘contemporary art’ from the region, derivative and not very African.

Behind the palace bungalow is the traditional palace, a recreation of the previous structures, magnificent domes of straw and intricately woven sticks and wicker. Lined with fabulous grass mats and adhering to age old traditional designs, THIS palace was impressive! So too were the royal cattle, a herd of cows with extraordinary horns a metre or more long, docile animals that seemed to like to have their heads scratched – but they are rather pampered beasts in the now museum compound.

*

I tried to visit two large genocide memorials today, one near the King’s palace and one on the side of the road, but on university grounds in Huye. In both cases I was stopped because I hadn’t got a ‘permit’, and getting one involved a great deal of trouble. What’s the point, I wondered – completely vainly to fairly basically educated security guards – of having a memorial if I am not allowed to visit it? Sometimes Africa can be so illogical.

*

So, after a flask of African tea on a smart hotel balcony, I rode north towards the capital, Kigale. But by four o’clock I realised that at the average speeds I ride here I’d still have a couple of hours to plod along on the curling mountain roads, so I decided to stop here in Muhanga, a small town that sprawls along a few ridges of the terraced mountainsides. It’s not very attractive, but there were various options for accommodation. I found a bizarre place tonight. It’s a multi-storey, shiny, mirror-glass place that seems to be an office block and supermarket. But instead of offices there are small hotel suites. I’m on the second floor overlooking the valley and have a sort of sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and enclosed balcony – that seem like they should be offices. But I have a first tonight! My £30 room costs me £15! That’s impressive, a 50% discount – or ’promotion’ as the quietly charming Pacifique described his reduction. Round the back, next to the supermarket, is a bar and restaurant and the whole place seems to have Catholic overtones of some sort and there are a great number of nuns visible about town too. It’s all a bit of a mystery, but who cares? It’s cheap and quite comfortable and the Turbo King is chilled.

There’s a middle-aged French couple staying here tonight. We all agreed that we had seen almost no independent travellers here in Rwanda or even Uganda. Funnily enough, I spotted their bicycles in the passageway of the hotel in Fort Portal a couple of weeks ago. They also bargained a half-price deal, but they managed it with a nun and that must be more of an achievement than my agreement with Pacifique! Beating a catholic nun down to 50% is momentous! We chatted for a bit over our suppers and I found them to be Africa enthusiasts, with a special place in their affections for Lesotho. Cycling there must be even more extreme than on these mountains. They are heading towards the lovely road through the forest that I so enjoyed two days ago. On bicycles it will be hard but wonderful, to experience the peace and calm of that landscape. Laughing, they agreed that they too will enjoy the ‘canopy walk’ by standing on the side of the shelf road and will get enough forest walking with their bicycles. You bet they will. That road climbs for tens of miles.

How I have been enjoying the cleanliness of this fine small country. It is so refreshing not to see blowing litter, plastic bottles, rusting cars, dereliction and dirt. People even care for the verges by their small houses, sometimes even to planting a little formal garden of clipped and topiaried shrubs. There’s been a government policy to replace all mud and thatch dwellings, which deteriorate quickly and are fire hazards, causing poverty and suffering. Everywhere are new zinc or pantiled roofs and poor but neat dwellings. The roads are generally excellent, the traffic light, disciplined, and courteous, the police apparently uncorrupt, vehicles kept to a standard, all the motorbike taxis licensed and their passengers helmeted. Traffic police are visible – I’ve been stopped just twice as they don’t usually bother with me. It’s relaxing to ride here. It doesn’t feel like Africa.

*

Conscientious Sandrine knocked on my door at 7.09 this morning to ask how my night had been. To my mind, at 7.09, it still was… Twenty minutes later she declared with another knock that my breakfast was waiting – the breakfast I thought I’d ordered for 8.15 to 8.30. Oh well, it IS her third language. So it’s been a long day. Actually, the night was stiflingly hot under an overweight duvet and sleep was intermittent. Yawning away at 8.30, there’s a lot to be said for fresh air, sunshine and complete lack of stress for a healthy life!

DAY 65 SATURDAY 11th FEBRUARY 2017. KIGALE, RWANDA

I’m not at all sure what to make of Kigale, Rwanda’s small capital city, a place of about 1.5 million, spread over a steep ridge and the surrounding hills. In some ways it is so unlike any African city I have seen; in others it could be on no other continent. There’s evidence of astonishing investment, tall modern buildings and an international feel (banks making a LOT of money of course), but at the same time I am constantly importuned by traders, touts and beggars. There are many trees and public gardens and neat roundabouts covered by clipped grass, smooth streets, quiet traffic; but at the same time you cannot walk on half the pavements because they constantly change level, have elephant traps in them and are covered in goods for sale. Traffic stops at zebra crossings – that’s amazing! People are well dressed and enjoying smart shopping malls and tidy coffee shops; but at the same time the street outside is being dug up by legions of poorly paid workers who are carried away crammed in the back of a truck. People are somewhat remote and aloof; but at the same time service is good and professional. There are policemen and women on guard tonight every block or so, cradling their guns; and at the same time I feel completely relaxed about my personal safety.

It’s so funny that all my friends were so worried at my intention to tour Rwanda – about which the world knows only one thing… Thanks to that horror, I am probably in the safest city in Africa! It’s probably safer than Totnes this Saturday night; it’s certainly quieter and less drunkenly rowdy (imagine a British town or city where the strong beer is 70p a bottle! It doesn’t bear thinking about).

So I have to reserve my judgement; my atmosphere metre is swinging wildly: irritated by touts and pan-handlers, impressed by the safety, absolute cleanliness (FAR cleaner than any town or city in England or Europe), and by the calmness but a bit at a loss with the distance and reserve of the people, for this is very unlike Africa.

*

It’s been a sociable day for once. This morning I was late getting on the road, well, I only had 50 kilometres to ride anyway. I chatted to Tija and Titol, the French couple for an hour and a half before I got on the road. It was fun to meet them and find a common love for Africa in general and Lesotho in particular. Also it was fun to find that we are all of an age: Tija is 67 like me and Titol her husband, 71. And they are bicycling over the Rwandan mountains, having started out in Ethiopia in late October. We shared a lot of enthusiasms and attitudes, not least the fact that old age is a mental condition, the only proviso being that you have to remain healthy, but then, people like Tija, Titol and I do exactly that! We challenge ourselves and refuse to grow old in attitude. Again, I must quote a friend, who from the age of his mid-forties, used to say, “Oh, I’m too old for that..!” and died aged 63, perhaps because he was old enough? There are some journeys that really worry me before I begin them, especially if they are likely to be physically tough, but I know that the rewards are conversely satisfying when I get to the other side. I hope I’ll meet Tija and Titol again one day on their farm near Nimes! Who knows? I have passed SO many ships in the night on my endless footloose travels…

In the afternoon I felt I had to exit the African street life for an hour or so, and stepped into a smart international coffee shop, the sort of place that only the well off middle classes of Kigale and foreigners can afford to frequent. I was joined by Ivan Gonzales, as Mexican as his surname, but not his given name suggests. A cheerful fellow, with some apprehension of going towards his 30th birthday, a significant and serious landmark in Mexico, he told me. He’s doing a Masters degree at a university in Germany in some sort of development and community work, having worked in the field for a number of years. His university sent him to the Eastern Cape for three months (Cape Town area) and now to Kigale for some weeks. Then he goes back to Germany for his second semester. We had a pleasant hour. The last time, well, the only time, I was in Mexico was in 1973, about 15 years before he was even born! “Eh! That was a different Mexico!” he exclaimed. Sometimes it’s impossible not to realise that I am now a senior citizen travelling the world! But who cares? I am still doing it with the same gusto I did when I was approaching 30. I was able to assure him that the early 60s is perhaps the best period of life! That amused him.

*

Finding my rather down-market place to sleep tonight was easy, as Tija and Titol told me to look for this place as I climbed the last hill to Kigale centre. It’s a bit basic but it is only a few hundred metres from the central part of the city, an easy walk up the hill. At £15 I can’t complain even if the decor leaves a lot to be desired and the room’s a bit of a cell. The Turbo King is chilled and the goat kebabs remarkably tender and if I keep the bathroom door shut the aroma of drains won’t impinge. The manager kindly insisted that I bring my bike under the yard shelter amongst the tables and chairs (empty but for me, the only other clients watching – inevitably – Manchester United play Watford on the loud TV in the bar). No doubt my breakfast will be taken next to my bike, as I am writing now as a shower falls. It’s been gathering humidly all day but I am delighted when it rains as I drink my beers. It probably means it’ll dawn sunny again tomorrow: another unknown day in Africa.

In Rwanda the bill is always brought to the table in a small hand-carved wooden, decorated lidded box, a nice touch.