Dave’s Rwanda Trip, And Paris, 20081021
I’ll try to get more pictures up soon in the normal place (http://www.thecathouse.homeftp.net/Filez), but it’s looking like not right now since the server back at thecathouse still isn’t talking to me these days.
I’m writing this from Paris now, looking out at a dreary rainy day that we’re taking to catch up on some practical stuff, but first, some more stuff about Rwanda.
Practical notes about Rwanda
1) How to travel
Find Volcano, or Atraco, or one of several other companies with names ending in “Express”. They’ll have a small office tucked to the side amongst all the other small shops along the street everywhere, but more easily you’ll see an accumulation of their busses. Find the ticket office, and fight your way through the crowd to the desk. State your destination and desired departure time- usually there are signs with options- or you can just say “nearest” or “next”. This is the one place where you don’t have to haggle, the prices seem fixed. They’ll write your destination and time and sometimes also your name on two parts of a 3 part ticket. They keep 1 part in their booklet (most receipts here work that way- they write it out, it carbon copies or otherwise is tracked in a book, and they tear out the original to give to you). Take your two parts and find the bus. Find it early, so there are good seats left. Avoid the seat with the wheel well (and thus no leg room), and perhaps also the seat with the speaker. If you come late, you may have to sit on one of the aisle seats which fold down in the middle, trapping everyone in back in back. Purchase drinks, snacks, footware, pants, etc., from vendors who will crowd the bus and offer things to you through the window. Avoid giving money to the beggars with various levels of hideous deformities who will also crowd around… or don’t, there are different modes of thought on whether to give money to such. Eventually an official person (who you’ll recognize because they have a pile of tickets in their hand, not by any uniform) will ask for your ticket, and you give them one of the two remaining pieces, keeping the third yourself. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.
2) Communication
Option 1 - email at an internet café. Going rate is around 100 Frw / 10 minutes, depending on the city. If you miss one, don’t worry, there’s one on the next block too. Stuck in a tiny village? No worries, there’s an internet café in a mud hut somewhere there too.
Option 2 - rent time on a cellphone from one of the MTN folks around. They’ll have a small booth, or a table, or just be carrying what looks like a desktop phone, but it will not be plugged into anything and if you look in back it’ll have a cellphone antenna sticking out. The cost will be on the order of 100 Frw per minute.
Option 3 - when you first arrive in the country, buy a cellphone. Don’t worry about a plan or anything, that won’t be necessary, just get the phone. These stores are harder to find, they’re every 2 or 3 blocks instead of every block. ☺ Then when you want to make calls, ask one of the 3 or 4 people within 25 feet of you at all times who is wearing the yellow MTN overcoat (or not, they’re not strict about uniforms) to sell you some air time (And by “ask” I mean “fail to avoid making eye contact with” because they’re pretty aggressive about offering air time to everyone who passes.), and for 500-2500 Frw they will tear off a card from their stack, take your phone and type in the numbers for you (you don’t even have to know how to work it), and you will get the corresponding amount of credit on your phone. Actual time allowed varies depending on the time of day of your call. I think about 5% of the population of Rwanda (usually younger folk) is employed by MTN, to sell airtime on the street.
3) Food
Your best option is to find a place with a buffet. You’ll only be allowed to fill your plate once, but it’s a great deal for that. There are usually vegetarian options as well, especially at Indian or Ethiopian places, but elsewhere they at least have French fries. I recommend against the beef stew, but otherwise we were very pleased with the food even at tiny hole in the wall places in town.
Or you can order off the menu, but you may have to ask for a menu, they don’t tend to bring you things by default here. Most things are a la carte - each item ordered separately. I haven’t seen any meals yet that came with anything other than the main thing you order. But the sides are listed as options too. The prices are there, and you don’t have to haggle about this purchase either, as far as I’ve seen.
Your bill, which you’ll also have to ask for as they’ll seldom bring it to you of their own accord, may consist of several small slips of paper. Sometimes they’ll bring it piecemeal as you get stuff, one with the drinks, one with the entrees, another with the sides. Then the French term for what we call “the check” which is “l’addition” really makes sense, since you have to add them all together. The high class places are kind enough to add it up for you.
Coke is always an option. I also recommend Fanta Citron (caffeine free sweet citrus soda). And Mutzig (lager). ☺
But overall I’ve been quite happy with the food here. I haven’t been super careful about avoiding the things they tell you to avoid, and haven’t become ill as a result. And it’s quite tasty.
So there’s my super short travel guide to Rwanda. ☺ Just some things that became commonplace after we’d been there for a few days that I may not have mentioned previously that I thought worth capturing.
Our last day in town was fun. We bought some more souvenirs, traded a couple of books that Mandy had read for one that we hadn’t at the used bookstore downtown, which had a fair collection of English and French available. I haven’t seen a ton of books in Kinyarwanda here. Then we met up with Mandy’s friend Sybil, whom she met a long time ago when she was in Senegal during undergrad. Sybil is teaching in Uganda right now and just happened to be traveling down here with friends of hers now. So that was a cool coincidence, and we spent the evening hanging out chatting with her.
Then we finished packing up, wedging all the souvenirs into our rolling suitcases, and then when they were full most of my clothes went into a laundry bag I’d brought along for just such an occasion, and even got a few hours of sleep before the taxi we’d arranged showed up at 2:30 am to take us to the airport. Kigali is really quiet in the late morning hours, very few cars on the road besides us. There were, however, two police roadblocks between our hotel and the airport, primarily checking for drunk drivers. But we passed without incident, checked in, and were sitting by the gate waiting for the plane half an hour after we left the hotel. So much for leaving 2 hours of margin. ☺ Kigali airport is nice and small and efficient.
The plane was packed, with some tourists, but it looked like also with many business folk from Kigali heading to points eastward. You can do business in Kenya and make it a one day trip I believe. I got yelled at for taking pictures on the tarmac in Nairobi, apparently that’s not allowed. But I did keep one of a pretty bird. Funny, walking from the plane it feels like any airport in the world, until you see this strange animal land and you’re like “oh yah, I’m in Africa still”.
I brought my gorilla walking stick souvenir, a meter long solid piece of wood with carvings. In Rwanda they had no trouble with it at all. In Nairobi they made us check it at the gate… such that we picked it up in Amsterdam also at the gate. Then in Amsterdam security almost took it away from me, but the guy made a special exception and let me keep it. I think I’ll try to find a way to get it checked preemptively on the way home. Funny how security varies from place to place. Which then makes it make sense that on these international flights, even though you’re just making connections, you always have to go through security again. I’m sure Amsterdam doesn’t trust Rwanda’s security procedures. But we got through - no hassles at customs either - just quick glances at our passport and a stamp. A United States passport really is a powerful thing it turns out. Then in France there were no customs at all… we just picked up our bags and left.
And apparently with the lost baggage (both Mandy and I) in Kigali, and the threats to take away my gorilla walking stick, we’d used up all of our bad luggage karma, because in Charles DeGaul airport, our bags were literally within the first 6 to come off the plane, and we headed right out to the metro with no delays. Nice.
I was very happy to see trains again, and especially to ride on one. It was a quick half hour or so ride from CDG to Paris, and then a few blocks from the metro to the hotel we’d booked. Net cost about 17 euros, which is a lot compared to Kigali, but tiny compared to what it would have cost from DTW. I love cities with good public transit. ☺
We headed out from the hotel to a local shop for some pita falafel fast foodish dinner. Paris feels kind of like Disneyland now. Tiny streets, little shops everywhere, such classing European style that you see imitated in amusement parks, government buildings, etc. Here it all looks like that. It’s fun. The density is similar to Kigali, except there it’s only one story, here above the little shops wedged together there are 5-10 more stories of living and other space. And here more of the shops are food, whereas there more of the shops were stuff. We saw homeless folk and beggars here too, at similar density, but they didn’t as actively follow you along harassing you. And the street crafts here were more fun - paintings of alien landscapes, wire sculptures, etc. And a group of kids breakdancing on the street with a huge crowd gathered to watch. Way more leisure based businesses and activities.
I guess I saw more similarities than differences between Paris and Kigali. Paris is more expensive certainly, but Kigali is expensive compared to the surrounding villages too. There were similar crowds, and the people were by and large dressed nicely. Here the style is different, it’s more of a preppy expensive but casual clothes rather than the business casual button down shirts and slacks that were common in Kigali. A wider variety of styles here, and more focus on sexuality in the styles. But still all dressy. Another way to put it is that people are dressed nicely in that pretending to be casual. Here there are way more options with restaurants. And the prices are labeled, no haggling so far much to my relief. And it’s more beautiful. The older architecture is still well maintained. You can’t turn a corner and find a dirt road or slum. The people are more beautiful too, but that’s probably just my personal preference. Lots of motorcycles, but they’re not taxis (they sound like chainsaws- I keep thinking some gardening work is going on outside my window ☺). No air time vendors, but lots of cellphone stores. People are busy, and moving, and dealing with overcrowding and responding in some similar ways - some smile at you but most avoid you. People dodge each other passing on busy sidewalks in the same fashion.
I notice many couples holding hands, more in our first few hours here than I saw in our entire time in Rwanda, including one couple making out on the side of the street. We never saw that in Rwanda. But there are no guys holding hands anymore. We did, however, see someone in an Indian chief headdress in their underwear dancing in front of one restaurant/bar/club though. ☺ Not sure what was inside that club.
The hotel room is tiny, but a very efficient use of space. They packed so many more amenities in such a small volume than in Kigali, not surprisingly. For example there was a triple panel sliding door on shower in the bathroom, so you could fit through the door into the smaller than 1m x 1m shower. There were triple folding shades on each side on the window too. Everything is packed into a tiny tiny space.
Unfortunately the first hotel was full after our one night there, so we had to go off searching for another. Walking down the streets we found a dozen hotels within a few blocks, all of which were full. But finally, half an hour after the checkout time, we found one with space for two days anyway. So after a stop for some fresh bread we shuffled our train of bags over, and took to wandering the city some more.
We found a Mac store right next to our hotel, and asked about fixing my computer, which he agreed was a hard drive problem. He sent me to another store which was able to do warranty repairs. We wandered some more, getting to see more of the city, and found that place without incident too. Then I ended up deciding not to do the warranty repair after all, since by paying for it myself it could a) get done in 1-2 days, b) upgrade to a larger hard drive, and c) get the old hard drive back to maybe recover some of the pictures from the gorillas etc. that I didn’t upload or back up yet. Apple apparently requires you to send everything in to do the warranty repair. So that’s in work now, and I’ll hopefully get it later today or tomorrow.
Then we had sushi at one of the many many sushi places we’ve been passing. Yum! No sushi in Rwanda that I saw. Then we wandered around the city some more, visited a gaming store and were amused to see many familiar titles - Dungeons and Dragons, RoboRally, Settlers of Catan, and more, translated into French. Fun stuff. And again, a sign of a society with more time and margin for leisure activities. After a break at the hotel we wandered off again, over the Sien, past Notre Dame and a bunch of government buildings, to a vegan restaurant Mandy had discovered her last time here. Building under repair look like archeological digs. But it is a really nice city, and it was a great way to spend my birthday.
We’re at this hotel, the Hotel Studia, for one more night tonight, then we move to the TimHotel near the Eiffel Tower, which actually had a room for the next 5 nights, the remainder of our stay. Next we contact professors etc. and my exchange partner Florence from back in 5th grade (and some subsequent visits) to try to get together with her while we’re here, probably this weekend.
All for now. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload more pictures soon.