mwanza - kigali

so long, friends

11 Jan.

Eventually we had to say good-bye to Hotel Tilapia and pretty little Mwanza, and get back on the road. We were a little over halfway around the lake - and we only had two days to get Danny back to the office. It was appropriately rainy when we woke up, packed the car and hit the road. Due to some bad instructions from the hotel front desk, we ended up at the wrong ferry. When we finally found the right one about an hour away, the ferry was pulling away from the shore. I silently read the New Yorker (about how to make Jews feel included on Christmas) while Danny fumed.

As always happens on a trip so long on the road, a melt-down occurred. I wanted to read him the New Yorker story and he wanted to be mad. Then I got mad that he was mad and he cheered up by purchasing a monkey hat off a vendor. We rode the ferry silently, with arms crossed.

The road from Mwanza to Kigali was a good one. We reached the border at Rusomo Falls, I walked across the little bridge over a raging orange rapid, and met Danny on the other side. The "no-corruption" policies of the Rwandan border control made for a quick crossing, and we were on our way - on the right-hand side of the road. Rwanda is called the "land of a thousand hills," and we wound our way, zig-zagged and swooped all over the country, heading north, then west into the city. Everything about the Rwanda seemed tidy - from the cleanly swept yards to the impeccable dresses worn by the women. The road was smooth and free of potholes. We remarked at how something must be going right here.

We ended the evening crashing at my friend Julie's house in Kigali. We walked through the residential neighborhood and had dinner at Papyrus, drank oodles of wine and walked back home.