Bonjour!

So from where has all of this extra time been coming? It has been coming from Kigali, Rwanda, that’s where. We headed to Zanzibar after 6 weeks of working with KYGN and TCC schools, as they both had exams during that time. For Easter holiday and a break between terms, each school was scheduled to have the next two weeks off, so we decided to figure out a plan of action. Long story short, Maura and I have a friend in Kampala, Uganda, who runs a youth centre, and who has extended many invitations for volunteer placement opportunities. As most of the placements with which my hostel in Moshi was affiliated were either on Easter holiday or full of volunteers, we decided to contact Denis in Kampala. (He visited Barretstown last summer in Ireland during our orientation and first camp session to get some new ideas for his centre).

Friends from the Hostel Hoff in Moshi had gone on holidays to Kigali and Kampala, and they strongly urged us to stop in the Rwandan capital on our way to Kampala. Once we were in Dar Es Salaam, we sought out bus trips first to Kigali.

Enter: Mr. Alpha. Standing at an impressive five feet 4 inches and weighing in at just above 215 lbs, the 65 year-old man whom we thought was just our taxi driver from the harbour to our hostel in Dar became our saving grace. Approximately 3 million people live in Dar, and the bus station may actually be the worst place in the entire world, housing 3/4 of them. Mr. Alpha came through in the clutch, to be expected really, and we picked up our tickets for the “24 hour bus ride” to Kigali beginning the next morning at 6 am.

I use quotations around 24 hour bus ride because it actually turned into a 36 hour bus ride. No bus trouble, traffic, or anything of the sort—that’s just how it goes here. Time is literally the least of people’s worries. And so we rode, on dirt roads, paved roads, through rain and shine, without air conditioning, to the Rwandan border. For whatever reason, Americans do not need visas for Rwanda, so the border crossing was quite simple, and just like that I was stamped out of Tanzania, walked over the bridged border between countries, and was stamped into Rwanda.

It’s a potluck here, and everybody’s bringing something to the table...French, Kinyarwanda, and English. I brought my best English, and thankfully Maura decided to bring some decent French. Sara’s Swedish is a nice seasoning but pretty useless. Now I am sitting in Kigali, but I am trying for a short entry, so will wait tell you all about Kigali later...but just a preview: it is gorgeous!

Photos: Our bus, and the nicest of our rest stops.