South to Nyamagabe

We left Kigali in the early afternoon on Tuesday, after spending the morning working on our field collection methods – Samsung tablets with a GIS data collector installed, with custom surveys built and distributed to the five student researchers. I went out to take care of some housekeeping – got cash from the ATM, a few groceries and then to get a few documents printed.

The print shop was a hole in the wall in a plaza that faces one of the main streets in this part of Kigali. Due to the impending Commonwealth conference, the road crews are working overtime on upgrading this road – hundreds of guys laying stones on the edges or digging holes for drainage or water pipes, teams of women with shovels and hoes breaking up fresh loam dropped in the medium, all amid huge construction vehicles – excavators, road graders, steam rollers, dump trucks, bulldozers – working non stop. It’s been like this since we arrived, and they have made incredible progress, from a literal rubble pit to a solid road base with beautiful stone work, ready for paving.

They also have replaced the water mains up here, above our house, which led to us having steadily less water over the last week. We finally used up the last of our reserve cistern on Sunday, meaning that when we left Kigali yesterday, none of us had showered in several days, and the toilets were not in good condition.

Back to the print shop – there were guys using electric stone cutters out front, and another guy using an angle grinder on the facade out front of the shop, all added to the noise of rumbling machinery on the road outside. I handed over my USB card and showed them what I needed to print, and then watched as one guy would hit ‘print’ while the other added one sheet of paper to the printer and then massaged it, coaxing the page through. The printer would fail after one or two pages, so they would turn it off, back on, and restart the process. All the while people pushed through the shop, chatted, stared at me, and others worked on the two other computers with customers, in what I assumed is the shop’s primary business of visa preparation and applications. All this while the angle grinder threw a cascade of sparks down onto the street outside. I finally got my printouts and headed home.

Then some waiting for our primary investigator (PI) Brian, who was collecting the rental car, some last minute organizing and then we drove away from #1 KG 551 St. and southwest out of the city. We hit a traffic snag as we neared the bus station, which meant 20 minutes at a near-standstill in a line of cars and trucks, winding through a market with crowds of people milling around us, moto-taxis buzzing through the gaps in cars.

Then we were free of the city and out on the main roads, which are generally 2-lane paved roads, winding up and down the hills, often tracing the contours of the ridgelines or just below.

I had not, until now, appreciated that Rwanda is a country roughly the size of Vermont, with more than 12 million people. That’s almost 24 times as many people. It looks as if almost every square foot of land is either a house, a pasture or agricultural land.

We wound west through Runda, Musambira and Nyambuye, before turning south at Muhanga through Ntenyo, Ruhanga and Kigoma. We stopped at a way station, got out and stretched and admired the goats a man was minding down below the guesthouse. Another guy offered us brochettes of chicken or some other meat, but we declined. All along, people stared, often slack-jawed, or waved shyly.

The roads were populated by heavy trucks, buses and moto bikes, along with a few SUVs like ours, including one or two white UNHCR or World Food Program Land Rovers. The traffic wasn’t that bad, except for the foot traffic along the road. Everywhere, people were walking – kids, moms, families, men in suits, guys carrying bundles of firewood or empty plastic jugs on their shoulders; women with sacks of rice balanced on their heads. And bikes – usually cruisers, but with anything you can think of stacked on the back – crates of beer, bundles of logs, lumber, sacks of rice, a mattress or two. Uphill, the bike driver pushed the bike alongside it. Downhill, they’d cruise, shouting to warn people they were coming through.

It was the people and bikes that were the most troublesome – a kid jumping out in the path of a vehicle, or a bike swerving away from the edge of the road would send Brian muttering. That felt more dangerous than when we passed trucks laboring uphill, and it got worse as the sun fell closer to the horizon and the dark closed in.

We finally arrived in Nyamagambo around 6:30, with the full strawberry moon rising in the east. We settled into our rooms, after a bit of an argument over how to pay (despite the Visa/MasterCard logos at the desk, the manager said they could not accept credit cards).

A clean room with mosquito netting and hot water – heaven. We had a few beers and a buffet dinner, and then headed to bed.