Backpacking Trip: Tanzania and Rwanda Part 1

A couple of weeks ago my roommate and I took off a few days of classes to travel, the only problem was we couldn’t really decide where we wanted to go, or how we wanted to get there. The one thing we knew for sure, however, was that we somehow wanted to end up in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. A couple of things made our trip difficult—the fact that we’re not allowed to take night buses, the fact that we’re not allowed to take buses period to some areas in Kenya, and the fact that we are poor college students and cannot afford to fly everywhere we want to go. So basically, we packed our backpacks as lightly as possible and headed out on a 6am bus to Arusha, Tanzania hoping that we could catch a bus from there to either Lake Victoria or the Rwandan border. The bus got us in to Arusha around 2, and since we had already been there, we tried to find a bus that left that same day for somewhere else. Once we got off the bus we basically just started asking around and talking to people about where we could get buses to and how we could eventually end up in Rwanda. After discussing for about two hours with several people, we found out that we could take a bus to Mwanza, a city on Lake Victoria, and then commute from there to Rwanda, however, the bus to Mwanza takes all day and we would have to backtrack to Nairobi again to get there. The other option we were told was to take a 5am bus the next morning to a town in Tanzania called Kahama, situated a few hours away from the Rwandan border. Either way we traveled, however, the trip would take at the minimum one day, because we could not drive straight through the country to the border since there is a huge national game reserve in the middle of the country, the Serengeti, which costs a lot of money to drive through and would have involved us going with a tour group and taking time on a safari—something that we have already done before and weren’t interested in doing again. So we chose to spend the night in Arusha, at a $3.50 a night hostel, and departed the next morning for Kahama. The bus to Kahama was pretty painful, as it was largely overcrowded, hot, dusty, and the trip itself was really long. We were the only white people on the bus and were clearly some of the only tourists to ever make this trek. Although the ride was not fun at all, we were at least happy to see the beautiful Tanzanian landscape, as we traversed literally the entire country. We got into Kahama at around 4 and again relied on just talking with people to find our way to Rwanda. The one problem we ran into was the fact that not many people in the town spoke English, as apparently it is not really a tourist attraction. People were very confused by us; however, they were friendly and very helpful. After discussing with the one English speaker we found and after doing the best to negotiate using Kiswahili, we found that we could take a small truck to the border that would only take 3 hours. Since there were no trucks leaving that night, we started to roam around town for another hostel to stay in for the night. We found another equivalent of $3 a night room, dropped off our bags and walked around the town to see what it was like. We went to a little local place where we ate some tasty beef stew and curry and chatted with some people about the town. Kahama is a really small town that is not at all modern, yet the people there are quite interesting and friendly. Although we were only there for about 12 hours, we really enjoyed our stay. The next morning we left at around 5am for the Rwandan border. We packed into a 14-seat van, with about 18 other people, which made for a pretty uncomfortable, however, beautiful ride. The sunrise in the morning was the most beautiful one I have ever seen and the land we drove through was lush and green. After nearly three cramped hours, we ended up at the Rwandan border, along with only two other passengers. I overheard the other two passengers speaking French and decided to ask them if they two were going to Kigali. One of them was a Rwandan citizen returning home to Kigali and the other was a pastor from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was just passing through the country. Both agreed to help us through customs and to help us get to our final destination. The border patrol station was the smallest I have ever seen. We were the only four people moving through the country and everyone was really lax that was working there. We were surprised by the fact that as United States citizens we did not have to pay any fee or obtain any visa to enter into Rwanda. After getting out stamp, we literally just walked into the country and no one was in sight. We entered through an area called Rusumo Falls, where we crossed a big bridge over a waterfall. When we got to the other side there were a few small buildings, one of which was a Bureau D’Echange where we were able to exchange our money into Rwandan francs. We paid our $3 bus ticket and waited around talking to people for about 30 minutes until the bus departed for the capital. The drive through the Rwandan countryside was one of the most beautiful. Again the land was extremely lush and green, consisting of huge rolling mountains and deep valleys. Rwanda was a Belgian colony, thus in addition to Rwandese and various mother tongues, most Rwandan people speak French (a very small number of people we found there spoke English). The people we were riding with in the small van were all extremely friendly and inquired about who we were and where we came from. Driving the countryside, it was so hard to imagine how a horrible genocide could have occurred just almost ten years ago in such a peaceful and beautiful place.