After a morning of final presentations of Friday, we left for Kibuye. Our group included the Go Ed students, Aryn, Vestine and Pastor Anastase (our professor). The driver said it was a 2.5 hour drive to our guest house, but it ended up being more like 4 hours. We always take the same bus on our field trips. It is a big, white van, with the word "JUST" written across the top of the windshield. It is written in a weird font, and for the first couple days I thought it said "LUST", and that we were riding the "Lust bus"! Our driver has all his music on tapes. The one that we listen to every day on the way to class, or on field trips has about six songs on it. They are hip-hop/R&B songs that were popular in the US last summer. at first it was a lot of fun to hear them because I knew every word and could sing along. One a four hour drive, when the same six songs are played over and over again, you start going a little bit crazy!! The best thing about the drive was the view. There is no way to explain such glorious beauty! We pulled off to the side of the road for a short break and looked over the cliff at the green, rich valley below. Rwandan farmers use the trellis system, so up the mountain walls are shelves of crops. It is really fantastic. There were sheep walking around, and they let me walk up really close to them. I walked down to a small waterfall, and stood among the tall trees that had orange moss growing on them. I felt like I was in a mystical place.
We arrived at our guest house as the sun was starting to set. It looked like a tropical paradise. There were palm trees and tons of beautiful, brightly colors flowers. I shared a bedroom with Susan and Morgan. Simple concrete rooms, with three beds and a small bathroom, but in my mind, they were very comfortable. We went down to the restaurant that overlooks Lake Kivu and had a buffet dinner that was pretty good. It's too bad we don't have good Fanta in the USA - made with real sugar and packaged in nice glass bottles.
Susan, Shelby, Emily, Tim, Janae, Nathan, Ryan and I gathered in Shelby and Emily's room to play games. I jokingly suggested that we play "Murder in the Dark", but everyone else liked the idea. We covered the window with a blanket and turned out the lights. One person was the murderer (we passed out cards that either made you a murderer or a towns person), we walked around in the dark and eventually the murderer would pretend to cut somebody's throat in the dark, and that person would fall to the ground. Then when we found the "body", the light would go on and we would try to figure out who the murderer was and then vote. We would keep going until we figured out who it was. It was scary but really really fun. We played for almost two hours... Then we went and laid out on the ground to look at the stars. I have never seen such bright and beautiful stars. We talked for a while. I (once again) jokingly made the suggestion that we go around and say something nice about everyone in the group, but I guess we all wanted a self esteem boost, so we did. Then I went back to the room with Susan, talked and then went to bed.
On Saturday we had an excellent breakfast. The water at lake Kivu looks like it is bright aqua from above, but the water is clear and you can see the bottom when you get close to it. There were islands out in the middle, and I felt like I was in some sort of dream-scape, it was so beautiful. We got in a long boat that looked like an over-sized canoe with a motor at the back. It was about a thirty minute ride to one of the islands. I spent the ride hanging over the edge of the boat to touch the water, it was so nice! We hiked to the top of the mountain. Our guides ran up and scared all the bats out of the trees and a big cloud of thousands of bats rose up. It was an amazing sight to see. I didn't really enjoy the hike. It was up a sttep rocky cliff and my legs got all shaky just trying not to slip and fall off the cliff. The top was pretty. Going down was a nightmare for me. The rocks kept slipping and I was the last one to finally get down to ground level again. We swam in the clear water for a while until the rain storm got closer and we had to go back for lunch. after lunch I went with Emily, Janae, Nathan, Vestine and Aryn to the resort next door that had a sandy beach. I swam and then fell asleep in the sun. Then we got some chocolate ice cream. It was a heavenly afternoon.
We came back for a 7pm dinner.. but it wasn't ready until 8:30. That is my biggest complaint about Africa.. the service for meals is always very slow. I think their tourist industry should do a little more to have meals ready on Western time schedules. I may sound insensitive or a little bit bratty saying this... but I can't go from 12 -8:30 without eating, and I don't understnd why we had to wait so long. I was feeling really sick and faint by the time our buffet was finally set up. We played Murder in the Dark again. Vestine came over to see what we were doing, and we felt really bad telling her we were playing Murder in the Dark.. seemed a little too insensitive to tell that to a Rwandan who lost loved ones in the genocide. So we tried to make it into tag in the dark, but we kept slipping up.. Went to bed around 11:30 after trying to kill all the mosquitos that were buzzing outside my mosquito net.
Sunday we got up and went to church. We got to introduce ourselves and they wanted to hear all of our names in case they had the same ones. If somebody knew someone with one of our names, they would come up and hug us. Nobody had ever met someone named Kendall or "Candle", haha. We got up and saing Sanctuary, Amazing Grace and Big House. The service was pretty long, but good. The sermon was about suffering, and the pastor tried to connect it to us by talking about Sept. 11th. After the service we played with a few kids outside and then packed up and drove home. On the drive back we pulled to the side of the road for our driver to buy something. A mother brought her baby up to my window and we shook and I held both of their hands for a few minutes until we had to leave. This drive was even more pretty, because I was awake for more of it. It was nice to get back to our house in Kigali.
Now we are on our way to the Eatern Privince for a week of field research. We will interview poor families for Food for the Hungry's program. We are staying at a local college and will have squatty potties and bucket baths for the week. Be back Saturday night!
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