Rwanda...

...a pretty magical place. Normally when you cross a border you can, for a while, say, "this looks just like the last country." But not with Rwanda. You cross the border and see incredibly beautiful scenery all around you. I really didn't expect to see green and pretty, pretty much everywhere. The people are really wonderful as well. You don't have the same peddling of goods or outright "give me money" demands like in Uganda. Instead, you get people who make you feel like you made their day just with a smile and a wave. Unfortunately, the truck was only in Rwanda for a few days, but they were wonderful.

You've already read about gorilla trekking. On to traditional healing! I saw that there was an ethno-botany tour on offer in Ruhengeri (Musanze) and thought it would be really interesting to meet with a healer and learn about traditional medicine in Rwanda. If I think of it as a traditional healing tour, it pretty much sucked. If, instead, I think of it as a community village walk, it was great! I walked with my guide Herbert through Musanze Town for about two hours to start. I got a lot of "Mzungu/Wazungu!!" (white person!) and kids who were super cute and very curious about me. (I also got a "numuKorea" which Herbert said was "not Wazungu, from Korea.") But think Constant Gardener when Tessa is walking through a village... almost every kid you pass is so excited to see you and shouts "How are you?! How are you?!") We happened to walk by a school and the teacher invited me to go say hello to the children. You open with "malaho" (how are you?), the children all respond in unison with "yego" (i'm fine). You continue with "amakulu" (what's the news?) and they respond with "namiza" (it's good.) (I may be butchering the spellings of these as my guide had problems with r's and l's...) Anyway, they all respond in unison! The cutest part was saying "Hello, How are you?" in English and getting this enthusiastic response from 15 kids of "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" So cute! When I left, all the kids took turns touching their fingers to my palm and saying "Bye, See you tomorrow!" Herbert got the teacher's number but this was apparently because he wanted to send his child there in a few months. I later met Herbert's wife, sister in law, son, and cousin's sister. I also found out that he paid "minimum one and maximum three cows" for his wife as dowry.

As for tradtional healing... It is supposedly passed on from generation to generation, but I'm pretty sure I met with a Western-educated doctor who focused more on natural healing instead of traditional healing. He promotes herbal remedies and a philosophy of "we are what we eat." His pharmacy is stocked with olive oil, sunflower oil, herbal tea, and miscellaneous piles of leaves. I didn't learn too much from him, unfortunately, as telling me that X herbal tea cures 30 different diseases isn't terribly helpful. I Did ask if this natural healing shop was in competition with the regular pharmacy across the street. Yes. Apparently, the Rwandan government subsidies 80% of the cost of drugs which provides a big incentive to locals. And! You don't really need a prescription for anything! I think this drug subsidization occurs in a lot of countries because in Tanzania, for instance, a girl on the truck got 10 Valium for 200 TSH (approximately 12 cents).

Musanze: Formerly Ruhengeri, Musanze is a pretty small town with not a whole lot to it. There is an ATM, a post office, and a market. There aren't a lot of souvenir shops and the ones that Do exist aren't very enterprising. For example, I was able to buy handmade cards, but no envelopes! And that's pretty much all I know about Musanze. I Did get to eat at the Vision 2020 restaurant that had an awesome one-pass buffet: Less than $3 for an awesome plate of rice, chips, cassava, yams, squash, peas, beans, and deep-fried shredded beef. Delicious! You might want to be embarassed by how high you've piled your plate, but then you see that the Africans have piled their plates twice as high! Potatoes are apparently very cheap here - 100 RWF for 1kg of potatoes. (~17 cents)

Genocide Memorial: No visit to Rwanda would be complete without a visit here. I don't know if one really enjoys a genocide memorial persay, but I am really glad I went. I was a bit apprehensive about going only because even just reading the Lonely Planet about the genocide almost brought me to tears. I was alive when this happened and at the time, had no idea what was going on... It was hard for me to really think about what was going on there. Before getting to Rwanda, I think I really only knew what the movie Hotel Rwanda had taught me. I think the part that was really disturbing was that some of the Interahamwe didn't just kill - they wanted their victims to suffer. They would, for example, hack off someone's hand or foot, come back hours later for another limb, then again for another limb, and then maybe kill the victim. The memorial itself takes you through the history of how colonization fueled animosity between the Hutus and Tutsis where little to none existed before, inciting events, the actual genocide, and the aftermath. There was also a section that covered other genocides that had occurred (Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, Balkans, etc.) and how some of the genocides have not been recognized by certain--or in some cases all--nations so that there's no justice for the victims. Currently, approximately 120,000 people sit in Rwandan jails for crimes of genocide, but slowly, perpetrators are being held accountable. We were actually in Arusha (Tanzania) when several people were being tried for their crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

So I think for a lot of people, myself included, the only thing known about Rwanda is that a violent genocide occurred there. There's really so much more to it though! A beautiful, fertile, and lush country with really lovely people. Rwanda has definitely been one of my favorite countries in Africa and I would be lucky to get to visit again.

(Updates about Uganda and Kenya are coming... we've done a quick loop through Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, and are now back to Uganda. Currently in Kampala on my way to my first ever cricket match! Next stop: Jinga! [The source of the Nile!])