My birthday party, well, that was far more fulfilling than I
could have imagined. I invited everyone from my training group to come down to
my regional town for a party. I didn’t expect many people to come down, since I
live in the farthest, hardest to get to corner of Rwanda. Even though it’s a
tiny country, and I don’t’ think I live too far away, everyone always makes it
seem like they’ve crossed the Amazon to get to my region.
Somehow, stars aligned for my birthday though. We celebrated
it a little late, in a time that made sense. It was during a break, it was just
after memorial week, a large group of volunteers had returned from Zanzibar and
it was right before our “In Service Training”.
Some 10 or 15 volunteers made it to the party. I probably
wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it if it wasn’t for a crazy coincidence. We
were all staying at a cheap Catholic guesthouse a few meters from the Congo
border. There was a hotel bar nearby where we started the night having a few
beers. We were sitting at a big table outside on a balcony overlooking the
border and Lake Kivu as it dumped into the Rusizi River. During the day you can
see a wide array of white land cruisers from all sorts of NGOs going to and
from Congo. At some point I tried to make an NGO bingo game (biNGO) where every
space on the board was a different NGO and every time you saw that NGO’s
vehicle you could mark that one off. I ran out of NGOs after 18, though, so we
never played the game.
As we were making a loud Peace Corps ruckus, one of my
friends came and asked me if I knew a girl in Kenya named Christina. I did, and
they said that somebody in the bar was chatting with her on his smart phone. I
went into the bar to talk to the gentleman. He introduced himself as James. He
said he knew my friend and PCV in Kenya, Christina Gusa. He had heard that we
were PC Volunteers and told Christina that he was in the midst of a Peace Corps
party in Rwanda. Christina, being a good friend, new that it was my birthday
and told him the party probably belonged to someone named Joey.
James was an interesting character, as most people of his
breed tend to be. He was an Australian-born and South African raised pilot. He
had bee working and living in East Africa for a couple decades. His home base
is in Mombasa, Kenya and he absolutely loves it. I invited him to join us. As a
good Aussie, he quickly became the life of the party. He had plenty of wild
stories. In fact, he was currently in the midst of one, and I’m not talking
about the coincidence of our mutual friend. He was on a job for a couple mining
executives. He had flown them out to Rwanda (his first time in the country) so
they could cross the border into Congo. They were going to get some money that
was owed to them at the mine they owned. $9 million kind of money. He said he
had arrived that day and would be leaving in two days. The trip into the Congo
sounded kind of sketchy and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if those guys came
tearing across the border with a briefcase in a hail of gunfire.
At one point, he was telling us stories of famous people he
had flown. He mentioned that he had been the personal pilot for the campaign of
Kenyatta, Kenya’s new president. Then he mentioned that he had also flown Jude
Law. A bunch of people jumped at that information. “Jude Law?! What was he
like?!” I was shocked that he was of more interest than the president of Kenya.
I’m sorry, but when Jude Law is a head of state, OR wanted by the International
Criminal Court, I might find him of interest for discussion.
We moved on to the next bar, my favorite one in Kamembe,
right on Lake Kivu. During the weekend the bar is full of dancing, however this
was a Wednesday. We had to really push the party. I thought my flash drive full
of dance music would get our small party started, but James had different
ideas. He went to the bartender to ask for a bottle of Johnny Walker. I was
watching the difficult communication take place. She told him it was 500, but
she meant 50,000 (Rwandan francs). He thought she meant 500 dollars. He only
had dollars. 500 dollars was only slightly shocking to him, and I think he
would have paid it. Instead, I intervened and told him it was closer to $80 for
the bottle. He seemed surprised at what a great deal it was. I couldn’t help
being shocked. He got a bunch of tumblers and put me in charge of distributing
drinks of a liquor that had been out of our price range for 6 months (longer
for me). He seemed fairly uninterested in taking shots with us, he just wanted
to see us have a good time. When the bottle was gone, he bought what was left
of the bar’s bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label and J and B Whiskey. I
estimated that he dropped about $250 on liquor for, basically, strangers. I was
shocked and grateful, but he simply said, “Well, when I’m making $14,000 for
this trip, it’s not a big deal”. It shouldn’t have been much of a shock,
though. I mean, this seemed typical behavior of most Australians I’ve met. They
just want to have a good time, and seeing others have a good time is just as
good. He was somewhere between Danny Archer, from Blood Diamond, and my Aussie
buddy Jordan. He had a bit of the “T.I.A.” ruthless streak, but was still
personable, fun and charismatic. When I asked him about Mozambique, where he
had been recently, he said, “It’s awesome. There’s a lot of money to be made
there!” I had been hoping for a little insight into the culture, but it was an
interesting response nonetheless.
The next day we spent the day just lounging by the lake,
sipping my jerry can of homemade pineapple passion fruit wine. I brought my
inflatable raft and enjoyed the sun. It’s days like this that I regret
complaining as much as I do about Rwanda.
The next morning we all got up early and took the boat to
Kibuye, where our week long In Service Training would take place. We left at 7
in the morning and arrived at 1. Our fellow PCV, Brian, was already in Kibuye
and busy arranging an adventures.
Yes. We had an adventure! A brief, semi-rugged adventure,
but an adventurous DIY style travel I love all the same!
Brian had been negotiating with a fisherman to rent his boat
for a couple of days so we could go camping on one of Kibuye’s many islands.
There is an island that was privately owned and had been developed for tourism.
Apparently, however, it was no longer running. The fisherman said that we could
camp there, but there was nobody there, so we would need to be self-sufficient.
No problem. We had tents, sleeping bags and everything.
We bought jugs of water, loaves of bread some sausages,
cheese and a can of hot dogs at a shop in town then headed down to the lake to
meet Brian and the fisherman. Just before we left, the fisherman got in the
boat with us. We were confused. Apparently Brian had agreed for the fisherman
to take us out to the island, then come get us in a couple days. Brian thought
he had agreed to pay 8000 francs to use the boat for two days, but apparently
there was some miscommunication. After some discussion it was agreed that we
would go alone and the fisherman would come out to where we were (somehow) and
take our boat for a few hours to go fishing. This was a reasonable compromise,
as we figured we could do without the boat for a few hours.
 |
| Paddling out to the island. Photo Credit: Brian Lee |
We paddled out towards “Amahoro Island” (Peace Island), a
place that could only have gotten its name with the intention of attracting
tourists. After an hour and a half we arrived at the small island. It was
actually two islands, connected by a dilapidated footbridge and a shallow,
rocky sandbar. The island had a couple of shacks, a sandy volleyball court. As
we prepared to dock, a portly middle-aged man appeared. He didn’t seem to take
much interest in us and went about his business until we landed. He told us
that we should take our boat around to the other side of the island where there
were places to camp.
 |
| Arriving at so-called Amahoro Island. Photo Credit: Brian Lee |
The places to camp were annoyingly well set up. Clean little
grassy patches and a couple even had white pavilions for picnics or to cover
tents. When we were nearly finished unloading our stuff, the man arrived and
said that we were required to pay 5,000 francs per person per night to camp. We
were utterly shocked. We could have paid half the price for a dorm bed in town,
and 6,000 francs for a two-person room. Sure, we like camping, and would prefer
it to staying in a dormitory, but there is something wrong with paying more for
camping than for a hotel. We argued for a while, expecting him to lower the
price. He said it wasn’t up to him. He said the Rwandan Development Board set
the price and he couldn’t change it. He even told us to look it up on the
website. Later I found out that the island had been bought by the Rwandan
government with the intention of developing it as a tourist attraction, but I
couldn’t find any sort of prices on their website. We told him that we would
leave and go camp on one of the other many islands nearby. He said we couldn’t.
It was illegal. The soldiers would come for us. Yeah, yeah, whatever. We loaded
the boat again and considered our next move. We only had about an hour and a
half of daylight left, so we couldn’t take too big of a risk on where we
decided to go.
We landed on an island halfway between “Amahoro Island” and
the mainland. We struggled to find a good place to access the island, but we
eventually moved all our stuff on land, and found a mediocre place to camp. The
grass was tall and stiff, and the ground was full of holes and rocks. Still, we
managed to find places to set up our tents. There were five of us. It appeared
that there were
 |
| Arriving on the island, in search of a real camp spot. Photo Credit: Brian Lee |
We scavenged the island for firewood. Of course there was
little to be found. Surely the fishermen had picked it clean long ago. There
was a small fire pit that did not look like it had been used much. I assume
that the fishermen occasionally use the island to rest on. We managed to find a
few branches, lots of twigs and grass. Just before dark we had a our camp set
up and a decent fire going. We roasted our hot dogs (which were more like
Vienna sausages) and made sandwiches. We were camping at the base of the island
and were well-concealed by bushes. We did have a little worry about whether it
was legal to camp on this island. After dinner, we hiked to the top of the
island, which took all of five minutes. We could see the lights of fishing
boats speckling the lake and in the distance we could see the faint red glow of
Nyiragongo, the active volcano outside of Goma, DRC. It was one of the rare
moments of feeling free. Free from the constraints of being a Peace Corps
volunteer, yes, but more importantly free from Rwanda. There isn’t much open
space. It is almost impossible to have solitude unless locked in your own
house. It can often be a struggle to fit into the culture while also trying to
be yourself. This feeling of freedom would not last long, however. We were
indeed camping illegally, as we would later find out.
 |
| Hanging around the camp fire. Photo Credit: Brian Lee |
The next morning Brian and I got in the boat and tried our
hand at fishing. The fishermen had left a couple of rods in the boat. They
consisted of thin sticks of bamboo with a fishing line attached to the end. We
attached little bits of sausage to the hooks, paddled out a ways and sat. We
weren’t expecting to catch anything. There is little life in Lake Kivu, due to
the methane gas that seeps into it from the land underneath. There are only six
species of fish and the large majority of what is caught are tiny little
two-inch fish called sambaza. Still, it was enjoyable to relax and “fish”. We
saw one of the fishing boats heading back in after a night on the lake. The
fishing boats consist of three ten-meter canoes bound together by large,
curved, wooden poles. We paddled out to them and started to greet them. They
asked if we wanted to buy fish. We said no, so they moved on and resumed their
rowing and chanting.
Then we paddled out to another island where we hoped to find
some more firewood for that night. We trampled around for a while, finding a
couple of decent branches, but mostly came away with long, thin, prickly
branches that don’t burn well and give off too much smoke.
When we arrived back at the island, with a boat brimming
with sub-par firewood, we found our fisherman friend, Elias, the owner of the
boat, waiting for us. He was in some sort of inflatable toy raft. The bottom of
his raft was inflated, but the rest was not. I was surprised that he was even
able to stay afloat in this vessel. Apparently there was a problem. He was
confused because he thought we were going to Amahoro Island. We said he could
take his boat to go fishing, but we were staying on the island, as per our
agreement of using his boat for two nights. He refused and said we needed to leave
the island now. It took a long time to figure it out, since he knew no English
or French, but he was worried about the police or the military. He said that we
had camped illegally and if we had been caught, the boat would be impounded and
it would cost nearly a hundred dollars to get back. I was against packing up so
easily, but in the end it seemed like the only option. I was annoyed with the
fisherman, since he didn’t want to give us some of our money back, but I was
mostly annoyed with the restrictive Rwandan laws.
 |
| It took a matter of 24 hours for most of us to devolve into this. My caption: Zach Wiberg, right, the famed 21st century explorer is paddled across
Lake Kivu by his primitive, native guides, after discovering the
long-mythologized |
We paddled back to the mainland, gave Elias his boat back
and trudged up the hill to a guesthouse. When we arrived at the guesthouse I found
that Elias has hustled to catch up with us and was speaking rapidly in
Kinyarwanda with his hand out. He was claiming that we had lost or stolen a
life jacket and we needed to pay him for it. The claim seemed absurd. We hadn’t
used the life jackets, nor had we counted them before or after. They had just
sat in the bottom of the boat the whole time. I felt certain he was trying to
con us. I also don’t think the con was his idea. He never seemed money hungry,
but we left him among some of the young and savvy guys who sell boat tours to
tourists. I felt like it was their idea to claim we had lost a life jacket. The
others wanted to pay him, but I was certain we hadn’t lost any life jackets.
The price he was asking also seemed outrageous, however, I really don’t know
the going price for a life jacket in Rwanda. In the end Luke gave him some cash
and he left. He’s a better persons than me.
Since our interaction with Elias the fisherman, I have gone
to Kibuye a few times and seen him. Every time he seems less like a fisherman
and more like the other guys that sell boat tours. The next time I tried to
rent his boat he wanted more than the cost of a motorized boat tour. We
bartered him down to something reasonable, but still high. The next time he wouldn’t
go even close to a reasonable price. Still, during those visits, I had seen him
out fishing, making it his primary profession. The last time I went to Kibuye,
however, he wasn’t even fishing. He and another guy were paddling around a bay
where most tourists are based and was actively trying to sell boat rides. It
feels almost like we corrupted this fisherman. It makes me think of a quote by
Jean Mistier, “Le tourisme est l’industrie qui consiste a transporter des gens
qui seraient mieux chez eux, dans des endroits qui seraient mieux sans eux” Tourism
is the industry that consists of transporting people that would be better at
home and puts them among those who would be better without them.
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