Misadventures in Akagera

 

It was a bad sign when the driver of the vehicle we were renting showed up an hour late to pick us up. He said he had had a “problem” with the police. It was a worse sign that the vehicle was not the RAV4 we thought we were renting, but an awkward Belgian monstrosity of an SUV that had an appearance closer to faux elegance than ruggedness. But really, what could go wrong?

After doing paperwork in his office and filling up the tank, Lise and I were finally on our way around noon. It wasn’t an ideal start, but the feelings of excitement and freedom brought on by having control of our own vehicle made up for it. When traveling, we are usually slaves to public transport, and its rigid routes and schedules, or hitchhiking, with its different set of drawbacks. But with our own car, we could go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And we had enough cargo space to bring whatever we wanted. In fact, we briefly considered not even going to Akagera National Park, and creating our own adventure in the Rwandan countryside instead.

We picked up supplies at the market in the little junction town of Kayonza. The market had charm because it had yet to be turned into a semi-enclosed multi-level wannabe modern monstrosity like the markets in most Rwandan towns.

Soon we were on a flat dirt road, in a russet-highlighted landscape that had nothing to do with the plunging jade valleys and rice paddies of my Edenesque corner of Rwanda. We were arriving at the edge of Rwanda’s scrap of savannah at the eastern end of the country. It was stirring not because it looked the Africa of most westerners’ mind’s eye, but because it looked so drastically different than where I had lived for the previous year.

By the time we filled out all the paperwork and paid our fees at the park’s front entrance, it was disappointingly late in the day. We had time for a short drive before we had to head to our campsite. The area we went to was supposed to have giraffes and some antelopey or buffolo-like creatures. We aren’t too into nomenclature.

After a steep, rutted and rocky descent to a plane downstairs from the welcome center, we saw little more than controlled brush fires, and weird little birds that slowly waddled away from us down the middle of the road. It took about an hour to understand how the map worked, but by this time, we needed to head towards the campsite, empty-camera-ed.

We crept the car along the top of a ridge, past the gazebo that abutted what we half-assumed to be the camping area. As we admired the view of Lake Ihema and wondered whether there were other places to camp further along, our friend, a giraffe, appeared out of nowhere a few dozen meters off the side of the road. (S)he interrupted his treetop dinner a couple times to glance at us casually. I felt like (s)he would have waved at us in a friendly way if it was easy. We gawked like nerds for longer than necessary, then went back to set up camp.

As we pulled in, I noticed a smell of gasoline. I didn’t think much of it, since I was pretty sure I’d been smelling it all day. So we set up our camp in the big open area between the gazebo and the fire pits. 

We had the whole site to ourselves, with far more firewood than a person like me should be allowed access to and a view that we don’t deserve. For dinner we made one of my camping staples that falls somewhere in between jambalaya and Mexican red rice. No secret to anyone that knows me that camp cooking over a fire is one of my favorite things. Especially when accompanied such fine libations as powdered “juice” mix and plastic bottle gin. We stayed up late, dancing around the fire to the music we were blasting from the car. The dichotomy of light and dark caused by the fire and the night let us forget that we were in the wilderness, allowing us to feel free to disrespect the environment around. Later in the night, the glowing green eyes of foraging impala appeared just outside of our illuminated realm. It was cool to see them, but it felt a little like passive aggressive neighbors were telling us to go to bed.

We forced ourselves up just in time for the 6 AM sunrise over Lake Ihema. We needed something immediately gratifying like that to justify the early morning wake-up. After a quick breakfast, we packed the car and headed on our way. On the way out of the site, we hit a big stone that had somehow strayed from the fire pit. It scraped some of the car’s underside, making an unsettling racket. I hopped out and when I looked under the car, I noticed a trickle of liquid coming out of one of the pipes. The damage was not from hitting the rock, but it was still something we needed to look at. The puddle forming under the car was gas. It had been a heavy stream, but after turning off the car, it slowed to a trickle, then nothing. That meant that it probably hadn’t been leaking all night, but we still couldn’t tell how much gas was left. None of the gauges worked.

We wondered if we should go back to the visitor’s center and make our plan from there, or just continue on, hoping that we wouldn’t get stranded. We chose the latter, knowing that even with a leak we would be able to cover some distance, since we had started with a full tank.

I called the guy we had rented from a half dozen times before he returned my call. He told me that even though the gas gauge doesn’t work, the “low fuel” light would come on eventually. From that point, we would have enough fuel to go about 50 km. So as long as we didn’t stray terribly far from the park entrance, we had a decent chance of escaping, while still spending time in the park. We had spent too much money on the park fees and car rental to turn back so soon.

There isn’t much to say about the day. It was enjoyable, although a little stressful. We saw a little bit of wildlife here and there, most notably plenty of giraffes, the sexiest animal on earth.

 

In the early afternoon, we really felt like we should make a move. We were starting to doubt if that low fuel light was actually functional. We headed toward the visitor’s center and park entrances. As we pushed up the last few hills toward the visitor’s center, the car stalled. With no illuminated warning from the dashboard, our car was out of fuel. We were maybe 2 kilometers from the visitor’s center. Lise’s phone was dead, but mine still had a tiny bit of juice left. I called the visitor’s center, wondering what we should do. As I was put on hold, my phone went dead. I had told them I was out of gas not far from the visitor’s center, but whether they understood or sent someone for us, we did not know.

We waited in the merciless sun for about 30 minutes, before we saw another vehicle. It was a large, shiny SUV, and we waved it down. A middle-aged white man rode in the passenger seat, and I tried to explain our situation. The Rwandan driver stopped the car and they got out. There was a family in the back. They said they would go drop off the family, then come back to tow us. As we talked, I found out that the white man lived in the same region of Rwanda as me. I told him the name of my village, and he said he lived there too. It turned out he lived just 100 yards from my house and was the manager of the cement factory in the village. I had seen him around a couple times, usually playing tennis, but had never actually met him. It was the strangest of coincidences.

Thirty minutes later, the driver showed up with an empty car. He explained that they had talked with the park officials. The officials had said that they would not allow him to tow our vehicle with his. It had to be done by park staff, a service for which I would have to pay. We got in his car and drove to the visitor’s center. After chatting, I found out that the driver’s son went to the school I teach at, and he had actually just attended our boys camp.

We waited awhile for the park vehicle to arrive. When it did, I hopped in with them and we drove back to our car. They tied a rope from their hitch to my bumper and started crawling up the mild hills. 100 yards before arriving, the rope snapped. The guys driving the other car didn’t notice, and they just kept going. I watched as they pulled into the parking lot, got out, and had horrified faces when they realized that the car being towed was no longer there. This was followed by immediate looks of relief when they saw me way down the road.

Lise and I begrudgingly paid the $30 service fee, then tried to get back in touch with the owner of the car. Luckily, the Rwandan wife of my neighbor let us borrow her phone. She had insisted on waiting for us as we got sorted out, offering to wait for us to make phone calls on her phone. Her husband (my neighbor) was clearly getting impatient. I felt bad, but we were really stuck, with two dead phones, and the park refusing to let us use a phone.

Our communication with the owner of the car was spotty, but it seemed that he was coming to get us, and maybe sending a mechanic. After an hour or so, a couple of mechanics from the nearest town showed up and started working on the car. I was worried because I didn’t know if we would have to pay for the repairs, and if so, I should probably have negotiated the cost beforehand. After another couple of hours, the owner showed up in a small car with a Rwandan friend and a Belgian friend. Each friend brought a four or five year old boy. It wasn’t sure why he had brought the entourage, but he mentioned something about how they had been doing work together in the morning, so they all came together on this little adventure.

Lise and I were exhausted from stress and heat. We had no idea what further costs would be incurred for repairs, lost gas, the owner driving out to rescue us, etc. It seemed that the possibility of extra charges could be endless, if the owner demanded them.

It wasn’t until after 4PM that we finally were on our way. The mechanic had repaired the leak with his random assortment of rusty tools and scraps of plastic and rubber. We drove back to the small town of Kayonza where we stopped for dinner. The owner of the car treated us to a buffet plate, while he ate three chapattis dipped in a stein-sized mug of hot, sweetened milk. I was disarmed by his kind and apologetic nature, as if it really was his fault that the car had broken down. We were uncertain about when we had first smelled the gas, but we never said we thought it was our fault. He must have been aware that the car he had rented to us was a piece of junk, and wasn’t even the same make or model that we had asked for.

We arrived in Kigali well after dark, and he drove us back to our guesthouse, which was a considerable distance away from where he lived. In the end, he gave us a fair estimate on how much gas we probably used, and didn’t mention repairs, or the cost of him coming all the way out to the park to help us out. He was a businessman, not a swindler, and new that if he had tried to take advantage of us, he risked garnering a bad reputation. He expressed his apologies and suggested that we refer our friends to him for tours and car rentals. We were simply relieved get out of there without any costs that would have inflicted me with a severe bout of poverty.

It wasn’t the adventure we were expecting, but it was an adventure nonetheless. We had a fun time with a far greater diversity of emotions than we could have expected, and somehow, it seems better that way.