A Visit To Dan's House

My buddy Dan’s site and home is very different from mine. He shares a compound with a family, lives in a simpler home than I and his immediate surrounds feel much more rural and spread out than where I live. He also has an abundance of huge spiders all over the walls. They weren’t there the first time I visited, but the second time I visited, they were scurrying all over the walls. I kind of panicked and seriously considered staying up all night, sitting in the middle of the floor with a flashlight, shining it on the walls to keep an eye on the whereabouts of my worst enemies.

On my first visit, his site mate came over and we made Tom Kha (southeast Asian coconut soup) for dinner. We had a couple beers, and pretty late in the night it came up that there’s a river and a waterfall nearby his house. I was up for an impromptu adventure, so we decided to make the supposed thirty-minute walk through the forest. Dan had never been there in the dark, so unsurprisingly we were moderately lost after twenty minutes. Somehow we ended up incredibly high up on the steep hillside above the river. Trying to descend to the river was, at times, moderately harrowing. A bad step could have led to a seriously long tumble that would have at the least led to some broken bones. We made it, though, after a while of scrambling around the sparse forest.

And what can I say about it? The waterfall was modestly-sized, but beautiful, and most importantly, had a good pool below for swimming. We swam around for a while and sipped the beers we had brought along. Somehow the outside temperature and temperature of the river were perfectly comfortable. Most importantly, though, was the amount of solitude we had. It was a rare thing to be outdoors, and be completely free from the eyes of anyone. Rwanda is extremely densely populated, but we were about twenty minutes from the nearest house. That in itself is rare. Some of my most memorable moments in Rwanda are those in which I feel a strong sense of freedom. This was definitely one of those moments.

I returned to Dan’s months later for another little adventure. This time it was a little more intense. The plan was to walk and swim from the upper end of the river, down to the waterfall we had been to before. The river descended through a series of rapids and waterfalls before reaching the final pool. To get to the river, we went off a trail and bushwhacked briefly to stony area just above the river. When we got to a big flat boulder, Dan told me that this had been the spot where a European, who had lived in this village a few decades ago, would meet with the community. It was a seven-foot drop down to the riverbank, and we had to jump. Seven feet looks a lot higher from above and it was embarrassing how long it took us to jump down. We laughed at ourselves when we looked back up at the modest height we had been so nervous about.

The river was more of a shallow creek at this point. We took off our sandals and shirts and started wading downstream. There were a few rapids and slippery rocks, but for a while, everything was pretty calm. The first danger, to me, was the spiders. I noticed a few long web strands traversing the river, and delicately crept under them. A couple of the strands had huge, long spiders clinging to them. My skin crawled. Then I saw a tree that was hanging over the river that was crawling with these big spiders. Several strands crossed the river, with the spiders just chilling about three feet above the water, leaving me unable to cross. At this point I really thought I was going to have to give up. Spiders are my biggest weakness and I felt incredibly vulnerable. Dan fears bugs and insects, but claims spiders don’t bother him because they are restricted to their webs. He also said this would not be nearly the scariest part of the journey. He broke through the webs, which made me panic, since I couldn’t see where the spiders went when they fell. Surely they were in the river. I was in the river too. So, naturally, I was about to be crawling with homeless spiders. I waited a few moments, hoping the spiders would get a head start down the river in front of me and proceeded, keeping as far away from the tree as possible, ducking low, in case there were any more webs that Dan had missed. Dan was getting annoyed with my sudden shrieks. He wanted me to use my words. At one moment he was clambering over a rock, and shrieked again, as I saw he was about to put his head right into a floating spider. He glared at me and said, “Would you stop screaming?! What is wrong?” “Don’t move, there is a spider right next to your head,” I responded. He slowly turned and came face to face with the devil and shuddered in shock. He swatted it out of the air and continued on his way. Luckily that was our last spider incident of the day.

The river started to get bigger and at parts it became hard to proceed over slick rocks, rapids and little drop-offs. The most unique part came when the river basically fell into a hole in the rocks, making a little waterfall in a small cave. We had to get out of the river, and scramble down some rocks to get to the other side of the little cave. On the other side, the river was forced through a tiny channel between two rocks. We climbed into the incredibly strong current and clung to rocks as we inched up into the little cave. The whole river was falling about four feet through a hole in the roof of the cave. There were a couple of smooth rocks to sit on next to the falling water (waterfall). The force of the water coming down was tremendous and the sound was thunderous.

The current continued to get faster, the rapids rockier and the drops deeper, until we arrived at a full on waterfall. The drop was about thirty for forty eet. We obviously couldn’t just slide down, but Dan had been here once before and knew a way down. The way was not obvious by any means. We climbed out of the river, and had to scramble diagonally down a stone crevasse until we reached earth again. A short descent through steep greenery led us to the most intense part of the hike (except for the spiders, of course). We had descended almost halfway down the falls and were standing on an earthen ledge next to the rushing water. A six-foot drop below us was a stone ledge. Reaching it would be difficult. I suggested that just jumping to the ledge was feasible, but he insisted that it was too risky. The ledge was barely big enough for two people to stand on, and the chance of a bad landing, which would ensure a 15-foot rocky fall, was too great. He said the only solution was to slip down the near-vertical earth between us and the waterfall, then flip your body over and climb onto the ledge. I don’t know if my description is making any sense or if it sounds terrifying, but it was very terrifying. Dan had to psych himself up for a few minutes before even clambering down a body length. There was a vine coming out of the ground that I tested for strength. It seemed strong enough to rely on for support, so I handed it to him. He took another few minutes to psych himself for the couple of steps over to the ledge. Mind you, the physical act itself wasn’t incredibly challenging. The point is that the stakes were incredibly high. For a moment he would only be touching earth with one arm and one leg, as he swung his body over to the ledge, all while hovering about twenty-feet above jutting rocks and churning water. He had done it once before, but he was still incredibly on edge (get it?). With the help of the vine as an emergency support, he swung his body over and inched onto the stone ledge. He exhaled deeply and let out a big whoop. I don’t know if I was as scared as he appeared, but I thought I was holding it together better. I acted like it was no big deal as I slid my body down to where the first foothold was. It was at that moment that I realized how scary it really was. I still tried to not let on that I was nervous, probably because of my embarrassing behavior with all the spiders. I reached for the vine, and with just a tiny tug, it came free and fell into the chaos below. Dan realized the serious danger he had been in, putting most of his weight into the vine, which was apparently not as strong as well anchored as I had thought. When I finally made the steps over to the ledge, I had the added benefit of Dan being there, so he was able to grab me when I was halfway, and pull me over.

The hardest part was over, but we were still only halfway down the waterfall, and there was definitely no terrestrial route to the river below. We had to, nay, we got to jump. It was a big drop, but nothing that I haven’t done dozens of times in Idaho. I was only worried about the depth. The river above had never been more than four or five feet deep. I let Dan go first. When I entered the water, I was surprised to find that, although I descended incredibly deep, I never touched the bottom. I still remember that moment of my body hitting the deepest point, the murky water bubbly around me, coming to a slow halt, and rebounding towards the greenish surface where I could see the rippling light of the sun. When I reached the surface, I found myself in a pool that seemed calmly enveloped in green foliage. Before leaping from the ledge, I was still too jumpy (get it, again?) to appreciate the atmosphere. A sheer rock wall draped in vines rose thirty feet above us on one side, while the bushy vegetation was thick on the other. I felt very tucked away and secluded in this little pool, which is a good thing.

We continued. The natural part of this adventure was almost over. The human part of this adventure (which I should actually refer to as awkwardness, rather than adventure) was imminent. We arrived at the top of the last waterfall, the one that I mentioned on a previous visit, and bushwhacked around it.

I forgot to mention that this area is full of sacred prayer sites that people from all over Rwanda make pilgrimages to. There are a few big, flat stone surfaces and some caves where people come to pray. Dan knows most of the people in his village, but out here, most of the people he might run into are strangers.

As we tried to make our way around the waterfall, he noticed two old woman traversing a steep trail on a distant hillside. As we were very indecently dressed and behaving abnormally, splashing around in rivers and all, he didn’t want them to notice us. We stopped and hoped they wouldn’t see us. It might sound weird, but when you live in a small village like this, your reputation is important, and strange behavior and shirtlesness like ours will be looked on with suspicion or even disdain. Rwandans tend to be very observant, and within a couple of moments, they noticed us. They waved and we shouted a couple of greetings. I didn’t feel to awkward, since I was very far from my community, but I could tell it bothered Dan.

He told me that these women were probably visiting a nearby cave to pray in. He said he walked into one of these caves once and regretted it. A group of Rwandans were huddled together in the darkness, speaking in tongues. He said it was like the scene in “I Am Legend” where Will Smith stumbles into a dark building to find a group of vampires all crowded together in a corner.

The hike was done and as we crossed the river to head back, we found ourselves on one of the stone platforms. This was another popular prayer spot. We heard voices of people approaching. We tried to sneak around them, but inevitably ran into the group of pilgrims. They were clean and well dressed. We were half-naked, barefoot and dripping wet. We exchanged awkward greetings--theirs in halting English, ours in well-rehearsed Kinyarwanda--and passed each other without incident.

When we got back to the place where we had embarked on our journey, we realized we had to make the little jump off the rock to retrieve our effects. Then, after Dan made the anticlimactic leap, I realized that I didn’t have to go down, since he could throw me my things. Getting back up, for him, turned out to be stupidly complicated. He spent several minutes gracelessly clambering up through bushes and rocks, trying to find a route for the seven-foot ascent.

When we got back to his house, he realized he was out of water and we would have to take a walk to the spring to fetch more. Most Peace Corps volunteers, and many Rwandans, that don’t have running water pay someone to fetch it for them. I don’t have any criticism for this, but I do have mad respect for Dan for insisting on fetching his own water. It is clearly one of the many things he has done in his community to help him integrate and ingratiate himself with his community. I enjoyed the physical task of fetching water when I was in Mali, but am also glad that I didn’t have to face the decision of whether to do it for two years in Rwanda. I am one of the few volunteers that has running water in the home. I was originally disappointed by this because I wanted that experience of going to the water spout every day and mingling with all the women and children in line. I got used to it very quickly now, and have to admit that I am thankful constantly that I don’t have to run out and carry a 50 pound jug of water any time I run out of water. Dan’s fetching trip takes about 45 minutes, more when there is a line. Luckily, when we went, it was after dark, so there was nobody in line. On the way there, Dan had to pick up a new cork for his jerry can. And when I say cork, I mean one of those purple banana blossoms that hangs off the banana trees. This is a common cap replacement (NOBODY in Rwanda has the caps for their jerry cans). We had to go stumbling around a bunch of banana groves to find a blossom that was at the right size and stage of growth. It was a fun little excursion for me, since I had no idea how to find the right blossom or even that it was appropriate to nab one out of somebody else’s banana grove. 

I live in a Rwandan village, but it is incredibly different from Dan’s. My house and immediate surroundings do not feel “village” on the level that Dan’s site is. I am usually grateful for my community’s relative modernity, with a basketball court and well-stocked boutiques, but there is something truly special about the simplicity of Dan’s village.