my weekend in Goma and Gisenyi

After quite a busy (and thankfully successful) week doing my research in Kigali I decided to take advantage of the weekend and explore the country a bit. I caught the last bus on Friday to Gisenyi, known as a gorgeous retreat town at the top of Lake Kivu, and arrived about four hours later well after dark. Being a bit of a spontaneous decision I had no idea where I was staying and jumped on the nearest mototaxi (the back of a motorcycle) sans helmet and flew off down wet and mostly dirt roads in search of a room. Gisenyi is so close to the Congolese border I found my limited Swahili very useful to ask the cyclist to slow down - pole pole! - which he thought was funny (but he did slow down!).

The first 'moderate' guesthouse I tried was closed. The second had no bednets (not something I'm willing to go without in rainy season). The third was completely full. Eventually I ended up in a Presbyterian church run hostel which was quite basic but clean and much cheaper than the others I'd looked at. It was too late to get something to eat at the hostel, so after stumbling around in the dark nearby I came across a local restaurant serving an almost finished buffet dinner and helped myself to the scraps before going to bed.

In the morning I woke up to rain, rain and more rain. Now, I know this is rainy season, but rainy season usually means a downpour every day or every few days, not all day without stopping! As sunbathing was clearly out I asked around and heard that the situation across the border was stable... I don't think I need to tell you what happened next do I?



I knew Goma was close to an active volcano (it errupted in December and covered the town in lava) - but it was quite amazing being able to see the smoke rising from the top and see just how small it looked because we were essentially on part of it. The hardened lava was piled up all over the place and roads on one side of the town were completely destroyed by the lava flows and the consequential road scraping to clear them. I was only in the DRC a very short time, but it was long enough to get a bit of a feel for the place. Even in a few hours, the sense of chaos across the border was palpable. Rwanda has a large police and army presence, but in Goma men in uniform swaggered all over the place. One of the reasons why I have so few pictures from my visit is my strong desire not to be "interviewed" by one of them and forced to pay a "fine" for being caught photographing something forbidden (and that really could have been anything!).



After a (surprisingly) uneventful border crossing back into Rwanda I spent the rest of my time in Gisenyi walking alot and enjoying the gorgeous views of the lake. On Sunday morning I was lucky enough to catch about two hours of sunshine. So far on my trip every single day I've put on sunblock it's been overcast and the few bright days I've forgotten to do so. Yesterday was not an exception to this and in two hours of sunshine I managed to turn a pretty crispy red colour.



My trip back to Kigali yesterday afternoon turned out to be the most exciting few hours of the weekend. Shortly after leaving Gisenyi the rain poured down in what seemed like sheets of water. Despite passing dozens of cars, buses and transport trucks that had crashed through the occasional guard rail and off the side of the mountains, our driver didn't seem to slow down, let alone stop. The three and a half hours back to the capital were spent almost completely in tense silence on the bus, marred only by shouts from passengers when it seemed we were about to careen into something!