Out on the razzle

Saturday Jan 19

Up early and off to Butare on the matata bus. Well, sort of. Get to the bus station at 8.30 and wait in the bus, with heat building up, till gone 9 when it’s finally full. There’s no express service to Butare so we stop every few miles. The buses are popular, we rarely have more than a couple of empty seats at any time, and occasionally are overloaded with the fare-taker squashing himself against the door. Great amusement that there’s a muzungu on the bus, but then people talk. Man next to me is a theology student going south to the university, he’s reading from a missal more or less all the way, including listening to hymns on an MP3 player. That’s true devotion for you!

The countryside is simply beautiful. Only unused land is in a strip of eucalyptus scrub along the road. Everything else is terraced, farmed, manicured. You’re never out of site of houses, too – it’s almost a continuous line of little rectangular mudbrick houses all the way, with just occasionally a traditional round, thatched building remaining. We stop at all the towns on the way – Ruhango, Nyanza. At Ruhango we find we have a flat tyre, so with full complement of passengers on board the driver charges through cyclists, motos and pedestrians to the back of the bus park, now down a mud track which gets steeper and steeper until he reaches a hut where someone mends tyres. This person somehow has a petrol powered air pump for his tyres, so we get reinflated. Then an impressive hill start through the chickens and little children who’ve gathered to watch, and back down the main road.

The main road is superb – no potholes, beautifully graded, shaded most of the way. The driver is careful and I feel perfectly safe. Children get passed around between adults (but not quite, yet, to the muzungu). We pass paddy fields and occasional grim genocide memorials – every district has one!

Two hours later and we’re in Butare. It’s blazing hot even though cloudy. The bus park is on the very edge of town and I walk up an avenue of jacaranda tress which don’t seem to give much shade.

Butare seems a one-street town with some lovely 1930s style colonial bungalows behind high walls, and each house smothered in bright blooms. There’s a sense of civic pride with noticeboards pointing out prominent buildings – the old hotel where a Belgian Princess stayed, the former bank which is now the university bookshop etc. Butare is Rwanda’s university town but you have to look hard to spot any kind of university feel to the place. At the far end of the town the Catholic church is there in force with schools, guest house and an enormous squat brick cathedral, quite out of proportion to the rest of the town.

The high street is the usual row of open fronted shops, set well back from the one through road (which, of course, continues on to Burundi so is an international highway); it has a wild west feel to it except that the baddies are on motos rather than horses. Having mooched the shops I meet up with Tiga and Soraya at the Hotel Ibis which is THE place for muzungus to gather and seems full of them. We have a decent lunch, European style, the some more shopping. Soraya buys loads because she’s in a very isolated place (Mushubi); I buy honey and a spare light bulb so Tom and I will be able to see to read in our lounge!

The girls want to get back early so I walk with them back to the bus park. On the way we pass the football stadium which is heaving – there’s a local derby just getting started. People have climbed every tree with a view of the pitch; they’re clinging on to the roof of some public latrines (imagine the stench on a hot day…) or using bicycles to see over the stadium wall, where red-overalled security guards are enthusiastically knocking them back down with staves. In the bus park a serious fight between two men has begun, and a crown gathers to enjoy the spectacle. We choose prudence and get out of the way. Poor Soraya is on her own in a beautiful but very isolated town; her house is big (therefore creepy at night); she has no running water, electricity for only a few hours each evening, and is cooking on kerosene. I feel so guilty at my good fortune by comparison! Tiga is less out in the wilds and there is another VSO, well established, for company.

I drift back through town and get my express bus back to Gitarama. In fact it’s so express that it only takes just over the hour to make the run, despite stopping for the driver (and others) to buy fresh milk at a dairy we pass on the way. Nobody gets out of the bus, all the transactions are done through the window with much waving of banknotes. It’s so express that as we reach Gitarama I realise that nobody has got off it since Butare and for a few minutes I sweat thinking I’m going to have to go all the way to Kigali and then try to get back late at night. But I’m rescues by an English-speaking woman next to me who just tells me to bang on the window when I want to get off. The driver’s well into his stride now, overtaking anything on the road (we have some much hairier moments than on the outward journey) but slowly obsequiously whenever he spots traffic policemen lurking (on foot, in pairs) by the roadside. (Apparently if they see someone speeding their trick is to stop the next car that passes and make the driver take them to catch up the speeding vehicle, which then gets a booking. Sounds a haphazard arrangement but it must work because everybody, everybody, slows down when they see the cops. The driver’s now shouting into his mobile, driving round the twisty road one-handed and chatting to the front seat passengers as we enter Gitarama. I bang on the window and, magic, the bus stops at its designated stop for the town. It happens to be outside the shops right opposite our flat. How’s that for service!

Very tired, so flake out early.