A casual day today…
breakfast and coffee (and more coffee and more coffee), then boarded the
minivan. I brought some deflated soccer
balls with me and told Phenie I wanted to give them to a school or kids playing along
the road. While I pumped them up, Phenie
took me to an orphanage just outside the park and introduced me to Happy, the
main administrator (yep, that’s her real name!). I handed two balls to a couple kids out front
and was met with two big smiles. She showed
me around and introduced me to the children.
Wow, tough living conditions! I
saw the boys bunk house and when I asked is it full, she said yes, three to a
bed! They cook over a wood fire, bring
water up in large plastic containers and learn in tiny, dark classrooms. Yet, the kids seem happy and sang several
songs for me complete with dancing and a drum accompaniment. On the drive to Rwanda, we stopped at a
random soccer pitch along the road where a couple dozen kids were playing with
an old beat up ball. The driver called
the coaches over and we gave them a freshly inflated new one. They said thanks and told me they’ve been
playing with that ball for four years.
We drove through the verdant valley filled with farms growing tea,
sorghum, bananas, pineapple, and corn. Back
through the tedious border crossing with checks and paper work on both sides –
plus an Ebola screening checkpoint – fun!
Before the border, we stopped at Kabale for a car wash (Phenie doesn’t
like driving a dirty car in the city).
Seems hard to hand wash a car in a mud puddle filled dirt lot but it
came out looking pretty good! We ate
lunch in a second floor café overlooking the main road through town. So interesting watching the people and
traffic go by - women carrying everything you can think of on their heads,
bikes and motorcycles with two, three sometimes four passengers. We were across the street from a Singer
sewing machine shop. Mainly, they sold
table top, foot powered models. I guess
due to the lack of reliable electricity, it’s the preferred machine. I saw two separate customers lash these big
table units on the back of their motorbikes, carry the actual sewing machine
between their legs with the wife riding side saddle in between the driver and
table. So fun to watch their ingenuity.
We drove quickly through the last two
hours of Rwanda and into Kigali where I said goodbye to Phenie and gave him the
last soccer ball for his two sons. I
also left him the pump and asked him to check in with Happy at the orphanage
once in a while to fill up their balls when needed. He is back off to Uganda to get together with
his father, ten brothers and sisters and all the children and grandchildren for
the holidays – over fifty in his extended family!
I checked into the Hotel des Milles
Collines, formerly the Hotel Rwanda.
Surreal being in the place where the hotel manager sheltered hundreds of
Tutsis saving them from the genocide in 1994.
Today, as then I guess, it looks like your typical high-end hotel with a
pool and a nice restaurant overlooking the city below. I had dinner and a couple beers down by the
pool then headed to bed.
2025-02-08