Travel Update

Woo, long journey! I arrived in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali last night.  Holy crap, this place is clean, organized, and there are bananas everywhere.  Sureel and I entered through the Tanzanian border at Benaco and then walked across into Rwanda.  After some shady deals exchanging our Tanzanian money we bought some lunch and paid for a bus to Kigali (three or four hours).  We had been traveling for something like thirteen hours since the morning, and when I finally took a shower the water was brown from my dirty hair.

Last night we had dinner at our hotel and sat next to a Rwandan and a Ugandan.  We talked African politics for about an hour, had some laughs, and got some tips about Kigali.  The people here are very kind, honest, and like I said, this place is clean, organized, and beautiful.  Oh, it’s really freakin’ expensive too.  We had to visit several hotels before we found one with available rooms, and the prices range from like $30/per night to $70… Ahh!! I will hopefully get some pictures to capture the green hills surrounding the city.  Most of you know I hate to appear like a tourist :)

Tanzania was cheap but hardly anybody speaks English.  It was a good chance to practice my Swahili, which is getting pretty good for communicating things like “tomorrow we are going to ____,” and “we would like ____.”  In Kenya we always joke how the Tanzanians speak the sanifu (pure) Swahili and how they are so polite that, even when they pick-pocket you they ask “please” first.  Well I can officially say that this is not entirely true now because some dudes tried to pick-pocket me a few days ago and they never said please.  I caught them with their hands in my pockets and I grabbed them so they couldn’t run away, made sure I had all my belongings, and yelled some stuff in Swahili. hahaha.  Crazy!

Anyways, we are hopefully off to Uganda tomorrow, August 7th, where we will camp at Lake Bunyonyi if we can manage it.  I should be back to Tala for the start of my semester in the next week or so.  Adios, amigos!

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