I must be long-winded, becuase I still haven't even talked about my weekend. It was great since my friend from days of yore flew down from Beirut for 48h to visit me and see Rwanda.
I am kinda falling asleep as I'm typing so for now I'll be short with the breath...
Friday afternoon we went to what the locals call Gisozi, the Genocide Memorial Center. A powerful experience especially because it's almost impossible to reconcile today's clean & peaceful Kigali with the images of horrors that were posted up in the exhibit. I struggled not to cry openly at the video testimonials. It was especially difficult when I entered the room that contained thousands of photographs that relatives donated to the center in memoriam of their loved ones who died so senselessly. The center's gardens and its views overlooking the other hills of Kigali are fabulous; it was fitting to have the multiple large stone burial vaults there. Some had flowers strewn on top from loved ones who came to visit. It hit me that each vault must contain thousands of victims each.
That night we balanced things out a bit by opting for frivolity. Elias, Chief and Herbert wanted us to go to the Executive Car Wash for food, then hit the hottest place in town, the New Cadillac. The Car Wash had great roasted goat & pork, but the chicken was the best. I have never before tried to bite into a piece of meat and had it bounce off my teeth. That chicken did exactly that and I am very sure that it was not made of rubber as a joke. Needless to say, the chicken was left pretty much intact. The meat was great but unfortunately the service was silly. We asked for salt at the beginning of the meal and got it with the bills. When we checked the tab, we found charges for things we did not order, and the charges for the two dozen beer that we did order weren't there. I can only hope that they just gave us the bills for another table...
I must say that the highlight of the New Cadillac was the glow-in-the-dark carpet and the black light. Black lighting in African clubs are an interesting visual phenomenon since you saw mostly teeth and light shirts grooving & grinding away but sometimes you couldn't really make out the person that belonged to the teeth and shirt. It was trippy, especially when drunk and tired.
Four hours later, we dragged ourselves out of bed and heaved ourselves into a jeep for a mini-safari at the parc nationale de L'Akagera. Although the guidebook was not particularly excited about the wildlife scenery there, I still got to see animals that I'd never seen in the wild before. During four hours of bouncing up and down dirt roads in a 4x4, we were lucky enough to spend some time watching giraffes, various antelope species (Impala, Waterbuck, etc...), hippos, baboons, warthogs, Marabou storks, egrets and a fish eagle.
My favourite animal encounters in that brief time have got to be the giraffes & the hippos. Up close the giraffes were beautiful and huge, but my favourite thing about them was that same characteristic unimpressed ruminant look that I recgnize in the cows from back home. Somehow they remind me of a bubble-gum chewing attitude-laden punk teenage girl. The hippos I didn't get to see in full glory as they stayed safely in the water. That may have been a good thing since it muted the smell that they are supposed to have. We parked the car next to where we saw them surface a little, in hopes of seeing them actually come back out of the water. They didn't, but I got to see them do this crazy ear spinning thing which I assume is the best way for them to get water out of their ears. I think humans should also be able to windmill their ears at high rpms as it would be such a useful way to get water out of your ears after swimming, and it'd be a great trick to impress at parties. I'm glad there were no repeat incidents of angry animals charging at us (Ecuador 2007.)
The weekend was good fun, it was fabulous to see my diplomat friend David again and see more of Rwanda.
