I will start with the flights: in a word - terrible! The captain announced that there would be some turbulence, and there was, but "some" suggests a little. In effect he should have said there would be some periods of relative smooth flying. I have never been on a rougher flight in my life. There was turbulence from beginning to end, so much so that on several occasions, food service had to be interrupted and the flight attendants were directed to sit down and put their seat belts on. One member of our group, a young man from Fanshaw college, had never flown before and I was thinking of him from time to time as we bounced across the Atlantic Ocean. I was also thinking of myself and how much I'm not a fan of flying.
We landed at Heathrow, surprisingly after such a rough flight, the landing was the smoothest ever, and made our way over to the Yotel where we spent a quiet and refreshing 5 and a half hours. We had a nap, were able to stretch out on comfy beds and get our feet back down to size, and also have a shower.
We met up with another of our travel-mates, Heather (she was on the previous trip) and we made our way over to the security area and had really only just arrived through the check when we were called to board the plane. Unfortunately I had a middle seat, and although the person beside me was nice, it still feels awkward to ask a person to move every time I needed to use the washroom. Impossible to sleep.
The flight from Nairobi was rough but thankfully short. We spent about thirty minutes on the ground at Bujumbura picking up some people and Linda and I spent a moment or two standing on the landing outside the rear door of the plane looking around. We asked one of our seat mates to take a picture of us with the Bujumbura airport in the background.
When we arrived at Kigali we were met by our bus driver (Olivier again - we were very happy to see him again!) and our official guide from CNLG, Martin. We ditched our stuff in our hotel, and we were off and running. Our hotel, by the way, is fantastic and so far removed from the St. Paul - not in distance but in every other manner. We are sharing a room with Heather - it has three beds and a really nice ensuite washroom. It's a really nice refuge at the end of the day. The hotel has a terraced eating/sitting area, and it's where I am sitting as I write this blog. I have a lovely view down a valley and up the other side of the valley to one of Kigali's many huge hills.
After we stowed our stuff, we set off to the site of the memorial for the Belgian soldiers who were killed by the Presidential Guard on April 7, 1994. The men were guarding the Prime Minister, along with some Ghanian peace-keepers when the Presidential Guard arrived. They sent the Ghanaian peacekeepers away and captured the Belgians, took them to the school where the memorial is, where the Belgians made an attempt for freedom. There are bullet holes and grenade marks on the walls. The Belgians were eventually tortured and killed.
We walked from there to the Nakumat mall and found a foreign exchange office that was open. I exchanged $300US for 230,000 rwandan francs.
Later we had dinner at the New Cactus restaurant, which is a western style resto in Kigali and didn't make it back to our hotel until about eleven o'clock. We were totally exhausted and we had to get our stuff ready for the next day before we went to bed.
Eventually, we made it to bed. I fell asleep immediately.
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