It’s a three or four hour drive from Kigali down to Gisenyi,
and in that distance, you’d be hard pressed to paste together a mile of level
road. You’re constantly climbing, descending, turning, turning; and around each
bend, you’re treated to a panorama of scenery more beautiful than the last:
mountains and valleys of greenery stretching to the horizon, and beyond. A
thousand photographs couldn’t do it justice; but if they could, for what
purpose? In a moment you’d climb or plummet around the next corner, only to
find another vista requiring a thousand photographs to capture. You resign
yourself to the futility of it all, to the fact that you will go home and tell
your loved ones you saw the most beautiful place in the world, you’ll watch
them smile a nod, and have no ability to show them – really show them – what
this place is. So, you surrender, sit back in your seat, and take in one view
after another, a parade of nature’s beauty enduring for hours, until you are
emotionally exhausted by it, so awestruck there is no awe left in you. Then you
begin to wonder, “If I can’t show them what it is, maybe I can tell them. . .”
Just outside of Kabari village, the road turns right and
heads up into the mountains, but if you stand by the roadside, the hill drops
away from your feet out across a valley. The village spreads out before you,
pops of red, blue, and silver rooftops nestled among the thick green trees,
crosscut by straight black lines of volcanic rock, piled into walls enclosing
fields of dark, rich soil, piled high onto mounds and topped with bright green
crop sprouts. The contrasts are amazing as they roll down and away, repeated
again and again until they fade away in the thickness of the humid air; and
just at that place, where the colors fade, the valley stops at the feet of the
volcanos. Off to the left, set off against the blue sky, is the peak of
Nyiragongo, ominous and black, distant yet impending, white steam floating off
the peak and away into the wind. And it is beauty enough, more than you
deserve; but off to the right, the scene is repeated again with the peak of
Mikeno, just as ominous, just as impending, clouds rolling off her into the
wind. The volcanos create a picture frame for the whole scene. You could stand
there for a day, alone, awestruck. . .
But in Rwanda, you are never alone, especially by the
roadside. There is a constant flow of trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and
pedestrians: all manner of pedestrians, children, adults, fashionable youth,
elderly women, beggars, all bustling about their way, all oblivious to the
beauty of the place, as if it is there for them to admire any time they want. A
young mother crosses your path, a large bowl of carrots balanced on her head, a
baby wrapped tightly to her back with a brightly patterned cloth. Her face is
tense and serious as she makes eye contact with you, then quickly looks away.
You smile, and offer her a greeting. She pauses, and looks back at you.
Beginning at the corners of her eyes, the seriousness cracks, as the corners
wrinkle into a smile, pulling her cheeks along for the ride. Her mouth opens in
a wide grin, and that sets it all off perfectly. Her deep brown eyes, her bright
white teeth, her smiling face, her carrots, her child, the hills, the houses,
the fields, the mountains, the volcanos, the clouds, the sky, all contrasted
together into the shocking reality of this place.
Rwanda has two nicknames, “The Land of a Thousand Hills,”
and “The Land of a Thousand Smiles.” After a few days here, you begin to feel
that you’ve seen all of both. The hills are relentless, never ending. The
smiles are equally eternal, but slower to appear. These are a quiet people,
reserved. There is history here, a scar that reaches to the heart. There are
some things these people do not talk about, and a few more they’d rather not.
The smiles come, but first they must know they are welcome. It’s an astounding
place. The pain has inspired a reserve, a suspicion, but only on the surface.
Those scars that were cut so deep released something unexpected. The heart was
not filled with hatred, but optimism. This is a country which knows its problems,
but also knows – with equal certainty – that there are solutions. There’s a
creative spirit evidenced everywhere, volcanos turned into tourist parks,
volcanic rock pulverized into road pavement, bicycles packed with produce,
weighted down to the point they’re pushed up hills. It’s exhausting, in every
possible, inspiring way exhaustion can be. They shouldn't be this way. It makes no sense. Yet, here it is.
All that adds up to say, I’ll probably be back.
