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2016-03-02
GREAT UPLIFTING STORY.


Rwanda: Expecting the unexpected in a place you know nothing about

2016-03-01 21:15 - Darrel Bristow-Bovey
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No matter where you go, before you even get there you always have an idea of what it will be like.

Before you land in Switzerland you’re expecting shops selling chocolate and buses that run on time and clean streets and tight-lipped locals. In Beijing you’re waiting for teeming sidewalks and surgical facemasks and grey apartment blocks disappearing into grey smog. Tokyo? LED screens the size of buildings; stressed-out businessmen in slightly ill-fitting suits singing karaoke with their boss and his important client; vending machines selling schoolgirls’ panties.

But I wasn’t entirely sure about Rwanda.

I suppose I expected green military uniforms and AK47s and the glint of machetes and steam rising from the humid jungle. I knew my mental picture must be at least twenty years out of date but at the least I expected to feel uneasy while I was there.

We flew into Kigali over rolling green hills but I couldn’t see any spirals of smoke or angry mobs or military jeeps. The airport was small but clean and quiet and I bought my visa at the customs desk and no one shook me down for extra cash.

It was warm but it wasn’t hot. Kigali is spread across a series of lovely hilltops and the breeze was cool and soothing after the heat of back home. I had strolled through customs with my carry-on but the hotel shuttle I was catching had to wait for people collecting their luggage, so I sat on a bench outside in the sunshine and watched the people come and going.

It seemed alarmingly normal. There were bustling business travellers and families having reunions. I watched a young couple parting – he hugged her and wouldn’t let go. Then he tried to let go but she started crying so he held on. They stood there hugging each other tight. I wanted to take a picture – just for myself, to remind myself later of their emotion, how raw it was, how intensely they felt it – but when I raised the camera I felt the people around me stare at me in disapproval and I lowered it again, a little shame-faced.

A man sat next to me on the bench, and I didn’t pay him much attention, but then one of the other people also waiting for the shuttle, an American man, came over and murmured in my ear.

“Careful,” he whispered. “This guy next to you is eyeing your things.”

I looked sharply at the guy beside me. I checked the zips on my backpack and the latches on my carry-bag. I patted my pockets to double-check my passport and my wallet. Good thing the American warned me: I had become too complacent. You only need to lower your guard for a moment in a foreign country, especially a mysterious country in the heart of Africa, and your whole trip can be ruined.

The shuttle was ready to go so we piled in and drove through the astonishingly clean streets. We’d been driving maybe half an hour and I was thinking about the gorillas I’d be trekking to see and wondering what pictures I might get …

“Oh my god,” I said.

Some of the other passengers looked around.

“I’ve left my camera back on the bench.”

“No problem!” said the driver. “We go back.”

“It won’t be there,” I said.

“It will be there,” said the driver. “No one steals anything in Rwanda.”

I admired this sweet display of patriotism – people in South Africa would be tripping over themselves to tell you about how it’s long-gone and you’ll never see it again, and telling you some other story about how something of theirs was stolen. But still, I knew it was gone. I wouldn’t leave a camera lying on a public bench in Switzerland or Singapore and expect it to be there an hour later.

“There’s no point,” I said. “All these people are tired after their flight. Let’s just go to the hotel.”

The other people on the bus agreed with me so we carried on to the hotel, and everyone climbed off, then the driver said to me, “Come, we fetch your camera.”

We drove all the way back, through the traffic and the clouds of motorcycle-taxis. The driver’s name was Christian, and we chatted about the gorillas and about the time he went on holiday to Uganda and then at last we arrived back at the bench, and I climbed out and there were two new people sitting on the bench and between them was my camera, precisely where I left it, the strap dangling down.

“That’s mine,” I said, and they handed it to me with a smile and a wave, and Christian drove me back to the hotel.

No matter where you go, before you even get there you always have an idea of what it will be like. The best times are when you’re wrong. 

Darrel Bristow-Bovey is a columnist, screenwriter, travel writer, author - follow him on Twitter.


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