A Day Trip to Rusumo Gone Awry...

Being sick when you are far away from home is miserable.  When you aren’t feeling well, the last thing you want to deal with is new situations, language barriers, and other challenges.  A comfortable, familiar bed, a warm cup of tea, and a loved one to dote on you is really the best medicine.  Fortunately for me I have a loving husband that has made the last few days less miserable, but oh I really could have used my own bed!  Now, don’t get me wrong I have had some amazing experiences over the last few days, but I can’t ignore the little black cloud that has been following me around, especially today.

It all started last Thursday morning when I woke up feeling nauseous with a major case of heartburn.  Signs soon showed that I was having a reaction to the dreaded malaria medicine.  I had become too confident that I was going to make it through the month with little to no side effects, and the medicine gods were having their revenge.  I tried to eat throughout the day with a side of Tums at every meal, but the pain in my stomach would just not subside.  Progressively, over the next couple days, the pain got so bad that I couldn’t eat without tears coming to my eyes.  In preparation for our visit to the gorillas, I knew I would need a lot of energy, so I tried not taking my malaria pill the day before in hopes that the side effects would wear off, but it appeared the damage had been done.  My esophagus had been irritated by the pill and acid, and every time I eat, it irritates it further.  If I try to delay eating though (in hopes of allowing it to heal a little), I get irritated and no one is happy.  So, a once enjoyable experience has turned into a miserable chore, necessary for sustenance.

Like I mentioned before though, the amazing experiences I have been having during this misery (gorilla trekking – wow!, public health day – amazing!) have been able to push the black cloud away, and it hasn’t really affected my mood too much…until today, that is.  Let me back up a little…

For the past couple weeks, Drew and I have been trying to decide on a day trip we could take during our final week.  Many people had told us to try to go to Akageera National Park, which is Rwanda’s much smaller version of the large game parks in Kenya and Tanzania.  While it doesn’t have the land space or number of animals that the other countries do, it is supposed to be a pretty great experience (especially if you have never safaried before).  It also only an hour and a half from Kibungo.  We decided this would be our day trip.  After calling several tour companies, we soon discovered that it wouldn’t be so easy to organize the trip from Kibungo, since many of the cars come out of Kigali which is 2 hours a way.  It was going to cost several hundred dollars to arrange, and after the gorilla experience, our pockets were feeling empty, so we decided to find another trip and save our money for one day when we could come back to visit one of the other big parks for a true safari.  Instead, we decided to visit a town called Rusumo.

Rusomo sits on the border of Rwanda and Tanzania.  There is a river that runs along the border of the two countries in this area, and right at the border crossing, the river forms a large waterfall, “chutes de Rusumo.”  The views in the area are also pretty spectacular.  We had heard that it was cheap and easy to get to Rusumo by bus, and that there was a great hill with a nice hike you could do to look down over the border and the falls.  Also, on the way to Rusumo, there is a town with a co-op where you can watch Rwandan artists create dung paintings.  So, we decided to pack a lunch, take the hour-long bus trip to Rusumo to see the falls, do the hike, and then stop off at the co-op on the way home…perfect day trip!

Well, except, when we arrived in Rusumo, things didn’t quite work out the way everyone had said they would.  There is a bridge across the river from Rwanda to Tanzania that overlooks the falls.  It is a great spot to take photos and watch the huge rush of water.  We were told that you could walk out onto the bridge without a problem to see the falls.  Well things weren’t exactly so easy.  As we started across the bridge, a Rwandan police officer stopped us and asked what we were doing.  We told him we were taking photos of the falls, but were planning on staying in Rwanda.  He said something about immigration, and we told him again we weren’t crossing the border.  He didn’t really respond, so we kept walking across the bridge, and when he didn’t immediately follow, we thought we were ok.  Well a few minutes later, he came out onto the bridge and something again about immigration.  We decided to go back and see what it was all about.  When we got to the immigration office and told the border officer what we were trying to do, he kind of laughed, took our passports, asked a few questions, and then wrote a handwritten note saying, “Please allow them to walk on the bridge to take photographs of waterfall only.”  He told us to give it to the police officer.  We went back down to the bridge and the officer let us pass.  After a few more minutes looking at the falls, we decided to start on our hike up the hill.

Well, when we got to the turn off where we were told to start up the hill, we found a gate and a police officer.  We decided to keep walking up the road and collect ourselves before making conversation with our second police officer of the day.  After about 30 minutes, we walked back ready to talk to the officer and start our hike up the hill for lunch.  We asked the officer if we could pass the gate and continue up the hill to look over the falls and see the view.  At first, he just said no, but then asked why we wanted to go up there.  We said again that we were hoping to see the view.  He told us to go down to the bridge and see it from there.  We told him we had been there already and were hoping to see it from the hilltop.  He then started laughing at us, and said that it was too dangerous and we could not pass because of the snakes.  We told him we would watch out for snakes, and some friends had said it was a good view from atop the hill.  He then said no again, and we turned around and walked back to bus station, defeated.  The sun was beating down, Drew and I were both hungry, since we had now missed our picnic lunch, and no one seemed to understand what we were trying to do, or just thought it was outright comical.  I was at my wit’s end!  So, we decided to climb back on the bus and head towards home.

As we left Rusumo and got to the next town, it started pouring down rain, so we quickly decided after our luck earlier that morning that we probably shouldn’t stop at the co-op. We did not feel like getting stranded in rainstorm in the middle of nowhere.  Anyway, we made it back to Kibungo safely, and told our story.  It seems that there is heightened security for some reason at the border, as no one else had the same experience with so many police officers and gates at the falls.  The falls were pretty cool to see, and we got to “see” Tanzania from across the river, so that is cool too.  I was just glad to have Drew along this morning, as I know there were a couple times when I would have had a breakdown and begun crying.  The Rwandans really wouldn’t have known what to think of me then!  I also feel pretty lucky that this was the first experience we have had that didn’t go as planned, and it fell at the end of the trip.  If it had been at the start, we probably would have lost a little confidence in navigating the country, while now we can look at it as just one rough incident among many great experiences.

I am starting to feel better, though only since I have decided to stop taking my malaria medicine for a few days until I can recover.  I cannot believe we only have 2 days left.  I am looking forward to helping on another garden project tomorrow and visiting the orphanage for a couple more afternoons.  I know we will leave on a good note.