This far into my journey, I've learned that the best experiences are often the unexpected treasures I find along the way. With that being said, I was not expecting one of those treasures to be a routine stop at an eco camp in Rwanda, called Red Rocks rub by an American-Rwandan brother sister duo.
After a sobering visit to the genocide museum in Kigali, we shuffled into the reception in search of quiet solitude and the wifi password. The owners were nowhere in sight, as seems to be common when you're in the middle of nowhere, so I flopped onto the couch and perused the numerous brochures in front of me. Too often at these pit stops in the middle of nowhere, Africa I am going insane by the end of the night with nothing to do and no wifi to keep my mind engaged. I seem incapable of simply enjoying the solitude and the amazing scenes that play out in front of me, brought to us free courtesy of nature.
I'll be the first to admit, I can make a lousy traveler.Visiting an Eco Lodge in Rwanda
Expecting much the same out here, I was surprised to see a half dozen brochures for different activities offered at the camp. Basket weaving! Cow milking! Banana beer making! Bee harvesting! Five minutes earlier if you'd asked me how I wanted to spend my evening, I would have said on Facebook, but now I was the keenest bee harvester would-be that ever existed.
The co-owner eventually showed up and turned out to be one of the most charming women I've ever met in my life. She explained the concept of the camp to us, one in which the locals pitch ideas to them or vice versa about ideas that could bring entertainment to tourists through the area (though I wonder how many people are really trekking through Nyakinama, Rwanda on any given week) that are sustainable and bring in revenue. We signed up for all four activities on offer that day and the next and off we set.
The first up was basket-weaving, taught by a grandmotherly type who spoke no English. She was super willing to teach us how to make the baskets, which involve a surprisingly complex (for me) method of threading different colored grasses around different colored grasses in an increasingly complex pattern. Apparently women must learn to basket weave in order to find a husband. Based on my efforts, she kindly suggested I might remain single for the rest of my life. I was rather enamored of my poor efforts though, and amazed by the complex ones she could whip up. I bought a red, white, and blue bowl to ship home to my American sister. My mother got my mangled effort at a coaster because my mother is forced to love and revere my efforts, no matter how poor they are.
After this, we made our way a few doors down to milk a cow. Now this activity is probably geared toward city slickers who have never beheld a cow in person (or cow) before. My best friend for this trip, and fellow Typhoid sufferer, just happened to be a cattle rancher and in desperate need of a cow fix. I grew up in a dairy town and have been around bovines a time or two. While we milked, I talked with the woman whose cow it was with the help of the camp owner as a translator, in order to understand why this family rents out their cow for milking purposes. It was to this day, one of the most depressing stories I've ever heard.
This woman and her children had been beaten endlessly by her husband until he was finally arrested and jailed for two years. Her and her three sons had thought it was over until he was released from jail and returned in the middle of the night, barred them in the house and lit it on fire. Her and her three small sons escaped with burns and fled to her hometown, where she was now living in a stone house with one room and no furniture and her cow. She told me her story as I sat with her boys feeding them Oreos while my friend milked her cow to satisfy a whim. We didn't even want the milk after it was done, instead leaving it in her grateful hands. Our guide had suggested a $5 donation for the experience, which we later learned was to go toward a month's supply of HIV antiretrovirals for her and her sons, who had been infected with HIV from her husband and then passed on to two of the three boys at birth. (Before leaving Rwanda, we organized a donation between the two of us to cover a supply of their drugs for what costs less than my weekly coffee habit).
Back at the camp, we pitched our tents and ate our dinner in silence. Rwanda was shaping up to be one of the most amazing countries I would visit on my trip, and yet at the same time it seemed to be one of the most heartrending at the same time. The goal of travel is to open your eyes to a different side of life, but sometimes you forget how easily it might break your heart to open those eyes.
We retired to bed early that night, weary from the day and eager to be up at the crack of dawn to harvest the bees; I tried not to think too much about what I had been doing a year ago and what a strange turn my life had taken while simultaneously praying I didn't get stung and discover a life threatening bee allergy in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure I slept well that night.