Cyangugu has lots of memories for me. Among my first jobs by the way, was shuttling between Kigali and the “city” of Kamembe located just at the southern part of famous Lake Kivu. Word has it that, this lake is the deepest in the region, though some academicians put Lake Tanganyika as the deepest. I am no scientist or “lakist” and hence will only restrict my self to the utterances of what I believe and know to be the plain facts. All the same, whether Lake kivu is deepest or shallowest, does not make any difference in the eyes of a villager, all lakes are deep and the same. The road to Cyangugu gets more and more treacherous day by day ; instead of calling them pot holes, one may now be tempted to call them “sauce pan” holes, do you get what I an trying to describe? These are phenomena like lakes spread evenly across the better part of the toad from Gikongoro through Nyungwe forest up to the Kamembe town itself. On my recent trip to those zones, I wasn’t enjoying the comfort of a lorry but the discomfort of driving a small and ramshackled device known as a car. The English normally say that, all that begins “in a well ends a well”! I was optimistic that, whatever I intended to accomplish in this ghostly town would go well because I started in the “wells” (mini lakes along the road). Apart from the torrential down pour along the way from Gikongoro up to Kamembe coupled with the deadly ditches (not the side ones but on the road itself), the pools of water that occupy them made driving rather a nightmare (if you are driving by the day, they become daymares as well). On my part, I hit the road at around four o’clock in the afternoon, reason, I had to take my old machine to a “cargynocologists” to examine her and confirm that she was fit for the trip. Wondering why my car is a she? As the “Nicholas Sakozi” of this world and they will swear that it or rather, she is indeed a she! They call her a “la voiture” (translated as “her or she car”). As the day was slowly dying away, I was busy negotiating the hills and bends of Butare, finally, the day light “died” away as I was arriving at “Mr. Berenari’s home town, shhhh, Berenari is none other than the Honorable “Tony Blair” of this land. Now you know who I mean, dukomeze, driving into Nyungwe by the forest by the night was rather a real nightmare in both the word and the sense. I cannot count the number of times the giant “sauce pan” holes kept leaking the bottom of my car; I would try rushing a bit, only to be met by a giant “mini lake” on the road, I would slam on the brakes with all the energy my aged legs could master and the in protest, the car would glide on as of protesting my “incar” or is it inhuman act; without much warning, it would torpedo itself in the pools as if going for a swim, leaving me cursing through my closed teeth! It took me a gruesome two and half hour to emerge out of the forest, into the open lands of Gisakura Tea estates. Surely, there is something nostalgic with this place; having been bred in a similar environment as here, It always makes me feel home and young sick as I move by. The similarities between this place and Mfashumwana village is that green shrub covering the valleys and hills from just a few meters away until the eyes can see no more. Never worry, the tea was more or less invisible this time round because it was night. All I needed was a dry and warm bed to rest my old bones. I had booked a room at my favourite “hotel” in Kamembe, known as “Hotel du Chute”, though they pronounce it as “hotel de Shit”! On arrival, I was given “condolences”, yes, condolences because some one who looked and felt very big had turned up in town and he too wanted to occupy the same room I had booked. This is off the record; as the Rwandese say, that, when the own of the bangle turns up, you stretch out your arm so that he can take his bangle away without bothering him! By the way, Jesus Christ once said that, “Give to Kayisali what belongs to Kayisali …” then a “Kayisali”, turned up in town and wanted my room, I had to “flee” as fast as the old engine of my car could take me. I found myself holed up in a not so homely hotel (but more comfortable), the “Ten to Ten”, it would have been very good had it been located at the lakeside and far away from the noisy town. If you cannot get what you want, then you must want what you get! Contact: mfashumwana@fastmail.fm
