“Heading to Rubavu”

After spending sometime in the north Eastern districts of Rwanda, it was time for me to bid farewell to the good folks in Umutara region. I really had all the fun a Villager like me would have bargained for. No interruption from the usual “bad boys”, I mean the characters that specialize in making other people’s lives hard by reducing their propensity to “kill” their thirst by reducing the quantities of the throat washers in the name of “gusangira” (sharing). After all, all those spoilt kids that think lopsidedly; they imagine that, drinking bottled beer is cool enough to tantamount to bring civilized! Some of these chaps have lived too long out there and they think they are no longer like us; like the bird that flies off the ground on to an anthill and it thinks it is no longer on the ground! After having prematurely returned to Kigali, prematurely in that, I was still having more fun than I had bargained for, I decided to find another spot where I could explore more and find what to tell to my readers. The problem is that, this column is too expensive for me. I spend much more than what I am paid in my quest for what to tell you. I sometimes travel out of Africa in order to find stories for my fans. As they say, “when you have one eye, its sight improves much better than the one of two eyes”, since I represent many villagers bundled together, then my travels have to be equal or greater than all theirsput together. As people were preparing for the long weekend in more than 5 years, I too decided to look for where to go. How was I going to spend such a long weekend of 4 days (Friday’s Independence Day, Saturday and Sunday plus the liberation Day on Monday), This is a weekend that happens to fall on the week ending the month, meaning that, the lucky ones have been paid for their monthly toil and the unlucky ones have to swallow and pray that, the weekend would end as fast as it came! To some of us, we still have to find the necessary purchasing power for the drinks that would push us through the 4 long days! As a matter of fact, I met a few friends who were contemplating on heading out of town for the holidays; after a short discussion, one suggested visiting Karongi or what was known as Kibuye, this was rejected on the ground that, Karongi was not “hot” enough a destination. In the end, it was enormously adopted that, going to Gisenyi a.k.a. Rubavu would be the best idea and destination. I for one had no complaints about this destination, wasn’t it in the proximity of the great Brasserie (RWALIRWA) that brews the best brands in this land! mfashumwana@fastmail.fm