“A Visit to La Palise Gashora”

Many of us had gotten so accustomed to “Club La Palise” a.k.a Nyandugu, we used to go there for this or that; evening drinks, roast chicken, swimming pool, just to mention a few! This time round, we decided to try out something much more different from the noisy Kigali resorts and the choice of “La Palise” tucked away in the quiet of Gashora was no mean bargain. First and foremost, visiting such a place required adequate preparation, adequate funds as well as adequate company. By the way, it wasn’t any of my ideas to visit this place. In the first place, I did not even know where and how it existed. I only heard of it a few times and that was that! It was one evening as we had gathered at one friend’s home on his birthday when his wife suggested that we set a day and visit Gashora. Of course, knowing its proximity to the Burundian border, we eagerly accepted as it would mean having a chance to “swallow” lots of ARMSTEL BOKs! To cut the very long story short, we chose the day and decided on how much each of us was to contribute towards meeting the costs of everything that day; this would include; eats, drinks, leisure, among many other things. We planned on having a fully-fledged sports session to include jogging, footballing, boat riding, etc.! We hit the road at 09:00am on a Saturday morning and within an hour of sober driving, we had reached the junction turning off from the Kigali – Nemba road. It took us close to 15 minutes to get to the resort. Behold, La Palise is situated on the shore of a small Lake (unfortunately, I did not find out its name). It is made of a number of scattered buildings that serve different purposes. The main buildinghas a nice Bar & Restaurant, with others serving as Hotel Rooms. There are lots of grass thatched bingaros here and there, all these overlooking the lake! The place lies on a very huge chunk of land; it is like being in the middle of nowhere and yet you are somewhere! The cool breeze from the lake, punctuated by the vegetation gives the place a real natural appeal. In a party of nearly twenty people, it was like attending a Party in the jungle! We started by jogging up the road till the trading centre from wherewe branched off to a football playground just at the outskirts of thecentre. Here, we decided to have a football match. We split ourselves into two teams. In the end, some of the ladies declined to join us and hence, we ended up having two teams of 6 people each. To overcome this shortfall, we invited the kids around, who willingly accepted to join us and hence the match began. We played something like football (of course many of us hadn’t played football in decades) for close to half an hour and most of us were completely knocked out; Men, women and children alike! After the match, we had group photographs of the teams and had a dance session to appreciate the hospitality of our local team-mates. We then set off for the resort again. By the time we got back to the resort, lunch was almost ready. We went for the different tribes of drinks,ARMSTEL BOK, ARMSTELs, MUTZIG, PRIMUS, Smirnoff Ice, Fantas, etc.! Of course, many of us did not want to eat on an empty stomach and hence, we had to line our stomachs with several bottles of our favourite drinks before we could have lunch. mfashumwana@fastmail.fm