Rwandan roadtrip

Rwanda is called the country of a thousand hills ("les milles collins") and the description is spot on. I drove across about half the length of the country yesterday from Kigali to Kibuye never once touching a straight stretch of road longer than 20 meters, just endless broad meanders around the hills. The countryside is very green, fertile and every square inch is cultivated - it has to be to feed 6 million people crammed into an area about the size of Wales. I love contours, and so the landscape is right up my street. The views can be spectacular as you crest one of the larger hills and gaze out over the endless fractal progression; this time of the year is quite hazy, so the more distant hilltops are blurred by vapour, giving the scene a kind of dreamlike quality.

Driving in Rwanda seems to involve jamming the wheel hard to the right around one bend, hard to the left around the next, and so on until you reach your destination, all the while tooting the horn to warn the hordes of pedestrians, cyclists, cows and goats about your approach. The density of population is obvious from the dozens of people who lined almost every stretch of the two and a half hour journey.

Lake Kivu is, to look at, a paradise location with crystal clean water surrounded by those milles collins. It's a perilous place, however, as it contains pockets of methane gas which periodically bubble up and can suffocate anyone swimming or fishing in the vicinity. Three years ago (to cap Africa's bloodiest civil war) the Volcano overlooking Goma on the Congo side of lake Kivu erupted and cut a lava path through the city centre. Apparently the lava solidified about 70m into lake Kivu, however if it had penetrated another 100m it would have ignited the methane, leading to an unimaginably vast explosion. That is one horror at least that the long suffering people around Lake Kivu have been been spared.

Here's a random observation: I've been known to start my sentences with an conteplative hum "Mmmm" but Rwandans seem to take this to extreme, beginning every word with the letter M. Okay, so this isn't strictly true, but certainly the four survival words of Kinyarwanda I've learnt so far all fit the pattern:

murakoze = thank you
mwaramutse = good morning
mwirwe = good afternoon/evening
murarakye = good night