A Walk to Remember: Congo Nil Trail
A nine-day hike along Lake Kivu, conquering 227 km worth of mountains, rural villages, stale donuts, and breathtaking views of Rwanda
By Andrew Kinton, ED2
The nine days are tough to describe: the beauty, the tea fields, the frustration, the friendliness, the frustration, the early mornings, the long days, the pain, the hunger, the laughter, the innocence, the coffee fields. . . . .the list goes on and on. Alanna Klose (ED2) had an idea to hike this new hiking trail developed by the Rwanda Board of Development and immediately I was in. Shawn Grund (ED2) was also intrigued and from then on, we were hooked and excited.
Day 1 - We started with an arduous bus trip, seven hours on twisting and turning roads through the Nyungwe rainforest. Our trek started in Kamembe, the most southwestern town in Rwanda near the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lake Kivu. After a good meal and a cold Primus the night before, we set out at 6am the next morning. Our first five hours were walking on a main road through Gisakura, an enormous tea plantation. After eating diesel smoke and getting rained on, we parted with the main road and headed north on a dirt road. We stopped in a small village with nothing more than a bus stop, street vendors and hagglers and we were immediately the most exciting thing to happen to this town in days. They tried to charge us four times what the meal should cost. I had to ‘tell off’ the waitress in Kinyarwanda and demand the real price. That night, we didn’t reach an official camp site so we found a church on top of a hill – lending privacy – and set up our tents here.
Day 2 - The road was a sloppy mess from the storm the previous night. We fought the mud along with the few squish vans and motos. People were understandably very curious as they never get tourists in this part of the country and especially foreigners who speak their language. We reached our stop for the night at a small guesthouse/hotel overlooking the lake. We drank two well deserved beers and rested our aching feet and legs. We had fresh fish from the lake, rice, and French fries. The staff didn’t speak English, so we tried to explain to them that we brought our own houses (tents) and were going to sleep outside of the rooms on the front lawn. They assumed that this meant we were really poor and offered to let us have a bedroom for FREE! We didn’t want to take advantage of them, so they watched on in amazement as we pulled out a tiny bag and turned it into a shelter to sleep.
Day 3 - The next day was full of amazing views of the lake. It was a very peaceful nine hour walk and it was shocking for us to see an area that wasn’t bursting forth with villages and people. We found a small village near the top of a mountain and stopped for our first food of the day, randomly picking one boutique. We really lucked out here – the seller was a kind, friendly lady who was so curious about us. She gave us good service and we returned the favor by eating like pigs. She gave us fresh, still hot, amandazi (donuts), which were amazing - usually they are sold cold and a few days old. She laughed and laughed when we told her our purpose for walking across Rwanda – just for fun! She held the group of kids trying to see us at bay. She never even called us muzungu, but asked our names. Later on in the day, a three year old child spotted us from about 20 meters away but down a steep mountain where his mom tilled the field. He made his way up the side of the mountain to us and just sat there: not talking, not begging, not doing anything. We got him to say a little bit and I gave him the last of my water as he was sweating like no three year old I have ever seen. That night we crashed with a fellow PCV who lived in the area. She cooked us a good meal and we finally got our first shower.
Day 4 – A very quiet day again with few people and few villages. We finally reached a large market town in the middle of a rice paddy. We went into a store with a café and had conversations with a helpful man who showed us a shortcut. After asking him a few questions (his English was good), he told us that he had a Peace Corps Volunteer as a teacher last year. After he left, another man who spoke English well said that he was a teacher with a PCV in a far away part of the country. Then, another man sat down. His English was flawless. He was a Congolese man teaching English in Rwanda, he also knew PCVs back in the 1980’s when the DRC was called Zaire. What a coincidence!! Three random strangers in a village in the middle of nowhere all with links to the Peace Corps!
We then parted ways and ended up at the campsite at an orphanage, L’Esperance, another PCV’s site. But this was no ordinary orphanage -- it was beautiful and serene place. We showed up just in time to help the kids with their computer class. After, we watched the ten babies eat. The house mamas then put them on these tiny little potty training plastic toilets and waited for them all to poop. While they sat there, all in a row, they sang songs while throwing their pants at each other. It is an image that will stay with me forever.
Day 5 - A day of rest. Our legs were hurting and we felt like broke down cars. We weren’t planning on this day of rest, but the orphanage was the perfect place to soothe our swollen and sore legs. Their small guesthouse was small but with plenty of books, old National Geographic magazines, and a million dollar view. There was a ‘turd floater’ that night (polite saying from the great state of Texas when it rains so hard all the horse poop floats down a river or stream). We woke up to a delicious, hot breakfast on the patio overlooking the mountains and Lake Kivu in the distance. Around 3pm, the kids came back from their Seventh Day Adventist church and we went to hang out with them. We stood around and chatted or played with those who were brave enough to approach us. The kids are kids and it didn’t take long before they were climbing all over us and wanting to be held. That night, the cook at the orphanage whipped up a special meal for us and it was like a gift from God himself – a giant, wood-fired pizza! After sipping on a beer and eating this pizza, the cook approached again and dropped another pizza on the table.
Day 6 -- April Fool’s Day and a busy day of walking. After breakfast, we left the orphanage and I took a hard-boiled egg to eat on the road for a snack. Maybe the cook pulled a fast one on me or maybe it was fate, but in true April Fools fashion, I felt something wet on my leg and thought maybe I peed my pants. I stuck my hand in my pocket and realized it was egg oozing through my pocket onto my leg. After nine hours of walking to our next destination, we finally made it into Kibuye. We cheated slightly and took a bus to the next checkpoint because this stretch was a paved road busy with buses and cars and we knew it would be miserable. The EPA would choke if they ever came to Rwanda, the buses and diesel SUVs belch black smoke as they chug up and down the mountains. After the short 20 kilometer bus ride, we got to Rubengera and strolled over to a fellow PCV’s house where we stayed that night. She made us a great pot of chili and we got a good night’s rest once again.
Day 7 – On this day, we never quite knew where we were going. It was not well signed on this day and had we not known Kinyarwanda, we probably would have got lost. We found a young boy that took us on a shortcut and straight down a mountain and we sludged through a swamp area where an old man showed us the path to our next village. We were slightly intimidated when the road in front of us went up a huge mountain and the old man with the walking stick was making us look bad. We were sweating bullets and panting like dogs and this old man kept chugging away like the tortoise racing the hare.
We were dead tired at the top, but powered through because it looked like the heavens were going to open up and dump an ocean on us. We made it to the next stopover, Musasa, by 3pm. We found a government office and asked where we could sleep. He said we could sleep in front of the office and that he would summon a guard for us. We asked about food, in which he replied there was NONE to buy in this village. It was small. . . but seriously, nothing?!? He took us to a small boutique where we had our dinner of two amandazi each at 3pm. The government official and his colleague ordered drinks and walked out wordlessly, making us pay before we offered. We were thoroughly irritated by their gumption.
Close to dark, we ventured back to our makeshift campsite and called it a night around 7pm. The guard showed up shortly thereafter and began our nightmare. He was jamming his radio ten feet from our tents, talking, laughing, and singing with whatever people he could find on the road at this time of the night. This continued, literally, all night. I don’t know why there were people out in the middle of the night in this village, but they were there and we got only an hour or two of sleep. Telling them to be quiet only got more laughter and chatting about how the ‘muzungus’ were speaking in Kinyarwanda.
Day 8 -- We rolled out of our tents before the sun came up. None of us were in a good mood this morning. I couldn’t resist telling off the guard and his group of friends that they are people with bad culture, a response we learned in our training to use when people are not being friendly. The morning walk was quiet and we once again found ourselves somehow lost. We stumbled on a small village high on a mountain in a forest, stopping at a cobbler’s shop. We bought some bananas to eat and rested while a group of 20 kids gathered in front of us and stared. By the time we left, we had the parents of these children laughing as I would try to poke a kid in the stomach and they would yell and scatter like ants. The nice cobbler man gave us a parting gift of six bananas for a safe journey. We captured the hearts of this small village in only 30 minutes.
Once we got back on the road, we found that in this area, the kids all knew how to say, “What’s up?” “Nothing much.” We speculate that there had to be a PCV nearby. We were determined on this day to set ourselves up for an easy last day so we continued to walk more than anticipated. We walked for 12 hours. We were worn out but knew the end was near the next day. At this end of this day, we ended up in a village where we spotted a school on top of a hill, overlooking the lake. We befriended two teachers who were very kind and arranged night guards for us. From here, we could see the lights of Goma, Congo and the Nyirangoro volcano with its red glow from the crater, lava lake. We got a good night’s rest finally after the night from hell.
Day 9 – At sunrise, we packed our bags and hit the road early. We took it easy on this day as we were hurting from the 12 hour walk the day before. My knees were swollen and it was painful to walk downhill, but we worked our way from the hills back down toward the lake. We could see our end point, Braliwa Bay. At one point, we walked next to some guys carrying rocks on their heads that would crush my spine had I tried to do what they were doing. Four hours after beginning to walk, we made it to the end! It was only 10am, but we found a cozy bar where we sat on the lake shore beach and had beer, goat kebabs, and French fries. We laughed and talked about our adventure of a lifetime and all decided that it was an amazing experience and were happy we did it.
BY THE NUMBERS
Miles Walked: 140 miles
Days on the Hike: 9 days
Hours Actually Spent Walking: 65
Longest Day of Walking: 12 ½ hours
Mountains Hiked: ??? too many to count!
Amandazi eaten: 12
Pizzas Eaten: 2
Times ‘muzungu’ was shouted at me: 450 (estimate 40 times per day x 9 days)
People greeted: everyone along the way‼
Strangest greeting: Old woman running outside from her house, topless, waving and greeting us!
Strangest thing begged for: “Give me a bible” (of course, hikers always carry bibles with them!)
Biggest surprise: The kindness of some village people who have probably never met someone other than a Rwandan. They have every reason to simply stare and not be nice, but they are just great people. Also, old people are awesome and kind.
Most beautiful sight: a 16” pizza at the orphanage
Worst sight: The next mountain you have to climb when you thought what you just climbed was the end destination
Best comment: One young man to me, “Buy me food, I am hungry” His friend, “This is a visitor to our country, you must buy him food”. It is rare to here a comment as amazing as this. It gives me hope that there are people out there that still respect others.
Most touching moment: sharing my last bit of water with a three year old that crawled up the side of a mountain to see us
Day 1 - We started with an arduous bus trip, seven hours on twisting and turning roads through the Nyungwe rainforest. Our trek started in Kamembe, the most southwestern town in Rwanda near the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lake Kivu. After a good meal and a cold Primus the night before, we set out at 6am the next morning. Our first five hours were walking on a main road through Gisakura, an enormous tea plantation. After eating diesel smoke and getting rained on, we parted with the main road and headed north on a dirt road. We stopped in a small village with nothing more than a bus stop, street vendors and hagglers and we were immediately the most exciting thing to happen to this town in days. They tried to charge us four times what the meal should cost. I had to ‘tell off’ the waitress in Kinyarwanda and demand the real price. That night, we didn’t reach an official camp site so we found a church on top of a hill – lending privacy – and set up our tents here.
Day 2 - The road was a sloppy mess from the storm the previous night. We fought the mud along with the few squish vans and motos. People were understandably very curious as they never get tourists in this part of the country and especially foreigners who speak their language. We reached our stop for the night at a small guesthouse/hotel overlooking the lake. We drank two well deserved beers and rested our aching feet and legs. We had fresh fish from the lake, rice, and French fries. The staff didn’t speak English, so we tried to explain to them that we brought our own houses (tents) and were going to sleep outside of the rooms on the front lawn. They assumed that this meant we were really poor and offered to let us have a bedroom for FREE! We didn’t want to take advantage of them, so they watched on in amazement as we pulled out a tiny bag and turned it into a shelter to sleep.
Day 3 - The next day was full of amazing views of the lake. It was a very peaceful nine hour walk and it was shocking for us to see an area that wasn’t bursting forth with villages and people. We found a small village near the top of a mountain and stopped for our first food of the day, randomly picking one boutique. We really lucked out here – the seller was a kind, friendly lady who was so curious about us. She gave us good service and we returned the favor by eating like pigs. She gave us fresh, still hot, amandazi (donuts), which were amazing - usually they are sold cold and a few days old. She laughed and laughed when we told her our purpose for walking across Rwanda – just for fun! She held the group of kids trying to see us at bay. She never even called us muzungu, but asked our names. Later on in the day, a three year old child spotted us from about 20 meters away but down a steep mountain where his mom tilled the field. He made his way up the side of the mountain to us and just sat there: not talking, not begging, not doing anything. We got him to say a little bit and I gave him the last of my water as he was sweating like no three year old I have ever seen. That night we crashed with a fellow PCV who lived in the area. She cooked us a good meal and we finally got our first shower.
Day 4 – A very quiet day again with few people and few villages. We finally reached a large market town in the middle of a rice paddy. We went into a store with a café and had conversations with a helpful man who showed us a shortcut. After asking him a few questions (his English was good), he told us that he had a Peace Corps Volunteer as a teacher last year. After he left, another man who spoke English well said that he was a teacher with a PCV in a far away part of the country. Then, another man sat down. His English was flawless. He was a Congolese man teaching English in Rwanda, he also knew PCVs back in the 1980’s when the DRC was called Zaire. What a coincidence!! Three random strangers in a village in the middle of nowhere all with links to the Peace Corps!
We then parted ways and ended up at the campsite at an orphanage, L’Esperance, another PCV’s site. But this was no ordinary orphanage -- it was beautiful and serene place. We showed up just in time to help the kids with their computer class. After, we watched the ten babies eat. The house mamas then put them on these tiny little potty training plastic toilets and waited for them all to poop. While they sat there, all in a row, they sang songs while throwing their pants at each other. It is an image that will stay with me forever.
Day 5 - A day of rest. Our legs were hurting and we felt like broke down cars. We weren’t planning on this day of rest, but the orphanage was the perfect place to soothe our swollen and sore legs. Their small guesthouse was small but with plenty of books, old National Geographic magazines, and a million dollar view. There was a ‘turd floater’ that night (polite saying from the great state of Texas when it rains so hard all the horse poop floats down a river or stream). We woke up to a delicious, hot breakfast on the patio overlooking the mountains and Lake Kivu in the distance. Around 3pm, the kids came back from their Seventh Day Adventist church and we went to hang out with them. We stood around and chatted or played with those who were brave enough to approach us. The kids are kids and it didn’t take long before they were climbing all over us and wanting to be held. That night, the cook at the orphanage whipped up a special meal for us and it was like a gift from God himself – a giant, wood-fired pizza! After sipping on a beer and eating this pizza, the cook approached again and dropped another pizza on the table.
Day 6 -- April Fool’s Day and a busy day of walking. After breakfast, we left the orphanage and I took a hard-boiled egg to eat on the road for a snack. Maybe the cook pulled a fast one on me or maybe it was fate, but in true April Fools fashion, I felt something wet on my leg and thought maybe I peed my pants. I stuck my hand in my pocket and realized it was egg oozing through my pocket onto my leg. After nine hours of walking to our next destination, we finally made it into Kibuye. We cheated slightly and took a bus to the next checkpoint because this stretch was a paved road busy with buses and cars and we knew it would be miserable. The EPA would choke if they ever came to Rwanda, the buses and diesel SUVs belch black smoke as they chug up and down the mountains. After the short 20 kilometer bus ride, we got to Rubengera and strolled over to a fellow PCV’s house where we stayed that night. She made us a great pot of chili and we got a good night’s rest once again.
Day 7 – On this day, we never quite knew where we were going. It was not well signed on this day and had we not known Kinyarwanda, we probably would have got lost. We found a young boy that took us on a shortcut and straight down a mountain and we sludged through a swamp area where an old man showed us the path to our next village. We were slightly intimidated when the road in front of us went up a huge mountain and the old man with the walking stick was making us look bad. We were sweating bullets and panting like dogs and this old man kept chugging away like the tortoise racing the hare.
We were dead tired at the top, but powered through because it looked like the heavens were going to open up and dump an ocean on us. We made it to the next stopover, Musasa, by 3pm. We found a government office and asked where we could sleep. He said we could sleep in front of the office and that he would summon a guard for us. We asked about food, in which he replied there was NONE to buy in this village. It was small. . . but seriously, nothing?!? He took us to a small boutique where we had our dinner of two amandazi each at 3pm. The government official and his colleague ordered drinks and walked out wordlessly, making us pay before we offered. We were thoroughly irritated by their gumption.
Close to dark, we ventured back to our makeshift campsite and called it a night around 7pm. The guard showed up shortly thereafter and began our nightmare. He was jamming his radio ten feet from our tents, talking, laughing, and singing with whatever people he could find on the road at this time of the night. This continued, literally, all night. I don’t know why there were people out in the middle of the night in this village, but they were there and we got only an hour or two of sleep. Telling them to be quiet only got more laughter and chatting about how the ‘muzungus’ were speaking in Kinyarwanda.
Day 8 -- We rolled out of our tents before the sun came up. None of us were in a good mood this morning. I couldn’t resist telling off the guard and his group of friends that they are people with bad culture, a response we learned in our training to use when people are not being friendly. The morning walk was quiet and we once again found ourselves somehow lost. We stumbled on a small village high on a mountain in a forest, stopping at a cobbler’s shop. We bought some bananas to eat and rested while a group of 20 kids gathered in front of us and stared. By the time we left, we had the parents of these children laughing as I would try to poke a kid in the stomach and they would yell and scatter like ants. The nice cobbler man gave us a parting gift of six bananas for a safe journey. We captured the hearts of this small village in only 30 minutes.
Once we got back on the road, we found that in this area, the kids all knew how to say, “What’s up?” “Nothing much.” We speculate that there had to be a PCV nearby. We were determined on this day to set ourselves up for an easy last day so we continued to walk more than anticipated. We walked for 12 hours. We were worn out but knew the end was near the next day. At this end of this day, we ended up in a village where we spotted a school on top of a hill, overlooking the lake. We befriended two teachers who were very kind and arranged night guards for us. From here, we could see the lights of Goma, Congo and the Nyirangoro volcano with its red glow from the crater, lava lake. We got a good night’s rest finally after the night from hell.
Day 9 – At sunrise, we packed our bags and hit the road early. We took it easy on this day as we were hurting from the 12 hour walk the day before. My knees were swollen and it was painful to walk downhill, but we worked our way from the hills back down toward the lake. We could see our end point, Braliwa Bay. At one point, we walked next to some guys carrying rocks on their heads that would crush my spine had I tried to do what they were doing. Four hours after beginning to walk, we made it to the end! It was only 10am, but we found a cozy bar where we sat on the lake shore beach and had beer, goat kebabs, and French fries. We laughed and talked about our adventure of a lifetime and all decided that it was an amazing experience and were happy we did it.
BY THE NUMBERS
Miles Walked: 140 miles
Days on the Hike: 9 days
Hours Actually Spent Walking: 65
Longest Day of Walking: 12 ½ hours
Mountains Hiked: ??? too many to count!
Amandazi eaten: 12
Pizzas Eaten: 2
Times ‘muzungu’ was shouted at me: 450 (estimate 40 times per day x 9 days)
People greeted: everyone along the way‼
Strangest greeting: Old woman running outside from her house, topless, waving and greeting us!
Strangest thing begged for: “Give me a bible” (of course, hikers always carry bibles with them!)
Biggest surprise: The kindness of some village people who have probably never met someone other than a Rwandan. They have every reason to simply stare and not be nice, but they are just great people. Also, old people are awesome and kind.
Most beautiful sight: a 16” pizza at the orphanage
Worst sight: The next mountain you have to climb when you thought what you just climbed was the end destination
Best comment: One young man to me, “Buy me food, I am hungry” His friend, “This is a visitor to our country, you must buy him food”. It is rare to here a comment as amazing as this. It gives me hope that there are people out there that still respect others.
Most touching moment: sharing my last bit of water with a three year old that crawled up the side of a mountain to see us