Friday was another beautiful day set to Rwandan Time. We wrote some thank-you notes, packed up, said a final good-bye to Pastor Elson and made it about 1 km before needing a small repair done on our van. It was “all good” as it gave us a little more time to soak in some final images of Byumba.

Before long, we were on our way back to Kigali, leaving behind beautifully terraced hills as far as the eye can see and big portions of our hearts as well.

Returning to Kigali was a bit surreal since it’s literally only an hour from Byumba, Gicumbi and yet is so incredibly different. Between occasional villages full of bright-blue uniformed children, we saw people of all ages pushing heavily-laden bicycles up steep slopes and the occasional small child just walking along the road all alone. Soon we drove along a valley with fields of sugar cane and rice, passing through communities closer together and with more industry.

All too soon, we reached Kigali and enjoyed one more leisurely meal with Emmy and our driver, DiSalle.

We’ve all grown to love Emmy so much and somewhere along the way we began thinking of him as a teammate so much that we still find ourselves looking around for him as if he’s just wandered off like Yohanna and Petero so often do.

After our second fare-well of the day, we piled all our luggage and 6 people including our driver Maurice into a land rover and set out for Musanze district, a 2.5 hour ride slowly up and down countless slopes with steep drops off the road into picturesque valleys.

Although we were headed to a new district, I wasn’t expecting things to be so different from Byumba as Musanze and Gicumbi are neighboring districts. Gone were the terraced hillsides and roughly paved roads. We passed soccer fields and agriculture predominant with banana and corn.

Part of the transformation is also that we’ve entered a new phase of our stay. No longer are we here so much on development work but have now become tourists seeking restoration. Our ride was quiet as some slept and some contemplated the last few weeks and even what the future may hold for us and the residents of Gicumbi district. 

When we arrived in the city of our destination (can’t recall the name right now!), I was very surprised to see how built up the location is with many hotels, very wide roads and tourist shops. I underestimated the tourist value of the location and what that meant for the development of the city—good or bad.

We were all quite spent and were facing a VERY early morning, so sought our beds directly after dinner with a blog half written…the gorillas weren’t going to wait for us to get our beauty sleep!

Thanks for reading and for your comments, they mean so much to us! Peter is also faring better and it was probably a good thing for him that it was a travel day full of long stretches of driving! Spoiler alert – he DID do the gorilla trek on Saturday and we were all SO thankful for that! Brian will fill you in on our Saturday in Musanze district later…

Megan