Returning to Rwanda part 1 - holiday plans gone to pot

My ‘holiday’ remarkably rendered me more exhausted and drained than I was before. After falling ill on day two, I also caught malaria somehow and had to replace my week in Zanzibar with a week in a guesthouse bed.

And it had all been going so well. I walked out of the airport and into the capital, enjoying the morning sun rising over a quiet, lush, hilly Kigali and friendly greetings. It was a good 2 hours before anyone called me muzungu. Unprompted, the ladies in the market recognised me and called out ‘Amakuru Mateyo’. I met up with old Rwanda friends in Kigali. There were no security check points on the road to Rwamagana (there used to be at least 4). I returned to the centre and saw the staff and the boys and girls. I went to visit Fils’ grave to pay my respects (Fils died of a brain haemorrhage a couple of months after I left). And in the evening we all went out for brochettes and fanta.

Brochettes and fanta!

Then I fell sick and did very little other than feel sorry for myself, lie in bed, visit clinics, take drugs and watch really bad Rwandan television!

The clinics were hilariously bad. The first didn’t do any diagnosis. No questions about my symptoms, no checks except my temperature. They just immediately gave me a painful miracle injection in my bum which within an hour made me feel like a new man for 12 hours, did a malaria test, tried unsuccessfully to test me for stomach problems even though I had none, saw several patients around me as I lay in pain on the bed, announced I had malaria, got confused when I questioned why because it has a 2-3 week incubation period and I’d only been in the country for 6 days, then issued me with my malaria drugs. But, oh my God, that injection gace me an amazing kick! I had crawled out of my room bent over, struggled onto a moped and almost fallen off it several times going the short distance to the clinic, but after that injection I could run! And the first place I ran to was the pizzeria with beautiful views over Kigali's hills and great pizza and ice cream!

Rwandan TV was as bad as the clinic. And the torment almost drove me to hunt their producers down and offer them some common sense guidance. Their only Rwandan productions appeared to be the news in 3 different languages delivered by stoic robot like presenters, interviews with children in which an interviewer manhandles kids and forces them to perform for the camera, footage of Rwandan dancing, and a segment titled ‘ICT Development in Rwanda’ which is a montage of pictures of computers played over and over between programmes. The rest of the broadcasts are other largely French TV channels which they arbitrarily switch to and from without introducing or giving any consideration to the start or end times of the programmes. Consequently you start watching a programme or a sports game and half way through they just switch to another channel. A week of this drives you nuts.

My drug induced high didn't last long. I was soon feeling deabilitated again. After postponing my flights onto Zanzibar several times I ended up giving up, cancelling the holiday and going back to recouperate in the comfort of Kuwait...