Our apologies for the long-delay in journal entries. The airline lost Gavin somewhere in Europe, on the way home. We tracked him down, and so the remainder of the posts from his and Duncan’s trip will be up, soon.

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The weekend was spent in and around the Lake Kivu town of Kibuye.

This region is quite picturesque with lush green rolling hills surrounding a crystal blue lake.

Although the landscape left Dunc and I in awe, the living conditions of the average person were well below those in Kigali. It was very interesting for us to see the type of growth that the country is undergoing in Kigali and not undergoing in the more rural areas. Kigali is bustling with a ton of city work going on and with booming development markets,whereas Kibuye is a small rural town, where the way of life probably hasn’t changed for a very long time.

Kibuye was also one of the worst hit regions in Rwanda during the genocide with many atrocities happening in churches, fields, and streets all over. Over the weekend, Duncan and I both witnessed a lot of emotion in the people as many remembrance events were put on during the last 2 days of the official 7 days of mourning.

The day we were leaving, we were fortunate enough to meet a team of biologists from the National University in Butare who were kind enough to give us a ride back to Kigali.

Our 3hr ride back, in the box of their pickup, gave us an amazing panoramic view of the landscape as we passed through tiny villages stuffed with people to the point that many of them were standing on the highway (this trip also saved s a couple thousand francs, or 6 bucks).

We returned to a flurry of emails that resulted in a very busy Monday. The next post will describe our encounter with a group of kids living on the streets, a tour of the Bugesera region in the south, and another visit to the Rebero Orphan Centre.