Party Vacay Bus to Gisenyi

I was on the party bus. On the way to Gisenyi. Everyone was snacking, which was fabulously different than the usual strict three-meals-or-less-a-day norm. I will never, ever understand how Rwandans can eat no more than three big meals a day and not touch the tiniest bit of edible energy in between. It's usually a matter of money – snacking is pricey. Also, bread is expensive in Rwanda, and Cassava bread (it's not bread, it's mush) doesn't last so long, so you can't just wrap what you have leftover for later. You need to eat it all in one meal. It also is, perhaps, a matter of being polite – snacking in public when not all can must be somewhat rude. But a vacay bus is a vacay bus, and these passengers were clearly more interested in maximizing the enjoyment in their vacation.

It may have been a Tanzanians-and-Kenyans-going-on-vacation-in-Rwanda bus or a Rwandans-who-grew-up-in-Tanzania-or-Kenya bus, because everyone was chatting in a mix of Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili. When the second-hand-clothing sellers gave their sales pitches in the last stop before leaving Kigali, a woman was checking our a very frilly, girly, leather jacket. It was apparently for her hubby, who wore it the whole trip to the vacay spot. Men often wear womens' jackets. Or well, what was manufactured for women, anyways. And in between munches on their kabobs – totally inappropriate for Rwanda and awesome – passengers were swigging down their Waragi, the Ugandan hard liquor that is the poster boy for what not to drink in secondary schools throughout the country. As passengers were becoming more and more pissed, the driver was becoming more and more pissed at them. “I will report the police on you!” he yelled to them, and everyone begged in him not to, including the most drunk passenger in between giggles.

There are police checkpoints in Rwanda to check I.D's. At one such checkpoint, the driver,

who was beyond irritated at that point, pointed to the passenger who was the most drunk and making lots of noise and giggling. We'll call him “giggles.” Everyone in the bus, in full party-drive, begged the driver to give Giggles a break. A lot of explaining and yelling and threatening ensued between the driver, the police, and the passengers, until the driver gave Giggles a break and we went on our way, stopped every second for the really drunk passengers to pee, which added an hour or so to our journey.

The music was a great mix of terrible American rap with an insane amount of expletives and detailed sex descriptions but in really clever rhyme. And in English, thank God. It's a long drive to Gisenyi.

There were hardly any girls on the beach. There were lots of weddings. But not a lot of girls just running around, splashing around, and getting time to breath in the lake air. From my ver

y unscientific tiny sample size of ASYV students and galleries in Kigali, it appears that girls are not as good at realistic drawing and composition as boys, and maybe those moments of running down and having fun on the beach contributes to artistic sentiments. Maybe just looking at really nice views with nothing else to think about, which you do at the beach, boosts art development.

There were lots of vacationers doing flips, playing catch, swimming and getting married. The thematic colors of one wedding were very shiny florescent pink and silver. Including for the men, who wore the shiny pinkness on their toga-ish traditional dress (there is a word, no time to find out now...) with the silver shining through on the buttoned-down colored dress shirts under the pink toga.

You walk along the lake on the path on the swanky side and you pass massive villas and scandalously exclusive hotels, perched far from the pathway and covered by foliage but with a small hint of elaborate decorate window frame to make you dream of what it would be like to peer out from these massive monstrosities. They are a few minutes from the Congolese border.

Vacationing girls in Gisenyi wear stilettos, which I think is the result of far more paved roads. They wobble if they must, but vacation is vacation. And not a time for practicality.

On the right are drawings from students which I think captures Gyseni quite well. In different ways, but together they capture the city, whether that was their intention or not. Enjoy.