First crap day of my trip
Trip Start
Apr 21, 2008
1
31
225
Trip End
Apr 20, 2009
Gisenyi,
Rwanda
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Along the way, I met two people from Winnipeg doing missionary work in the town I was about to visit. When I asked them how long they would be staying in Gisenyi, they explained that they committed to living there for their WHOLE life. I couldn't believe that. They didn't even pick the town. It was chosen for them. Of course, they could change their mind if they wanted to go back but they didn?t think they would. They were 100% committed to their missionary work.
As soon as I got to Gisenyi, I could see that I wasn?t going to like it. What a dump! It wasn?t what I expected at all. I couldn?t believe this was a resort town. A bunch of old buildings along a dirt road. The beach was about a 15 minute walk away from the town.
After I checked into my sketchy guesthouse, I changed into my swim shorts and headed towards the beach. I
couldn?t help but notice people staring at me along the way. These stares were a bit different though. I almost felt like the people were laughing at me. I then had a local guy come up to me and talk to me. He wanted me to visit the local language school which he operated. I politely declined. As I left, he told me to be careful and not expose my legs to too much sunlight. This is when I realized that the locals were laughing at me. They were laughing at how pale my legs were. Oh well. Nothing I could do about that.
The beach was actually very nice. Not many people were there. A group of 12-15 locals were relaxing in one spot and that was it. As I walked along the beach, I was approaching the private area of a very expensive hotel. As I got closer to the hotel, I noticed the hotel?s security guard staring me down. He eventually started walking directly at me. He did not look friendly at all. Not knowing what to do when I was about 30 feet from him, I just decided to wave hello to him. Suddenly, all you can see was a shiny set of white teeth. The guy had a smile that stretched from ear lobe to ear lobe. I immediately felt more comfortable. The security guard looked like he was in Grade 10 and suddenly looked very friendly. We met at the border of the private and public area of the beach. The border was actually a flower bed. We shook hands when we reached each other. He was on the property of his hotel and I was on the public side of the beach. We chatted for about 10 minutes in French. The kid just wanted to know what I was doing in this town. After realizing he wasn?t able to give me access to the hotel?s beachfront, I just decided to read my book at a spot not too far from the hotel. I noticed that the guard went to get a chair and placed it right at the public/private beach border. It seemed like he wanted to make sure I wasn?t going to try to access the hotel?s facilities.
About 10 minutes later, a beach vendor approached me. About 10 seconds into my conversation with him, the
security guard started yelling at the vendor and telling him to leave me alone. This is when I realized why the security guard placed a chair by the border. It was to scare the vendors away so they wouldn?t bother me. He did this for about an hour scaring off several vendors. Each time I waved to him as a sign of my gratitude. But after a while, there were too many and they became very annoying. I couldn?t read more than 5 minutes without someone bothering me. Some would even ask that I help them get a visa to Canada. I decided to just go back to my guesthouse.
I walked around a little more during the evening. But the people were just brutal. I would have people grab my arm and point to their stomach and say they were hungry and demand money. They were doing it in a mocking way. I had to put up with this attitude the whole time I was there. The locals should realize that people will stop coming and spending money in their town if they continue to treat foreigners this way. Anyhow, I was just fed up and decided to leave town the next day. I was supposed to go to a town called Kibuye but I found out it was too difficult to get there from here. Instead, I decided to return to Kigali and spend a few more days there.
