Kigali to Butare

With the public affairs director from the US Embassy, we gathered our equipment in a van and made the two hour drive on Friday from Kigali to Butare, in SW Rwanda. I had a range of feelings on the drive: the scenery is striking in both beautiful and disturbing ways. Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills, and that it is. But as a conservation biologist, the highly fragmented habitat and lack of any large forest tracks along the drive was a little depressing, although not unexpected. I remember feeling the same way in 2008. Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa and most people subsist by farming- either larger scale farms, or family size subsistence crops. In any case, from the valleys to the hillsides, most land is deforested and farmed- even up to the very top peaks of the hills and mountains. They use a terraced agricultural system that looks a lot like steps: a flat area with crops growing and then as they move up the mountain, a step of 1-2 meters in height separate the next flat area-all the way up to the top of the hills.  The sheer magnitude of agriculture means that most hillsides have been completely deforested.

We arrived in Butare, the town where the National University of Rwanda is, just after lunchtime. The town is small but densely populated with 100,000 people living here and has a fairly simple layout that reminded me a little bit of Social Circle (where my Grandma lived in Georgia) with a main road coming down the middle with various shops on either side. Lucky for me, the layout is just simple enough that I might not get lost too often! I was both extremely excited and nervous as we made the drive through Butare (all 5 minutes of it). Excited to see what Butare finally looked liked, and nervous to meet the department chair of the Biology Department who was going to show us two houses where we might live.  The University is really beautiful. Sure, the buildings aren’t very pretty, but they are all nestled in trees and amongst lush grass.  It reminded me a little bit of UCSC and the redwoods.

We met with the Dept. chair who was really nice and gave me a gigantic hug when we first met. I had read about how hugging was a common form of greeting in a guidebook, but I had forgotten about that and was still a little taken aback. But it was also nice to be so warmly received. We looked at two places to live. One wasn’t great, but not horrible either (a 2 BR apartment). The second place was only $50 more and was a house with a garden, a furnished 3 BR and 2.5 baths (Joy, Margaret, and Paulo, your rooms are ready and waiting!), including plenty of space for my field equipment. While the second place was quite a bit farther from the university than the first apartment we saw, as Manhattanites who have lived in a glorified shoebox for the last ten years, we couldn’t fathom turning down the 3 BR house with a yard! The rent also included someone to clean the house and a guard! Seemed like a no brainer to us. We both felt a little guilty about moving into such a huge place- after all, it is only the two of us. But we spoke with some other ex-pats in the area and were told that big homes were the norm and that it was hard to find smaller places that were nice. We have a papaya and mango tree in the back yard, and a garden with lettuce and carrots growing!

Even though we secured housing, and that was our biggest worry, there are still a ton of little things to get sorted out that make it a little hard to relax.  Our saving grace has been a US conservation scientist and her family who live 5 minutes away. They have generously taken us under their wing and have been so amazingly nice and helpful. They’ve given us advice on all kinds of practical and logistical issues (which internet service to use? Do we need a guard for the house during the day? Should we buy a car for getting to my field site? What kind of car is best? How do we buy electricity?). They even gave us a tour of Butare yesterday. Much to my delight and surprise, there is a LOVELY 20m pool at one of the hotels here from which you can buy swim passes!  That definitely made my day to see this gorgeous pool overlooking a small forest and valley where the arboretum is located!  We’ve eaten dinner at their home with their very cute little kids (6 and 3 yrs old) for the last two nights.  They have been such a blessing and it’s so nice to already have some friends in town!