In the beginning when I was preparing for life in Rwanda, I was pretty certain that I wouldn’t come home during my service. You always hear that going home makes you not want to come back to your host country and that it’s better for you emotionally if you can just tough it out. “Two years is not that long in the grand scheme of things,” I told everybody who asked about my travel plans. And, while that statement is certainly true, as the one-year-in-Rwanda mark approached, toughing anything out for any reason pretty much went completely out the window.
So Ryan and I found good deals on tickets out of Tanzania and decided to come home together and make a real adventure out of the whole trip.
It started with an approximately 27-hour bus ride from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Rwanda is such a tiny country that only three of those hours were actually spent driving here, whereas all the rest were in Tanzania. Ryan and I were surprised to find that people piled into this bus – sitting on armchairs (mine), standing and sleeping in the aisles – as though they were getting on for a quick trip down the road. We did manage to snag a $3 bed for a few hours at the midnight rest stop, but I’m pretty sure all that comfortable sleep was completely negated by the physical and mental toll it took on us when woke up realizing we hadn’t set our phones forward an hour and were running an hour behind.
Ryan studied abroad in Dar es Salaam in college, so we were warmly greeted by his host family at the bus station when we arrived. They were so kind to us, cramming our huge bags into their compact car and taking us back to their house for a quick meal before we had to get back to the port to catch a ferry to Zanzibar.
ZANZIBAR! I can’t decide if I want to tell people to try to go and risk it actually becoming a commercial tourist attraction, or keep it to myself so it could potentially be the exact same when I’m able to go again. Zanzibar is an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania. It’s paradise, literally. The sand is white, the water is clear, the weather is perfect. Ryan snagged us a room in a guesthouse, and fortunately for us the guy who manages it is also a local fisherman. When we told him we wanted to go snorkeling, we paid a few bucks to tag along on a fishing boat, watching as they caught octopuses and fish with their bare hands, speared eels, and spotted obscure poisonous creatures that had me convinced my time in paradise would have a tragic end. The following day, we went swimming with dolphins in the Indian Ocean! I am still so completely in awe of that experience; nothing I could say would do it justice. They were so close we could see them perfectly even when they were scratching their backs on the ocean floor, and never seemed affected at all by our presence. It was incredible!
Being back in the States was overwhelming but amazing. My only regret is that it was such a short, whirlwind trip. We spent a little time in DC on both ends of the trip and visited Texas and Seattle in between. Everyone in both of our families went above and beyond anything Ryan and I could have hoped for in terms of making us feel welcome and comfortable. And yes, coming back was absolutely excruciating. And yes, it was worth it.
After a number of delays and a few choice words with airlines about baggage fees, we landed back in Tanzania with just a couple of hours to spare before we had to get back on a bus for another 25+ hour ride. We actually did almost get left behind at one point on this trip, but thanks to Ryan’s unparalleled ability to chase buses while simultaneously running sideways and calling my name, we barely made it.
This time, because of bus schedules, we had to go up through Kenya and back down through Uganda to get into Rwanda. Since we would’ve had to pay the visa fees either way, we made plans with two other volunteers to spend New Year’s Eve in Uganda together. The other two volunteers went white water rafting while we tried to get our heads back on straight, and then we all went bungee jumping together on New Year’s Day. Ryan and I did a tandem jump, which is absolutely the way to go if you need a little push. It was incredibly thrilling and surprisingly painful, but certainly an exciting element to add to an already amazing trip!
After another nine hours into Kigali and then three more to my site, I was back in my house and back to my Rwandan life. School started about a week later and we’re now a couple weeks into the first term. I miss home and it’s lonely at site, but things are slowly getting back to normal. Whatever that is.
That is beautiful Tressa; an absolute paradise!
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