Rwanda Rama!

We’ve finally made it to Rwanda! It seems like we’ve talked about it for a long time so it’s really great that we’re actually here! It’s known as the Land of a Thousand Hills and for good reason. The capital city of Kigali has stunning views from almost anywhere in the city! The rolling blue hills on the horizon, against the lush green vegetation, contrasted against the red dirt are a breathtaking sight to behold! And the climate is pretty alright too. The average daytime temperature is 24 degrees Celsius. It seems to be nice and sunny in the morning with a little rain shower in the later afternoon or evening. Pretty close to near perfect!
Fresh produce can be found in abundance and it’s delicious! We’ve had fresh: banana, pineapple, mango, passion fruit, avocado, and pretty much anything else you can think of!
The people here have been especially friendly too (And not just friendly so they can convince us to buy something from us either). We walked towards the downtown area one day and we had been walking for close to 2 hours. So we decided to stop in at a gas station and see if they had a map. They didn’t but, one guy about our age, Albert, invited us up to his office. He searched his office for a while and when that proved unsuccessful, he tried searching on the internet as well. Our hunt was in vain but he called the tourism office for us to see if they had them as well. That evening we received a text message asking if we were able to locate the map and an invitation to have coffee! We thought that was pretty nice from a perfect stranger!
Yesterday evening, a friend of a friend Valence, tried to help us locate a book store (apparently, THIS is where one might find a map!). We were again unsuccessful, but as we walked, he invited us to come to his house. We agreed and he was THRILLED! He served us Rwandan coffee, which by the way, is AMAZING! In the course of the evening, Valence told us several times, had glad he was that we Mzungu (white men) came and shared coffee with him at his house. Yet we were also honored to have been invited! It was a wonderful privilege!
We haven’t been particularly busy this week, but we have enjoyed walking around and soaking in the scenery. It has been especially great to share coffee and conversation with some local Rwandans! We look forward to doing a LOT more of that!

Aging and the Art of Bartering

Craig and I were out doing a little shopping before we left for our trek in Nepal. We were in need of a few things. Sunscreen, a warm fleece, a new headlamp, and a water bottle, seeing as I left mine in Cambodia. Craig had located our goods and had been in the process of negotiating a price for quite a while. Now the shop owner was quite pleasant and things were progressing nicely. I’m not sure that’s quite accurate, seeing as it often just comes down to a waiting game and seeing who will give in first. Anyways, the owner’s friend decides it’s also time for him to get involved and say his piece. But it was to the owner’s detriment.
His first question to me was “Are you mother & son?”
WHAT????

Really, now, how OLD do I look? Or better yet, how YOUNG does Craig look? I know sometimes he drops a couple of years when he’s clean-shaven, but that wasn’t the case today. The guy proceeded to ramble on about it, saying I looked like I could be his mother, and I am old enough to be his mother, blah, blah, blah. He settled on telling me that I look like I’m 36. I aged 8 years in that store. I’m not sure why 36 but apparently, this is the age that is old enough to be the mother of Craig. I told the owner that I was insulted so he had to give us a discount on the purchase. In the end I think I saved us 200 rupees, which is about $3.50. Not near enough for the amount my pride was bruised. I guess it’s time to stock up on that anti-wrinkle cream!

~R

Christmas in Pakistan

Our Ferrero Rocher Christmas tree!!

Well here it goes. Sorry that many of you have heard parts of this story and that we have been a little slow to post it.
We arrived in Lahore (Pakistan) on the 23rd after spending the night in Amritsar. From there we took a rickshaw to the bus station and then the fun began. Here is what Ruthie wrote later that day.

We had an awesome sleep in a super nice room last night and it was only about $30 Can! (Well, maybe it’s not really that nice. Maybe our standards have changed a LOT since we left!) It was convenient because it was just a 2 minute walk from the railway station. So we easily walked away from the touts. We left at a leisurely time and had no trouble at the border or crossing it. I told Craig that I actually felt excited about being here. Those were my words. And I’ve already come to eat those words. We bargained on a rickshaw and we had our pick of the drivers because there were not many people crossing today. So we agreed on a price. When we got there, the driver said 100 more than what we agreed on. After some discussion, we settled on 50 more than we had agreed to pay. I wonder if it had anything to do with the ‘gift’ of fruit he gave us during the ride. We purchased tickets for the next leg of the trip and sat down for an hour wait. We had a bite to eat and were just sitting around talking. Craig got up for something and came back with stool on the back of his pants that was not his own. We were a little confused by it, thinking it could have come from walking on the street or maybe the rickshaw rides. After a couple unsuccessful attempts of trying to clean it off, he decided to change, as there is no such thing as paper towel here. Next thing, Craig comes running out with the same pants on and his jacket open with his bare chest exposed and yells “they took my wallet!”. He clearly knew what they looked like so he took off after them out the building. They had about a 10-15 second lead, so they were long gone. The next several hours entailed reviewing camera footage, filing a police report, calling overseas to cancel credit cards, and sitting and waiting. It was not that Craig was careless, because he was not. He had become a target to rob, by being an obvious foreigner. He has always been very careful to keep his wallet (money belt) in his pocket and to have it secured to his pant belt loop. These criminals clearly knew that. Craig watched the security camera footage later and they were standing behind us, watching us for at least 30 minutes before the incident happened. They had seen Craig take out money and pay for some food. So that is why they used the diversion of the stool, and proceeded to splash fresh stuff on him even after he had put on clean clothes. It was then, that one of them “helped” to clean him up and in the process of changing clothes had stolen the wallet. Now money isn’t that big a deal. I still have all of my documents, cards and we can get more money. But it is his passport that is so essential. It contains the Pakistani visa that enables us to remain in this country. It also contains the Indian visa that we need to get back into India and catch our flight to Rwanda in a month. I guess we’ll be spending a lot of time in Embassies the next few weeks. Sigh. Please keep us in your prayers. It’s not fun to be robbed.

I think I neglected to the fact about our money situation, in regards to the last entry. After I typed up that last one, we decided to get a little to eat and process through everything. We went back to the bus station and had tickets reserved for the midnight bus to Islamabad. So we walked down a ways to find an ATM to get a little more cash out. Craig had most of our Pakistani rupees, so cash was getting a little tight. After 5 or 6 unsuccessful attempts, at various ATM’s, we decided to return to the bus station. The manager was kind and walked with us again to try and find a moneychanger to exchange our Indian rupees, but they were all closed.
I thought they might give us a bit of a break on the bus fare, seeing the incident happened at their bus station, but no such luck. The bus fare came to 1680 Pak rupees and we had 1650. I refused to give them all of our cash, thinking that was a rather unwise thing to do. We hopped on the bus with 100 Pak rupees to our names, which equaled about $1.50 CAN!
The 5-hour trip was long and rather sleepless, but they did give us food and beverage. We decided to save our chips and cookies until we were REALLY hungry!
We were really thankful when a friend of a friend (now a good friend of ours!) came and picked us up and took us to the Canadian embassy. This was now December 24th, so we did have a few doubts that they would be open, but they were. After having to walk a bunch of blocks, we finally made it. Our friend was not allowed to come through security with his car, (it is Islamabad and with all the incidents, security is pretty tight). Here we started the process of getting a passport, in a foreign country, without most of the necessary documents. After 4 hours of paperwork, we figured out that we could hopefully get a temporary passport in 5-6 days, and then start the process of going to the proper Pakistani and Indian authorities to get visas. And this at the time when there are considerable tensions between Indian and Pakistan.

Now is the part of the story when God shows up. We were in a pretty low state, basically no money, no passport (which you need to show everywhere in Pakistan), no visas, and a person from the embassy quite emphatic that we should not be in the country for safety reasons. As we have written earlier we are not adverse to difficult situations, but this was getting a little close to our limits; and amplified by the lack of sleep, no doubt. So we again called our friend to see if he could pick us up again, and he told us he received a phone call.

The bus station manager had called from Lahore, and they had found the money belt!!! It was found not even close to where the man had left the building, but inside by the other entrance. Who knows how it actually got there, but I’m positive it was only through God’s power. It’s times like this, when we are absolutely helpless, that God can actually do something where only he gets the glory. Maybe that’s why he chooses to wait until we are out of answers before he does the miraculous. Along with the passport, the cards were there as well, (even though most of them are now cancelled and useless). And the other amazing thing is that we hadn’t even left a contact number with the bus station (partially hopelessness, partially too much on the brain), but he had just gone through his list of calls on his personal mobile, as we had used it to call our friend’s mobile. Well welcome to Pakistan!! Now is the point of the story where I’m supposed to say everything else went perfectly with no problems, Well…

Celebrating after getting back the passport!
We found ferrero rocher at the bus station and couldn't resist!

We did have a good Christmas, and after going to church (where even Santa made an appearance!), we had a wonderful Christmas lunch with our friend’s extended family. No turkey or stuffing but enough spices to make up for both. We topped that by an evening viewing of the newest James Bond flick. After picking up Ryan (Craig’s cousin) from the airport, we spent the next couple of days visiting both him and his friends in the area. It was a good time, meeting old and new friends in different places. That is definitely one of our favorite things about traveling, just meeting new people and catching up with old friends (hint, hint!).
After seeing Ryan off, we then decided to catch a bus back to Lahore, where we would hopefully meet up with the managers and thank them again for their help. But we couldn’t get a bus for a few hours, so we decided to hire a taxi to take us right to the border. This seemed like a great plan, we could then make it back to India the same day, and see the famous border ceremony (maybe a little more exciting with all the tensions!).
Two hours into the supposed 5-hour drive, our driver got a little careless and rear-ended a car that had slowed down on the road. After the usual exchanging of pleasantries the other driver then proceeded to take our driver’s registration papers so he wouldn’t take off. Then the fog rolled in, and they shut down the motorway, causing us to take smaller side roads. When we finally got to Lahore the other driver demanded that our car go with him to the mechanic shop & police station. After trying to convince the other guy we needed to go to the border, eventually he took us anyway. By this time the border was closed and we were once again in Pakistan with about 100 rupees. When we finally got to the border, we happily discovered a hotel there, and as a bonus they would exchange our Indian rupees.
After a good night sleep, and some English lessons with the soldiers at the border, we decided to it was time to go. Then at the immigration office we were told that we had not actually received an entry stamp into Pakistan. And this was after we asked the lady specifically to stamp them, because we didn’t think she had done it. After a little while they eventually stamped us in and out of the country. Not a bad week all in all. In the end we were out a few hundred bucks, but other than that we were all right.
Of all the problems that are in Pakistan, we only experienced the everyday type like: theft, car accidents, and incompetence. Although it was an adventure you don’t necessarily want to have, we would absolutely go back! For all the things that didn’t work out, God most definitely took care of us!