Bujumbura to Kigali

The whole time we were in Burundi we didn’t realize we were an hour behind TZ, so when we woke up to our phone alarms at 6:30am to take the bus to Rwanda, it was really 5:30am. A fortuitous oversight, because we arrived at the bus station way too early and so met an incredible man named Negro, driver of the New Yahoo! Express to Kigali.

Negro (pronounced like the Spanish) has a magnetic personality: he is compelling, convincing, and ultimately irresistible. His eyes bulge out when he looks at you and the intensity of his stare and earnestness in his voice command you to listen. His demeanor – the way he walks, his gestures – are effused with power and control. This is a man who knows what he wants and how to get it, and he is exceedingly proud of his job as driver.

After helping us choose the best seats and good-naturedly posing for a picture for my African bus collage in the predawn light, Negro invited us to breakfast at everyone’s favorite Bujumbura café: Boulangerie Trianon. After breakfast we set off on our six-hour trip and Negro put on the first of many cassettes, all of which were excellent, from American country to French folk to Tanzanian Bongo Flava to Burundian gospel. He constantly joked with the passengers, shouting out friendly barbs and bugging his eyes out at them in the rear view mirror, drawing many a laugh. He spoke sometimes in Kirundi but more often in Kiswahili flavored with French.

As we climbed the gorgeous green mountains north of Bujumbura, Anette and I were awestruck at the scenery – endless huge-leafed banana groves, jungle-like vegetation creeping over the houses, and at the higher elevations, blue-leafed trees fluttering like aspen. The houses seemed sturdier and the people a bit wealthier than those we saw along Lake Tanganyika on our drive with Yusto. A difficult life of backbreaking labor, indeed, but a feeling that the people of these mountains belonged in this setting, like Sherpas to the Himalayas.

Overladen bikes struggled uphill or sped downhill past us, and groups of women walked along the road in brilliantly colored fabrics, looking much more like the “waswahili” women of the Tanzanian coast than the city girls of Bujumbura who dress in European fashions. They were the quintessential picture of Africa, carrying everything imaginable on their heads: baskets of cotton, bunches of bananas, bundles of firewood, four-foot stacks of Africa-red bricks, huge bails of newly cut grass, all with a hoe held over their shoulder and a baby slung on their backs. We felt like we were seeing an Africa untouched by time, here in the middle of the continent where few wazungu tread.

We crossed into Rwanda under strict security and Negro told us to put our camera away because people here are still sensitive to outsiders taking pictures. As we stood in the long line waiting for our visas, Negro came up to us and asked for our passports, then disappeared into the Rwandan immigration office. Five minutes later he reappeared with a big grin on his face and handed us our newly stamped passports.

We were now driving on the best highway we’d been on in Africa: perfectly paved and signed, painted with center and side lines and even adorned with curbed sidewalks (a very Western notion) in places. The hills of Rwanda looked much like Burundi, but the stone and brick houses even wealthier, with terra cotta tiled roofs that could have been Italy. Bright billboards sponsored by USAid and the EU dotted the road, attesting to Rwanda’s progress since 1994. It is clear that many countries, in their guilt, have given hundreds of millions of dollars to Rwanda since the genocide.

We stopped for a 15-minute break and Negro took us to a local eatery where we had our first taste of manioc ugali. Ugali is the staple food of East Africa, usually made from boiled corn flour. We found the manioc version much stickier than the corn, but ate happily while Negro fussed over us, making sure we used the proper right hand technique to scoop up chunks of ugali, and ordering the kitchen staff to cut our meat into bite-sized pieces. Just like at breakfast, he refused to let us pay.

Shortly after lunch the Rwandan police stopped our bus and two other vehicles on a downhill slope. The officer insisted on giving us a ticket but he let the two trucks go, piquing Negro’s anger. The two began to argue in loud Kinyrarwanda and Negro became furious when the officer wouldn’t rescind the ticket, so he promised to have him reprimanded. The officer cheekily replied, “no problem, no problem,” in English, and then a female officer who had joined the scene said something that clearly crossed a cultural line. Negro immediately opened his door to get out and confront her, and all the passengers defended him by yelling at her and banging their hands against the windows.

Indignant, Negro drove off with his ticket, but he soon veered off the road to the local police station, where he parked his bus and went to set things straight. At first we were skeptical, thinking it was just going to be a futile battle of egos, but upon reflection we realized that Negro was doing something that took a lot of courage: standing up to the system because he felt he had been wronged.

It took an hour and a half of waiting in the hot mid-afternoon sun, but nobody complained; we sensed that everyone respected Negro as much as we did. When he came back and triumphantly took his place in the driver’s seat, explaining how he had made the officers so afraid that their skin changed color and they rescinded the ticket, everyone roared with laughter and applauded his efforts.

For the next hour as he barreled down the highway with one hand on the wheel and one hand gesticulating wildly, eyes bugging out in the rear view mirror, Negro boisterously recounted the events while the passengers shouted out their approval and delight. And so we reached Kigali with one less African policeman comfortable in his corruption, thanks to the magnetism of a man named Negro.