After 10 years of being away from her homeland, Laura returns for the first time to Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills ( Photo Provided )
Diary,
It’s 4 p.m., flight number two, and I’m sprawled out across four plane seats waiting for take-off from Brussels to Rwanda. It’s too good to be true.
Tap. Tap. The pilot’s voice peaks through the intercom. “The plane’s brakes aren’t working. We’re going to have to delay takeoff until the problem is solved,” he says.
It was what you could call a disaster — an additional 18 hours of wait time compensated by a free bologna sandwich. In a flight full of angry faces, Laura’s stood out from the crowd.
You could hear her laughter bellow down the airport gates. She seemed to know everyone — the family of five, the solo German traveller and the local Rwandans heading home. She cracked jokes about what could go wrong next and snuck into the bathroom to smoke cigarettes.
But the more I talked to Laura, the more I realized she had a much deeper story.
She was born and raised in Kigali, Rwanda, but left to study in Moscow four years after the genocide. She settled in the Netherlands with her boyfriend and had two children. The death of her mother brought her home for the first time in over 10 years. She said she had no idea what to expect
After the flight landed, days passed and time settled. We met again at Bourbon, a coffee shop in Kigali that rests in a downtown plaza.
( Photo Provided )
Over the phone, Laura tells me she’s bringing along her sister or else she’ll never find her way there and back.
“Everything has changed,” she says before hanging up.
By the time I arrive at the coffee shop, I’m 20 minutes late and drenched from head to toe. It pours rain at least once a day and this time I lost the game of keeping dry. You have about three minutes of light drizzle to either find shelter or an umbrella before you look like someone pushed you into a water-filled gutter.
But I wasn’t the only unrecognizable one. Laura’s outfit melted into the crowd of women’s conservative long skirts and dress shirts. The knee-high leather boots in which she trotted around the airport were replaced with flat wooden sandals. Her baby-blue blouse that was cinched in by a crisp vest was replaced with a grey cotton tank top. And her designer jeans were substituted for breezy capri pants.
She runs up with a smile and jokes that she’s been waiting. Rwandans are notorious for being late, so I thought I’d be able to get away with it. Laura has been living in Europe where life is rushed and watches are wrapped around wrists for a reason.
“Everything is in slow motion,” she tells me. “It’s like this,” she says while dragging her feet against the ground imitating how the locals walk at a snail’s pace. Her sister erupts in laughter while shaking her head in agreement.
( Photo Provided )
We walked up one of the main streets past the Milles Collines, a well-known hotel that sheltered victims, during the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994. Rather than peering through the hotel’s gates her head is drawn in the opposite direction towards the view of Kigali’s endless hills.
“It feels like I’m finding myself in another country than my own,” she says.
“See there,” she says pointing off at cluster of houses that dot a distant hillside. “The time I left, all this place was not there. It was just a forest.” She adds: “Everything is new, but in a positive way.”
Laura says the architecture has changed from small rural houses to modern plazas and buildings downtown. The roads that line the city centre are paved and impeccably clean. Every few blocks, she mentions how surprised she is by the developed landscape.
“It’s really quite beautiful,” she says. “It’s a sign the country is moving in a new direction. This is a whole other level than I remember it.”
Suddenly, she stops walking and begins laughing uncontrollably. “Except, I didn’t see any change at my house. The roads are bumpier than ever.”
