Rwanda 2018 | Traveling, Arrival, and Day 1

Well, well, well. Here we are again- back again to start recapping our July 2018 Rwanda trip.  I debated on not recapping this trip because life has been so busy the past year and we are just days away from our 2019 Rwanda trip. But the other day, I was looking for a picture from one of our first trips and went down the rabbit hole of reading my old Rwanda posts. Some of the stories and memories I had forgotten and I spent probably an hour or so scrolling with a smile on my face, remembering our past trips. Reading posts about past trips makes me just so darn happy and I know one day, I’ll be thankful that I did a recap for this one. Also, it messes with my brain and it’s Type A ways to do some but not all our Rwanda trips.

This makes my fourth trip to Rwanda, Cory’s fifth, and Baker’s second. One of the amazing things to see about our trips, especially after they are done and documented, is how they evolve each year. Looking back to our first or second year, we had no idea what we were doing! We’ve learned so much along the way and we are looking forward to see how much it morphs this year!

Friday | July 13th

I’m not sure why we always chose to leave on Friday, the 13th but it hasn’t done us wrong yet! Our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:40pm from Atlanta so we met up around 10:30am at our church to load up all our supplies and head to the airport.

Cory and I had taken the majority of the totes to the church the night before (when one fell out of the car on my foot! Ouch!) so all we had to take that morning was our suitcases and carry ons. A lot of our families were there to see us off and our trusty friend from church, Joe, willingly drove us down to the airport just like last year!

Our group from L-R was Sarah (my cousins girlfriend), my cousin Jordan, Cory, Me and Baker, Crystal, her husband Jamie, and our pastor Joel is squatting.

For the first time this year, we flew Delta/KLM rather than United or Qatar. We typically choose the cheapest flight and it just so happened that KLM allows three checked bags rather than the two we’ve had in the past. This really worked in our favor because Ben (the missionary we support in Rwanda) and his family had left some luggage in the States when they were here for their son’s birth in early 2018. We were able to bring all of their stuff back and a ton of supplies! We ended up with 20 pieces of checked luggage.

We made good time getting to the airport and when we arrived, there was almost no one checking in. While this is a ton of luggage, it’s not that bad with 6 adults (you have to leave one out to handle Baker) and lots of carts. With this much luggage, we couldn’t self-check ourselves in but a few awesome ladies helped us and all our luggage was under weight! For the totes and our luggage, I will take full responsibility for that because I have become the packing boss. I’m talking about most of our totes were like 49.8 lbs.

Once we got checked in, we headed to security. Jamie had forgotten to put his pocketknife in his checked bag and funny thing is, he got through security fine; but his wife Crystal got her carry-on searched for all his unopened snacks. Haha! The line to security was pretty long, which was weird since there wasn’t many people checking in, but it moved fast. And we had plenty of time to get to our gate.

After getting scolded for carrying Baker’s stroller down the escalator, she got to go on her first tram ride to our terminal. Once we got to our gate, we assumed our position for the few hours we had until we could board. Just like last year, we found a spot that we can sit across from each other and block Baker in but she was much more difficult to contain this year.

We didn’t want to make her sit because all the wiggles needed to be out before we spent 8 hours on the first flight, but all she wanted to do was walk up and down the main walkway of our terminal. We were okay with that until she started to want to lay down, face flat on the cold tile. After she almost got ran over by one of the golf cart shuttles, we had to entertain her other ways.

Traveling in jammies is always a good idea especially for toddlers.

On the way to the airport, Cory remembered that he forgot to pack ALL of our memory cards for filming. When heading to a country like Rwanda, memory cards or camera batteries really aren’t things you want to forget because you will be hard pressed to find them there. We debated on stopping at Best Buy on the way to the airport but figured it would be hard to get the van and trailer off the exit and didn’t know how long it would take us to get checked in. We knew there would be stores in the airport that had them and just bit the bullet and paid the higher price for two.

See ya later, America!

We boarded our flight and then got delayed for about an hour due to weather. About 6:30pm, we took off for Amsterdam.

The unamused faces of Baker…

Much like last year, take off was pretty anti-climatic. I was hoping for some excitement but Baker was just “whatever.”

Our flights with Baker were drastically different this year than last. She was glued to her daddy and didn’t want anything to do with me. She had her own seat this year (praise the Lord!) but once she got sleepy , she wanted to be held. She only had one crying spell and it was in the middle of the night on the way to Amsterdam when she woke up and realized that Cory had gone to the bathroom. She was literally laying on my lap and screamed bloody murder until he came back. Pretty sure there were some people grumbling under their breath about that one.

She didn’t sleep nearly as much as she did last year and wasn’t entertained by anything very long. This is the 2nd year that I’ve taken a bulky, handmade entertainment bag that she played with for all of 10 minutes. Next year (this year, really), we will just stick with lots of snacks and the iPad. Also, I’m making a mental note that both our phones and the iPad have the SAME games on them so she won’t have a preference of one over the other.

For the most part, she did really well on the flights considering she had just turned two but we were exhausted, especially Cory because she wouldn’t let him have a break. We dealt with a few grumpy people like one man who almost got an ear full when he was very ugly to Baker for kicking his seat. She did it like one time and we were trying to get her situated so she wouldn’t do it again. It really made me want to kick his seat all night but I let it go. Then we had a woman make a comment about Baker using the iPad and eating a sucker during landing and how a child her age didn’t need all that. I cut her a real ugly look. What do people expect on long flights with toddlers? They don’t want them to scream the entire time but some people have no understanding.

Every time we hit turbulence (we hit some really bad before landing in Kigali) or our stomachs would dropped, Baker would say “whee”.

Saturday | July 14th 

Over 24 hours of travel later, we made it to Rwanda! Woohoo! This is our happy place, you guys. I do miss the newness of going to Rwanda the first or even second time, but as that fades, a feeling of “home” takes over. I will always look back at our first few trips fondly but there is something to be said about being familiar with where we are and what we are doing.

We got smart this year and rather than spending an hour trying to get our luggage and totes (remember we had 20 pieces plus our carry-ons) from the airport in one trip, we made two trips to Ben’s house. Cory stayed with Keneth and Ben and the rest of our stuff that didn’t fit in the first two vehicles while the rest of us headed to Ben and Josephine’s. Some friends of ours and fellow board members of Cory’s on the RCRI board had been in Rwanda for a few weeks and were leaving the next day. Ben and Jo were hosting them for dinner and invited our group to stay. We’ve always dreamed of going to Rwanda together so it was very, very cool to break bread together with Ben, Jo, and family in their home. Maybe one day, we’ll get to make that dream a reality and do a full trip together.

We had the choice of making the 3 hour drive to Musanze that night or stay in a hotel in Kigali and drive up the next morning before church. After dinner, it was already pretty late, probably 10pm or so (Hello, African time), and we were all pretty tired but wanted to get the drive out of the way. When Ben received a call from Immigration at the airport saying there was an issue with Sarah’s passport though, we were told we would need to stay in Kigali for the night. Luckily, it was a small issue with her address and was resolved the next day. We sorted our totes the best we could and set them aside so we could grab the ones we needed for Musanze in the morning before heading to Olympic Hotel in Kigali. Staying at the hotel gave us a chance to have a hot shower and get a few hours sleep. All I remember about that night (because travel tired!) was our room was so hot and the fan didn’t work. Luckily, it was cool enough to open the window and let some air in and we all crashed hard!

Sunday | July 15th

Day 1:

The next morning, we got an early start so we could make the long drive up the mountain. Cory and I got up for breakfast and thought we were late at 6:20. Cory went to make sure everyone was awake and when he didn’t get an answer at any of the doors, he assumed they were already down stairs. We had forgotten to tell anyone what time we were eating breakfast and when we got downstairs, no one else was down there yet. After waking everyone else up, we had our first Rwandan breakfast of coffee, bananas, omelettes, toast. We very much needed the coffee after only a few hours of sleep. Ben met us at the hotel but didn’t realize we had totes at his house to take with us so we picked up our totes from Ben’s house, then headed to the house we were staying at in Musanze.

Baker was in a great mood that morning and it made us hopeful for the day (spoiler alert, we should not have been hopeful).

One of the exciting (or nerve-racking) things about going to Rwanda is we never really know our accommodations before we get there. We typically tell Ben and Jo how much space we need and they either book us a hotel or a house. We’ve stayed at a house the past two years and it’s worked really well. When we got to Musanze, I wasn’t aware that we were staying with Bishop John and when we pulled up to this guest house (like a bed and breakfast), I just knew we were in the wrong driveway. Bishop John met us at the house and things started to make a little more sense. I will talk more about this later, but this was by far, the best accommodations we’ve had yet.

We dropped our stuff off and headed to Nyabihu for church.

We were already about 45 minutes behind and when we got to Musanze, we noticed the car was running hot. The ride from Musanze to Nyabihu took us longer than normal (about 40 minutes) because all the slow trucks and we had to pull over to put water in the car because it was running hot again. Luckily, we stopped near a well because we had no water in the cars.

Baker knocked out on the way to church after staying awake and crying the whole 3 hour ride from Kigali. Hint- this became the theme to the day!

She wasn’t too sure what to think when she woke up in a traditional Rwandan church. That would be kind of shocking.

After church, we had lunch at Pastor’s house and got to meet Onesme’s baby (Onesme had his civil marriage ceremony while we were in Rwanda last year). Baker enjoyed meeting Baby Dorcas and so did we!

After we got done with lunch, we headed back outside to get our annual picture in front of the church. On the way, Baker made a friend and this was about the only time all day long she was happy. It was a really hard day, y’all.

Joel got to see Aline, that he met and bonded with last year.

I thought that Cory and I had a picture in front of the church from each year but we only had a group one from 2014 and we didn’t have one at all from 2015. Darn! But this will be a fun thing to do with Baker each year. Also, I’m pretty sure Cory has on the exact same outfit in 2017 and 2018.

This reminds me of an awkward family photo. We are definitely one awkward family but add in no sleep and bright sun and this is what you get.

This little cutie was in her Sunday best. Typically after church on Sunday, we head to Gisenyi to visit Lake Kivu but this year, we headed back to the house because we were all pretty wiped out and wanted to get settled.

Baker had cried that majority of the day so far and when we got back to the house, it didn’t get any better. Her poor little schedule was so mixed up and she was very tired.

We had planned to eat most of our meals at the house this year but there is one restaurant we all love and wanted to visit one time while in Musanze. While getting ready for supper, Cory was just gonna keep Baker at the house because she was so ill and upset but I wanted her to go. I hopped in the back of the truck since we just had a little way to go (totally deserted my screaming child, no shame). Cory was driving at first but couldn’t concentrate with Baker screaming bloody murder so Joel took over. It was at this point that Cory was very irritated at me for making us taking Baker then peaceing out for a quiet ride in the back. Oops!

This was also the only point thus far that we thought we had honestly made a mistake in bringing Baker. All we could think about was how we were stuck in a forgein country with a very upset child and no way to get home.

Well I be darned if Baker wasn’t the most precious Angel throughout the entire supper. We were all a little shocked but thankful for some relief from our screaming toddler. No idea where she got that sucker but I’m pretty positive no one cared at this point!

After dinner, we headed back to the house for our devotion time and called it night as we were all overly tired. Baker slept really well that night and it made for a much smoother day on Monday as we had our first day at the school!

I hope you’ll join the me the rest of the week as I try my hardest to get these recaps done before we leave on Friday (lofty goals, I know since I have SO much left to do but I’m determined to do it!).