A young Rwandan scholar left a profound impression on me

In the Rwandan Genocide Memorial gift shop I bought a handy Kinyarwanda–Kiswahili–English phrase book. The tipping point in the decision to buy it were the phrases ‘This gentleman will pay for everything’, ‘Would you like to dance?’ and ‘What do you call this?’ Our Genocide Memorial museum tour was the sobering prelude to a cycling tour of the volcanoes in the northwest of the country. With this phrase book in my possession, I now felt equipped to deal with almost any situation should I become detached from the rear of the peloton and lost.

In the event, however, I kept up because every hour or so there was a rest stop to take on fluid and allow the laggards to catch up. During these halts the cycling team would quickly be surrounded by astonished local children, then adults. Amazingly, given its adjacency to unstable eastern Congo, northwest Rwanda is ‘safe’ and open to tourists, though I saw few others along the way and we were a sensation wherever we went.

At each rest stop I would come puffing up last by which point our cycling party would already be thoroughly rested. Speechless with exhaustion, I would throw my bike down, then myself, as if I’d been shot, and shake my head despairingly at any approach made by the local children for a comment or a reaction. Then the signal would be given to remount. It wasn’t until the third day that my stamina had increased enough to remain upright during some of these halts.

On one occasion we stopped for a breather at the bottom of a long hill. About 50 locals were clustered around scrutinising us. I was standing with my bike apart from the main group and attracting no attention when a boy of about ten (the same age as my grandson), a barefoot, gentle soul in filthy rags, came and stood about five yards off to consider me and my two and a half grand’s worth of electric bike.