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.