On the Road: Kigali to Chato Beach Resort
I’m sure that I’ll have more to say about Rwanda when we actually have time to stop and enjoy it a little more. For our first day in Africa, we were simply passing through. My first impressions are of a very populous and industrious-looking country that is very clean and tidy throughout. For our arrival whilst rains are still falling, it was also a very green place. Every river valley is full of rice-fields and they are being worked in all states from planting to harvesting.
Although much of the aid from around the world has now stopped flowing, Rwanda seems to have made good use of much of it. The infrastructure was, apparently, already pretty good before the genocide, but it is being maintained well so far. The other thing that strikes one, on initial arrival, is just how many people there are. This is not just in Kigali, but every town and village is very populous and there are many people walking along the roadsides everywhere. Still, we are just passing through and today is very much about the destination, not the journey. The Chato Beach Resort, our destination now for just a single night, is more than 300km from Kigali and we have to cross the border along the way at Rusumo Bridge.
Computer connections at the border seem to be a little erratic and things take a little more than an hour to be completed. Emmy has more to do, making sure he is allowed to use his vehicle in Tanzania and tells us to go on ahead up the hill into Tanzania. A professional gatherer, no doubt looking for a tip, escorts us to the first free table at the very first bar on the hill and we all order a beer to manage the heat. Kigali, first thing in the morning, was misty and cool, but now we have descended a few hundred metres down to the Kagera River, the temperatures are climbing towards 30 Celsius. I’m not a beer drinker at home, but a cold Kilimanjaro always goes down well when you are in the bush. Drink whatever’s local, don’t bother with imported beers. We paid less than 70p or about a dollar a bottle.
Of all the people who I saw crossing, in either direction, we were the only three who weren’t local. I guess this just isn’t the usual way to get to the southern shores of the lake. Once safely on our way again, the roads are a little less well-maintained and the same trucks are dominating the traffic as before, but there are far fewer people to be seen along the way. Once we get further from the border, down out of the hills and valleys, the number of villages increase, as does the general number of people to be seen.
Our journey down to Chato is an uneventful one. The roads are fairly quiet and, even the section of unmade road the we need to travel on for about 30km, is pretty harmless to a weary traveller. There isn’t much wildlife, but there is plenty of local colour to allow me a few candid photographs. Where Rwanda was neatly painted homes along the roadside, Tanzania is brashly painted advertising on every shopfront in a riot of bold colours and designs. Somehow, despite the smaller apparent population density, Tanzania seems more industrious and alive than Rwanda did and I like it better.
The sun is almost setting when we finally make it to our lakeside destination. We are staying at the Chato Beach Resort, right on the shores of the lake. The rooms are comfortable enough, the bed is fine and the plumbing works. I even had an air-conditioner that at least could be turned on or off. I couldn’t get the remote control to do anything, but a slight cooling breeze was better than nothing.
I’m well aware of just how complicated the English language is. We have a nuanced approach to its use that can be very demanding on a non-native or non-first-language speaker. I try my best to explain what I mean in simpler terms when in Africa for this very reason. Sadly, it doesn’t always work and, despite our best intentions, the translation fails. This is something that one has to expect as a foreigner travelling in a faraway land. Sometimes, however, you are left to wonder whether you are dealing with an idiot or an incompetent. In the case of our server at Chato Beach, I fear it was the latter.
There are simple tricks to use when taking an order, not least to employ a numbering system for the menu board, rather than struggling to write everything in longhand. Once that long-winded process was complete, we ordered our drinks, only to run into a person who doesn’t know how to pour a gin and tonic. It’s always spirit first, whatever the drink, but this seems to be something that needs to be taught, rather than learned by experience. I can, of course, forgive this slip-up from a random person, but not someone in the hospitality industry. This isn’t helped when counting above one seems to be a problem.
I made the observation, when in Namibia, that there was apparently only one catering college in the country. Everybody cooked the food exactly the same way. The carrots were always cooked “al dentist” rather than “al dente”. Perhaps Tanzania – or Northern Tanzania at least – is in a similar position.
No complaints regarding the actual food at Chato, although the portion sizes were rather on the large side. I sometimes get the impression that a given chef has seen a photo of a dish and then recreated it in a larger-than-life form. It isn’t just an African issue, either.
There now seems to be a piece of forgotten knowledge concerning burgers, for example. The fast-food outlets of the west still have this knowledge, but it has either been lost or never arrived elsewhere. A burger is a sandwich – something in a fist-sized bun with garnish and sauce that you can pick up in your hands and take a bite out of without it either not fitting in your mouth or spraying across the room. I’m almost at the point now, where I have lost count of the number of times that I have had to use a knife and fork to eat a burger. Tonight, I needed to take the top off the stack and still required cutlery. It was well made and tasty enough, just much more of an effort than it needed to be. It looked amazing and could have dressed the page of any magazine or cookery book, just not easy to eat.
There’s also a deep-rooted desire to overfill a plate. I guess a visitor to a restaurant is perceived as going away happy if they were unable to clear the plate. It doesn’t work very well for me. I was taught to always leave a clean plate, sometimes forcibly, like many of my generation and I find it difficult to leave anything, even to this day. Added to the fact that we are travelling on a continent where people are starving and it really doesn’t sit very well with me. I really do recognise that it is a tricky calculation. Is it better for the customer – on average, of course – to go away feeling stuffed or still hungry. I’m not saying that I have the answer, but I would prefer to see more clean plates. It’s much easier to tell whether it was left because of taste if the portions are smaller. How does the chef know how he has done if all the plates go back to the kitchen with food still on them.
All things considered; it was a reasonable place to spend the night. Breakfast was acceptable, even if the cook on egg duty didn’t seem to know what a fried egg was and Fred had to try and show him. The egg membranes were actually too weak to hold the yolk together in any case, so perhaps the cook was smarter than he appeared. As a relatively inexpensive stop-over location, it was perfectly fine. We’d be back again in three days and once more nearer the end of the trip.