20 July 2014: Horses

This post, which I am writing on a transatlantic airplane flight, will be the first in awhile that deals with one day only (though some recent days could have had their own posts, whether by amount of possible material or amount that I actually wrote).

Awhile ago, I mentioned that A. and V. wanted to take me to see these horses, but that I didn’t really get what we were supposed to do with them. As it turns out, neither had they: we went there after church on Sunday the 20th, and only at that point did I understand that none of us had actually ever been there before.

The horses live on the other side of Mount Kigali, which is a big, forested mountain that I believe peaks at the highest point in the city. Nyamirambo and Nyakabanda are built on its slopes—and, as such, I see it every day when I walk outside. The dwellings stop at a certain height, and give way to what I believe is a eucalyptus forest. (Eucalyptus trees are not endemic to Rwanda, but I have heard they were introduced in large numbers after massive deforestation for fuel in the wake of the Genocide.) Somewhere up there, there is also a military base, for which reason it may not be a good idea to just wander around in the forest alone.

The walk to find the horses was a lot of fun, actually—at least for me. We never left the “City of Kigali” (Umujyi wá Kigali), but we definitely did leave the city of Kigali. Walking up the slopes of the mountain, we first reached the end of the bus line, then the pavement turned to cobblestone, then the cobblestone changed to dirt, which got rougher and steeper as we kept climbing. Similarly, the dwellings got smaller and more informal, and the views progressively more dramatic.

We probably didn’t get to the highest point, but we did actually end up starting down the other side of the mountain. At that point, the vistas we saw probably did extend into the Western Province, and we saw banana plantations, farmland and winding rivers stretching off into the mist.

I thought this was great, though the others started to complain about all the walking. It was a bit of a relief when we arrived at this place, which from the signs appeared to be a stable where you could ride horses around.

I guess we didn’t actually see most of it, but what we did was kind of underwhelming. There was a small stable with four horses in it, and they were available to ride, but at ludicrous prices. If I remember correctly, it was Fr. 20,000 (about $29) for an hour, which does not sound like it would be cheap for such a service in the U.S., and probably works out to the average monthly income of a Kigali resident.

They kindly offered to let us ride for Fr. 10,000 for a half-hour, or pay just 5,000 ($7.19) to sit on the horse while it didn’t move for a few minutes. This was all kind of laughable, so we contented ourselves just petting them and feeding them hay.

Again, I thought this was fun, and though some of the animals were a little feisty they all responded to patience and caution. The others were a little less cautious, and a little less patient, and more than once almost got bitten. A. remarked that she would “ride them in heaven, because there they won’t bite!”

An interesting footnote to the story is that we also saw a donkey on the same property. Only one of the three of them really knew the difference between a horse and a donkey, and she only to the extent that Jesus rode a donkey, not a horse. Now, that little passage from the Bible has a lot of spiritual significance: the donkey as a symbol of humility, as opposed to the prestige of the horse. Neither horses nor donkeys are native to Rwanda, though; it’s just funny to think that that cultural reference is completely lost on the millions of devout Christians in this country. I am sure it is explained to them, and I do think that V. got the gist, but still.

On our way back, we took a bit of a detour through the woods. I thought this was a pretty risky thing to do, having heard there was a military base around there and also having noticed that the sun was going down soon. I followed, though, because it looked like they knew where they were going. They did, and as it happened we were actually going to a place that people generally knew about (though it really didn’t look like it).

It was kind of just a slope in the woods, with a solid, nicely spaced stand of eucalyptus trees (if that is what they were). And a bunch of other people had gotten there ahead of us to take photographs of each other using the trees as a backdrop. I had my camera, of course, and one of the others had a smart phone, and we proceeded to do exactly that. (These were mostly kind of cutesy, posed pictures from all different angles; I don’t much care for them, and as such I don’t appear in many, but I—or at least my camera—was pressed into service dozens of times.)

It was a nice, scenic place, and I am glad we went. Generally, I was glad that, even though I wasn’t getting “out” of Kigali, at least I got to see a break from my normal, day-to-day work of researching and bussing my way around the city. And hey, I thought the horses were kind of nice!