It is amazing the emptiness of the skies over North Africa. I know you are thinking, DUH, but there is a difference between the black, bleak sky of North Africa and the Ocean. As you fly over the Iberian Peninsula, the entire landscape is dotted with the picturesque, hilltop villages and towns of Portugal and Spain. Even the Med is dotted with islands, ablaze with the lights of civilization. But not North Africa. Looking at the in-flight map, it shows that I am less than 30km from a town (Constantine, I think Morocco possibly Algeria??) large enough to warrant a dot on the map, but when I look, nothing.
Bouncing across the sky in my cocoon for the past 10 hours and as I will be for the next 10, I am off on another adventure. Unlike my previous trips, I will be in a land completely foreign to me, meeting with people I have never met before, known only by an obscure name I can barely pronounce and the sweet, accented voice on the other end of Skype. Rwanda is the scene; the mission is work; and the hope, to come back enlightened and touched by a culture that has known nothing but war, betrayal at the hands of neighbors, and rapid reconciliation. None of this will be realized until I have successfully set foot in three countries, boarded three planes and hopefully collected a small token from each.
In my imagination Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) is a dusty town, crisscrossed by terre rouge roads, with innumerable motos weaving to miss the people doing the most ill-advised thing one can do in Africa…cross the road. Every building will be caked in red dust, from tin roof to the dirt ground the buildings have sprung up from. Of course, this was probably the scene some 25 years ago, but now I am sure the buildings are modern, the streets are “paved” or as close to paved as one can be, cars and motos alike, sharing the road, and the hustle and bustle of a large town. We shall see…
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