Kigali to Ruhungeri

This was a stunning drive through lush green hills, where mud-brick houses clung onto the steeply terraced hillsides. Every inch of every slope was roughly terraced, into tiny narrow plots where a huge range of crops grew, including bananas, cassava, cabbages. Rows of people worked together, heaving mattocks over their heads and into the soil. Along the road, people carried wood, leafy branches, water, pots and baskets on their heads. Children had jerrycans rigged up like rucksacks on their backs. Other kids weilded machetes as long as their legs. Women crouched, digging, on slopes steep enough to warrant use of a harness. Dry-faced children smiled in their threadbare clothes. People squatted by the road to cut long grass, toddlers toddled onto the road here and there. Everyone seemed to be working, carrying, or going somewhere with a purpose.

Many houses did not even seem to be made of mud-bricks, but rather had a wattle and daub kind of construction, with lumpy mud patted onto a woven frame of branches. Most villages had a pump or tap station, looking fairly new and built in concrete, labelled "Safe Water," and at each of these, dozens of people waited with rows and rows of yellow jerry-cans. There were also "Eco-Lav" buildings, presumably another recent rural improvement initiative. Maybe that's where all those Oxfam "Give a bog for Christmas" toilets have ended up.

The road climbed and wound over and between the mountains. The day was hazy, sultry, welcoming. The volcanoes rose over us, shrouded in low cloud, only their lower slopes visible, hinting at their perfect smooth steep sides. This is a stunningly beautiful part of the world.