Mike's Rwanda Trip Blog: Day 5: Traveling & Butare (now known as Huye)

Today was a pretty light day. We got up and had breakfast, I was excited to find country potatoes, bacon, ickynumero fresh fruit, and ickynumero jelly. It was a great way to end our time at Chez Lando. We left around 9, stopped by the supermarket for a snack (jelly doughnut) and some cold bottled water. From there it was about a 2.5 hour drive to Butare, recently renamed to Huye, where we stopped at the King's Palace. The palace is a recreation of the hut the king of Rwanda lived in until a colonial palace was built by the Germans in the mid to late 30s. The two now sit next to each other and provide a stark contrast of Rwandan society before and after colonization. The hut was really interesting and showed the section for women, the section for men, and the bed for the king and his woman of the night. The king had as many as 40 wives, but only one was the official queen mother. We also saw the milk hut, and beer hut. Additionally, we got to see the ceremonial cows. they have massive horns that are as long as my torso is tall. They are trained by the herder to come out and present itself based on wistles and certain songs. The man sang to the cow while we got to pet it. It was crazy to stand next to this massive cow with massive horns and pet it. Then we got to see the calves that were not very old, the youngest was almost 3 weeks old. From there we went to the hotel, which was a slight downgrade in quality, but I'm sure there is far worse out there. So then we had an amazing dinner in town and back to hotel to enjoy the worst and tiniest shower I've ever seen. It was best summed up by another student's father who said you can sh*t, shower, and shave all at once because it is all so close and there is no shower curtain. Tomorrow will be busier and I'll probably have a longer blog as we will be going to a museum and a genocide memorial.