A little expedition south

Last week our group went on a little 3-day excursion to Butare, a region in Southern Rwanda that borders Burundi. Butare (the town) is a mid-sized university town that suffered some of the worst atrocities during the 100-days of the genocide. We didn't have the opportunity to visit any of the sites down there, as we spent most of our time at the Center for Conflict Management at the University, hearing a rather interesting "reinterpretation" of Rwanda's role in the geopolitics of the Great Lakes region. In order to vent some of our frustrations about the blame shifting/evasion tactics/blatant lies we heard at the Center, we decided to go on a nice long drive South. It was possibly the most beautiful drive I have ever been on, zooming along the roads that wind through the hills, revealing jawdropping views at each turn and breathing in the fresh mountain air. Along the roads, women in brightly colored wraps walked along, swaying gracefully under the impossibly large loads they balanced on their heads; schoolchildren waved and chased after our van screaming "bazungu!!" (plurual of muzungu); and men laboriously tried to navigate their rickety bicycles up and down the hills, sometimes latching on the back of our van to get themselves pulled along.
The hour drive went by in an instant, and suddenly we were at the border of Burundi. A couple of us (yeah, including me) didn't have our passports, so we just sort of snuck into Burundi illegally... and then promptly turned around because after a few minutes the border guards somehow noticed 3 white kids tiptoeing around. But anyway, I just feel pretty badass having illegally snuck across an international border. It also just reinforced my feelings about the absurdity of some of these borders in the region. In the actual area where we crossed, the border between Rwanda and Burundi is just a narrow little stream, maximum 6 feet across and 3 feet deep--one side Rwanda, one side Burundi.
Anyway, after about an hour of sketchily hanging around the border area, we drove back up to Butare, and then onward back to Kigali the next day...