With only one full day in Kigali, we resolved to make it count. We woke in the morning to a beautiful view of the Kigali golf course, which solidified our opinion of the neighborhood as suburban. We are fairly far from the city center, but it is a quick boda ride away. Luckily, since we will be taking them frequently, the boda drivers here are regulated, so we get helmets and can only ride one per motorcycle.
We walked to the hotel from last night for breakfast and wifi. We hadn’t planned much of this part of the trip, so some quick research was in order. Sustained, we got a ride to the Genocide Memorial. The exhibits are well curated by the Aegis Foundation, but the audio guide gave some much appreciated extra context. It was surprisingly direct about the role of the Belgian colonists in fomenting a class and tribal hierarchy, to make their territory easier to govern. The exhibit claimed that the labels Hutu and Tutsi were essentially invented in the 1920s, with Rwandans who owned more than 10 head of cattle being Tutsi, and the rest Hutu. It’s not entirely clear to me that this is accurate, given the current government focus on “one Rwanda”, but it’s a nice sentiment.
The exhibit was also quite direct about the failure of the international community to appreciate the genocidal intentions of the Hutu extremists, and to intervene with the troops they had available for the evacuation of their citizens. There is clearly a lot of blame to go around, but the exhibit didn’t focus on anger as much as memory and prevention. The nicely manicured gardens had several sculptures of elephants, which do not forget, and one with a mobile phone to “tell the world”.
Wall of Names
Elephant with mobile
After the exhibit, we went to the Hotel des Milles Collines, near the middle of town. It was a central landmark, and more useful to tell a boda driver that we wanted to “see the town” without being offered a tour. Ruth and I rode separately, and I was made a little late by picking up a passenger. A man in a wheelchair was sitting in an intersection, and called “hey Muzungu” (white person), to me. I assumed he was asking for money, and tried to ignore it, but he was actually negotiating a ride up the hill from the driver. He grabbed on the back, and we wheeled him uphill for maybe half a kilometer, until he let go in a roundabout and exited smoothly with traffic. Very impressive maneuvering in a chair, and the driver and I shared a laugh.
The Hotel was actually the real life location of the events from Hotel Rwanda, but there’s little indication of that now. We looked around, and noted the existence of a fancy restaurant on the top floor. We then walked across the central hilltop, and stopped at a “beach bar” with a fanciful mural on the walls, and had a cold Tusker. During the midday heat, I decided I needed a haircut, and so we went back to our neighborhood, where I got very good treatment at Justine’s Salon. I don’t know if the barber had cut my kind of hair before, but with a little instruction, I got a good trim and a cooler head.
Haircut
Tusker
Painted Moto
On the way back to our place for a nap, we stopped at the wonderful Inema Art Center. It wasn’t in any of our relatively sparse guidebooks, but a reporter from the New York Times was there, so they’ll hopefully get some good publicity soon. I restrained myself from buying a painting, but did admire their painted moto.
For dinner, we returned to the Panorama restaurant at the Hotel Milles Collines, where we were the only ones to enjoy the excellent food and fantastic view. We had a great bottle of South African cabernet, and enjoyed the start of our next great adventure.
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