first impressions

hello from the land of a thousand hills! i arrived on april 8th and i'm starting to settle in and get a feel for kigali. here are some first impressions...

kigali is spread over several hills and valleys, so not the easiest town to navigate. but it makes for pretty views. the central part of town, where i work, is very modern and clean. emblems of 'development' abound. large modern building projects all over town (usually with a chinese foreman), roads newly paved or in the process of being paved, clothing stores, electronic stores, women in business attire and (to my great dismay) a somewhat sterile business district where my work is. i'm living a 15 minute walk from work, with a friendly british couple. the house is nice, though it used to be a clinic owned by PSF (the NGO i'm working with), so it's not all that homey yet. but the power doesn't really seem to go out, and we have hot water, a fridge, a stove. that said, this house doesn't come close to some of the expat houses here. i had dinner at one the other night - a little island of america in the posh kiyovu neighbourhood, discernible from some part of middle america only by the presence of the rwandan man doing the dishes. some of the people had been in rwanda for a year or two, but had few if any rwandan friends. the expat-local dynamic is obviously complicated, but that evening did leave me feeling a bit icky.

i've really only had one day at work, but so far i've been very impressed with PSF's mission, running and infrastructure. my role is unclear, as expected, though the project has a rotation system where every newcomer is shown each department's activities. so i guess the idea is that by getting to know the project over the next couple of weeks i'll come up with a direction of my own.

it's a weird time to be in rwanda - april 6 was the 16th anniversary of the shooting down of the plane which sparked the genocide. so this week has been a week of mourning, with a national holiday at its start. obviously, the burden of the genocide on rwandan society is difficult to really appreciate. the newspapers i've seen were full of pieces about sufferers of post-traumatic stress (of which there are obviously enormous numbers) and their care. i've seen on tv a lot of memorial events this week, and i think we have a work trip planned to a memorial site (a church where a massacre took place) some time next week. we were advised that this mourning period will be quiet and we shouldn't go out to bars etc out of respect. day-to-day life seems relatively normal - people are at work, the markets are open. i doubt i'll ever really get to grips with how people think, talk and feel about what happened and its aftermath, beyond what can be learned from books.

yesterday i went to the market for the first time! a very friendly rwandan man who'd started talking to me on the street a few days ago took me and my roommates. there's no market in the town centre, so you sort of have to know where to find them in the parts of town where locals actually live. i was very excited by the variety available. i guess because of rwanda's tropical climate, there's a pretty good diveristy of produce year-round. we bought a lot of fruits and vegetables, and our rwandan friend provided explanations, and some attempt to prevent us from getting ripped off (mostly unsuccessful). our kitchen is now stocked full of ingredients, ready for some attempts at rwandan cuisine. it was such a pleasure to get away from the sterile land of embassies and offices where we work and wander around the part of town where people live, barter and stare at white people.

(i tried posting a photo of the view of mont kigali from the wall behind our house, but i think that's asking a little too much of the internet connection...)