Morning

Well, after 26 hours of flying I’m finally here.  We were picked up from the airport and driven to the Presbyterian guest house where we’ll be staying for the next 5 weeks.  My roommate is not here yet due to flight cancellations so I’ll be sleeping by myself until Tuesday (ish). 

The city is beautiful (from what I saw last night) and there are so many hills.  Kigali is home to about 3 million people I believe.  Today we are supposed to take a tour of the city and hopefully go to the currency exchange – and a convenience store.  I have no shampoo yet because I was going to wait and buy it here.  My bath this morning consisted of just soap and no shower curtain - a lot different than home.

Also I slept under a mosquito net for the first time last night.  I thought it would make me feel clustered but it actually makes me feel a little safer.  The house we’re staying at is nice and very beautiful.  WIFI is somewhat hard to connect to in my room but is easy to get in the lounge area.

 

 

May 26, 2013 (PM)

Today we went into Kigali to exchange money and get necessities and then took a bus tour of the city.  Overall the city is very clean and pretty developed and it’s hard for me to imagine all the terrible things that happened here 20 years ago.  We walked by the Hotel Milles Collines, which is where Paul Rusesabagina housed many refugees during the genocide and inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda. 

The bus tour was very interesting.  We went to a genocide memorial where Tutsi’s were forced to march to up the mountain and then killed.  We also went to a stadium (I can’t remember the exact name for either) where Tutsi’s were gathered and tortured.  The tour was very interesting and as I learn more about the events of 1994 the landmarks have so much more meaning to me. 

Also during the bus tour we were definitely stared at a lot more by locals than I’m used to at home.  The white population in Kigali is close to nothing and people definitely took notice of us.  However, the people are very friendly and I’m excited to interact more with them throughout the next five weeks.