I often forget, when I’m not in the middle of traveling long distances, that I don’t like it all that much. It’s fun and exciting at first, but after about two or three days, when you haven’t changed your clothes, brushed your teeth, or gotten any decent sleep to speak of, it gets pretty old. My breaking point was right around hour six at the Nairobi airport – my plane to Kigali was delayed for unspecified reasons (later we found out there was some mysterious “technical problem” – not really what you want to hear when you are actually on the plane) and all of us Rwanda-bound passengers had to sit and fidget while every single flight to every other part of Africa (and Turkey!) except for ours was called to board through our gate. Luckily, we finally got our turn to wander aimlessly across the tarmac (how the people in front of me knew which plane to get on I do not know), just in time to avoid me losing my mind entirely.
The rest of the trip was fine though – everything else was on schedule, and none of my flights were more than 7 hours or so at a time. Virgin Atlantic has great movies and great food (Katie, they served me cheesecake!) and Kenya Air is actually pretty decent. I had an 11 hour layover at Heathrow, so I left the airport and tooled around London for the day, managing to get a wicked sunburn on my face from napping a little too long on Turnham Green. Also, in case anyone is planning a trip there anytime soon, here’s a little info on what $20 gets you: two single ride tickets on the Tube and an iced mocha. Seriously. This cements my intense dislike of the British pound.
Anyway, so I’ve been in Kigali now for two days, and I LOVE it. The city is much bigger than I expected, and really beautiful. Rwanda is pretty much entirely made of hills (it's known as "the land of a thousand hills"), so everywhere you go has a great view. It’s also pretty good exercise just walking around! Life in the house is great too – we have a wonderful cook, Seraphine, and a guard, Isaac, who I also like a lot. AND I get the top bunk of a bunk bed. I love bunk beds! Turns out the mothballs were a good call though – our old friend the cockroach is no stranger to Kigali.
My driver met me at the airport on Friday afternoon (I can’t tell you how grateful I was that he didn’t give up on me and leave!) and took me to the house in Kiyovu (the neighborhood in Kigali where we live), giving me a good tour of the city on the way. We live just down the hill from Paul Kagame’s house/compound (he’s the Rwandan president who, by the way, is revered here) – it turns out we’re in a pretty wealthy area. Marianna, an intern from U of Michigan who is getting a joint degree in public health & social work, was at the house when I got there. (Everyone else was in Goma, just across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – more on that later.) Marianna’s been a great hostess/tour guide, and constantly saves my butt with her excellent French :) I also finally got to meet a bunch of the other people I’ll be working with when they returned to the house this evening – I’ve already learned a lot about NGO/government/development politics, and I’m really excited about the projects I’ll be working on – it looks like I’m going to have a ton to do!
There's so much more to tell, but this is already overly long and I need to go to bed. But the point is, so far, so good! Now if I can just figure out how to not keep shocking myself on the power cord to my laptop…
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