Rwanda--an experience. *Chronicles of a West African in Kigali*: Weekend in Kigali

Carmen and I just ended our first weekend in Kigali!

Saturday, we pretty much spent the earlier part of the day at home catching up on more sleep as we are still jet-lagged. Later on in the afternoon, we spent time with our new Ghanaian friend, Ama, who interns with the World Food Program (WFP). It was refreshing to hang out with another intern who has been in Kigali for a while now and is familiar with the city. Turns out she went to my sister boarding school in Ghana (SOS Hermann Gmeiner), which made the conversation more entertaining. Later that night, we Tantine Antoinette (another aunt) passed by to take us to spend some time at her house. She lives closer to the WHO office so it will make our commute to work easier.

Today (Sunday), we opted to go to Christian Life Assembly (CLA) instead of the Catholic church with Tantine. Ama recommended CLA and said the service was done in English so we decided to check it out. The set up of the church, the praise and worship, etc was very much like being in a non-denominational church in America. We dragged along Carmen's cousin, Jean Paul, who on our way to church told us he had converted to Islam. Overall, we liked the service and I think we will come back.

After church, we found ourselves at the MTN center which is like a mini mall with shops and restaurants on different floors. We ended up at Bourbon Cafe which was really nice! We got ourselves some croissants and smoothies. They had free WiFi and there were a lot of umuzungu's around (I think I might be coming here more often). The rest of the afternoon was spent with the grandparents, more aunties and uncles who all live in the same neighborhood (matter of fact the same street)!

The evening ended with Carmen and I spending more time with Ama and her Cameroonian friend talking about how we West Africans are louder than Rwandese. In search of a taxi to go back home, I noticed the neighborhoods were quiet again (I guess they go to bed early in these parts)! The most interesting part of today was taxi taking. The first taxi driver we tried to take (myself, Ama, Carmen and her cousin) tried to overprice our fare. We tried bargaining with him in French with support from our little Kinyarwanda. After a little back and forth, he budged an accepted our 2000 RWF that we were willing to pay for the short distance he was trying to charge us 4000 RWF for. He gave us his number at the end of the trip so now we have Fred's number to call incase we ever needed a taxi. After we parted ways, Carmen and I had to take a taxi back home by ourselves. Our driver spoke Swahili, no French and very little Kinyarwanda. We used the American Embassy and the Police Hospital as our landmark of what was close to the house. The rest of the directions was left in the fate of my Swahili language app. The directions were limited to Kulia (right) and Moja kwa mona (straight ahead). Surprisingly we were able to make it home, although we almost got lost and were saved by remembering that Red Cross was on the same street as the house. We used our few words to bargain the taxi fare and bid the driver good night.

Tomorrow at 8am, our first day as interns starts. We are attempting to go to bed early tonight as we are still trying to get out of jet-lag. Hopefully, we wake up on time.

Ps: Happy Mother's Day to all our mother's who made it possible for us to even live to get such opportunities in life. God bless you all!

Have a blessed week guys :)!