Sunday, August 15, 2010

Driving tour through Kigali

August 11
Kigali makes for some great driving.  With the windows down, you catch a nice breeze; the weather here is perfect.  Mornings are cool (just below 70F) and afternoons are warm (just above 70F).  Folks start shivering at 65, and start looking for shade at 78.

Kigali sprawls over dozens of hills, so a drive through the city involves constant climbing and descending.  On cresting each hill you see a new section of the city: in the valleys: small plots for farming, brick yards and lumber yards, a large golf course.  Neighborhoods snake up the sides of hills: along dirt roads you’ll find small mud-brick houses, single-room barber shops (“New Look Salon”) and cell phone stores with hand painted signs.  Clusters of folks loiter outside chatting and doing business.  Along paved roads you’ll find blocks of gleaming, gated mansions.

Closer to downtown, you start seeing big hotels and government offices.  Shops are housed in four-story strip malls; corporate billboards plaster the sides of buildings (Coca Cola, telecom companies, insurance companies).  One Mutzig Beer billboard features a smiling African business man, toasting to “The Taste of Success.”  Two sky scrapers are being built in the middle of town.  Kigali boasts several large traffic circles with water sculptures and elaborate gardens planted in the center.

Along every road, you see a file of people walking, carring their groceries or supplies on their head.  A line of five boys, each with a kichen table balanced on his head march along a main highway.  An overloaded banana truck that had broken an axil is being unloaded into smaller trucks.  Pedestrians are almost skimmed by the traffic: motor bikes weave in and out of trucks and SUVs.  Everyone beeps their horn before passing.

In the dry season, roads are coated in a thin layer of red dust, stirred up by the traffic.  The air is cool, but there’s also the smell of exhaust fumes, and a faint whiff of burning trash.

1 comment:

  1. Nice description, I feel like I'm there! Except when I try to visualize it I can only see you in the Miata :)

    BTW, the fireworks story is hilarious!!! My officemates are probably wondering what I was laughing at.

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