My visit to Kigali, Rwanda: The Second Day

Kigali is a beautiful city, I can not say this enough. It is very clean. I learned that they have a national cleaning day one Saturday each month. The people gather and clean up the city voluntarily. There are no public service vehicles that go into town making it less congested. To move from where James Lives to town we used motorbikes. They are affordable and have strict rules like you have to wear a helmet and a highlighter jacket.

I on the bike to Kigali town

I swear there wasn’t even a stray paper floating around.

Very clean streets in Kigali

The city is on a hill which means that there are the very nice view and trees.

The hills

On this day we didn’t do much. James’ wife, Anna and I went around Kigali. She has to work on some stuff regarding the wedding and I was okay to tag along. It is not like I had anywhere to go anyway.

The other thing that caught my attention was their money. In Kenya, the largest coin we have is a 20 shillings one and a few 40s floating around. They have money in notes from 500 to 5000. They also have 100 coins. It felt weird.

Coins worth 100

I was looking through some notes on Google Keep when I saw this note that I wrote about the experience. It is unedited.

My first day in Rwanda, well it’s technically the second because I arrived at the airport at 11.45 pm, but today is the day I want to talk about. I haven’t gone to many places yet but one thing I can say is that Kigali is as clean and as beautiful as everyone says it is. I must admit it is a welcome change from the all busy, congested streets of Nairobi. As I have observed there aren’t many commercial vehicles in town and if you have been to Nairobi then you know that it is a good thing.

Then it doesn’t feel so different from home since all major supermarkets (Nakumatt) and banks(Equity, KCB) from Kenya have set up shop here. Inside Nakumatt there are familiar products almost feels like am shopping at home. As you walk down the streets you will see the all familiar “equity agent here” signs and a few bata shops. The one thing that puts me off is that most people use Kinyarwanda and French and know very little English or Swahili so I have decided to keep my communication to a minimum. The family I am staying with is a delight. It’s a newlywed couple who are young and friendly.

Kigali is not so different from Nairobi, apart from the clean and congestion part of course. Needless to say, I did not feel homesick at all. The buildings on the upper side were skyscrapers but the lower side was filled with smaller buildings. I actually heard that the government was planning on taking them down in favour of more modern buildings.

The first day ended well, no much to say about it.

Previously, My visit to Kigali: how it came about.