Blogs from Ville de Kigali, Rwanda, Africa - page 7

Who would have thought there could be so much to write about and we haven't even arrived yet! Am writing this sitting in the bar at Nairobi airport, all flights onwards are either cancelled or delayed so we are 3 hours into a 6 hour wait for our flight to Kigali. The good news is that we have caught up with the advance party -Scott, ( aka "Ding Dong"), Jeremy (nickname as yet undecided, watch this space) and The Silver Fox himself (David) so most of the gang are now together and despite being a bit bleary eyed we are bonding nicely over a few card games. Everyone is really excited to finally be here and keen to get on to Rwanda. In the meantime, our luggage was seen going round and round on the carousel ... read more

Here are some details about our relatively mundane Saturday... We started off grocery shopping at Nakumat, a Kenyan supermarket chain, located in a downtown shopping mall. Upon entering the parking lot, you pull up to a parking ticket machine where someone is standing and they push the button for you and then hand write the (military) time on your ticket. Next, you pull into a parking garage, which is normal except for the armed guards. We were looking for an electric tea kettle for our security guard because it gets chilly (65 degrees) here at night. Upon closer inspection, most of the kettles had British-style plugs, and the only model that had a plug that would work here was $100. The purchase was postponed for Amazon.com. Next up...milk. Milk is available in small, wax-coated cardboard boxes ... read more

Attempt at posting two videos.... read more

I've just been fired from blogging. -Alex Anyways, on Sunday we went to the Artist Village in Kigali. It was an outdoor mall of shops the size of large, walk-in closets and no indoor lighting. We were immediately taken as suckers and ushered into the nearest shop. Nothing has price tags, and we are VERY obviously mozungas (foreigners). Quickly, we learned that if you pause to look at something and especially if you stop to pick it up, it means you really really want to buy it. The next step is to ask the price, and due to our mozunga-ness, everything is priced at least double what it could actually be sold for. Luckily, the first item we picked up was not something we had to have, and upon hearing the price we put it back ... read more

On Friday, the Embassy trusted Alex enough to loan him a Land Cruiser so we have wheels for the first time. On Saturday, we drove all over the city of Kigali with two couples from Alex's work. We attempted to go to the farmer's market to buy vegetables and crafts, but it was closed due to a local election. Instead, we came to the shopping mall which is reminiscent of the Blazy Mall in Soldotna when it had Mugz. We are currently eating at a Starbucks-like cafe, where Alex got food poisoning yesterday, but the only place we have found with free internet. In our tour, we found the butcher shop, unfortunately named the German Butchery. For lunch, we ate at an Indian restaurant in downtown and walked around to a few shops there. There are ... read more