Welcome to Rwanda

Bonjour! I've been in Rwanda for a little over 24 hours now. My first impressions, though minimal because I have been sleeping most of the time, are good. I arrived at around noon on the 16th after about 27 hours of travel and was almost immediately through immigration, baggage claim, and customs. A driver from the study picked me up and brought me very slowly to my house. The first thing I noticed is that people do not seem to drive like maniacs around here. In both Uganda and India, it seemed like traffic laws were really more traffic suggestions. One way streets were only one way if going around the long way would result in a higher fare and lights were mostly for decorative purposes. But here, at least so far, it seems that people obey traffic signals, stay on one side of the road, and stay somewhere around the speed limit! And I saw a traffic cop (which was, other than the city center, the only thing pointed out to me by the driver).

My house is about a half an hour drive from the airport so I was able to see some of the city, which seems pretty orderly (sidewalks!) although a little confusing. Kigali is built on a series of hills so the roads run around the hills rather than up and down which makes it hard to figure out any sense of direction. It is beautiful though. The hills are a deep green and the roads, which are mostly unpaved, are a deep orange red. The roads circle around the hills and as we drove higher, I could see down into the valleys, onto the silver rooftops of the houses.



My house is very nice. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and oh wait for it... a washing machine. Oh yeah! We have a porch in the backyard that looks out over an adjacent hill behind which the sun sets and I imagine I will be taking quite a few leisurely sits, watching the sun and listening to whatever random songs the hotel next to us chooses to jam (last night I heard a pretty great selection of African music supplemented by Pat Benetar and Bruce Springsteen. There are some pretty banging club beats right now.)







Unfortunately, when I arrived yesterday the house was empty. This past Friday was a holiday which apparently means that everyone gets out of town. So Saturday evening I puttered around the house, read, and watched some movies. I wont lie, I was a little bummed that no one was here. As excited as I am to be here, a year seems like a very long time right now and to arrive in a country with no one here to talk to made me pretty lonely. I missed people like crazy. But today my housemates came back and having other people around was very cheering. One of the women, Jeri, is here only for another month but the other, Leigh is an admin intern and, like me, will be here until next summer. Not much else to say quite yet since I just met them, but they are both friendly, get along well together, and seem like they will be easy to live with.

Well, there isnt too much more to write just yet. I'm pretty tired despite sleeping almost 18 hours today. Tomorrow is my first day of work, which Im pretty excited about and I will be sure to update more once I actually know what I do!