How do you get around Kigali??? This is an excellent question. It is no easy task.
Kigali is relatively small, with it taking probably 20-30 minutes max to go from one extreme end of the city to the other by car or motorbike. Most places are 10-15 minutes apart. But the city is extremely spread out - laying over several different hills, so you have to take wheels most places you go. It is extremely difficult to get orientated here, as there are basically no straight roads, no roads with names on them, no addresses, and the neighborhoods/hills (each hill is a different neighborhood) have names like "Kimihurura", "Kicukiro" "Kibagaba" "Nyamirambo" and "Nyarutarama". For real.
When my friend Elli came to visit she said the city roads basically seemed like one big spaghetti noodle to her - and it was a very accurate description. Just check out Kigali on google maps to see for yourself.
The only way to get around Kigali is to use landmarks. So directions sound something like this -
"Take the airport road and turn left at RDB towards the MTN center. Make a left on the golf course road. Pass, but don't take, the stone road towards the Manor hotel. Our road is the 3rd dirt road on the left. We are the 2nd dark blue gate on the right".
God help you if you don't know what or where the fuck the RDB is (the Rwandan Development Board - just a random big office building that everyone knows because you have to to get around), or if it's not on google maps. There is no way to get where you are going. And if you don't know the RDB, or the MTN, or the Manor hotel? Good luck, sucka!!! Welcome to my first few weeks in Kigali - when I was expected to be house hunting and car searching and going to job interviews. What fun!
Here are some actual directions I got to a job interview site:
Head towards the airport, then turn left at the road that would take you east to Akagera. A couple minutes down the road you will see La Palisse hotel on your left (you'll see the sign for it; the hotel itself is down the hill a bit below the road). About 5 minutes past La Palisse, there's an Engen station on your left. You'll also see a big sign for "Les Enfants de Dieu." This is bus/taxi stop #15, called "Ichumi na Gatano."
Take a left up that dirt road. The trip is about 10-15 up the road, just keep going straight. The only part where "straight" might be confusing is about half-way up when you see a Ndera Psychiatric Hospital sign. The hospital is on your right. Do not go up that hill.
You'll pass Rubungo Health Center and a few shops. Eventually the road will come to a "T." Turn left at the "T" and then immediately turn right up the hill. This is "Musave." Our office is the 3rd or 4th house on the left, up the hill.
Shockingly, I got lost.
Until a week ago, we didn't have a car. This means the only way to get around (without spending a small fortune on taxis) is to take a "moto" - or a motorcycle taxi. When we got here, the first thing we heard from many many people was to absolutely not ride any motos. (Wait what?? I rode these all over East Africa last time I was here - including a 5 hour trip through the Ugandan rainforest on the worst road I've even been on!). Apparently they are incredibly dangerous (460+ dead last year in moto accidents in Kigali alone). Rwanda has no triage units, and generally terrible hospitals, so you do not want to get in a serious accident of any kind. However, what nobody mentions is that motos are the ONLY way to get around this town (unless you are loaded). Except for the buses - which are cheap and pretty decent - but people, please. I don't know where the fuck I am or where the fuck I'm going 90% of the time, so it will be some time before I jump on a bus.
Because there are no street names here, and no maps, it is basically impossible to tell anyone where you need to go. Thank GOD for google maps, because without it I would be completely and utterly screwed. Anytime I need to go somewhere, I basically stare at google maps for 30 minutes, draw a mini-map of my destination area in my notebook, pick a few landmarks that I hope a moto driver might know, and feel a lot of anxiety. Then I head out to the street. On any main street you can wave down a moto - they are everywhere, all the time. But very few speak English. And very few seem to understand my French. I usually have to go through 3-5 of them before I find one who seems to actually understand where I need to go. (I tell them the landmark, and the neighborhood the landmark is in. And while you're talking to one 3 others will stop by just in case you don't like the original guy or his price. Usually anyone with English skills wins, in my case). Once I've chosen a driver, I climb on and say "buhoro buhoro" and "buhoro chanay!", which means "Slowly! Very slowly!", and which also means "please please don't fucking kill me right now". Then they smile and off we go.
Here is a little story of what house hunting is like in Kigali - with no car and no real understanding of the city after two weeks.
I was headed to see a cheap room in a shared house. Alex was working, of course, so I took a moto towards the US Embassy - the only landmark I had to go off in my directions. I got off the bike where the paved road ended and followed my little hand drawn map and ridiculous directions ("below the mosque") - when there was an entire neighborhood below the fucking mosque.
I went to the street "below the mosque" and walked around a bit looking for the "3rd driveway on the left, green gate, before the incomplete house". I tried a few different streets when I didn't see anything like that. But there were just little local style mud and cement houses everywhere - no place a muzungu (foreigner) would rent a room in the big house that was described. All the dusty little kids ran around shouting "Ello!! Ello!" and "Bye" and "Bonjooo!" and "Good moaning!" (even though it was 5 pm). It's amazing how kids here continue to be so passionately delighted every time they see a white person.
So finally I went back to the other roads that were in the opposite direction of the mosque and found the big fancy houses with the gates. But there were four different long dirt streets, and almost no green gates, and definitely no green gates that were the 3rd driveway on the left! Or anything close to it.
There was also a pack of 4 roaming soldiers, armed with massive guns, that I was beginning to pass over and over. Which was awkward. I was trying to avoid passing them a 5th time, but I couldn't, and luckily when I did one actually said "hello". (I am intimidated by the soldiers here - there are many - and I don't know the rules. Are you supposed to ingore them, avoid eye contact, smile, or say hello? No idea). In a combo of broken French and English the soldier asked wtf I was doing. I explained that I was trying to find a house but had no idea where it was, to which he replied "I wanted to help you get where you're going but you don't know where you're going!". So I tried to have him call the lady showing the house, but we discovered I had no more credit on my phone. So then the four armed soldiers escorted me around the streets asking people where we could buy phone credit. Then they escorted me to the little store in the area of tiny mud and cement houses where I bought some credit. But I forgot how to put it on my phone so the soldier had to do it. And all the people were staring. Everyone in Rwanda just stares and stares and stares. Me, four armed soldiers, about six dusty, snotty African smiling kids shouting "Bye!" "Ello!" "Bonjoo!" standing in the middle of a pack of staring Rwandas of all ages. One of the soldiers calling the lady on my phone. What fun!
I desperately wanted to take a picture but was scared of how everyone would react. I'll always regret not taking one.
He hung up and implied, in a variety of languages, that he had no idea where the house was and also implied that I was in the completely wrong neighborhood. But then some other random guy who had been watching the spectacle came over and somehow seemed to know exactly where we were supposed to go, and, five minutes later, we were at the house. (Which is one I had walked by and considered calling to see if it was the one, but there was no incomplete house on the same block, and it was on the wrong side of the road).
The room was not lovely, but not awful. But most importantly they said "no couples allowed". Should've asked about that before this 2 hour outing...
So then I was off towards home. Repeat motorbike fiasco.
Life in Kigali. For now....
(Please tell me it gets easier?)
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| The soldiers who were to become my escorts... |
