Oddities I have come across in my first few days in Kigali…

Well, it is 7pm, I’ve been home from work for a couple of hours and I’ve already had dinner – bread, cheese, pineapple and papaya. I have bought green beans and was going to make yummy bean salad but then realised as I walked out of the supermarket that I didn’t have anything to make the dressing with – I am overwhelmed by the simple things like trying to cook in a kitchen that’s not mine and in which I will not be staying for too long – hopefully! I’m also feeling a bit lonely and could really do with writing a couple of emails, logging into skype and who knows, maybe one of my friends would be online and I could share some of what I’m experiencing en direct – but although we have wireless internet here it can only handle one computer being connected at any one point – and the dude from across the yard has been on it for hours… same scenario last night too! So I’m writing another message for my blog about all the little oddities I have come across during my first few days here in Kigali – they are such strange little things that I’m sure if I don’t write them down I will forget them soon because they will become normal.

Let me start with things I have been told during my preparation in Germany: for one you are not allowed to walk on the grassy bits that are in between the two traffic lanes on the roads in the city (you know those things with palm trees and flowers and grass in them) – apparently you get fined quite a lot of money, or you have to water the spot for x amount of time, if you trespass. There are however little gaps every so often for pedestrians to cross over – today I saw a revolutionary in this respect – he crossed the thing but only stepped on the rocks that frame the whole thing – daring!
On my first day at the office we walked up to the main entrance and I noticed that the flower pots were topped up with shredded paper (those tagliatelle-like pieces of paper that come out of the paper shredder). I asked my colleague why; whether all this shredded confidential information had any positive effect on the plants? She said no – this is just for decoration. Fair enough – it doesn’t look very nice, especially not once it’s been watered 15 times, but hey – other countries, other customs.
Another rather interesting thing is that for the last 2 days I have been able to walk in and out of the office compound at my leisure – I have not once showed any identification to the guards. The second time I went in there I was on my own and the guard wanted ID – I told him it was my first day here and after that he didn’t even want to see my passport anymore, although I had it out already… I didn’t mention this in the security briefing this morning ;-))

After work I had to go food shopping and walked into town to the supermarket to get some provisions for the next few days. Kigali generally has good roads and is overall well organised. There was one thing I did find extremely weird: on the pavements along the roads in town every 10 to 15 yards you have big round flowerbeds – in the middle of the pavement. This means that you can’t actually walk on the pavement because it is constantly obstructed by flowers and trees. No idea why this is – just one of those oddities I guess.

Well – this is it for now I think – there is so much to take in and it is hard to describe it all – above all it is a strange sensation that this should be home for the foreseeable future.