Kigali

When I organised this trip I did not consider visiting Rwanda as I didn't know much about it However throughout my travels I had heard a lot of good things about the country so when the option to do a day visit to Rwanda was on offer I was glad to go. Rwanda is also the fiftieth country that I have visited. There was noticeable difference between Uganda and Rwanda straight away after crossing the border. Firstly there is an hour difference so we went back an hour similar to South Africa time. Secondly they drive on the right hand side of the road and there is speeding fines so drivers follow to rules. The roads were lovely and smooth with a large number of cyclists sharing the road.

We drove to Kigali which is the capital of Rwanda. It is the cleanest city in Africa as every last Saturday of the month businesses close to that everyone can help clean the streets. I would suggest that it may be the cleanest city in the world as there was not one piece of plastic or paper on the ground. Kigali is located on a hill with green fields growing tea, rice and roses.

We visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial and I learned about the 1994 genocide which killed one million people within one hundred days. The genocide involved the Huti native people against the Tutsi native people where people were killed using machetes. The genocide museum is located at the final resting place of 250,000 people who lost their lives during the genocide. It was hard to read about all the people killed violently during this attract especially the children. It is hard to believe this genocide happened so recently and over a few weeks.

Our driver told us that local people still have a lot of hurt as so many people had family members killed during the genocide. Nowadays people from Rwanda can not differentiate themselves as Tutsi or Huti instead they only call themselves Rwandans in order to try keep peace. However from talking to the tour guides it sounds like there may be conflict from not having freedom of speech. Afterwards we visited the Belgian Memorial which commemorated ten Belgium UN peace keepers who were killed during the genocide.

We drove to Hotel des Milles Collins which was known as Hotel Rwanda. This hotel was used to keep some people safe during the genocide. We had a lovely lunch and I happened to bump into Claudia who was on my trip to South Africa and Zanzibar. It was a nice surprise to meet some of the Intripid group and Claudia for a brief moment again.

Rwanda surprised me as a great country to visit as it is so clean with plenty of cyclists. I was glad to visit the genocide museum as although it was sad it is interesting to hear about Rwanda's history.Leia mais