3,000 Rwandan Francs
3,000 Rwandan Francs can buy you 3.2 gigs of mobile data, an umbrella, or three motorcycle taxi rides across the city.
I might have overpaid for the umbrella, but I don't regret it; for about USD$3.60, I have shade in the middle of the day.
We're walking a lot. The city is hilly and spread out, but we haven't figured out the buses (though I'm reading up: http://www.livinginkigali.com/information/transportation/taking-the-matatu/). In the meanwhile, we find ourselves facing 45 minute walks between any given cluster of places we want to go.
You can see why we hopped onto the motos– they have helmets for passengers (though jackets and such are too much to ask), and traffic isn't too crazy here.
I haven't yet decided where motos land on the good/bad-ideas spectrum: I think somewhere between heroin (from what I've read, not a huge problem the first couple of times but don't make it a habit) and eating street food in China (excellent and delicious and cheap and convenient but there's probably a reason people warn you not to).
We spent a lot of yesterday planning our trip: in the tourist office of the Rwandan Development Board, we acquired free area maps and asked advice.
Some ten women sat behind the customerless counter, and though I think tourist information was their job, they didn't volunteer much information. If I asked something specific, the response was friendly enough but minimal.
I asked if they had other maps, and after a perfunctory search in a messy desk drawer, they said no. But Rick found a box of new maps behind the couch, and none of the ten women watching us from behind the counter made any reaction when he took some.
I asked about bus schedules, and was shown the bus station on the map– she said if I wanted timetables, I'd find that there.
The bus station took a five mile journey to the other side of the city, but we took motos to the Genocide Memorial museum (a better topic for a different post) and then gamely traipsed a further 40 minute walk through winding streets.
"Muzungu" means foreigner in the sense of "not African", and the moment we leave paved streets, we're subjects of fascination.
This surprises me, because I've seen plenty of muzungu walking around in the city. But maybe it's a tightly proscribed area where we're expected to go, or maybe we're extra weird somehow.
In any case, I see no muzungu as we approach the bus terminal. Rick is approached by young men who want to chat with him while he walks. A little girl runs up, smiles at me with a big "hi!" while squeezing my hand, then runs back to the group of women who are sitting together by the roadside laughing.
I quickly learn that "bus timetables" were not a correct thing to ask for. We arrive at the bus station (bus yard?) and it's like China: where do you want to go? Get on this bus, it will go there soon! Buses jockey in the center of the square; small offices/kiosks bearing different bus company names line the edges.
It's hard to tell how well any given person speaks English. Everybody seems to speak some, but we usually have to ask the same question multiple ways to be sure of the response.
Regardless, we learn what we needed to: anywhere we want to go, anytime, just show up here and ask somebody which bus to take. Prices are standard and buses are often.
I'm hungry, so we stop at a stall and get samosas, giant flat triangles that put me more in mind of empanadas de pino than samosas from India: they're stuffed with minced beef and a couple of whole boiled eggs.
Eating on the street is a definite faux pas, but we elect to flout it, sitting on a stoop and munching away.
Our extreme foreignness is rewarded with an audience, a semicircle of people who stop what they are doing to watch us the whole time we're eating. Which, these are big samosas. It takes a while.
A group of girls giggles to each other. A teen wants to take a picture, but her parents stop her. Nobody talks to us, they just watch. The stare continues even if you meet people's eyes. We pretend not to pay attention, and the crowd disperses with no fuss when we finish.
Dana meets us for drinks at the Inema Arts Center, a vibrant residential collective full of active art-making during the day, and we show her around the rooms of beautiful paintings. We introduce her to Innocent, the founder of the Center, who greeted us and showed us around when we wandered in a day before.
We close the day with dinner at a Turkish place, nice enough that the waiter pulls out our chairs and live performers sing and play music in ensemble, a mix of African music and mellow Beatles. Prices surprise me: the four of us eat for 34,000 RWF, or about $10 each including drinks. And Rwanda is expensive by East Africa standards!
Spreading maps out on the table, we make travel plans.
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