Paved in guilt

I arrived in Rwanda last Tuesday, after a long slow drive south over the Equator from Uganda. Crossing the border by road, as opposed to the sanitized version you get in intl airports, was a rare and interesting event... I think that border crossings reveal so much, not only about the countries you are crossing between, but also about the general concept of borders in general. The border guards and customs & immigration bureaucrats on both sides were almost comedically serious about passport stamping and making sure our forms were perfectly filled out. As we stood in those impossibly long lines, I watched as villagers on the distant hillsides calmly walked across the porous artificial borders along centuries-old dirt paths.
After a very long day of driving, we finally pulled into downtown Kigali. Similarly to Kampala, Kigali (pronounced Chi-gali in Kinyarwanda) is spread out over about 10 of the thousand hills of Rwanda. And that's pretty much where the similarities with Uganda end. While Kampala was grimy, bustling, and effusively friendly, downtown Kigali is cleaner, cooler, prettier and quieter. But the quiet here doesn't feel calm, it feels like the quiet of someone holding their breath... Generally Kigali feels a bit more closed, and ever so slightly more hostile, especially towards muzungus--totally fair game considering how badly we fucked up here. However, the city has very low crime rates and feels totally safe--one of the few perks of being in a police state/military dictatorship (I'll get back to you on the others). Indeed, I'm not as harassed by street kids and beggars because the police round them up and illegally hold them in deplorable conditions in detention centers in the city (well documented by HRW).
Otherwise, the people here are welcoming once you crack the surface a little-knowing a little Kinyarwanda really helps and often elicits endless giggling. Unfortunately, it's a really tricky tonal language. Example? Someone told me that at a genocide memorial event a little while ago, a pastor who was giving a speech spent a lot of time practicing the phrase "we will remember forever," because a slight slip of the tongue would have produced the phrase "we will revenge forever," not exactly the message he wanted to convey...
Anyway Kigali is a beautiful city and is really Westernized and luxurious after Kampala. No no no, there's no hot water from the taps, but there is a continuous electricity supply. Well, almost continuous. It blinks out for a couple of seconds once a day, but that's nirvanic next the consecutive days without power in Kampala. Plus the city is just generally very well-maintained, with beautiful landscaping and roads with fewer potholes than NYC--as many say, paved with Western guilt money. Also, it's relatively easy to get around on the moto-taxis that zip up and down the hills around town. Ok, they are kinda dangerous, but I always wear a helmet and it's really the only way to get around if you don't have private transport!

The first week in the Rwanda was emotionally trying, intellectually challenging, and physically exhausting because we visited several genocide memorial sites (more on that to come). For that reason, we have a lot more free time to relax and explore the city on our own. Last weekend a few of us just spent all day lounging by the pool at the Hotel Milles Collines (feat. in Hotel Rwanda), drinking beer, and watching the World Cup (OMG FRANCE IS IN THE FINALS!! ALLEZ LES BLEUS!!)...
More to come on Rwanda soon... In the meantime, scroll back to some older updates and check out the new links to some of my pics from the trip thus far! (there are also some pics from Rwanda on the link below, but I must warn you that they may be disturbing)