Saturday 15 May – Everyday life in Kigali

Saturday 15 May – Every day life

I feel I have neglected this blog for too long now and will renew my effort to write in it regularly. One of the reasons I haven’t written for the last few weeks is because I have been quite busy. Another reason is that I feel I haven’t had anything interesting to report. Nothing exiting has happened really. Everyday life does not interest me particularly but today it occurred to me that it might to other people. So to give you an idea of what my life here is really like, when I’m not travelling and such, I will tell you about what I would do in a regular week.

First, I can tell you about what I was doing just a few minutes ago. I really love weekends here because it gives me time to just relax, read a book and hang out with friends. The very best thing though is the mornings. Normally, I eat breakfast outside on the porch every day of the week. It is so nice to breath the fresh morning air, listen to the birds and look out over the stunning view of Kigali with its endless hills. On Saturdays and Sundays this city is so peaceful in the mornings. Sundays are the best since everybody is in church and it does not feel crowded in this very crowded country for once. On weekends I eat my breakfast outside as usual but I also bring my ipod and allow myself to sit for an extra hour before I start my day and just look out over this beautiful city and let my mind wander. It’s like meditation. Stress is generally not a problem here since people never hurry anywhere but it’s still wonderful to be able to take an hour to be in your own mind and just think of whatever happens to pop up.

Most Monday nights we go to quiz night at a restaurant in town. It’s not very advanced. The team that wins gets their dinner and drinks for free and gets the honor of making the questions for next week. The quality varies depending on the team that is in charge but it’s generally a nice way of spending a Monday night. One night of the week we have West Wing movie night with some friends. We are a small group who managed to miss the hype of the series when it was at its most popular and we are now watching the dvd box. It’s a very good excuse to hang out with some friend and we usually make it a pot lock, or knytis in Swedish. It’s a nice way of relaxing after a stressful day at work.

On average we eat out about twice a week. There are a lot of nice restaurants in Kigali which have really good food. I have found a great Chinese restaurant that makes the best noodles and dumplings! There are also some good Indian places that have great food. Aside from that there are a lot of restaurants that have typical western food like pizza, pasta and such. I have to admit that I rarely go to places that have Rwandan food. As I have mentioned earlier, it’s just not very nice. It’s always the same few dishes and it never tastes like much. They don’t put salt on anything and they don’t seem to use any other spices either. Coming from Europe where spices are very important it’s hard to get used to that. There are a lot of places here that make brochette (grillspett) most often with goat meat (sometimes they have beef or chicken) and they are not bad.

Sometimes when I go out for lunch during the week I go to one of many places that serve Rwandan buffet which is ok. The reason for the buffet is that I would never have time to wait one hour (which is not unusual) for my food during my lunch hour. The buffets here more or less contains the same things: roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, rice, pasta, one meat stew and another with either fish or chicken. At some places they have a nice salad to go with it and usually you get fruit afterwards. It’s not very exiting but it doesn’t taste bad either. Food here is mostly made up of carbohydrates and fat which is not very good for you. It’s hard to find fibers and slow carbs, and they put a lot of sugar in most things.

Every Tuesday since a couple of weeks back I have French class in the morning. It’s me and a friend who are taking lessons with a teacher who is actually really good. A couple of times a week I try to find time to go for a jog. There are no good places to run really so I just run around my neighborhood which is about 5 kilometers. It’s hard sometimes because I have to get past all the hordes of people that are everywhere in this city. And since I kind of stand out in a crowd people stare, or want to talk to you or just laugh and point. You get used to it after a while and I guess people get used to seeing you running there as well.

The nightlife in Kigali is not very impressive and if you’re a girl and go out dancing people basically never leave you alone so that’s not something I do very often. If we go out at the weekends we normally go to a restaurant for dinner and then stay for some drinks or go to a bar for a drink afterwards. We often invite people over for dinner and drinks and sometimes there’s a house party. Kigali is just not a party place.

So that’s what could happen in a typical week here. Not overly exiting but I can’t complain either. My internship is very interesting so I’m not bored at all, that’s what I’m here for. The best thing about it is that there’s no stress! We’re on African time even though people actually come in time to most meetings, at least in Kigali. In Uganda people might come several hours late or not come at all, but here people come and they’re usually not more than 15-30 minutes late. I can live with that. It’s a nice contrast to Sweden where everybody seems to be stressed all the time. Also, the climate here is perfect. It’s never cold and never too hot either. Ok, I might have taken that too far. Sometimes it’s hot and sweaty here but if you compare it to western Africa for example it’s nothing. It’s bearable. The altitude makes evenings and mornings cool and fresh and it’s green and lush everywhere. All crops grow like weeds and nothing is ever out of season. We have great fruit and vegetables all year round!