Today was my last day in Kigali – tomorrow I’ll head out west. I started the day with a tour hosted by the Nyamirambo Women’s Center. The NMC is just over 15 years old, and was created to provide women in the Nyamirambo neighborhood with job skills and support. My tour guide, Jocelyne explained that it really found its footing when a couple Slovenian women got involved in helping to create a social media presence and to organize a “brand identity” (for lack of a better term). The NMC now provides a number of tours, cooking classes, and other activities aimed at socially conscious tourists, and that revenue helps support the core mission.
Our walking tour explored the Nyamirambo neighborhood (some of which I saw on the bike yesterday). One cool area is a pedestrian only street which is specifically intended to give neighborhood kids a safe space to play. It’s decorated with murals, with games painted on the street. It was late sunday morning, and the kids were out playing in force.
We stopped to check in on the bike race – today was the Men’s Elite race, the final race of the UCI championship. In addition to the main circuit, this race included one lap of the “extended circuit” which included Nyamirambo and a climb up Mount Kigali. The neighborhood was out in force, even though it’d be another few hours before the race came through. We weren’t prepared to stick around that long, so we circled back towards the NMC for lunch.
Our lunch was prepared by a group of tourists who’d taken an NMC cooking class and was totally delicious – spinach in peanut sauce, green bananas, beans, etc. There was a couple from Maryland on an extended East Africa tour, and a woman from Australia (I think?) in town because her husband was a journalist covering the races. After lunch, I browsed some of the artisan products for sale in the NMC shop, then took a circuitous route back towards the race course to catch some of the action.
People say Formula 1 involves a lot of sitting around waiting for action, but cycle racing involves a heck of a lot more sitting around. Luckily, I was able to chat with nice locals while we waited for some action.
After the group went past, I made my way to the Genocide Memorial (separate from the Genocide Museum I visited yesterday). This was built in the early 2000s to tell the story of the Rwandan genocide, as well as other genocidal campaigns of the 20th and 21st century, and to try to educate people about how hatred can build to the point of genocide. It’s an intense space – less about the day-by-day events, and more about the victims and the ongoing impact.
Leaving the memorial, I caught up on the very end of the race on my phone – won, in a fairly dominant way, by the Slovenian Tadej Pogačar. Then I walked over to the Niyo Arts center, a gallery and cafe space. I had a long chat with one of the artists whose work was on display, then grabbed an early dinner and made my way home.
I’ve really enjoyed my time in Kigali – friendly, chill, and lots of cafes. It’s a city that’s changing rapidly – there’s loads of construction, and a series of urban ecoparks are going to totally transform the look and feel when they’re finished. The quasi-authoritarian state of the government would feel more problematic if it wasn’t being enabled in part by my own quasi-authoritarian government…
Anyways, onwards to Lake Kivu!
I love those African fabrics. Hope you get to Slovenia someday!