City tour of Kigali

After our visit with Plan Rwanda, we embarked on a driving tour of Kigali.  Rwanda is called the Land of a Thousand Hills for good reason.  The hills are steep and frequent.  Traffic in many parts of the city is a crazy mix of large trucks, pedestrians, and motorcycle taxis.  We drove though Kigali on our city tour and throughout the day as we went from place to place.  Below are a few photos snapped during our excursions.  One impressive sight that passed by too quickly to photograph was a man who appeared to be a professional cyclist - in a full cycling kit - blasting up a very steep climb.  That man must have had quadriceps like tree trunks.

This man crossed the street in front of our bus demonstrating one of the more common ways to carry a large load in Kigali.  Those are dried bean plants bundled on his head.  We saw many gardens around the city were beans and corn were planted together.

We saw children walking home from school all over the city.  Virtually every one of them offered us a smile and enthusiastic hellos.

We saw a lot of crazy streets in Kigali.  This was the craziest.  It was jammed with large trucks and people moving large quantities of every kind of wares imaginable.  There were multiple times I thought I was about to witness the demise of someone - motorcycle taxis trying to pass between our bus and a truck with 24" of space.  Or men with ridiculously large stacks of stuff on their heads walking into traffic.  It was basically Third World Costco.

As we sandwiched in between trucks and were inches from the faces of workmen, we were constantly barraged with comments like:

"Hey, Umuzungu, give me some money!"  Translation: "Hey, white person, give me some money!"

"What's up, Kazungu?"  Translation: "What's up, small white person?"  This is considered to be very derogatory among Rwandans. 

This was a very colorful and very large stack of mattresses on the back of a truck.  Yes, you read the label right - these are made out of Rwanda Foam!  James observed that they were so colorful you don't even need sheets!

Kigali is notable for many things.  The number of paint shops is definitely one of them.  I can't tell you how many paint stores we saw.  Rwandans must really like to paint stuff.

One things Rwandas really like to paint is, well, anything you can put a beer advertisement on!  Primus beer is a local beer - basically the Rwandan Budweiser.  Ubiquitous in bars and advertising.  And, like Budweiser, just not that good.

Tusker is another favorite beer, although they need to get with their painters, since their advertisements are not nearly as ubiquitous as Primus.  This beer is named for the elephant that killed one of the brewery's founders.  Seriously.  Order one for yourself and read the label.

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And definitely check out the bottle.  It says, "BEER ONLY"
Sounds good to me!

The favorite beer of Hobsons in Rwanda is, without question, Mutzig.  We are, after all, outstanding people, no?