Farewell, Kigali...

Tell me, does it move you?
Does it soothe you?
Does it fill your heart and soul?"
-Hanson

So here we sit at the Bourbon Café for one last evening coffee on my last evening here in Rwanda. It seems like we just landed here in the land of a thousand hills. True to character, I have completely fallen head over heels for this country in the very heart of Africa.

I never intended at leave Kenya at all this summer, but now that I’ve spent this week here in Rwanda, I feel like I was never not coming here. This entire Africa experience just seems like it fell into place so easily that I feel like maybe I was just meant to come here. I realize how cheesy and corny this sounds. I cringe to think that anyone reading must just think “Oh geez… she had another exciting day… things are pretty, people are nice…yes, we get it, you are lucky, get over it already!!” But honestly, every experience, every moment has been just filled with so much pure joy that I just can’t help
gushing about every silly second of every day.

This trip has been the crowning jewel on the entire summer experience. Shelby and I are like, the perfect travel companions. We agree on EVERYTHING. What time to wake up. When to go to bed. How we should do our hair. How much we should tip. Which books to read. Where to eat. What to order. We split meals all the time because our tastes are exactly the same. We haven’t had so much as a single eye-roll or argument or cross word. We really didn’t know each other too well before we got on the plane, so we’re pretty lucky things have turned out so well. In just 5 days, we have so many inside jokes and funny memories, It feels like we’ve known each other forever.

We’ve done an amazing job of challenging each other’s fears, but never pushing too hard. For instance (and I’ve left this out until after the fact so to not terrify my mother!!) : the moto-taxis in Kigali. Now, as much as I’m willing to hop on an airplane to a foreign land without so much as a second though, for the most part, I’m a huge wimp. I’m scared of so many things that it’s a wonder I leave the house in the morning. Getting mugged, throwing up, catching a tropical illness in general, extreme sports, any animal that can bite, all of these things scare me near to death. I had put motorcycles/street bikes on the list of things that I never ever wanted to experience in all my life (along, of course, with breaking a bone, getting stitches, going skiing, and getting morning sickness). Imagine my complete horror when we arrived in Kigali, and instead of the death-defying matatus as the main mode of public transportation, we find a city completely crawling with moto-taxis.

We spent the entire first day here exploring on foot, but soon realized that wasn’t going to get us all the places we needed to go (not to mention the fact that with all the walking we had been doing, I developed three sets of disgusting blisters on my feet from each of the three pairs of shoes I had packed). So with me hobbling around Kigali as an invalid, it was time to re-evaluate how we were going to get around. As the city of a thousand hills, we were awfully sick of hiking up the huge hill to the Bourbon Café anyways… (Let me just interject here to say that the Bourbon Café is our new home away from home. We are completely smitten with our dear cute waiter friend, Ally, who is probably the sweetest kid on the face of the planet. Whether it’s hooking us up with extra internet time or bringing us free plates of cookies, he’s always got our back. The kid rocks our socks).

So anyway, we mustered the nerve Tuesday morning, and took the taxis literally 30 seconds up the hill to the Bourbon Café for breaky. It was so scary, but so much fun. From that moment on, we were hooked. Never paying more than $2US, we have spent the last 3 days popping all around Kigali on the back of the infamous moto-taxis. The drivers all wear bright green vests and green helmets, and when you are lucky, the helmet they supply you with actually has a working buckle to fasten it, so you don’t have to tromp through town with one hand on top of your helmet to make sure it doesn’t come flying off and into the face of your comrade on the road behind you.

Shelby became the queen of taking photos while zipping down the roads, while I tended to hold on for dear life. It’s funny, the contrast. Sometimes, we’d find a driver who you would trust to drive you from here to Capetown, while other times, you’d be driving down the center of two lanes, with matatus on either side of you, close enough to touch. In all seriousness, once I actually got so scared, I had to close my eyes, and pretend I was on a bus, with my blowing hair the result of a wide open bus window! While I waver between loving and loathing the moto-taxis, I have to admit that I like them a heck of a lot more than matatus, and I’ll miss them in good old Nairobi.

Oh Nairobi. It’s funny how different Nairobi and Kigali are. Walking around Kigali, you almost forget you are in a foreign land. Things are so clean and new, it feels like the shiniest parts of home. I actually saw a city employee yesterday picking up leaves off the street. It’s just that clean. I am rather conflicted about heading back to Nairobi. I never realized until I left how smoggy and cranky and crowded and angry the city is. If it weren’t for the amazing friends I’ve made there, I don’t know that I’d really want to return to Nairobi for any extended period of time. Other parts of Kenya, without a doubt, but not Nairobi. Bittersweet as it is, my time there is coming so quickly to an end. As it stands, I have 1 more sleep in Kigali, 18 more sleeps in Nairobi, then 4 sleeps in Mombasa, 2 sleeps in Nairobi, 1 in Amsterdam, then HOME!

-Delaney xo