Capital Excitement

This Saturday I had arranged to meet a few friends in Kigali for lunch and evening drinks whilst watching the sun set.  This seemed like a most exciting prospect – especially the thought of eating lots of tasty food, so I set off at 9:30 in search of a bus.  Upon arrival at the Onatracom ticket sales office, I managed to establish that there were no tickets for the 10am bus, only 12 midday, so I walked down to the bus park to take my chances...  As I approached, several ticket sellers saw me and ran towards me waving their ticket books.  One of them was shouting “Aliceeee!  Aliceeeee!”, which was nice.  We all greeted each other and one of them proudly pointed to a big bus in the middle of the bus park so I asked him (my now well practised Kinyarwanda phrase) was the big bus going to Kigali?  Soon?  I was in luck and herded onto the bus which left straight away.

After a nice journey, which included much singing (other passengers, not me), we arrived two hours later in Kigali.  I decided to head to the MTN centre to see if I could get my old UK phone unlocked.  I was advised this was not possible, but was told where to go to find some experts who may be able to help.  So, after a lovely lunch with friends in La Gallette, I went to search out some experts.  I approached a mobile phone accessory shop and asked there and they said they could not do it but would find someone to help.  They called a guy off the street.  He then looked at my phone and told me it would cost 15 000 FRW.  I said this was not possible and I would not pay more than 5 000.  We eventually settled on this amount and I was asked to follow him...we walked down a few streets and turned into an alley where there was a row of mobile phone and computer repair centres.  It would not be somewhere I would have wandered into myself!  At the repair kiosk we had to haggle again, and they agreed on the same price.  I was quite proud of how much of this I had managed to achieve in Kinyarwanda and it definitely seemed to please the locals that I was trying.  Whilst waiting, a lady came asking for money.  I explained in Kinyarwanda that I had had to hand all my money over to the shop so I could not give her any.  She thought this was hilarious, so shook my hand and hugged me and wandered off laughing.

Eventually, sometime later, my phone was ready for use and I was delighted to be able to have a familiar handset (my African bought one is not so good).  So I headed off to meet Ste, who I was staying with.  Only I could not remember the instructions for how to get to where he lived and I could not get hold of him on the phone.  So I asked a security guard directions.  He could not help me, but hailed someone else on the street who very kindly walked me to the bus stop despite the fact that his bus was leaving from the opposite end of town.  We had a nice chat and then I negotiated my way onto the bus.  On arrival in Nyamirambo I had still not heard from Ste, so I purchased a fanta at a shop and sat down to drink it.  I was immediately surrounded by local people and handed a baby to look after.  She was a lovely baby and we all had a nice chat for 20mins, when Ste got in touch and we established I had the wrong contact number all along.

I went back to his lovely house and we had some coffee before heading out to the local bar for sunset and dinner and drinks.  We had a lovely evening watching the sun set over Kigali and it was lovely to catch up with people.  The chicken kebab I ordered, which turned out to be an entire roast chicken and not a kebab, was also delicious.  As were the jacket potatoes.  We returned for more conversation and snacks at Ste’s before a very late night for me (11pm – well, I’d been up since 5am!).  I had a great sleep and slept in until 6am on Sunday morning as there are no prisoners banging and singing here at 5am!  A very lovely time indeed.  And it got better.  Ste needed to practise his Thai massage skills, so I very kindly allowed him to practise on me.  Eventually I headed back to town to meet Lesley and Steve, who were coming to stay with us.  We had a lovely salad for lunch and then did a quick shop in Nakumatt before heading off to get the bus.  Which was another adventure in itself really, but it all turned out fine and we got on another big bus and made it safely back to Kibungo.