I got a moto into town and upon arrival, which was about
12:30, everything was eerily quiet.
Except for the quavering tones of the Muezzin from the mosque floating
over the city centre, the usually bustling streets were strangely silent. Slowly shops began to open one by one and
life crept back into the sleeping streets.
I stopped at Cafe Simba for what is (in my opinion) the best latte in
Rwanda and then went to the bank and to buy a couple of bits before meeting up
with other volunteers for lunch. After
lunch I had to dash back to the dorm in order to get ready for the run. Judy and I headed off to Nyamirambo for the
meeting point and psyched ourselves up for the run. Kigali – like the rest of Rwanda – is
enormously hilly. The run itself was
approx 10km and there were points where the route climbed endlessly uphill at a
gradient too steep to manage a run. The
locals looked at us as though we were mad, although a few offered shouts of
encouragement. And of course, if there
are uphills, there must be downhills.
These were equally sharp and several of them involved running through
rutted drainage ditches with enormous potential for
twisting/breaking/destroying ankles if you took a wrong step. There were several sharp corners, and on one
of these there was a recently dug well excavation, which I very nearly ended up
in thanks to the strong shove provided from the runner behind me. There was also a ravine to jump. Well, I say ravine – it was a stream that had
down cut the surrounding area so was over a metre deep and about a metre
wide. I just decided to go for it and
see what happened. I was not overly
convinced I would make it to the opposite bank, but my foot managed to land
just over the edge of the cliff and I ran on through the banana plantation to
the next obstacle (more hills). The
cruellest part was that most of the last km was uphill – I thought it would
never end and was looking out for the red signage of the bar the whole time,
desperate for it to be over. I was
parched. Still, it was nice to get back
and have a cold fanta and bottle of water before heading off for a shower and a
night out in Nyamirambo. Judy and I were
dead chuffed with ourselves for making it round the course in such style.
Nyamirambo is a
suburb of Kigali and has quite a nice vibe to it. We went for dinner in a Congolese restaurant
(similar to Rwandan food). We had a very
long wait, so had a few drinks and a good chat whilst we waited. After this we moved on up the hill to a
club. It was extremely lively and there
was lots of dancing going on, but I’m afraid I was a bit tired by this point
after my earlier exertion, so decided just to sit quietly and watch whilst
sipping on my water (living on the edge!).
After about an hour we headed out to see what else was happening around
Nyamirambo. There were plenty of spots
in which to sample the nightlife, but I decided it was time to say goodnight
and head home.
