h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

appologises if letters are wrong; I have an incredibly wonky keypad - q is where a should be, a is where w should be etc....

anyway - am in Kigali (Rwanda capital) which has traffic lights and little green men at some junctions! which people actually obey!!!
this is very unusual for africa, but kind of suits Rwanda which is a crazy mix of extreme Africa - the city sprawls shanty-like across its hills - and western stuff, probably something to do with the huge nos. of NGOs and UN stuff out here.
However, still havent seen many mzungu, so for the kids in the countryside we are veryt odd!

anyway - we came to rwanda in a matatu smuggling shoe polish; off all random things, but it meant they took good care to keep us sweet, help us over the border and not drive too crazily
Kigali is a huge mess; still recuperating from the fighting, but very appealing none the less, and it has all the typical african street hawkers and kids.
yesterday we trawled the woodcarving stands and picked up a few goodies... Fi wants to bring home a cow skin rug!

today we went to one of the genocide memorials; at Nyamata, wxe got there after a bumpy bus ride, and got off too early but we did manage to land ourselves with a guide Gilles; a secondary school student; who walked us to the church and showed us round - his parents and some of his friends died there, its weird to realise that everyone over 10 experienced the genocide, and nearly everyone zill have connections to some of the memorials;

the church is a small place - about 10000 died inside it, in an attack that began zith grenades, another 10000 werer rounded up fro, the nearby countryside and killed in the church compound; The locals have dug some crypts in which skulls and bones are displayed, and there is a coffin - in an Unknown soldier kind of way - of a pregnant woman zho died in the massacre;

Rwanda itself is gorgeous - rolling hills; and snaking flood plains in between, the hills are very dry, it is the ,iddle of dry season, but the plains are a sea of green: tea, coffee, sugar cane and papyrus...
tomorrow we are heading south to Nyungwe forest; and back to uganda on sunday

oh and for those interested in the transport -( today we got piki-pikis - motorbike boda-bodas; which we sat on pillion and zoomed up the m
ain road-hill to the city centre!!!

Very neato