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Day 2 – picking fruit and visiting a local mosque

Our second day here in Kigali has been calm and spontaneos. We started of by searching for wi-fi, since our hostels was down at the moment. We’ve realised that dealing without internet is more difficult than we first would have believed, so after accidentally ending up in a super fancy gym (fancier than anything we’ve seen in Lund). “Very LA” according to Anna-Clara. Soon we found our way down to a very nice european styled café, had some wonderful banana bread and went on to satisfy our internet needs. We found addresses and phone numbers, checked our facebook and sent an e-mail or two.

Not what you expect next to a dirt road in Kigali

Enough about internet, we went out on the street to find motos that would take us to the city center. We wanted to go to Rwanda Development Board, a REALLY big building next to the parliament, which we figured people would now about. However, after crossing through the relatively well-organized traffic we still weren’t there. Thankfully people on the street stepped in with advices and we finally got there. At the office, we got plenty of tips on transportation and accomodation for the rest of the trip, and also a tip on a nice market, not to far a way.

We went to the market where we found friendly people and beautiful crafts, with more than enough souvenirs for the rest of the trip. Some of us finished of earlier than the rest, so we went for a walk up the road. Suddenly we found what seemed to be a plant nursery, with plenty of flowers and trees planted in small bags and improvised pots. With my old high school french (where I apparently didn’t learnt exotic flowers names) we managed to get a small tour of a mans plants, which we all enjoyed a lot. We then went back, met up with the others and started walking towards the restaurant. Just by the market we found an avocado tree, with avocado the size of a big mango or a small hand ball (depending on who you ask). Suddenly a man had climbed up in the tree to pick some for us, and since there’s almost nothing I love more than climbing trees, I jumped up after him. He picked 5, I picked one, but to be fair he had a special stick to help him. So now we have avocado for at least the next couple of days and I got a climbing session that made my day.

Me picking fruit

A size comparison 

After having a nice lebanese lunch we continued with the middle eastern theme by visiting the muslim quarters. We saw a mosque, bought plenty of passion fruit and had an amazing view of the Kigali hills in the sunset. The motos brought us back home as the sky turned darker, and when we returned to the hostel we enjoyed fifteen minutes of wifi before it broke down again. With no wifi we decided to go for some traditional Rwandan dinner at a restaurant nearby. There was plenty of food, even though we didn’t know exactly what we were eating it tasted wonderful. However, don’t try the red sauce. It’s hot. VERY hot. Like one drop will burn your tongue for minutes. The only solution was to fill the mouth with ugali, their local porridge, cooked into some kind of thick dough. Fills your stomach, that’s for sure.

Visiting the mosque

And eating dinner

Now we’re back home and I’m going to sleep.

/ Gustav