So I've obviously been a huge slacker at posting in my blog since I arrived in Rwanda two weeks ago to the day (and almost to the hour - we [Joyce and I] landed in Kigali around 1:30pm Rwanda time on Sunday, 9 Sept. 2012). After 25 hours of travel time, flying from Ottawa to Toronto, Toronto to Addis Ababa (Ethiopia - 13hr flight), Addis to Kampala (Uganda), Kampala to Kigali (Rwanda), and then finally Kigali to Gitarama (where I will be living for the next 6months).
I was really dreading the 13hr flight from Toronto to Addis as the longest flight I have been on before that was probably a maximum of 6hrs and I became super restless in the last hour of that flight, but surprisingly 13hrs didn't turn out to be so bad! The airline we flew with was Ethiopian Airlines, and the service much resembled that of KLM (one of my favourite airlines to fly with). Everything on the flight was free, and we were given lots of nice goodies at the beginning to ensure our flight was a comfortable one - a gorgeous pashmina-like blanket, toothbrush and toothpaste, a sleeping mask, earphones and even some comfy wooly socks! Amazing! (Clearly doesn't take much to impress me lol)
The meals were really enjoyable as well - first was a beef stew with mashed potatoes, green beans, some sort of greek-like salad, a bun and a delicious chocolate cake/brownie.... the second was spicey chicken with rice and peas, bean salad and fruit salad - yeeeum! And then of course unlimited drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and all that other fun stuff! :-)
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| Pics of plane food and freebies |
I was also fortunate enough to have a young American girl sitting beside me, with the seat in between the two of us free (so lots of leg and body room and free space in between the 2 of us). We had some nice chats about what we're both doing in Africa (she was heading to Kenya) and about our lives in general - she was young, about 18 or 19 I believe, but very adventurous and fun to talk to!
Flying over Ethiopia was probably the most enjoyable part of the flight - what a GORGEOUS landscape! The pictures I captured do not any justice to the view I actually saw out my plane window - stunning! Ethiopia is verrrry lush and green, with many mountains and hills rolling over the countryside. Definitely a country I plan to return to and visit - the scenery was absolutely beautiful!
Four of us from the CCA IYIP program were flying from Ottawa to Addis - Sarah (who is placed in Malawi), Farhana (placed in Uganda) and Joyce and Myself (Rwanda). When we arrived in Ethiopia we had a 3 hour layover - not long enough to get bored, but not enough time to take a short tour of Addis either, so that was somewhat unfortunate. But we still managed to make an adventure out of it! After waiting in Terminal 2 of the Addis airport for 2hrs and not seeing our flight/gate number showing up on the tv screen, we finally realized that we were in the wrong terminal and had to take a bus to Terminal 1 in order to catch our flight to Kigali. Good thing we noticed an hour before the flight time because we had to go through security to get out of Terminal 2 and then hop on the bus outside and drive over to Terminal 1. This actually didn't take as long as we expected, but we were still grateful to arrive in Terminal 1 with about 30mins remaining before departure time - *phew!* Farhana, Joyce and I sadly had to leave Sarah by herself in Terminal 2 though, as her flight to Malawi was leaving from there.
From Addis to Kampala was a nice short flight and we said farewell to Farhana as she disembarked the plane in Kampala. From there we waited about an hour or so in the plane before flying out of the Kampala airport and off to Kigali. From Kampala to Kigali was also a very short flight - about 1hr or so later we had landed in Kigali! Yaaay, finally arrived in Rwanda! My home for the next 6months :-)
Passing through Rwandan customs was fine, which was a huge relief given that some previous interns had run into so issues with their entry visa at customs - but luckily we had no troubles. Best yet, ALL of our luggage arrived in Kigali with us - thank you Air Canada and Ethiopian Airlines!
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We were greeted at the Kigali International Airport with a very warm welcome from our Supervisor at UGAMA/CSC (cooperative I will be working at for the next 6months), Emmanuel. Emmanuel helped us load our ridiculously overweight luggage into the jeep, and then off we were for the gorgeously scenic 45-60min drive from Kigali to Gitarama (town where I am living and working).
Joyce and I were so incredibly exhausted by this point that unfortunately we weren't the most exciting muzungu's (swahili word for foreigner - aka. our new name in Rwanda) to accompany him on the drive from Kigali to Gitarama - but I did manage to hold a decent convo for almost half of the way before the fresh mountain air and exhaustion sent me into a comatose state lol!
Joyce and I had made arrangements to live at Azizi Life House for the duration of our placement through Christi (one of the Azizi Life partners) prior to our arrival in Rwanda; however, we quickly realized we had failed to inform Emmanuel about our accommodation arrangements when he told us that he had booked us a hotel to stay in for the night (oops!). No problem though, we were flattered by Emmanuel's thoughtful gesture and said that we would simply let Christi know that we would move into Azizi Life the next day - no worries!
Emmanuel had book two rooms (a separate room for each of us, crazy!) at the Splendid Hotel in Gitarama, with all expenses (including meals) paid for by UGAMA/CSC - how nice!! Definitely very unexpected and extremely kind of them, we felt really welcomed and already in good hand! :-)
Splendid (pronounced "splendeed" here, lol) is a really nice, clean hotel that is actually located just a short walk down the road from Azizi (where we live now). The staff at Splendid are very kind people, and the food is definitely enjoyable (we went back to the restaurant this past Friday for dinner as well). Our first meal in Rwanda was definitely not a Rwanda one - I ordered Spaghetti Bolognese and Joyce had the pizza, yeum! lol! Although, this was the first night I sampled the delicious "African Tea" that I have now officially become addicted to in Rwanda. The tea (from what I've gathered) is basically a combination of hot milk and water (or just hot milk), spiced with ginger and sometimes tea masala, a tea bag and sugar (sometimes added, sometimes I add it myself/or add more... lol!). It's amazing! I've attempted to make it at home a couple of times since then and have been relatively successful, but still nothing compared to how the Rwandan's make it!
After dinner we both parted our separate ways to our rooms to sleep - socializing was not at option at this point as we were both zombies lol. In the morning we were warmly greeted by the staff and served a lovely meal in our room, which consisted of a large omelette, toast, passion fruit, tree tomatoes (another fruit - the red one below), mini bananas and tea for me and coffee for Joyce! :-) Scrumptious! (see below)
Emmanuel picked us up around 1pm, as promised, and drove us to Azizi Life to meet Christi and get settled. Upon arrival, we were greeted with a big welcoming smile from Christi, who then gave us a very quick tour of Azizi and helped us bring our luggage into our room. From there, Emmanuel said he wanted to quickly bring us to UGAMA to show us where we will be working, and then he would return us to Azizi to spend then rest of the day settling in. Emmanuel told us not to come into work until Wednesday morning, giving us the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday to get settled in to our new home and surroundings - how nice was that?!
Christi was (and still is) VERY helpful and an awesome resource to have here in Gitarama. She has been living here for 5years now, so she is very familiar with the area, the people, the culture, and even knows how to speak Kinyarwanda! (jealous!) She gave us a short intro to Gitarama and Rwandan culture, answered a million of our questions and gave us a little tour around Gitarama, which was super nice! We really appreciated (and still appreciate) her patience with us as we asked our many questions (and continue to ask many questions) and as she helped familiarize us with the area and culture.
I think I will end my intro to Rwanda post here, and explain the rest of the past 2 weeks in a series of other mini posts to follow. But at least for now, for those of you that already didn't know (which shouldn't be anyone by now lol) - you know that I have made it safe and sound to Rwanda! :-)
