Getting Here

After three long days of traveling, I  finally made it to Kabale, Uganda. I left Connecticut at 8:45am on Friday morning, and arrived in Kabale at around 4pm local time—9am in New York— on Sunday afternoon. The trip, while long and exhausting, was straight forward and uneventful. While I wish I could say I’d gotten to see the cities of Montréal and Amsterdam during my layovers there, people-watching in the airport was almost as good. It has always amazed me to see so many people who you may never again encounter, but who happened to be in the same airport, at the same time, going to the same place, for vastly different reasons.

The tarmac at KGL

This trip for me was different in that it was the first time that instead of feeling nothing but excited as I got closer to my destination, I felt more and more terrrified. So after some serious waves of self-doubt on my last 9 hour flight, I landed at Kigali International Airport (quick side note: here in Southwestern Uganda, “ki” sounds are pronounced as a hard “ch”, so Kigali is actualy pronounced Chigali).  As I was waiting in line at passport control,  I had my first direct encounter with the lack of resources in a developing country—the power went out. Everyone continued to go about their business—this is a normal occurrence here—and the generator soon kicked in, but it made me realize that energy is not consistently available even for necessary institutions or for those who can afford it.

View from the hostel in Kigale, Rwanda

Once I cleared customs,  I walked outside and was met by one of KIHEFO’s drivers, Enock, the CFHI program coordinator, Trina, Lillian, a social worker and tour guide for KIHEFO, and the two other participants who flew into Kigali: Marti and Marni. At this point any of the fear I had been feeling for the past several hours disappeared. The city looked beautiful, everyone was so welcoming, and I had completed the difficult part of the journey on my own. We went back to the hostel for the night, took some much needed showers, and went to sleep. I woke up completely awake at 5am, so I just listened to the birds chirping until the others got up. There was a beautiful view from the hostel.

We had breakfast at the hostel, which consisted of eggs, rolls with butter and jam, coffee, and delicious bananas grown right in Rwanda. After breakfast, we packed our things and went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. It was surreal to think that 20 years ago, on April 6^th, 1994, the president’s plane was shot down flying into the very airport I had just flown into the night before. Yet while the story of the genocide is tragic, and the trip to the museum was emotional, but I am glad I got to learn about the country’s history in  the short time I was there. Below are some pictures of the museum.

After we left the memorial, we made a quick stop for lunch at a shopping mall, where I got some strawberry yoghurt made in Rwanda (pasturized, of course) and a bottle of water for 800 Rwandan francs, around $1.30. We then left for Kabale, which is only two hours away from Kigali. The drive was beautiful, with lots of mountains, farms, and cattle grazing. When we got to the border, we had to get out of the car and cross on foot.  After walking across “no-man’s land” we got our passports stamped at the Ugandan immigration office and officially entered the country, although it is worth noting that I was officially country-less for about 20 minutes. About 20 minutes after we crossed the border, we made it to Kabale. We settled into the apartments and have started getting

oriented here in Uganda.