First few days in Kigali

I really should have started this blog before I left the UK, as it would have been good to post a little intro to IJM, a few things about what on earth I'm supposed to be doing in Rwanda, and some general thoughts. Would also have been useful to compare my expectations before arriving in Kigali with my experience of it in reality. But...I wasn't nearly organised enough to do that. Instead, hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend to post some general info. In the meantime, here's some first impressions of Africa, Rwanda and Kigali:

Flight here was pretty rough. Well, actually, the flights themselves were fine, but I had to wait for about 6 hours at Nairobi airport for my connection to Kigali. Nairobi airport is not a fun place. Dingy, nothing to do, miserable (especially when you've only had an hour and a half's sleep). Kenyan Airways did provide a free breakfast buffet though, which was nice. The most memorable thing from the flight was the complete lack of light as we flew over Africa. I think it was a fairly cloudy night, but the contrast between flying over Europe, where spots of light peeked out almost anywhere there was a gap in the clouds, and East Africa (at least south of the Nile delta), where the view out the window was just pitch-black, was startling. I remember looking at one of those 'world by night' maps and being slightly disbelieving about the lack of electric light across swathes of Africa, but it turns out to be accurate. The 'Dark Continent', literally.

On the other hand, flying from Nairobi to Rwanda on Sunday afternoon was a different experience. This is a truly beautiful country - haven't seen much of the countryside yet obviously, having only arrived on Sunday, but even Kigali is incredibly lush and green, sprawling over a set of rolling hills, and apparently the west and north of the country are much more impressive. I can see why it's called "le pays des milles collines" [the land of a thousand hills].

Kigali is remarkably clean and safe - a few expats have told me it is in many ways 'Africa lite' since there's very little of the chaos and squalor that characterises so many African cities. The weather's also lovely (although I know most of you in the UK and US don't want to hear this!) - hovers between 23-29 degrees pretty much all the time, quite pleasant temperatures even in the midday sun. It's the rainy season, so it rains fairly torrentially at least once a day, but usually clears up.

I'll post some more details soon....