Nyamirambo

South of my workplace, if you follow along the ridge of the hill towards the large mosque, lies Nyamirambo. It's the heart of the legitimate Kigali. A mixture of slums and small compounds, stores and barbarshops, restaurants and side bars, it has a vibe. The main street is colorful, with brightly painted storefronts advertising their products and the store name, usually something like “The Feelings Shop” or “Faty Store”. Matatus, the minibuses, are named after rappers or painted in team colors, and run up and down the street, compeating with the Moto drives, trucks, old cars, children, bicycles, animals and shoppers. We went to explore this “authentically African” part of town; the busy streets and feeling seems to be hard to find in Kigali, but it's obviously not impossible.

You could spend money on virtually anything in Nyamirambo. I bought a short wave radio (since which BBC has changed my life), and C bought a shirt. We also found watermelon, for the first time and much to my excitement. If you wanted to buy a phone, electronics, stereo systems, food, sodas, beer, livestock, used clothing, new clothing, sewn clothing, material, hygiene products, cooking products, old products, new products, music, movies, a new weave, or hopefully a turkey this week, Nyamirambo is the where you need to be.

We ate lunch at the “New Happy Restaurant” (which did make me pretty happy) and dinner at the “Green Corner” with some friends, consisting of bananas, goat brocettes, fries with mayonaise, and Mutzig beer, of course. Apparently Nyamirambo is actually alive after dark. Alive. Kigali is so quiet, so serene. It's as though the genocide stamped the fun out of the city, and was kept that way through all the new laws, regulations, street clean-ups, and rules. It was fun to find life, to find a place with some sort of character. Nyamirambo's got it, and I finally found it there.