First Impressions

The city of Kigali is set on a series of hills which divert both traffic and rainclouds in confusing patterns from here to there. Main roads are wide and nice, cobbled roads are serviceable and neighborhood roads remind me that this is still Africa. Rutted red dirt paths wreak havoc on shock absorbers, if you’re lucky enough to have any.

Rain fell yesterday, a light lazy day rain in early afternoon that pattered against the corrugated tin roof next door… a heavier cloudburst in the later afternoon that sent us racing for the car and made the school kids smell like a tumbling litter of wet puppies. Today's rain didn't waste time on sprinkling. We had to shout to make ourselves heard under the metal roof of the ATN (Africa Transformation Network).

We spent the morning at the ATN office where Louise co-teaches a quilting class. They are in the beginning stages of imagining and planning how to best transfer skills to the ladies who come that will add value to the skills they already have. In other words, the class is supposed to give them a new, more readily marketable skill. In this case, they’re teaching quilting in the hopes that the ladies will be able to make a sell quilts. The ideal would be to create a market among Rwandans and not depend on tourist money, but they’re not there yet.