18 Kamena 2013—Muri Internet Café

I am at an Internet café in Nyamirambo now, and they charge by the hour (not by the megabyte, like the modem I have been using at home), so I don’t feel too bad about posting pictures here! I have not edited all of my photos, but these are some of the best from my first week or so.

From the plane between Amsterdam and Kigali. We are over Sudan at the moment. See that faint red glow? It’s the Sahara Desert! (I was actually hoping it would be a little more dramatic, but it was cloudy and my seat looked out on the wing.)

From the back porch of the house in Nyakabanda, we can see in the distance the small-but-growing cluster of tall-ish buildings that make up the City Center.

This is the view from the back porch; the house that takes up most of the frame is the neighbors’, on the same property. You can see clotheslines, banana-trees and fences—not terribly exciting, I suppose, but this is where I am living!

Shortly after I took this picture (from the back row of a “full” minibus taxi), seven more people got on.

A view walking into town; in the foreground, on the left, is the main office of the Bank of Kigali, and behind that is what will be a very nice-looking office space or convention center or something when construction finishes.

Taking nighttime photos freehand with a point-and-shoot camera always produces interesting results, and stitching them together as a panorama does especially. I think, though, that this still communicates the kinds of dramatic landscape views that one seems to get all over the place in this city, set as it is on so many hills.

Got one!

Breakfast that day, with the fruits. In the back, the red tomato-ish thing is a tree-tomato (ikínómoro); in the middle on the right is what I have since confirmed is a passionfruit; and in front is an orange (a greenish one, sure, but still an orange).

A picture from my morning walk in the neighborhood. This is a very nice house in Nyakabanda, on a main road and with Mont Kigali in the background.

Also from my walk. You can see Mont Kigali on the right, and houses (all walled) in the foreground. If the picture were a little bigger (sorry about the resolution) you could also see the buildings of the city-center in the distance at the center-right.