Flying into Kigali - First Impressions of Rwanda

Before we start, everything we're doing in this video can be found on the Visit Rwanda app. Check the link in the description below and you can try it out for yourself. Good morning and welcome to Kigali, Rwanda. We've just arrived this morning, just driven straight from the airport and about to spend five days here exploring everything you can see, hopefully in Rwanda. We're starting off in Kigali, we're about to walk into the Nyamurambo, I never pronounce things right, we're about to walk into the Nyamurambo Women's Centre and be introduced to Kigali. So we actually, we just arrived this morning but we're a little bit late coming in, so we were meant to be doing a cooking class right now. We're going to go catch the end of it and see how they do cook here. We don't get to do the full thing, which is probably a good thing, I'm not a great cook, but we do get to see how it works. We're for the next week with Visit Rwanda and right now we're on Ekaze Tours doing a city tour of Kigali. So the cooking just happened here with Aminata and Shade, we have the green banana mixed with onions and tomatoes and we have here beans which we mix with onions and tomatoes also. So they did all the hard work because we missed the cooking part but we do get to have the tasting part. First we're going to go on a little walking tour of old Kigali. Wow well this is something I can't say I've experienced before. Rather than a bar it's a milk bar, pretty much all they sell is milk. So we've just come in order a couple milks and we're going to have a seat and chill in the milk bar. And this one is fermented milk so apparently this is quite rare, normally we should be sitting down people don't really have it stood up but we're doing a walking tour. Probably really good for It tastes like probiotic yoghurt and apparently that's really good for you, like a kefir sort of yoghurt thing that settles the stomach. Pretty good. Refreshing pint of fermented milk to start the day. We've also just been learning that Rwanda has its own language called Kinyarwanda and I've got a little cheat sheet here. So you can say Amakuru is Hawaii and then I could say Nemeza, I am fine. And then if you want to say thank you which is also another really good one to learn when you come to the country is Murakose. So hopefully that'll stick. So it's interesting we're here with Visit Rwanda and so far I've seen signs everywhere. So you might recognize that logo from this really small team in London, they're pretty rubbish but some of you might have heard of them, they play in the Premier League called Arsenal. They're now sponsored by Visit Rwanda so you might recognize it from there. It kind of shows in the last 10 years there's been a lot of development here and they're now entering more of the world stage and trying to attract more tourism to Rwanda which hopefully I'll get to show you this week. Besides what some of you might already know about it, the gorillas. The gorillas is the real big thing to see here in Rwanda but there's a lot more to it as well. We will get to do that at the end of the week. So far I've seen so many people wearing football shirts and football seems to be everywhere here. So we've just been doing a little walking tour of this area that's now been pedestrianized and made as a safe street for children we've just been told but it looks really cool. It looks like this is obviously a recent development but it's a very nice street to walk along and you can imagine this getting more popular for tourism. It also smells really good because it's where they make a lot of the food. So I'm very thankful that now we're going for lunch. All right that food was so good. I'm very stuffed but very happily stuffed. A great first meal as an introduction to Rwanda. I'm sure we're going to be getting loads more great food for the rest of the week but a really good start. So actually if we'd arrived on time we would have been cooking some of that this morning and learned a bit more about it. You had to use all the local ingredients that we just went and saw how they get it from the local market but I don't mind because maybe maybe I would have messed it up and that was really really tasty. So we got the best of both worlds. Now we're heading on to the next spot in Kigali. So interestingly most of that food was vegetarian which apparently is pretty common here. It's kind of rare for Rwandan people to have meat and more as a special occasion rather than with every meal and that's why it was really good veggie food. Which now brings me to we've come to a local market where the local veg can be sourced from. It's actually one of my favourite things to do when you first get to a country and just want to walk around on your own. Just go and find the local market and go and get all of the smells and the colours and all the different senses attacked by the local market. Sometimes it is attacked because definitely when you walk through the fish section but it's just well worth doing because you get to see a little taste of what local life is like. Everything just looks really fresh. It's interesting as well they have the women here making all of these clothes while you shop. So you can actually get something made ready for you while you're here. They've got all of the sewers right behind me. So I don't think we could carry on the rest of this trip and the rest of this video without talking about the Rwandan genocide which happened in 94 because that gives the context of where Rwanda's come since then. So right now we're at the Rwandan genocide memorial and I'm going to tell you a little bit about what happened and how Rwanda's bounced back since then. Sustained gunfire and grenade explosions started in the centre of town just before dawn and are On the evening of April 6th 1994 the Rwandan genocide began. It would become one of the most notorious and horrific events in recent history. The genocide was conceived by extremist elements of Rwanda's majority Hutu population who planned to kill the minority Tutsi population and anyone else who opposed their genocidal intentions. The next few months saw a wave of anarchy and mass killings in which the army and Hutu militia played a central role. Over 100 days nearly 1 million ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed. The methods they used for killing were typically quite brutal with crude farming instruments used to pummel and hack away at victims. The genocide memorial now acts as a stark reminder to visitors of the very recent tragedy and the grounds itself are the final resting place for more than 250,000 Rwandan people. Yeah that is harrowing, horrible to think about but I think so important to visit as well. I wanted to cut away and tell the story of what happened before coming back to being right here because I don't want to get it wrong but I do think that if you're coming to Rwanda then you should visit the memorial and understand the recent history because if you're going to see Rwanda's going I think you also have to understand where it came from and the genocide murdering more than a million people was only 28 years ago so it's not ancient history it's still a part of the history here and it's a part of it affects a lot of people here still so I think it is something that you should definitely try to understand even though you can't really imagine it but you should try to understand what happened so I'm glad we came I'm glad we got the audio guide which was really informative as well and it's free to free to come and see but then you can pay a donation for the audio guide and well worth learning about in my opinion. Now we're heading on and we're going to go explore more of Rwanda We've now left Kigali and driving out towards Nyangwe forest where we were spending the night but on the way we've stopped off in Nyanza to visit the king's palace museum and this apparently is one of the key stops you need to do if you're heading out west in Rwanda this is a museum palace it's a king's palace like this house was for living oh so we're exploring the king's palace right now and we've just been learning about the king of this area before the colonialization of Rwanda and he had this little house that he lived in 12 wives only one queen which was the preferred one I've just been told and also a live-in person to create milk and another live-in person to create beer and that was basically the king's diet and now from what I understand so far cows and milk is a very strong part of Rwandan history and Rwandan culture and what we're about to meet are the Nyangbo cows although you shouldn't call them cows they're Nyangbo and you're going to see why because they're pretty spectacularly different than a normal cow wow so these are Nyangbo or the royal cow and you can see the absolute size of their horns I've seen them before but I didn't actually know we're going to get to see them here and they're really impressive to see up close you can also see them in other countries around Rwanda but I'm told they all originate from Rwanda they're not used for milk they're not used for meat they're just they're the royal cows so they have more of a symbol and they're respected they're very warm aren't they yeah oh yeah well these Nyangbo really like being stroked stay awake it's okay made a friend and that is it for here very interesting and a great stop off on the way we're now driving for another few hours onto Nungwe Forest so this I think is well worth it if you do end up renting a car or getting a driver this is a great stop off I think we're going to find somewhere for lunch and then continue on to where we're staying tonight so you can see even here there's another little milk bar like the one we went into yesterday and as we were driving along as well I've been seeing them absolutely everywhere and now on to lunch a few hours later and we have arrived to Nungwe Forest and we're staying at Gizakura guest house right now we're just checking in it is raining a bit as you can see because it is a rainy season but hopefully it's going to rain tonight and then clear up tomorrow so we can see some stuff a little bit wet a little bit a little bit it's all part of the rainforest experience that's why you call it a rainforest thanks Jason and this is where we're going to be spending the night at Gizakura guest house before going out and doing our canopy walk here in the morning so this is where I'm going to finish this video and you'll get to see that in the next video but for right now I want to give my first impressions of Rwanda we landed into Kigali yesterday morning you got to see all of that in this video and honestly I think there's so far two sides thank you oh wow someone just made us a fire that actually completes it for tonight because now we have a little log cabin and a fire to rest before tomorrow so first impressions of Rwanda we've only been here now for almost 48 hours we had yesterday and today and yesterday we got to see a lot of Kigali which I think is a really good way to start a trip in Rwanda I know a lot of people come here for the grillers and we are doing that eventually but I think also if you're going to come all this way then you may as well also see the capital and understand a bit of Rwanda's history or at least try to so I know Kigali started to get a bit of a reputation as this really developed high-end place that people go for conferences in Africa and it's a very organized part of Africa as well like the streets there are very clean and as soon as you arrive you you see that straight away it all looks very organized and very different to a lot of African capital cities and then as soon as you get outside the city you see the rest of the real Rwanda so I think it's important to see both I think I'm glad we got to do the tour in Kigali first and then also glad that we're getting to see more of Rwanda as well and you're going to see that in the next videos coming up because we're traveling around for a few days before heading over to the grillers I think there is a lot to see here for such a small country roughly in terms of how big it is it's roughly the same size as Wales and yet there's 13 million people here so it's also one of the most densely populated countries in the world and there's a lot to see and a lot to do even though it's very small it also seems like a country that's developing and changing very quickly and I think to have the history of the genocide in the 90s is important to see where it's come from because it is changing so quickly now and I think like just even to try and understand a bit of that if you come here is is quite important because then it makes it even more impactful to see where Rwanda is going and I can't talk too much about it because I have only been here for a day and a half so I can't really give you my full impressions of the country and a full understanding obviously you're just going to have to come and see it yourself to get your own impressions but that's what I've made of it so far I'm going to leave the video here and you can check back for the next one to see what we get up to in the rest of Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda Rwanda anyway see you in the next one thank you for watching see you in the next video all right thanks again for watching and I just want to finish this video by saying that everything we did in this video and the series of videos free Rwanda can be found on the visit Rwanda app you can plan itineraries on it you can get in touch with the local guest houses and basically figure out anything you want to do while you're in Rwanda so go check it out the link will be in the description below and try it out for yourself thanks again for watching and see you in the next one can you say that again subscribe like and share I will subscribe and share and like so you guys have to too