First impressions of Kigali

After almost 4 hours on a paved road with potholes (mostly filled in so it's rough gravel/rocks) and road construction (yeah, they have that here too) you come down a hill and into a valley. Then you go back the same direction you came to get to the heart of Kigali. My first impression was it was a lot like Baguio in the Philippines. It is in the mountains with more cars than the average roads and taller buildings (like 6-10 stories some of them). There are a lot of people everywhere and I arrived around 5pm which is probably when people are getting off of work and flooding the streets. There are some really modern things here though, like some of the buildings with curved glass fronts and a round about with huge fountain and a digital bill board. It's so far an interesting mix and I'm excited to explore it a bit more. I'll probably stick around a couple days, or depending on what else there is to do or what develops, I could go back tomorrow.

So what am I even doing here? Well, Sam was at Maji over New Years and we talked about a lot of stuff, and he knows I'm interested in renewable energy. Tonight there is a dinner/meeting at 8 somewhere and it's going to be about Jathropa, which is a tree that has the potential to produce a heck of a lot of oil for bio-diesel. I'll stay overnight at Sam's house and come up with a game plan for tomorrow then. I don't know anything about Kigali, but I could just walk around the city a bit too. I think that would be kind of fun.