Welcome to my blog and welcome to Rwanda, a small country in Central East Africa just south of the equator blessed with a great climate, beautiful scenery, rich volcanic soil, and friendly people. Is Rwanda in East Africa or Central Africa? I don’t know, but based on geography it seems more like a part of East Africa as it sits within the Great Rift Valley and borders the edge of the massive Congo Basin (Central Africa). Water flows into both the Nile river and the Congo depending on where you are in the country. The divide is in the western part of the country and most of the watershed is the Nile river.
Culturally and historically, Rwanda is similar to its small southern neighbor, Burundi. If you look at a map of Africa, Rwanda looks like a tiny spec at the center of the continent, but it is part of East Africa.
To many in the West when one says Rwanda, they think of one word, genocide, and their knowledge of the country is based on the movie Hotel Rwanda. The movie is mostly historically accurate and Rwanda’s history is tied to some of the most shocking brutality in the history of the world, but from the ashes of a destroyed country with no infrastructure, tiny, land locked, resource limited Rwanda is blossoming into a progressive and modern country on its own terms. It is aiming to be a technology and financial hub for East Africa, not unlike Singapore or Abu Dhabi. It is an experiment that the rest of Africa is watching closely to see if this model should be reproduced in other areas of the continent.
Let me say before I begin our experience in Rwanda that I am not an expert on Africa let alone Rwanda. In fact, I am a novice here, an iniciante as my capoeira master, Mestre Joao Grande would say. I have been to Southern Africa and Phi has been to Tanzania in the past. Our understanding about this part of the world is limited, and we are coming here with open eyes and open minds. I am sure I will make errors in my writing and feel free to let me know if you see something that is inaccurate. I am not writing this with any agenda in mind, other than to share with my family and friends about our experiences here and as way for me to remember them as I move on in years. Time stops for no one, and if I don’t stope to put it these memories will fade into a fragmented memory of dreams of Africa.