After being in Rwanda for over a month, we are really settling into life here. Though walking through “the land of one thousand hills” under the intense Rwandan sun can be a bit brutal, a cold Fanta (“fiesta ikonje” in Kinyarwanda, the local language) at the top makes the hike worth it. We are getting to know our way around the city, and can (usually) give the moto drivers comprehensible enough directions to arrive at our destination. We’ve been trying to explore as much as possible, learning our way around different neighborhoods of the capital, and sometimes even getting out of the city. Last week I was able to go hiking up Mount Bisoke in Volcanos National Park. It was a tough climb through slippery mud and dangerous herds of buffalo, but with a one-to-one ratio of hikers to armed soldiers, we felt pretty safe. This weekend we will be spending a couple days in Akagera national park, going on a safari and meeting with brewers and beekeepers to learn about two prominent trades in Rwandan agriculture.
Here at Kepler, a program providing U.S.-accredited undergraduate degrees through Southern New Hampshire University for vulnerable Rwandans and refugees, we are making a lot of progress with our case and company work. We have also been picking up projects on the side that have really made us feel part of the Kepler team. Recently we assisted with their World Refugee Day event, which took place on June 20th. The event featured panel discussions by refugee students and administrators, traditional dancing, a student stand-up comedian, and touching testimonies of refugee experiences here in Rwanda. It was exciting to hear how empowered refugees felt both by the Kepler organization and by Rwanda as their host country. Rwanda has one of the most progressive policies towards refugees in the world, allowing them exactly the same access to education and work as Rwandan citizens. At the office, many of our coworkers are refugees from Burundi and DRC who graduated from the Kepler program.
In the past few weeks, some of our coworkers have become our good friends, and have been taking us around to try some more local spots in Kigali. Recently we went out with coworkers and other friends to one of our favorite Rwandan restaurants, Green Corner, located in the Muslim quarter, Nyamirambo (often referred to us as the coolest neighborhood in Kigali). They only serve two dishes, and the food takes over an hour to prepare, but once it arrives it’s clear what you’ve been waiting for. Their specialty is “ifi” or big fish, which is a huge pan-fried and spiced tilapia that you pick off the bone with your hands. It’s served with “Irish potatoes”, which, thanks to the mineral-rich volcanic soil, are supposed to be some of the best in the world.
This soil also makes for incredibly high quality coffee beans, but coffee drinking is not a big part of Rwandan culture. In fact, over 90% of coffee beans grown in Rwanda are exported. Luckily, there is a social enterprise called Question Coffee which aims to keep some of this coffee inside Rwanda. The company is funded by Michael Bloomberg, and is entirely sustained by a massive network of all-female farmers, processors, baristas, and managers made up of over 300,000 women across Rwanda. I spend every morning at their headquarters in Gishushu or at the Women’s Bakery near our apartment, another social enterprise which uses Question beans. Needless to say, the coffee is incredible. Recently we had the opportunity to tour the Question Coffee headquarters, where we learned about the complex process of cultivating, processing, and ultimately testing the coffee beans. On a recent trip to Musanze, a city in the Northern Province, I got to check out a coffee farm where I saw many women hard at work sorting and drying beans.
