Kigali vs. Kampala

Kigali, Rwanda. The land of 1,000 Hills

Old city taxi-park, Kampala, Uganda

Even on Sunday night people go out in Kampala

Locally people have asked me several times how long I’m staying “here” and I never know what to say because I don’t know where “here” is. I’ve spent much more time in Rwanda now and it appears I will be here for at least a few months over the early spring/summer, but I also spent two weeks in Uganda when I arrived, one week during the Memorial to the Rwanda genocide time when all work and movement stops in Rwanda. I’m returning for about three weeks to Kampala at the end of next week. I’ll take the cheaper bus option this time (about $15), a 12 hour bumpy ride when you are lucky (it took 15 hours overnight with Kampala Friday night rush hour traffic and 3 flat tires the first time I took the bus). However, the $150 flight is so short that when I left Kampala this last time I actually arrived in Kigali 15 minutes before I took off because of the one hour time zone difference. It’s always nice going back in time, or gaining time.

As I head back to Kampala, Uganda I’m reflecting on where would I rather live if I had the choice? Good question. How are these cities alike and different anyways? This may be totally uninteresting to many (most?) of my readers (and more interesting to friends and expats here), I'm not sure and I don't care, I felt like doing it. Here I break down my experience thus far in these two East African capitals.

Kampala:

A sprawling city of nearly 2 million people bursting with energy and activity, the first time I returned from Kigali I felt like I was suddenly waking up from a deep slumber. The noise including traffic, street vendors, music, and general pandemonium fills the air. People grilling meat on the street can be found ubiquitously around dusk (this does not exist in Kigali). Ugandans love to party and as nightfall comes, there’s a myriad of going out options to choose between. There’s also a number of casinos and Kabalagala is the crazy local hangout (a sort of red light district) if you are into that. And people don’t start going out until midnight sometimes there (reminds me of Madrid). In the Wandegeya neighborhood you can get food until the late hours of the morning while in Kigali most restaurants close before 10 pm.

Kampala is much cheaper than Kigali where I suspect the inflow of aid money and Ex-pats following the genocide has inflated pricing. For some reason, boda-bodas, the moto-taxi’s, known as moto’s in Kigali, are more expensive though in Kampala. And they are much more terrifying. With the traffic and roads being so much worse in Kampala and no real driving qualifications, I think I heard a statistic (yes I might be making this up) that 1/5^th of all hospital entries were from boda accidents. To be honest though, it is also kind of fun going around on bodas in Kampala. Bodas will drive down the wrong way on a one-way street, weave through crowded markets, and generally just do whatever they want to make good time. A boda can make a 10 minute trip that might take 1 hour on a bus/car with rush hour traffic in Kampala. And as they don’t provide helmets, it’s a real gamble opting for the boda option. All expats arrive in fear of the boda but after time many learn to “embrace the boda,” enjoy the haggling and joking over the price with the drivers, and accept some level of risk.

Summary of pro’s of Kampala over Kigali:

·         We have monkeys at the office compound (although from a work perspective this is a negative as it’s distracting) where I work.

·         Gadhafi’s mosque – gives you a great view of the city, offers a better tourist attraction than say the famous Hotel des MillesCollines in Kigali where refugees crowded during the Genocide.

·         Exciting and fun with lots of cool options for going out

·         More diversity – different ethnic groups and more immigrant populations

·         As it’s a bigger city (also larger economy with less unemployment) with a larger Expat scene there are lots of activities going on every night/weekend like for example, the Mountain Club which goes on outdoor adventures on the weekend, the Ted Talk club who discuss the talks over dinner, or the boxing club.

A few con’s for Kampala:

·         Airport is far away in Entebbe (although Kigali is moving their airport to a similar distance away in Nyamata soon)

·         Lots of corruption

·         Bodas are scary, traffic can be a nightmare and the city is very spread out

·         It’s hot! Kigali has a much nicer climate

·         From a muzungu learning perspective (which is what white people are called in both countries), while the level of English may be higher in Uganda (especially the country overall), it’s hard to know whether you should learn Luganda, Swahili, or another one of the many local dialects as Uganda has no unifying language like Kinyarwanda in Rwanda.

Kigali:

At this point through comparing Kampala you should get the partial picture of Kigali. Kigali is obviously much smaller both geographically and population wise (almost 1 million) and easier to navigate. Using my French from time-to-time here is fun and my living situation is better as I enjoy the more social aspect of my house and roommates here.

Summary of pros:

·         Cleaner – I’ve heard of some Expats calling Kigali “Africa light” because the streets are remarkably clean and you can feel like you are in a 1^st world city at times. Plastic bags are banned in the whole country – amazing.

·         Roads are better (mostly paved and not full of holes like Kampala) and much easier to get around/figure out bus system

·         Safer – there is so much security here it’s crazy. In Kampala my co-worker was coming home around 10 pm and hit over the head with an iron crow bar and robbed for everything he had. He was rushed to the hospital and luckily healed and has no apparent long-term repercussions but especially considering he was in a decent neighborhood this is still very scary. I hear about this sort of thing happening in Kampala but never in Kigali. I’ve felt safer here than I felt in Boston (notwithstanding the recent tragic events).

·         Rwanda is so small you can get to a lot of cool outdoor places including national parks to safari, see volcanoes, and go gorilla trekking in just a few hours. In Uganda you may have to fly if you don’t want to take a 10 hour grueling bus ride on terrible roads. But maybe there is more to see there?

·         Food – lots of really nice (but expensive) places to eat out. There’s a Mexican joint not far from me that’s popular with the locals (Meze Fresh), a Japanese sushi place, and several really good Indian and Italian places. Kigali City Tower even has a natural food’s store!

·         Beautiful! They call Rwanda the land of a Thousand Hills, but like Minnesota and it’s “10,000 lakes,” who’s really counting? Rwanda is incredibly green and hilly and Kigali itself is gorgeous.

·         Very few slums – in Kampala I walk just a few minutes from the plush Muyenga neighborhood I live in and find myself in some shady and very sad loosely constructed shelters that people call home.

Summary of cons:

·         Kigali is kind of boring. People are inside after 7 pm and it’s eerily quite.

·         Perhaps it’s because of the “police” state I sometimes feel underneath the overly clean and calm surface; the people seem more conservative and less lively here (sorry Rwandans if this view seems unfair).

·         Kigali is really small and there are not as many options as Kampala. Sometimes this can be a good thing though because it’s easy to make connections and I've run into friends randomly at restaurants, gotten picked up randomly by a friend with a car while walking on the road, or running into my landlord/roommate downtown at a super market.

Overall:

You can look at the comparison from a more scientific, possibly objective statistical perspective (Kampala wins). But what numbers don’t tell you is that just like my experience in West Africa, people in both places are incredibly welcoming and friendly. The excitement and energy of Kampala is hard to pass up and my social life would be better there. Despite the ease of living in Kigali I think I’d choose Kampala if I had the choice long-term. Plus Kampala has a facebook group called “Muzungus in Uganda” which is fun (Kigali has a yahoo group called “Kigali Life” – who uses Yahoo still?) as you can pretty much find anything you are looking for there.

Religion

So religion here is kind of a big thing. People are much more Christian than most people I meet back home, granted I haven't spent a ton of time in the "Bible" belt or Southern states. I sometimes open a business meeting listen to a prayer and people bless me all the time or pray that the devil doesn't betray me. It doesn't bother me, it's actually quite interesting and if anything, I wonder how society here has become like this, especially how people interact on a daily basis. Folks will ask quite out right if you are Christian and if you believe in God. When I explain to people that I am Jewish most people are surprised and excited. They haven't met many Jews before but they have respect, because we are "people of the book" and they've heard about us.The important thing here really is that you believe in God, in some way, shape, or form and they assume Jews do. This can be difficult for me as I classify myself as agnostic but I don't want to get in arguments with people so sometimes I'll just say I have "faith" to not arouse suspicion.

More recently I decided to go to a Church with my born again friend. There are lots of born agains here, it's really not that uncommon and I don't know how everyone has become born again but at least the small circle of people I know are very religious and believe in the Holy Ghost and prayer -and above all else Jesus. This is sort of a foreign concept for me but I decided to keep an open mind and I knew I would learn something cultural if I attended church with my friend Olive who urged me come one evening last week. More than anything else perhaps, it was the Congo guest speaker who was a former sorcerer/witch doctor of the famous Mobutu Sese Seko who was speaking at the church that convinced me. See pic below:

By this point the witch doctor had renounced his ways and become Christian, born again style. As he lead people through prayer, and the ways that the devil deceives us, people got more and more worked up. Eventually, people were in such a frenzy that they were yelling and gesticulating wildly and as the former witch doctor came around yelling "pow'" and blowing wind like sounds people were literally falling over and flailing their arms screaming. It was crazy, I've almost never seen anything like it, people were really going crazy and losing themselves, yelling things, speaking in toungs, needing to be escorted away by the ushers. At times I thought people were going to hit me and it was even a bit frightening. 

Because I've seen some hypnosis shows in the past this didn't totally surprise me or seem all that different. Many of the tactics actually seemed similar, and yet it was also frightening to see people lose control and have the "holy ghost inhabit them" as they describe it. I don't think anybody was "faking" it and in the end, I was glad I went. It really was eye opening. I still don't buy it though-they don't really get to the root of anything and my mind is much to scientifically based to accept simple answers.

The craziest thing that contradicts traditional religion Christian views I've noticed in both Uganda and Rwanda is somehow it's ok to have multiple partners -not when you are married but when you have a girlfriend. People are always surprised that even though I have a girlfriend back in the States I don't also have a girlfriend in Uganda or Rwanda. I was even told by one colleague that I was "really missing out" and asked "how can you be having an office and not expand?" I don't think the woman here would agree with this but it's a prevailing attitude among men and woman at least I think tolerate it in many cases. Basically, what they they were saying is that I was missing out by just having one partner - this seems incredible considering how many people are Christian and devout here, but some things just don't match up culturally and maybe it will take me longer to understand.

Food and Pricing in Kigali

Money in East Africa is a funny thing. Life is expensive and cheap all at once. It partially depends on how you want to live for sure –like an Expat or more like a local person. Prices often reflect the ability to produce something locally vs needing to import it and if it is imported how rare it is. But labor also plays a huge role – most service oriented things are super cheap. You can get a shave or your shoes shined for less than $1. The public system costs next to nothing. To go about 10 minutes down the road for example, I’ll pay 200 francs, or about .30 cents. For an amazing description on taking motos (bodaboda in Uganda) check out my friend and co-worker Jen's piece: http://schmirby.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/round-round-get-around/

East African buffet is really popular here. East Africa buffet, at least the type of about $1.30, usually means carb buffet, all you can eat. Spaghetti, fries (or chips as they call them), sweet potato, potato wedges, rice, beans, maybe some collards or one other type of greens, and usually a tomato-e beef stew. It’s almost never that good but not that bad either. You get sick of it though and you decide you want a pizza, lasagna, nice chicken dinner and you can expect to pay upwards of $10. That’s how it is, usually high-end cuisine and something different, or local cheap rice and beans type of food. In Kigali, you can also find crazy Western things like natural food stores and burrito places and Kigali is more expensive than Kampala and probably most East African capitals (it's an aid darling, lots of Expats, reconstruction money probably has played a big part).

Shopping for food illustrates some similar principles. The supermarkets here are not all that different than our supermarkets. Never as big or as elaborate and usually more expensive. Our food is so cheap we really don’t realize it (assuming you aren't shopping at Whole Foods all the time). Getting East African buffet for $1.30 right near my house, lots of food, little work, and cheap, means cooking really makes no sense ever unless I want to entertain guests, making something special, or have some inexplicable desire to clean dishes. The market (usually outdoor with lots of vendors who come together on certain days of the week) is an exception though as produce can be very cheap. Kimironko Market, pictured here from both inside and out with my roommates Johanna from New Zealand and David (also the landlord) is one of the bigger ones in Kigali. Everything is negotiated and it can be a pretty stressful experience, especially when you don't know what the prices should be and you are afraid of getting ripped off at every corner. People are yelling at you to buy their produce as if it didn't matter what you were actually looking for, which to me seems like the obvious reason why you’d buy one produce or another –not just because someone yells a price at you. I don't need eggplant thank you (and I don't like it)! There’s also all of the “bag boys” running after you looking for a job of carrying your stuff. It’s kind of nice having this service offered and it’s annoying because they really come after you and it can be hard to even make it back to your car.

Playing soccer, Frisbee, or tennis (much more so than in Kampala) is relatively cheap – it usually entails a $1.50-$300 contribution or some type of entrance fee depending on what it is. I had the strangest experience the other day going to an internet café to buy “cash power” as they call it here as we needed it for frisbee. You go to these random spots that have the power service from a national company (EWSA) which you buy digitally, get a printed slip, and then have the mobile power ability to go anywhere. I have no idea how you even know who offers this and who doesn't. There's not necessarily a sign. I paid about $6 the other night for two hours that I brought to a large field to light the place up at night. You just type in a code in this box and it transfers the cash power to wherever you are. I think our landlord David might do the same thing to electrify our house.

On the more expected higher end of pricing you have tennis balls - but not as much as it is - $16 for one can. There's also things like batteries (real ones, not the cheap, terrible Chinese ones they had here) or Iphone plugs (I lost just the power adapter part that goes into the wall) - and it's an astounding $35!  

So basically you choose how you live, eat, and play and sometimes it’s not that much different than pricing back in Boston and other times it’s incredible how cheap or expensive something is. You really have to adapt your expectations and understanding of pricing when living here.