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.