Postcard from Rwanda: Ubumuntu

The Kigali Gen­o­cide Memori­al is …

… affect­ing.

Today was the first day of a 10-day famil­i­ar­isa­tion tour of the coun­try hos­ted by the Rwanda Devel­op­ment Board (RDB).

I am in Rwanda at the invit­a­tion of RDB, as well as “GT” Part­ners Red Rocks Rwanda and Red Rocks Ini­ti­at­ive for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment.

I will try to reg­u­larly post travel impres­sions like this — “GT” Travel post­cards — as I invite fresh per­spect­ives on tour­ism for The “Good Tour­ism” Blog.

This morn­ing the fam group sat in on a ses­sion of the Busi­ness of Con­ser­va­tion Con­fer­ence at the state-of-the-art Kigali Con­ven­tion Centre, part of the very com­fort­able Radis­son Blu Hotel & Con­ven­tion Centre, our digs for three nights. 

After an Asi­an lunch at Soy, we were taken to Umusambi Vil­lage, which is a restored wet­land area; home to 50 grey crowned cranes that were saved from the illeg­al pet trade. Grey crowned cranes are an endangered spe­cies. The res­cued indi­vidu­als are part of a breed­ing programme. 

Umusambi Vil­lage is billed as Kigali’s first wild­life sanctuary.

As dusk set in we caught a little of the Nyandun­gu Urb­an Wet­land Eco­tour­ism Pro­ject. Nyandun­gu is a six-year ini­ti­at­ive to restore what was heav­ily degraded wet­land and turn it into a park for recre­ation (walk­ing, cyc­ling, pic­nick­ing et cetera).

And edu­ca­tion. An example of that is a garden near the entrance that is filled with indi­gen­ous plants that were tra­di­tion­ally used as medi­cines. Each plant is accom­pan­ied by an inform­at­ive wooden plaque.

I’m rich­er for all of the new exper­i­ence, know­ledge, and insight from the day. 

But it was our vis­it to the Kigali Gen­o­cide Memori­al that will stay with me. 

I even bought an Ubu­muntu pin.

Where next?