Tuesday 27 January 2009

Kigali street scenes

I haven't taken any photos for a long time, so here are some of Marisa and Stephane's from last year. They give you a good idea of the mayhem that passes for traffic in central Kigali. Here cars fill the pavements so pedestrians have to use the road in the "old town" full of tiny shops selling hardware, electrical stuff, cloth material and such like.
The middle of Kigali is a slew of motos, porters carrying goods to and from shops, and pedestrians.

This is one of the better roads near the town centre, at a quiet time of day.

The epicentre of chaos. This is the little one-way street where all the taxi buses and longer distanmce buses are based. The traffic here just has to be experienced - words can'tdescribe it. Fortunately nothing can move at more than walking pace so while near misses happen every second or two, real accidents are rare.

Quadrilingual shop sign. Many shopkeers are reasonably fluent in Kinyarwanda, French, English, Swahili, Lingala; some have other languages, too. This may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but as linguists they often put us to shame!

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