Sights and sounds of Kigali’s finest people and places

The Kigali Convention Centre and Radisson Blu Hotel. PHOTO | CYRIL NDEGEYA 

By CAROL MUSYOKA

Last Tuesday I flew to Kigali on the early evening flight and landed into a warm, balmy city. As we deplaned and walked to the terminal, I saw a long line of passengers walking from across the tarmac having just disembarked from a KLM flight.

I hightailed down the escalators in the terminal building as I knew the lines at immigration would be insane. They ended up being insane. But I didn’t mind as it gave me time to observe the immigration hall inside Kigali International Airport.

The modern hall is purpose built, with high ceilings and an almost clinical white décor. Illumination from the bright lights bounced off the sterile white walls and onto the clean-shaven, smart and well-spoken immigration officers.

They sat on high stools and were easily accessible due to the absence of the ubiquitous thick glass barrier found at many immigration counters.

To the far right of the immigration hall were two channels of passage with a large welcoming sign above that said “E-Gates Nationals Only”.

There were clear instructions pasted on the side on how to use the 21st century contraption: Walk to the reader, scan the bio data page of your passport, wait for the beep to signify transaction complete and voila, heaven’s gates would open and you, Citizen Rwanda will gladly step back home.

I stood and stared for a long time as the only other airport I had seen this was London’s Heathrow. The only pity was that the bulk of the passengers from the two flights were non-Rwandese and so I only observed two citizens triumphantly sail through.

I was picked up by an extremely chatty driver named Tresor, who spoke fluent Swahili as he was born in Bujumbura where he said Swahili is more widely spoken due to proximity to, and large trade with, the DRC.

Since I couldn’t get a word in edgewise past his excitable monologue I sat back to listen but I noticed a glowing orb in the far distance as we drove past the gates of the airport.

It was a beautiful sight against the clear night sky and something that I had certainly never seen in my past Kigali visits. I parked that question for later.

Tresor had much to say about how the city was now full of Chinese who had come to build infrastructure in Rwanda.

I puckered my brow in reflection as I had observed massive buildings being put up in Sandton, Johannesburg, by Chinese as well as critical arterial roads in Kampala not to mention our very own Kenyan railway and highways.

Historians will more likely document the not so subtle Chinese infiltration of Africa, when the effects of this economic colonisation will be obvious. Within 15 minutes my curiosity about the glowing orb was assuaged as we approached the Kigali Convention Centre (KCC).

In my past visits to this beautiful, serene city, I had driven past the construction of the $300 million (Sh30 billion) KCC without paying much attention to the distinct spherical framework of the emerging building.

The Rwandese government has constructed an iconic building that will become to Kigali what the Sydney Opera House, London’s Tower Bridge and Nairobi’s KICC have done in terms of being globally recognised city trade marks.