On a human scale
Former US president Bill Clinton has made a few mistakes. His biggest in office, he says, was failing to intervene earlier during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
It's a fair call. The errors of humanity hang heavy in the air in downtown Kigali, capital of Rwanda. There's a ripple in the eyes of the locals, an inexorable atmosphere of death amid the living. You look into faces and wonder what they've seen.
Travelling in Israel evokes a similar feeling, perhaps when you spot an elderly passenger on a bus with Holocaust numbers still faintly tattooed on her forearm. Kigalis, however, present an African savoir faire that can lift the mood to highlight the majesty of human resilience.
Kigali is also a developer's dream. Established in the early 1900s by German colonialists, the city undulates across four large mountain ridges. The best views take in the lowlands, the eyes following plunging valleys where the poorest eke out a semblance of survival.
For the commercially minded, the property potential is going to waste - no bad thing, perhaps. As a result, Kigali has evolved as one of those rare things: a human-scale city. Pedestrians own the place. Vehicles are forced to wend their way through the throng of humanity. Even major thoroughfares aren't so much roads as extended pavements and the beeping horns are ignored.
A sense of a thriving society resonates in a place where everyone seems to walk or run to their next appointment. That there is any society at all is a miracle. During a 100-day terror spree, militias aligned with ethnic Hutu extremists massacred up to one million Tutsis.
The darkness this so-human city has seen is staggering. It is, perhaps, what gives it its characteristic human light, even for a white outsider.
You develop the impression that Kigalis have seen it all. As such, the appreciation and depth of life here seems more refined and intense than elsewhere.
Worth visiting are the tree- lined laneways of the old Muslim district and the Caplaki craft shopping area. Film buffs may be interested in the four-star Hotel des Mille Collines, the 'Hotel Rwanda' of the 2004 movie and book by its manager Paul Rusesabagina. The Genocide Memorial is an essential, if harrowing, stop on any Kigali tour.
The nightlife buzzes here. There's enough going on to take hold of the unwary traveller. The tropical ambience, the spry and forthright people and the sense of historical drama and reconciliation can eat so far into you that you might not want to leave.
