After visiting two major national parks on the east and west sides of the country, I spent a day in the Kigali city. The first place of the day was Mount Kigali, where I hoped to view the city from a vantage point. I hiked up a back alley route where there was no paved road.
Villagers were selling fresh vegetable on the side of the road. People here seemed to dislike foreigner’s cameras pointing at them.
The motor taxi driver below initially asked me not to take pictures of him. But later he happily agreed to have a picture taken.
On the top of the Kigali mountain, I saw the panoramic view of the city. Rwanda is called the country of thousand hills, thanks to its mountainous terrain. The famous film Hotel Rwanda was about a real story of a hotel manager rescued over a thousand refugees during the Rwanda civil war in 1994. The name of the hotel is Hôtel des Mille Collines, which is “Hotel of Thousand Hills” in French.
My next stop in the city was the Kigali genocide memorial, established to commemorate the 1994 Rwandan genocide. There was no photography allowed inside the building.
Lastly, I went to the Inema arts gallery. It was a small gallery filled with local artists paintings and sculptures, and some outdoor sculpture too. Again, no photography was allowed inside. My most memorable piece was a large sculpture of a gorilla, covered by the texture of computer motherboard. It was listed with a price tag of over 30,000 USD.
This post concludes the series of blog posts on the photographic journey of my Rwanda trip.