Muganda

The last Saturday of every month is Muganda, a community service day. In theory, the entire population does activities such as cleaning roads, landscaping, etc. Afterwards there are town meetings. As a result, nothing is open until 11am at earliest.

Today we drove north to the Akagera national park. The two hour drive from Kigali was mostly on paved roads, though some of it was on dirt or "african" roads. We saw a number of small villages en route and a ton of bikes, far more than in Kigali. We bought bananas on the side of the road...about 75 for the price of what a single banana would be in the US. We got to the national park and started our afternoon safari around 2:30pm.

On the safari we saw a number of animals, including giraffes, baboons, warthogs, bushmarks (similar to antelopes), an elephant, and a number of other birds and monkeys. Our safari lasted about two hours.

Upon arrival to the Akagera Game Lodge, we found out there was a slight misunderstanding about prices. After an hour of negotiation, a price was agreed upon and we had rooms for the night. We played some moncola, and are now about to hit the sack. We get up at 6am tomorrow for a 7am depareture for a morning safari before heading north to the mountains to do some hiking in two days.

I tried uploading some pictures from the safari but no luck...sorry.