Kigali adventures

This morning I went to the big market in the Amahoro section of Kigali with Toma, one of the other visiting faculty members.  The first part of the adventure was taking a mototaxi there - this is a very common form of public transportation that I had not yet tried.  These are motorcycle-taxis - the drivers carry an extra helmet and drive around Kigali just as a taxi would do.  They only carry one passenger each (a good thing) and are faster and cheaper than car taxis and much faster but more expensive than buses.  Here is a link with a picture and lots of description:  http://www.livinginkigali.com/transportation/taking-a-moto/

The market is huge, and has fabric, crafts, housewares, grains and beans, fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken, probably more.  We bought a huge amount of fruit and vegetables - we will have to do a lot of eating to use it all before it spoils. I got broccoli, cauliflower, chinese cabbage, tomatoes, a pineapple, and mangoes. The market is reasonably clean, well organized and the people are very courteous - they do try to sell you stuff but in a courteous way.  Communication was not difficult except one problem at the end - I wanted to get a mango and I am sure that I was told by several people at different stands that they were between 800 and 1000 francs each (it's 600 francs to the dollar).  Since we had bought some for 200 francs on the weekend, I thought that was too high.  But Toma convinced me to try one more place, and offer 500 francs - I had a 500 franc bill.  I did, and the seller happily put 5 mangoes in my bag.  So apparently these were 100 francs each ???

There were 3 very small boys who seemed to adopt the muzungu (that's me) - they led me around for a while holding my hands and tried very hard to get me to take a picture of them - I had no camera - their miming of the picture taking process was absolutely charming.  So I violated one of my rules and gave them each 20 francs.

We both had bought a lot so we took a car taxi back.