A NIGHT OUT IN KIGALI
The Rwandan capital offers bountiful wildlife and a remarkable nightlife,
“Everyone is coming. Let’s grab that table,” said Nathalie Gatesi, a new friend, as she commandeered a high top in a prime location at Kigali’s hip urban beach club, Pili Pili. Nathalie was referring to the imminent arrival of some 20 members of her family who were all texting her at once.
The Rwandan capital doesn’t have a club scene so much as it has nightlife spots that, perhaps out of sense of unity, each get to be hot one night a week. Thursdays are for happy hour drinks at Inema Arts Center, followed by jazz night at Repub Lounge, which serves a coconut curry fish I could have eaten every night of my trip. Fridays, after midnight, are for dancing at the red-lit Cocobean club while sipping whiskey and amarula. Saturdays are for concerts and birthday parties, and clubs you didn’t hit up on Friday.
And Sundays belong to Pili Pili. A Nigerian government worker I had met at my hotel had even changed his flight to experience the magic with Nathalie and her family — and then invited me along. Preteens tossed a beach ball back and forth in the pool, while their parents drank lethally strong mojitos. A DJ played Boy George and James Brown. Then there was that view of Kigali’s famous hills, covered in tropical greenery and red clay as afternoon turned to brilliant sunset and then to the twinkling lights of one of Africa’s cleanest cities against a pitch black sky.
“This country has grown so far it’s like a new country,” said Marie Ange Katabarwa, a relative of Nathalie’s who sat down and immediately started treating me like I was part of the family, too.
M.A., as most people call her, went to boarding school in France before the 1994 genocide, and is now an investment banker splitting her time between Paris, Dubai and Kigali. She’s been coming back here more often to take care of her aging parents and manage their family cattle farm. The city, she said, seems to be ripe with opportunities for women.
“You can open your company online in three hours. It is so easy,” she said. Parliament, she pointed out, is over 50 per cent women. Now women can inherit property, whereas not too long ago, family wealth was passed on to men. A woman can open a bank account, she said, instead of asking her husband or father to open it for her. And if that woman doesn’t like her husband, she can divorce him.
“We are allowed to vote,” chimed in Nathalie, who does marketing for a telecommunications firm. The head of RwandAir, she pointed out, is a woman. “If you see a woman as the head of a company, you think, ‘I can do it.’”
While gender equality, in practice, still has a ways to go, the women I met said they feel the changes every day. “Before, people were afraid,” said Angeline Kajeguhakwa, another member of the family and a petroleum executive, who recently moved back to Kigali after 20 years in Florida. “Now you could take a cab by yourself if you are drunk or tipsy and you are going to get home safe.”
Angeline wasn’t the only family member to move back. I met new transplants from Boston and New Orleans, as well as Annabelle Uwera, who may be the pioneer of the bunch. She’s about to celebrate a decade back, after 10 years in London, and is now a super-plugged-in trade officer for the British High Commission.
I felt the sense of safety that Angeline had mentioned. I took walks alone at night and even hopped on a few motorcycle taxis to get around. (They’re 10 times cheaper than regular taxis, and thrilling to ride.)