Day 3: Getting settled, figuring things out.

Well, I am the proud owner of a new SIM card and a phone that can dial a Rwandan number. If you are coming here from the states, (looking in your direction, Anderson, take notes), get your phone unlocked by your carrier for international use, and then once you get here go to the MTN office in the UTC (united trade center), and they can give you a new SIM card that will fit into your iDroids, and a whole mess of minutes dirt cheap (think I just bought all the minutes in the country for about $15 bucks). You can reload by buying cards from kids on the street and enter it in with a code from your phone. Pretty easy.

Plus gives you a chance to stock up on any needed supplies at the Wal-Mart of Kigali:

If only Wally World had the symbol of a rampaging elephant instead of the creepy lifeless smiley face. More fitting, in my opinion. 

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The Hotel des Mille Collines. Does not mean "hotel of a million colons" as some uneducated people have suggested. Rwanda is known as "the country of a thousand hills," and this illustrates the even the French cannot get the metric system right. Mille. Million. Come on. 

This is the Hotel Rwanda of movie fame. Paul Rusesabagina was the manager who harbored over 1000 refuges from the Hutu militia during the genocide in 1994 using money, alcohol, the prestige of the hotel, and threats of future war crime charges against leaders of the militias. His wife was Tutsi, but he was Hutu. Now the government does not even acknowledge the two ethnic groups; all are Rwandan. It is considered extremely rude to really talk about it, or ask what group people belong to. 

Not sure what it looked like then as it has been totally redone in 2010. Very nice hotel, modern. Had lunch with some of the muzungu attending surgeons and their friends by the pool (muzungu loosely translated means "dizzy one," as the white guys usually are going around in circles confused. Refers to any foreigner, really.). Got a little lay of the land at CHUK.

2. 1. 

   2. Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali
      Boulevard de la Palx, Kigali

      Call

      Directions

      Website

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Cee-ach-oo-kaa will be home for the next month. Luckily (sarcasm intended) it's the start of the academic year for everyone, so we will have tons of new med students, no interns yet, and no one will know any of the patients on their respective services. I also won't have any clue of where to go, what to do, what resources are available at any given time, or be able to speak the primary language of my patients. Or one of the secondary languages (Je suis un petit fromage) for some of them. I will be a big help (and that's what "petit fromage" means in French).