Kigali is an extraordinary city, sprawled across tree-spattered low hills. Compared to the chaos and bustle of Nairobi or Kampala, it is calm, safe and remarkably clean, almost eerily so. There are few street children and no informal traders, the traffic lights work and motorbike taxi-drivers wear helmets. Neat new dormitory suburbs climb distant hillsides in orderly ranks, behind soaring new office blocks, malls and Ministry buildings. The government extols the fundamental unity of Rwandans, and the people live in peace. The transformation from the dark days of 1994 is nothing short of astonishing.
But it also feels slightly unreal. No country divides observers like Rwanda. To some, it is an unparalleled success story, a phoenix rising from the ashes of genocide. To others, an authoritarian regime, guilty of fierce repression at home and bloody military adventures abroad.
