The roads of the city were clear, the avenues spacious, neat and modern. Beautifully surrounded by the lush combination of tropical flowers and trees, and of course, the beautiful singing of the birds, sounding unusually loud and playful against the quiet night.
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As I am writing this, I am sat with a t-shirt and linen trousers sipping a cup of Rwandan (strong!) black tea in the beautiful garden of the hostel I am staying in, in Kigali, Rwanda. Carved wooden furniture live among banana plants, sycamores and cicadas singing in the background.
When I booked my ticket from London to Kigali, I noticed that there was only 1h between my London – Brussels flight and the Brussels – Kigali flight. However, since it was all under the same booking and the same airline, I assumed this must have worked out well multiple times in the past, so even though it felt a bit tight, I went ahead and booked it.
With my incredible mum by my side, I set off very late at night and got to Heathrow early hours of my departure day. Heathrow completely empty at the time, with the exception of us being in the very early flights (just a note that Terminal 2 has absolutely nowhere to sit before the baggage drop off, so we all sat or laid on the floor…). All went very smoothly until I was at the gate, where the boarding time kept on being pushed back again and again.
I kept glancing anxiously at the time, trying to calculate what is the latest that we would arrive in Brussels in order not to miss the connecting flight to Kigali (apparently 25 minutes are the minimum time for connecting flights…). Asking around, I could see I wasn’t the only one with connecting flights being very nervous, trying to get as much information as possible from the gate staff.
As the time went on, I started being more and more certain that we would miss the connecting flight. Everything seemed to be taking too long, everyone had so many cabin bags, kept changing seats, going back and forth, and my heart sank a little as I did wonder what the alternative options would be if we missed the flight.
And so it just happened – half an hour later into the flight we found out that those of us who were booked into the Kigali flight had been put into an alternative flight, not knowing what it was. My fear was that it wouldn’t be until the next day, and so it would be a bit of a faff having to leave the airport, come back etc.
Just as we landed in Brussels, I got an email that we had been put on a Turkish Airlines flight from Brussels to Kigali via Istanbul, very luckily for the same day, just a couple of hours later. The only glitch was that the flight arrived in Kigali at 2 am, whereas my original booking only arrived just before 8 pm.
I was a bit nervous having to arrive in Kigali in the middle of the night, mostly because if the guy from my hostel didn’t turn up, it would be really difficult for me to sort out an alternative at this time of the night (though at least Kigali airport had chairs!). Generally, my advice with planning in Africa is to have a backup plan in your mind, just in case things turn out a little different than what you have imagined.
In the end, I was very grateful that it all went smoothly. We arrived in Kigali just after 2am, and after exchanging some money into Rwandan Francs and getting a local SIM card for my internet, I was on my way to my hostel in the Kimihurura area of Kigali (the host must have felt very sorry for me as he offered me a single room instead of a dorm bed in order to be able to sleep properly!).
After a nearly 26h journey since I left home the day before, and laying in what felt like the most comfortable bed ever, I took a minute to cherish how I was feeling – a bit disoriented and tired, but mostly really excited and grateful to be back in Africa ❤︎
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