Compare and contrast

while we have been out of the big city Lon and I have made a list of reasons why we know we aren't in Rwanda any more...

on the surface many things appear the same here - there is a lady walking by the side of the road, she is wearing a brightly coloured african pagne (cloth) and a strappy t-shirt, on her head is a piece of matching pagne, and she's balancing a metal pot on her head, or a basket....she may or may not have a baby strapped to her back with another piece of cloth. Its the small details that count though - the plastic shoes were different in Rwanda after regular flip flops were discouraged (read prohibited), and the shape of the basket is different too.

Equally, many young men you see will be wearing a pair of shapeless trousers, football t-shirt (Eto'o is the most popular) and a pair of plastic shoes / flip flops

Some form of homogenization is definitely going on as many of the same pagne cloths are available and popular here as in Rwanda, albeit in different colour-ways, the same cheap aluminum cooking pots, and 555 stainless silver Indian style seem to be ubiquitous.

Reasons we are not in Rwanda


street food
music
there are no hills
men don't hold hands as they are walking along
men don't hold "themselves" in the trouser region as a matter of course
there are almost no banana trees in the countryside
roads don't have huge gutters next to them
there are no traffic police in every village
mobilettes (mopeds) are personally owned, not used as taxis
a lot more bikes
bigger range of brand of cars
not the standard little taxi bus
women ride bikes
there are donkeys


this is not a static list...