Rising like a Phoenix

About 10 km away from the memorial is Nyamirambo, one of Kigali’s oldest neighbourhoods, dominated by Muslim traders speaking Swahili, who initially came here from Tanzania. Amid barber shops and tiny beauty parlours, street-side restaurants serving local delicacies such as pilau, biriyani, ugali (a porridge made with maize and water) and fried plantains in a car-free area, as locals play board games, while children have a run of the play area. Largely a tea-drinking country, there are many milk bars in Rwanda, which double up as places to socialise, with locals thronging it for hot milk and cold fermented milk served from huge metal drums, besides cheese and yoghurt. In fact, like India, cows and milk are an important part of the Rwandan identity. One of the local greetings—amashyo—means ‘may you have a thousand cows’.