I got a ride from Kibuye to Kigali with B and he was kind enough to bring me out to D's house to drop off my stuff and then leave me in town to do some errands (although not that kind, really, since he had to stop at UNHCR and D lives close to that and then he had to go to his office in town and he just dropped me off on the way). Anyway, there is a big COMESA (Community of East African States) conference going on in Kigali right now and the city is all spruced up for the event. The primary side effect (other than abnormal cleanliness) seems to be police on motorbikes with sirens (which I've never heard in this country before) tearing through the streets clearing the way for supposed VIPs (like the presidents of all the COMESA countries), except that most of the time the people in the cars following look a lot like random people overly excited by the opportunity to stop everyone in the street and drive really fast.
On the way to UNHCR, we saw a set of three signs that said, "Kigali welcomes... Mauritius... COMESA." The next set said, "Kigali welcomes... Eritrea... COMESA." Fine, nice, very friendly. On the way back into town, as we approached the set of signs for Eritrea, we noticed that they also say the same (with a different country) in reverse. "Wait," B (who is Ethiopian, by the way) suddenly said, "does that sign say Ethiopia and is that the opposite side of the sign that says Eritrea?" We turned in unison to look. Yes, indeed. The sign says Ethiopia when coming from the airport and Eritrea when going to the airport, ON THE SAME SIGN, notwithstanding the fact that those two countries have been at war with each other virtually continually since Eritrea voted to remove themselves from Ethiopia in 1993. We both nearly collapsed with laughter, which was unfortunate since B was driving. But we didn't crash.
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