The rate at which Kigali is metamorphosing and modernizing and mutating is such that if you, as a human being are slow, then you will be left behind–in the museum of Natural History. Concepts, complexes, structures, new ideas, new thinking, etc are coming up at a rate never witnessed before. So don’t belong in the past, like a khaki suit. Crawl out of it here and now, because as the latest slogan goes, Rwanda is no longer the future. Rwanda is the present. But even with this triumphal mood currently pervading the city and the country by extension, all is not well for some sections of Kigalians, for one reason or the other. For instance as I type this, I have absolutely no doubt in me that the now former employees of KFM radio station and Top Tower Hotel are unhappy. The reason they can’t be happy is that they recently moved from being gainfully employed to jobless in the snap of a finger. So before you open your mouth to blabber about how things are tight in this searing July heat, know that there are people who are seeing worse days. Away from the woes of laid off radio and hotel employees, this is generally a feel-good season for Rwandans. Just this other day we (and by ‘we’ I mean The New Times broke you the story about Rwanda’s impending participation in the Miss World Beauty pageant. This is a first, Rwanda having never earlier participated in the prestigious pageant. Will Rwanda’s representative, Miss Rwanda 2016 Jolly Mutesi make the country proud? Well, that question will be settled on December 20 2016, in Washington DC, United States where the pageant is slated to take place. Also, what’s the name of the new by-pass road that stretches from the Ninzi Hill Hotel up to the Aigle Blanc building, popularly known as Polisi Denis? Right now we have no choice but to refer to it by the purpose for which it was designed, so we shall call it CCB -Convention Center Bypass. This sleek bitumen dual carriageway comes complete with ample and green road islands that feature tall elegant white street lights and equally tall and green and elegant Palm trees. About the Convention Center, how many of us still remember the giant MTN billboard that once stood at the Radisson Blu Hotel side of the facility, and that directly faced the KBC roundabout? That is as far as my own memory can take me back, although I’m further informed that even prior to the emergence of the towering MTN billboard, there was another tenant on the same grounds as now stands the KCC. That was the bank, Zigama CSS.
