Justin Ngoga has for years worked with several international organisations that had employees from diverse cultural backgrounds. As an intercultural trainer, he helped different people understand their cultural differences and how they could leverage and use them in a way that benefits them. After seeing the amount of cultural shock that both internationals working in Rwanda and Rwandans working in multicultural organisations were facing due to cultural unpreparedness, in 2018, Ngoga left his full time job and started his company, Impact Route. The father of three says that when he started, he was the only employee and did everything from programme and training design, content development, marketing, administrative work, training delivery, which he says was a stretching experience. Book launch attendees also had coctails and networking opportunities. “One of the many hard challenges I had to deal with was that the intercultural industry was very new in Rwanda. I had to work hard to raise the awareness of the intercultural skills necessity and convince people to buy the services,” he says. Today, he has trained more than 3000 people from more than 30 organisations, his customer base has grown and is getting a lot of work from business referrals. Through Impact Route, he offers services like Rwanda Cultural Awareness Training, a one-and-a-half hour cultural awareness session that helps new internationals understand basic Rwandan cultural behaviours and mannerisms, and intercultural training which is designed to equip participants with intercultural skills, knowledge and tools needed to meet the challenges today’s multicultural workplaces present, ‘homestays and cultural immersion’ programme where they place people in Rwandan host families where they eat Rwandan food and learn Rwandan culture and teach their cultures to their host families, as well as relocation services through their ‘relocation buddy’ programme which aims to help people relocating to Rwanda understand local culture and day-to-day life to confidently and independently navigate life in Rwanda with less relocation anxiety and stress. As Ngoga trained different individuals, they started asking him questions like, ‘if someone comes to my house asking me to pay electricity or water bills, how should I pay it?’, ‘how do I pay with MoMo (mobile money)’, ‘how do I pay for a motorbike?’ among other questions and he realised that he needed to write a relocation guide for newly relocated people to understand daily life in the country. The launch was attended by Ngoga’s former collegues, clients, friends and family. Thereafter, Ngoga developed the guidebook and named it ‘Moving to Rwanda: A Relocation Guide to a Smooth Transition to life in Rwanda’ which encompasses updated information about day-to-day life in Rwanda. According to him, the book makes life easier for people who come to live in Rwanda and helps them enjoy their stay because they have all needed resources to understand life in the country. He notes that it is his contribution to Rwanda as the country positions itself to become a centre for innovation in Africa and a financial hub with a service-based economy. ‘Moving to Rwanda: A Relocation Guide to a Smooth Transition to Life in Rwanda’ currently has five editions which according to Ngoga have the same information structure but differ from the updates they cover. He says the first edition was released in June 2020, adding that he upgrades it every six months to cope with rapid change of different things in Rwanda. On June 12, during the launch of the fifth edition of the book, Ngoga explained that it aids someone from the time they get the idea of moving to Rwanda as well as when they arrive in the country. “They understand that Rwanda is safe because I talked about safety in the book. I also talked about the weather so that they can know what kind of clothes to bring. I talked about currencies and other different pre-arrival information,” he says. “When you give them that kind of information before they arrive, it actually makes relocation much easier. They know what to expect,” he says. Apart from that information, the book provides more info about basic Kinyarwanda, religion, airline services, banking, healthcare services, transportation, real estate, water, electricity, internet, night life, schools, among others. Its audience ranges from people moving to Rwanda and their families, organisations hiring international staff, conference attendees as well as returning Rwandan diaspora. Readers share their views According to Alan Francis, a start-up business owner from the United Kingdom, one can turn to ‘Moving to Rwanda: A Relocation Guide to a Smooth Transition to Life in Rwanda’ as a reference guide. He says that he and his wife came across it when they were trying to relocate to Rwanda and found accurate information, which he says saved them time from checking different sources trying to get information. “The information was relevant and factual. When you come to Rwanda, you feel like you already know the country, specifically Kigali,” he says. Francis also notes that with contact details in the book, one can also access good service, declaring that when they had an accident, they found contacts of King Faisal Hospital in the book, went there and were given good service. Beatrice VSO, another reader, serves in a company that works with national and international volunteers. She says that the book helped her while taking individuals to a new society which would have been difficult if they didn’t have the right information to use. “This guide has been a wonderful tool for me to ensure that our international volunteers get to have first-hand information in terms of the weather, religion, language, car care services, mobile money, telecom market, among others,” she says. “The guide has been useful for people to understand and get to know their way around. I have found this guide to be a true companion to our people,” she adds. “Moving to Rwanda: A Relocation Guide to a Smooth Transition to Life in Rwanda” can be found on Amazon. One can get hard copies by contacting Ngoga, or at Kigali Memorial Souvenir Shop, Ikirezi Library and at Kigali International Airport.
