Hi guys. It's been a really tough start to the New Year. Noise in my area of Kigali has always been an issue, but lately it's out of control with all-night building work and chemical sprays. It feels like Kigali is becoming a city built for buildings rather than people. It's great to see so much development happening all at once, but it comes at the expense of public health. As much as I really don't want to, I have to admit that it might be time to look for a new home. Here's the story so far.
There's also a related video about the time they paved my road, which you might find interesting. It shows the road-building process and also the conditions that people are working under. Again - it's fantastic to see development happening in real time, but it does raise public health concerns along the way.
I feel like development isn't just about concrete and roads. It's also about developing the type of regulations and oversight that allows two million people to live on top of each other without exploding. That's the part I feel Kigali is kind of missing at the moment. There's a lot of regulations about noise on paper, but they're pretty much ignored when someone wants to build an apartment or spray chemicals in a residential area. It doesn't seem like there's much will to solve these issues at the moment.
