As we travelled on, I found myself looking back at one of the hills.
It felt surreal. I looked back and thought, wow. I couldn’t believe that I had been there and that so much had happened in those eight days.
The conversations came back to me. The things I had seen and learned. The people I had met. It all felt a little unreal.
If someone had told me ten years ago that I would one day be at a gathering like VIV Africa, surrounded by people from different parts of the world working in innovation, agriculture and poultry, I don’t think I would have believed them. For a long time, I used to see people travel and take part in things like this and think, maybe it is not for people like us.
But there I was.
I had gone to Kigali, Rwanda, for VIV Africa, held at the Kigali Convention Centre. People had come from different countries to share ideas and talk about the future of agriculture and the poultry industry. There were conversations about young people in the sector, innovation, the systems we are building, and the economics behind it all.
I don’t want to make those topics the whole story. What stayed with me was being there and taking it all in. Walking around the different stands, seeing the technologies people were bringing to farms, and listening to them explain what they were working on.
I appreciated the people who took time to answer my questions and share their experience. I was there looking for solutions we could use at Afrifama, and those conversations gave me a lot to think about.
Somewhere in between, it struck me that the small startup we had been building had brought me here. An idea I had started with was now taking me to places I once thought were for other people. And here I was, asking questions that mattered to our work, our farmers and what we hoped to build.
I kept thinking about how far we had come. From a simple idea to being in that room, having those conversations and looking for ways to improve what we are doing. We are still small, and there is a long way to go. But I couldn’t help thinking, look how much we have grown.
Kigali itself made the experience even more memorable. I had never seen a city so green. Every morning, travelling from the ridge where my hotel was to another where the convention centre stood, I would look out of the car window.
Tall, green trees, flowers along every road, clean roads and footpaths. Do they wake up before dawn to clean all this? I kept wondering.
The city looked just as beautiful in the evening on the way back. People were kind and polite, always ready to show me the way. Even moving around in the taxis became part of the experience.
After VIV Africa, I found myself wanting to understand more about Rwanda. I had admired the city, but I was becoming more curious about the people. What had it taken to build what I was seeing? Where did that determination come from?
That curiosity took me to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where I spent three or four hours listening to stories, watching videos and reading through the accounts laid out across the memorial. Some were difficult to get through. I may have shed a tear. There was so much I had not understood about what people had lived through, and what it meant to carry on afterwards.
Remember, Unite and Renew. Those words stayed with me. I was only beginning to understand, but they gave me something to think about as I moved through Kigali afterwards. The city I had been admiring was also home to people who had lived through that history. I found myself thinking more about what rebuilding had asked of them.
At Norrsken House Kigali, that curiosity led to conversations with young people building businesses and working on different ideas in technology. I got to hear what they were trying to solve and share a little of what we were doing at Afrifama. I loved being able to sit together and think through ideas. There was something exciting about seeing the community they were building there.
There was also time to slow down a little. We visited Eco Park, where everything was so green and carefully arranged that I found myself wondering, do they wake up before dawn every morning to arrange the bushes and lilies? Kigali, you have really outdone yourself. I’m joking, but wow.
In the small bookshops in the heart of Kigali, I found another way to keep learning about the place. I bought a few books to take with me. There was still so much I wanted to understand about Rwanda, and I wanted to carry some of that reading home.
And in between all these visits were the conversations. Along hotel corridors, in the back of taxis, sometimes just asking a question and ending up talking for much longer. I enjoyed hearing people talk about their country and their everyday lives. Those conversations became part of how I remember Kigali too.
As we travelled on, I looked back at the hill and thought about those eight days. I had gone to Kigali for VIV Africa. Now I was thinking about conversations I wished I could continue, ideas I wanted to explore, and how much there was still to learn about Rwanda.
Eight days had felt like a lot when I was planning the trip. Leaving, I felt as if I was only just beginning. I already wanted to come back.