Weather (and drinks)

Last Friday afternoon was very hot, while yesterday we had our first experience of serious raining, with a 30 minute deluge shortly after the service, so we thought it is high time we gave you an overview of Rwanda’s climate, which is shaped by two factors: latitude and altitude.

We are just a tad below the equator (check “contacts” for more precise details), so it should be very hot and humid, but we are at approx. 1500mt, which means it’s never too hot and not very humid; all in all… one of the best climates on Earth!

Basically a constant summer, or late spring, depending on your standards: temperatures average between 30 during the day (32 is very high) and 19 at night (16 when it’s “cold”). There are two rainy seasons: one goes from October to November, the other is starting soon (just started?) and will last a couple of months, so we arrived in the short dry season; however, it won’t mean 2 months of monsoons, simply a few hours of rain nearly every day.

As Italian citizens, it’s not really hot, but 7 years in Ireland, i.e. a lifetime for the kids, have changed our perceptions, so at times we feel slightly roasting, especially during those 2-3 hours around noon, if we're outside, but in those cases we are relieved by seeing some local people walking under the shelter of umbrellas: they feel it too!

On the other end, when the morning is cool, maybe after a rainy night, with the sky still cloudy, and the locals, wearing jackets or other unusual warm items, ask us if we don’t feel cold, we answer that in Ireland those 22-3 degrees are just one step below a heat-wave…  

On the whole, we really like it: nice and warm, you just need to drink a lot, and sugary drinks help, which means we use a great deal of delicious local fruit juices, like pineapple, passion-fruit, mango, strawberry (the best are the concentrated ones, buy 1 litre, make 5); unfortunately, we’ve also fallen in line with the local customs and the two adults can’t go a day without their coca-cola, coming in cheap 300ml glass bottles, very eco-friendly as you give them back to buy more (you can buy “new” ones only in the big supermarkets in the city centre, while in the mini-shops around the city you must bring your empties, or buy coke in plastic, which is nowhere near as to taste and definitely harmful to the environment, giving the total lack of recycling facilities).

Language curio: they call them all “Fanta”, regardless of the real content (Coca-Coal, Fanta Orange, Fanta Lemon, Sprite).

Latest weather update: this morning, while we post this, one of Kigali’s many hills has disappeared from our view: a big white cloud (or is it fog?) has shrouded the whole place, making it quite surreal, as the view can be more or less clear depending on the days, but the hill was always there…