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VSO - Sharing Skills, Changing Lives
Where we do it > Ten facts about Rwanda- Kigali - the capital - is the city in Africa most frequently visited by American Christian Rock Bands and stadium-filling Evangelists coming to convert Rwandans to Christianity (despite the fact that almost everyone is Christian already).
- Fried grasshopppers are a delicacy in Rwanda, but you have to keep the lid on the pan while you are frying them alive, or they tend to jump out.
- By law, at least a third of the Parliament representation must be female. Rwanda recently topped a survey of the number of women in any parliament with 49% female representation.
- Kigali is one of the few capital cities in the world without a branch of McDonalds.
- 50% of the population of Rwanda is under 18.
- It is considered disrespectful to call adults by their name (either first name or surname). This is because a great deal of importance is attached to names and you have to earn the right to be told them, especially with older people. The appropriate form of address is 'Mamma' or 'Pappa' for older people, and 'Sister' or 'Brother' for younger people. This comes with its own risk of offence if you call someone 'Mamma' when they think of themselves as a 'Sister'! There are also a lot of nuns, which confuses things even further.
- Rwanda is well known for its Gorilla population - as popularised in the book and film Gorillas in the Mist.
- The Source of the river Nile has been recently traced to South West Rwanda.
- Rwandans mix up the pronounciation of their 'L's' and 'R's'. Consequently the national and local elections are highly amusing for Mazungus (the local term for white people).
- Rwanda has only one cinema, and often films are accompanied by simultaneous interpertation into the local language (Kinyarwandan), The interpreters habitually replace place names used in the film with those of local towns.
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