The strangest museum...

So for reasons I will reveal to you later, I am doing a lot of research in Kigali at the moment. One place I needed to check out but never have was the museum of natural history. Located down a dirt road not far from the prison, I must admit I would probably not have bothered going if I was not required to research it as rocks and stuffed animals are not really my thing, but I’m glad I did just for the strangeness of the experience. The first thing that struck me as strange was outside the front entrance there looks to be an elephant’s skull stuck in a plant pot. It is actually mounted on a tree trunk on closer inspection, but I have to be honest it is a weird choice of object to entice people to enter. It reminded me of the book ‘Lord of the flies’ and the pig’s head stuck on a stick.

The next strange thing is that the text for all of the exhibits is in German and Kinyarwanda only. Now I’m not intending to diss the German language but how many people in this part of the world can actually speak German? I’ve yet to meet more than one German speaker here in over a year. I think the reason for this is that it was created by a German NGO but I do think French or English would have been a better choice for the second language if the museum was intended to be visited by people from afar or the wider East African community. When I asked if this was going to change I was met with a blank ‘why would that be necessary?’ look...

And the third strange thing was the exhibits themselves. Now I understood the displays of rocks and stuffed animals from the national parks, but if anyone could tell me what the purpose of a glass case full of plastic toy farm animals was I’d love to know. It would be better to take them to the nearest maternelle or pre-school in my humble opinion. That way they would really be contributing towards people’s education. However one thing that was wonderful and not so strange was the view from the terrace at the back of the museum. You can see all around downtown Kigali. You can peek at the clusters of mud houses nestled into the valley and see wisps of smoke rising from settlements. It was definitely the highlight of my day! A museum with a view....