Training Site, Butare, Southern Province

So I just learned that I'll be spending the first ten weeks of my assignment in a city called Butare in southern Rwanda (2.5 hours south of the capital Kigali). Here's some info on Butare that I was able to find online. We're going to be hosted by Nuns in a seminary in Butare, which is the cultural and intellectual capital of Rwanda.

Read below (link: http://www.rwandatourism.com/kigali.htm)

Butare (HUYE now ) was the largest and most important city in Rwanda prior to 1965, when it lost out to the more centrally located Kigali, 135km to its north, as the capital of independent Rwanda. Today the site of several academic institutions, including the country's largest university,Huye ( Butare) is still regarded to be the intellectual and cultural pulse of Rwanda. It is also an attractively compact and sedate town of shady avenues emanating from a main street lined with comfortable small hotels and breezy terrace restaurants.

The most prominent tourist attraction in Huye (Butare) is the superb National Museum, which houses perhaps the finest ethnographic collection in East Africa. Absorbing displays of traditional artifacts are illuminated by a fascinating selection of turn-of-the-century monochrome photographs, providing insight not only into pre-colonial lifestyles, but also into the subsequent development of Rwanda as a modern African state.

The cultural significance of the Huye area is further underlined by a visit to nearby Nyabisindu, formerly known as Nyanza, the traditional seat of Rwanda’s feudal monarchy. The impressive Royal Palace at Nyanza, an enormous domed construction made entirely with traditional materials, has been painstakingly restored to its 19th century state and is now maintained as a museum.