Yeah.

Come here.

Come here.

Alright, Meat.

Rwanda, come on and shake hands.

This guy's trying to be the African version of you.

Everyone, I'm your host.

Barbs!

If there was ever a comeback kid story, Rwanda would probably fit the bill.

Oh, and just a heads up.

Hey, guys, my body!

Edmund, He's Rwandan.

He will be popping in and out of this episode.

Hey, that's me.

I'll see you guys in a minute.

Thank you, Edmund.

And with that being said, let's jump into the globe.

Shall we?

Now Rwanda is starting to make the news a lot these days.

Few countries actually have a socioeconomic success story as them and things are only starting to look brighter.

But first, let's look at this little gem of a nation, shall we?

The country's just below the equator and it's surrounded by four other countries the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, and Lake Kivu to the west, which they share with the DRC.

However, the DRC gets the big island a tree in the middle of it to the south.

The only territorial dispute they kind of have with Burundi is this two square kilometer patch of land known as Sabaneta Reason thing because the Kangaroo Kenyatta River shifted its course southwards after heavy rains in 1965 no one really pays attention to this, though the capital of the country is Kigali, located near the exact geographic center of the country, and from there the country is further divided into five provinces or in Tara, north, south, east and west, and Kigali, which has its own provincial status.

Kigali, of course, is the largest city with over one million people, and it also holds the largest and busiest airport.

Rwanda, Kigali International over just a Skip South Bogus Centre International Airport is actually Kurt Remark to become the biggest and busiest airport servicing the greater Kigali area as Kigali Airport has been reaching maximum capacity in the past few years.

From there, they have only one other international airport com M B.

A international located in the western province close to Lake Kivu on the border of the DRC, The country has a wide network of paved roads that reach virtually every corner of the country and every main town and city.

But essentially all roads kind of stem off of Kigali, since the country is small and landlocked, they don't have any major industrial shipping ports and almost all cargo from abroad must be brought in from the port of Mombasa in Kenya or Dar Salaam, Tanzania, which is interesting because funny side note.

Rwanda is part of the E A, C or East African Community, an international government organization that acts much like a trade blocking customs union between six countries.

Talks have been made by a committee and proposing a huge mega state called the East African Federation, in which all six would potentially become one country.

But so far the idea is still in the works.

But who knows also, weirdly enough, Rwanda is one of the few countries that join the Commonwealth of Nations that never had a history of being colonized by the British anyway.

According to the World Bank, Rwanda was titled The most Competitive economy in the African continent as well as the easiest place to do business in Africa.

In fact, over two billion has been funded by the African Development Bank to construct Kigali Innovation City, which consists of world class universities, technology companies, biotech firms and commercial centers, providing over 50,000 jobs.

Around 95% of the youth are enrolled in schools, and literacy rates have jumped from only about 58% in 1991 to nearly 75% today.

How did all this happen, though?

Well, basically, in the year 2000 they had this thing called the Vision 2020.

And it was like Okay, guys, we literally just had a genocide and we had to fix things up in our country.

Let's get it all done in 20 years.

What we need We need to rebuild all the lost homes and fix the infrastructure we need to address the past atrocities and provide social service is we need to clean up all the mess on the streets.

Okay, well, we don't have many resources.

We are incredibly dense population.

We have a limited budget.

What are some cost efficient methods we could implement, divert about 22% of budget funds into the education sector and construct government subsidized neighborhoods for families that lost home.

Let's do the local communal justice system to put the two million cases on trial.

Let's do it.

Move Gondo in Kigali, where everybody has to volunteer to clean up everything.

Oh yeah.

Also, let's make the first and third Sunday of the month a car free day.

Oh, great idea.

What if on that day you could get free checkups from doctors and hold free open concerts in public?

And after that, let's ban plastic bags like visitors will get their luggage checked at the airport.

Yeah, those are all real things to this day.

Kigali is labeled the cleanest city in Africa.

They're making a statement, and it might really make you row.

Want to see it, huh?

And speaking of visiting, If you do, here's a list of some of the top multiple sites you guys that Rwandan geography suggested.

I mentioned by golly, has a lot of genocide.

Memorial sites Camp Kigali Belgian Monument, the Hotel de Mille Conine, the Ethnographic Museum in Bhutan, the National Art Gallery in Yan Za, New Way and Atari.

Both have royal palaces, the National University, the Cultural Heritage Quarter.

Maybe watch a culture center.

Ntarama Church, Congo Nile Trail the poor Funda Tea factory with Sanjay Caves.

Acquittal him the milk bar, the beaches on Lake Kivu, Rongrong senior, really cool towns and probably the most notable Spot Volcanoes National Park, which has an incredibly rare animal that we will discuss in the next section.

Rwanda is often called the land of 1000 hills.

It's small only about the size of Haiti or Albania if there's a lot going on based off of its interesting geographic location.

Although small, Rwanda sits on a very important geological zone known as the East African Rift, we've talked about this guy many times.

Basically, the crack starts in the Red Sea, splitting all the way down into the Great Lakes, which were subsequently formed by this rift system.

For Wanda sits on the Albertine Rift, the western crack section of the East African rift right next to Lake Kivu, one of the smaller legs but the largest of the country, which, by the way, has methane extraction.

Riggs, as the country sits on a fault line.

This makes part of the country partially geothermal, as the surrounding areas have multiple volcanoes, some dormant, some active.

The largest lake entirely within Rwanda, though, would be Lake Hemet, on the east side of the country.

In the Ghetto national Park, there are two other national parks, the Newman Way, forced national Park in the west and the famous Volcanoes National Park in the north near by the Volcanoes National Park, you can find the tallest peak of the country, Mt.

Carly seem be a dormant volcano, which is part of the larger Via Rome gum mountain chain that covers much of the west side of the country.

This is home to the famous eight volcanoes of the Virunga Mountains, and Rwanda has five of them.

If you zoom out a little further, you can see that Rwanda is split between two main watershed basins.

The Nile basin, where about 80% of the water drains in the Congo basin.

We're about 20% drains.

The longest river of the country is the Kagera, which makes the border with Tanzania.

However, the longest river entirely within Rwanda is then, yeah, Bronco, which hooks into the morgue Oh River.

And many say these waters could be some of the most distant sources of the Greater Nile River that flows into Egypt.

Yeah, the country is small, but it has a lot of natural features and landscapes to work with.

I mean, coffee is a huge industry out here as being of coffee.

It's time for my triple shot espresso break, which means no one comes in for this segment.

Hey, all right.

Rwanda is quite small, but it's it's of the relatively high elevation.

This means, thanks to the location in Tropic Zone, along a fault line with volcanic soil close to the equator.

Rwanda has the perfect climate and land produce crops.

It also means you'll find the occasional hot spring here and there and keep in mind after war and genocide times, much of the country was in need of recovery.

They wanted men today, one cow for a family program called Garrincha.

Back in 2006 it was like, Okay, we're left with a ton of impoverished and malnourished rural people.

How do we help them?

The cow is a huge symbol of livelihood in our country.

Cows give milk me clothing.

Let's give everyone a cow.

Okay, but how do we do that?

How about we start buying off a bunch of them to distribute to some registered applicants From there, the first female calf born from that cow must be given to another impoverished family, and the cycle continues.

Cycle continues, and since the program was implemented the quality of life in Rwanda has increased, the life expectancy has risen by nearly 20 years is the mid nineties after the genocide and today about 87% of the population of health insurance, compared to less than 40% in 8 2001 The biggest draws reward is that it is one of the only two main safe place for people to go into the incredibly rare mountain gorillas at Volcanoes National Park.

Rwanda has the largest population of the animals at about 200 they're heavily protected.

And speaking of animals, here is our resident animal expert to explain.

Oh God, you're a hollow here in Rwanda, basically, the east is more severe species, and the West has more jungle species in the east.

You confined things like hippos, Elephants, Blake, Right nor Sarai were is in the west.

You find more primates and bids like blue and gold monkeys.

Great blue.

10 tacos boost Great blue talk.

Great blue.

Terek owes Bush babies, baboons and, of course, the Menton gorilla novelists.

The national animal is actually believe Thank you, Gary.

You will.

And that just about does it.

So now we finish off the statement like we always d'oh food but many other East African countries, a staple found in many dishes is golly or Abu Ghali, a ball made of Mashed Mae's.

Most people only eat meat a few times a month, and most meals are high and vegetables, carbs and some groups milk.

Some notable dishes include Ametek, a Bahasa in key *** in the zoo zoo in areas.

By late cable, you might find some good Nile tilapia and a student lee the national, if not a very common dish.

Be Toki, also where wa wa banana wine is a popular drink.

But out of all drinks, milk is probably the favorite.

Cows are once again very important Rwandans.

They even rent them out for wedding ceremonies.

But that's a cultural fact, which means we now move on to thank you Noah Hyo tux.

Now, at this point, we've talked a lot about Rwanda's prosperity and social progress.

However, this is where things get a little heavy.

Wanda has a pretty intense story that everything came out, but first, the demographics graft.

The country has about 11.5 million people and is the second most densely populated country in Africa after Mauritius and ranks in the top three least corrupt countries in Africa.

Now, nearly the entire country of Rwanda falls under the broader People group known as the Barnyard Wanda, part of the bond to ethno linguistic family.

Most people in the country will just say that they are Rwandan and don't really prefer to establish the specific people group that they come from.

But estimates state that somewhere around 83% of the country is from the larger Hutu tribe and about 15% or from the smaller Tutsi tribe.

From there, the smallest 1% are from the twat.

The remaining 1% are all other groups, mostly other Africans and a few whites and Asians that have moved in these, the Rwandan front as their currency.

They used a type C N J Plug Alex, and they drive on the right side of the road.

Now again, just like we explained in Rwanda's twin country Burundi's episode a long time ago.

Even though they are seen as the same people and labels are not really preferred.

If they must talk about it, most people will mention whether they have a background in the Hutu or Tutsi tribes.

Here's Edmund explaining why these two tribes are a big deal in Rwanda.

Okay, so the Hutu and Tutsi is used to be a Class S O.

The two teas were usually the ones with more cows, and then the hotels were the serving class until after the colonization time, when it became pretty much became an identity.

People were given identity cards where it said, whether they were who tells her to tease and the conflict started from.

There were basically the same people.

We speak the same language.

Sometimes people say we're like I kind of like physically a little bit different, but it's all pretty much the same.

Thank you, Edmund.

Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

I mean, most ethnographers agree that Tutsi and Hutu groups cannot even be properly called distinct ethnic groups for what it's worth.

Over, Rwanda has four official languages English, French, Swahili and the native national language Kinyarwanda, which is weird because Rwanda was never even colonized by the British.

So how did English become official?

Well, it was kind of like this.

I won't have to melt in our own evolution, I say $2 waffle, new uber tonal a lesson.

Uganda.

Actually, Paul, if you really want to be accurate, they'll be speaking in Rwanda, not French.

Find Edmund.

Let's do the skit all over again.

You were in truth Day record in Tambura, Hungary, a record to whom get Uganda were bag isn't we brought some of that you God in English with okay, putting the whole grazing near boundaries of what is acceptable contextualized humor Based on historical incidents aside, that's basically how English entered Rwanda, mostly through returning Tutsi refugees that have lived nearly three decades in Uganda.

In any case, Rwanda is also, unfortunately known Best Buy the biggest scar they suffered in history the infamous Rwandan genocide.

I'm gonna let Edmund explain this one because this is something he knows.

The story of the genocide is like it goes back into the fifties.

That's when they really started slowly killing the two teas and then some family started escaping.

And then in 1994 the plan of the president was shot down at the time.

And then that day, that's when the genocide really started.

But it was something that built up from this fifties.

I was there and a lot of my neighbors that started getting killed some family members that day.

I'm very lucky that I survived.

So it ended when the RPF defeated our army and that pretty much ended the genocide.

And about 100 days somewhere around half a 1,000,000 to a 1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Tutsi sympathizing who twos and even some twas were targeted for slaughter by order of various who to military and police leaders.