Annemarie:
After Christmas eve in Rwanda’s National Genocide Museum we perhaps needed a little light relief and so pampered ourselves spending Christmas itself in Heaven. We haven’t been angelic enough for the real thing so we settled for a wonderful restaurant with rooms in the leafy presidential suburb of Kigali, but it was pretty heavenly: hot showers, comfy beds and great food and what’s more it was another ethical choice.
Heaven was set up by Alissa Ruxin, an American who was originally volunteering in Rwanda for ‘Generation Rwanda’, an organisation providing university scholarships for orphans. She decided to set up a business that would provide vocational training and employment for young adults and ‘Heaven’ was born! There’s a whole book telling the story of what Alissa, her husband Josh and the team at Heaven have achieved A Thousand Hills to Heaven and Martin kindly bought it for me for Christmas. The restaurant and rooms were juts the start, now the craft shop, art gallery, events and sourcing of local ingredients really bring a community together and provide a means of visitors to Rwanda making a contribution and for local people to support communities and small farm producers. They are still developing and this year are setting up the ‘Heaven Hospitality Academy’ courses so, more power to their elbow! Their team was certainly made our Christmas Day and Boxing Day very special. Read more about them or make contact at Heaven
I explained how many other enterprises we have discovered in our travels and they are very happy for any of them to get in touch for advice or to share experiences.