Good News Guest House

I spent most of yesterday travelling and arrived in Kigali, Rwanda early this morning… at 2:10am.  Unfortunately, due to the middle of the night arrival the person who was supposed to pick me up from my guest house failed to show.  (It was an honest mistake. He thought he was supposed to pick me up the following morning.)

Typically, arriving in the middle of the night in an African country can be a harrowing experience, especially when your ride is nowhere to be found.  This scenario is normally a huge security risk as you don’t know who to trust, and you are a bit of a sitting duck, so everyone tries to help you.  Ultimately you have to depend on someone and there is always a 50/50 chance they will rob you and potentially do worse.  Though I was hesitant and a little apprehensive with everyone at the airport offering to help me it ended up working out fine.  And around 11:30 this morning I checked in to the Good News Guest House.

I am always quite thoughtful and thoroughly investigate everywhere I board when I travel and this time was no different.  In case you are unfamiliar the Good News Ministries is a Catholic lay ministry organization.  The Good News International Organization (GNIO) is affiliated with the ministry, and the Good News Guest House provides funding for GNIO.

GNIO was founded several years ago in an effort to provide assistance for orphans and family members of the 1994 Rwandan genocide victims.  The GNIO founder, Ben, is also the owner of the Guest House.  Why did Ben start GNIO?  Because his entire family was killed in the genocide.

From the front it looks pretty basic:

But check out this gorgeous garden:

And the view of Kigali: