We Spent a Week in Kigali and Learned How People Actually Pay

Our team spent a week in Kigali, and one of the first things we had to figure out had nothing to do with the retreat.

It was how to pay for things.

Naira didn't work, cards worked in some places but not others, and cash ended up working almost everywhere else, though even that came with its own small headaches, and it took us longer than we expected to notice a pattern in any of it.

Things to Do in Kigali During a Work RetreatKigali gave us a chance to work, explore and see our colleagues differently, which could make it worth considering for your next retreat.

The Moment It Became Clear Our Usual Habits Would Not Work Here

The realisation did not come all at once. It came from one specific trip to the market. One of our teammates, Louis Eriakha, went to buy a few souvenirs to take home.

He had Rwandan francs in his pocket and assumed that would be enough, the same way cash is usually enough anywhere. But the market woman he was buying from didn't want cash. She asked him to send the payment through a mobile transfer instead.

Louis didn't have a way to send it the way she wanted. He had the money, just not in the form she needed it in. The two of them had to find a middle ground before he could walk away with his souvenirs, and that small standoff is where the trip really started to teach us something.

Paying for things the way we were used to back home, cash in hand, transfer on request, did not automatically work in Kigali. We had to learn the local logic of money as we went, one purchase at a time.