I arrived expecting a hotel.
Not just any hotel—the hotel. Hôtel Faucon. The first of its kind in Rwanda. A place that once stood at the center of Astrida, carrying stories of power, presence, and a kind of exclusivity that defined an era.
In my mind, I had already begun the visit. I imagined hallways that still echoed with footsteps from another time. I imagined rooms with stories attached to them—one in particular: the room where King Mutara III Rudahigwa once slept. That was the one I was quietly hoping to find.
But Hôtel Faucon, as I had imagined it, no longer exists. The building is still there—but the hotel is gone.
Today, it lives a different life. A Chinese restaurant occupies one part of it, a bakery another, and somewhere within, a nightclub waits for the night. I stepped into the restaurant and the bakery—spaces alive with present-day rhythm, far removed from the world the building once held—while the club, closed in the quiet of the day, hinted at a different kind of life after dark. Nothing about these spaces announces what this place used to be. You could walk in, order a meal or a pastry, leave—and never know.
I moved slowly, entering one door after another. Not as a customer, but as someone searching for traces. I looked up at the ceiling, studying its quiet endurance. I placed my hand on the walls—not out of curiosity, but out of instinct. As if touch could unlock something.
There is a certain feeling that comes with visiting places like this. It is difficult to explain, but unmistakable when it happens. It feels like standing between two timelines. The present moves around you—voices, footsteps, transactions—but beneath it, something older lingers. Not loud. Not visible. But present.
Places like this do not speak in words. They whisper—in textures, in silence, in the weight of what they have witnessed. If you are patient, if you slow down enough, you begin to sense it. A faint pull into the past. A suggestion of stories that once unfolded exactly where you stand.
Hôtel Faucon was once a symbol of access—and denial. A place built for some, and not for others. A place where hospitality existed, but not for everyone. Standing inside it today, with doors open to all, that contrast is impossible to ignore.
And there is no way to stand in that history without feeling a quiet discomfort—if not outright disgust. The idea that a place built for hospitality could once exclude the very people of the land it stood on feels deeply wrong. Not distant, not abstract—but personal. It is a reminder of a time when dignity was unevenly distributed, and access was defined by who you were, not where you belonged.
Time has changed the function of the building. But it has not erased its memory. When I finally stepped out, I didn’t feel closure. I felt uncertainty.
A quiet question followed me as I walked away: Will this building still be here the next time I come back?
Huye is changing. Growing. Evolving at a pace that does not always pause for memory. And this building—sitting on prime land, carrying history but offering modest commercial return—feels like it stands at a crossroads.
Preserved, it could remain a powerful link to the past. Replaced, it would make economic sense. And that is the tension.
Maybe that is why the visit stayed with me long after I left—not because of what I saw, but because of what could be lost. Places like this do not demand attention; they quietly hold it, until one day they are gone. And when they disappear, they take with them something we rarely notice in time—the physical spaces where memory lives.
If Hôtel Faucon’s building is to remain, it will require intention. If not, it will give way to progress, as many before it have. But for now, it still stands. And for those who walk through its doors aware of what it once was, it offers something rare: a fleeting chance to stand inside history, just before it slips further away.