KIGALI CAROUSING
It must be a side-effect of being out ‘in the bush’ (Alfred: Gross over-exaggeration – apologies to George W. Bush – ‘in the bush’ indeed!) but I seem to be having an increasingly wild social life whenever I get up to Kigali! This time started off with Heloise Allan’s farewell do. I had had one of those infuriating days which make you wonder what the hell you are doing here at all!! I had told my boss that I needed to bring the contracts for the new volunteer up to Kigali on Friday and reminded him every day, including the (not very realistic) threat that she might be allocated to another District if we didn’t put down on paper that we wanted her. So there I am on Friday and my boss has got the mayor to sign the first contract (acceptance contract saying the District approve her coming), forgot about the second one (agreement between the District and VSO re payments, employment conditions etc) and the mayor decided he wanted to leave the third (contract between the volunteer and the District) until she was here. And he had forgotten to get the top sheet stamped, without which it has no validity.
I said I was going home to get my things and, when the moto driver arrived, I would swing by the office to pick up the stamped paper. I went home, ate and packed and came back. He seemed to have completely forgotten in the space of 45 minutes what he was supposed to do. He ran to the secretary’s office where the stamp is kept – she had gone to lunch! So he told me to stay put, jumped on his moto and drove off, arriving back in ten minutes with the unfortunate secretary on the back who had been dragged away from her lunch to do this for me. She wasn’t happy but she’s a smart cookie and I figure she remembers that my boss actually spent most of the morning in her office and had never bothered to do it when he actually had the opportunity. (Alfred: Unnecessary detail, you might think? And you might be right – but every volunteer here can give you at least three or four such stories PER WEEK of their entire stay here, so it’s probably worth it!).
This meant that by the time I got to Butare I was running very late, so I stopped at the first bus station I saw – HORIZON, a company I don’t usually use simply because they are at the other end of town – and got a ticket for 1530, which already meant I wasn’t going to get to Kigali in time to visit the {program Office. Then, as we left Kigali, we came upon a massive road accident – two lorries and a petrol tanker had come to grief about five kilometres north of Butare. It must have just happened as there were relatively few vehicles backed up on each side, which left us uncomfortably close to a leaking petrol tanker, as far as I was concerned. The police were there looking on and a group of men (possibly from the tanker) were throwing rocks and stones at a crowd of children and adults who were trying to gather petrol from the leaking tanker with jerrycans. I could hear the sound of ambulance sirens in the distance so presumably in the midst of all this were injured or dead drivers and passengers.
So, our driver decided that this wasn’t going to get cleared in a hurry so he did a U-turn, drove back about a kilometre and then headed off into the countryside, presumably to find some way round the blockage. Well, you need to have travelled on bad rural Rwandan roads to fully appreciate the bravery/lunacy/determination of a driver who takes a large 30-seater bus on one of them! We trundled along, passengers bouncing all over the place, me getting walloped from time to time by an extremely well-endowed lady on my right in a manner some men might have actually found enjoyable and stimulating but quite frankly my concentration was on not losing teeth or cracking ribs.
Occasionally the bus driver would pull over and ask some bemused local for the right direction (Alfred: One is reminded of the old Irish joke where the tourist asks the local the way to Tralee and he replies: ‘Well, if I were you I wouldn’t start from here’) – as far as I could see they just pointed in some random direction and off we sped again (Alfred: Yes, ‘sped’, the right word to describe what the driver was doing but the WRONG thing to be actually doing on these roads). Eventually the bouncing around got so bad that everyone just started cracking up laughing, with various people looking around to see how the muzungu was coping. Meanwhile, children, goats and pigs stood stock still and stared at the huge white bus bouncing along roads that I am pretty sure few if any vehicles had ever travelled on before!
However, to give the driver his due, we did find the main road again and headed off towards Kigali on a completely deserted road. The driver then showed his true mettle by being determined to make up all the lost time and get to Kigali by 1800. And he pretty much did, which is really scary – it normally takes 2h15m to get from Butare to Kigali, we had lost thirty minutes across country and we got to Kigali only ten minutes late. Insane driving!
Anyway, Nidhi had texted me earlier to say she had arrived back from India and I headed off to her place to drop my stuff. Steve, who shares the house with Nidhi, was celebrating his birthday by attending an eight-hour planning meeting for the twelve-hour AGM his organisation was holding the next day (Alfred: There’s a man who knows how to part-eey!!). I arranged to meet up with Nidhi in Torrero’s later where a live band were playing and headed off to find Heloise in Kisimenti, pausing en route to buy coffee (for me an Steve), bread (me) and bananas (Nidhi) for the following morning’s breakfast.
Heloise and a big crowd of others had gathered in La Planete (the pictures will tell the story). The main excitement was the bill which I volunteered to sort out (Alfred: he has started to do this recently, why does he want the pain? Always a bloody nightmare!) Alfred may have a point there and this one was a doozy. The bill was RWF82,000 and once everyone had paid up we had almost RWF50,000! This always happens as there is just one big bill at the end and people have been coming and going all night. Anyway, an extra whip around and Heloise between them took care of the difference so it was OK but Alfred’s right, I gotta stop volunteering to do this!
Eric O'Flynn & Amy Parker; Ken Franklin talking to Cathryn Devine, Chris Harvey, Tiga and Andy in the background
Bruce Upton; Heloise and Rosie saying their goodbyes (Alfred: it being FAR too much trouble for Ruairí to actually put these photos in some sort of rough chronological order!)
Tina Hewing; from right to left - Amy, Eric, Heloise, the friend of Heloise's who ordered the goat liver brochette and a young English guy who had been made publicity officer for the Rwandan Film Festival three days previously (Alfred: the festival was starting the next day and none of us around the table had heard of it! Ruairí can't remember his name but he was a really nice guy and remarkable cheerful and upbeat under the circumstances!)
Thom Lee, Andy Crow (Alfred: or 'Andrew' as Ruairí has started calling him for some inexplicable reason), Hayley Pert; Heloise and friends.
Thom, Andy and Heloise, with and without friend.
Rosie Allan, back in one piece from Tanzania. (Alfred: Are all the Allans this nice? You feel it is a bit like The Picture of Dorian Grey - there must be some horrible Allan hidden away in an attic somewhere to compensate for them all!). Tiga, Chris, Ken, Thom (Tiga definitely NOT interested in what is going on)
I then went for a quick drink with Cathryn Devine and Ken (see picture) across the road (they used to share a house in Nyanza and wanted to catch up on old times) and then I headed back into town to see Nidhi in Torrero’s.
And this is where the night got really interesting! There was really good live music in Torrero’s and a few more people I knew – Marion was there (Alfred: and, and , and .... I can hardly bring myself to say it .... she wasn’t drinking!! Antibiotics, the poor love. And she kept on saying how well she felt since she had stopped drinking and smoking and ... hmmm, actually, making quite a lot of sense now that I think back over it... OK, forget I even started saying all this) and Irina and Nidhi and a guy called Luke with a complicated love-life that we all got involved in discussing and an Indian girl called Kelpa who had the most incredible Shirley Temple American accent. It was a great night, apart from my decision to switch from Mutzig (lager) to red wine. At the time it made sense, that’s all I can say.
We stayed there until around 0430, chatting to two members of The Kigali Boys, one of Rwanda’s hottest groups at the moment. Then we went to hang out at the mall. OK, Kigali’s version of hanging out at the mall which is going to the only 24-hour supermarket in the country, buying stuff and then hanging around the area outside it eating/drinking what you just bought. Corn chips and Mutzig in my case (Alfred: It’s an adaptation of the VSO sandwich idea – Mutzig on each side, red wine in the middle). However, Nidhi had enough sense to decide it was time to call it a night and Alex (of the Kigali Boys) dropped us home in his taxi. I think it really made Steve’s birthday to have us arrive in at 0600 on the anniversary of his birth, giggling and loudly telling each other to be quiet while slamming every door in the house!
So, not surprisingly, Saturday got off to a slow start. I eventually stirred into action around 1100 to wave Nidhi goodbye as she headed off to meet the other seven who were heading to Nyungwe forest with her (or being picked up en route) for chimpanzee trekking . Steve had headed off for his AGM so I wandered into town and ... can’t really remember to be honest. I know Steve met up with me at 1715 at Blues Cafe but before that I don’t really recall. I remember spending a while on the Internet and I must have had breakfast/lunch at some stage ..... ah well.
I do remember meeting Chris Harvey at some stage and I think it was in Simba, and I was with Steve? Or was I? Oh dear, this isn’t good. Definitely need to cut back on th’ould Mutzig ...
My memory kicks in properly again around 1930 when Steve met me at Blues Cafe on his way to do a radio interview (Alfred: Excuse me, ANOTHER radio interview!) about his involvement in the Rwandan music scene. Steve has been playing with a local band (he plays a traditional West African drum) and has already had a few concerts. On July 4th he will be playing for President Kagame as part of the Independence Day celebrations!! There’s posh for you. We did the interview (despite a power-cut) and then headed off to find something to eat.
Now you would think that 2130 on a Saturday night in a capital city, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find at least ONE place still serving food in the city centre. Not in Kigali. Ballymena on a Sunday morning would have more social appeal to it than this place! Every place we went to had stopped serving. One place did tell us that a restaurant called Chez Resto served food 24 hours a day, briefly raising our hopes, but then added ‘but not on Saturdays or Sundays’. WTF? You can get an omelette at 0400 on a Wednesday but nothing on a Saturday night? Eventually we gave up and went to Nakumat 24-hour supermarket and bought sausages and rolls and went home. Steve fried up the sausages with onions and we ate them around midnight with some beer.
Around 0400 that morning my stomach went on strike, which is hardly surprising given the abuse it had been taking – spicy German sausages at midnight after a day with little or no food was the final straw. I woke to find I had ballooned up like a patient with severe malnutrition and confidently expected to find myself drifting up towards the ceiling at any moment! Eventually I got back to sleep and didn’t actually get up until nearly midday. I hung around for a bit listening to Steve practising on the drums and then headed off to get the bus to Butare. En route there, Nidhi texted to say she was staying over there in the Ineza so I decided to do the same.
Nidhi was doing a wonderful John Wayne imitation when I met her, due to extreme soreness in her legs and thighs from having tramped all over Nyungwe Forest looking for chimpanzees - due to a mix-up over accommodation they had had to spend the night in Gikongoro which is miles away and then set off at 0200 to be there in time for the 0530 trek! Six hours of trekking and they saw 2 chimpanzees (Alfred: Hey, some people walk all day and don’t see any at all!). Anyway, we went for a Chinese meal and Andy joined us a little later. Later still, Ozzie Charlotte and her friend Sarah who is here on holiday also joined us, having gone on from Nyungwe to visit the genocide memorial at Murambi (Alfred: more about that some other time – maybe; underground mass graves is one thing but I’m not sure Ruairí has quite worked up the courage to visit Murambi yet).
It was a nice evening but the service was woeful, abysmal, disgraceful, awful (take the synonym of your choice)- there only seemed to be one person on duty and I suspect he was the owner or manager because he spent all his time drinking beer in a little alcove and had to be summoned whenever we wanted anything. A large group of Americans that had come in after us eventually gave up and left without their food. So would we, to be honest, except that Nidhi and I had actually eaten as we got their much earlier, Andy was in the process of eating and we weren’t going to vanish off and leave Charlotte and Sarah! The food was fine (given that 90% of the things on the menu were not available) and they had good tofu of all things (no beef, no chicken, only pork for the carnivores).
And this is where the night got really interesting! There was really good live music in Torrero’s and a few more people I knew – Marion was there (Alfred: and, and , and .... I can hardly bring myself to say it .... she wasn’t drinking!! Antibiotics, the poor love. And she kept on saying how well she felt since she had stopped drinking and smoking and ... hmmm, actually, making quite a lot of sense now that I think back over it... OK, forget I even started saying all this) and Irina and Nidhi and a guy called Luke with a complicated love-life that we all got involved in discussing and an Indian girl called Kelpa who had the most incredible Shirley Temple American accent. It was a great night, apart from my decision to switch from Mutzig (lager) to red wine. At the time it made sense, that’s all I can say.
We stayed there until around 0430, chatting to two members of The Kigali Boys, one of Rwanda’s hottest groups at the moment. Then we went to hang out at the mall. OK, Kigali’s version of hanging out at the mall which is going to the only 24-hour supermarket in the country, buying stuff and then hanging around the area outside it eating/drinking what you just bought. Corn chips and Mutzig in my case (Alfred: It’s an adaptation of the VSO sandwich idea – Mutzig on each side, red wine in the middle). However, Nidhi had enough sense to decide it was time to call it a night and Alex (of the Kigali Boys) dropped us home in his taxi. I think it really made Steve’s birthday to have us arrive in at 0600 on the anniversary of his birth, giggling and loudly telling each other to be quiet while slamming every door in the house!
So, not surprisingly, Saturday got off to a slow start. I eventually stirred into action around 1100 to wave Nidhi goodbye as she headed off to meet the other seven who were heading to Nyungwe forest with her (or being picked up en route) for chimpanzee trekking . Steve had headed off for his AGM so I wandered into town and ... can’t really remember to be honest. I know Steve met up with me at 1715 at Blues Cafe but before that I don’t really recall. I remember spending a while on the Internet and I must have had breakfast/lunch at some stage ..... ah well.
I do remember meeting Chris Harvey at some stage and I think it was in Simba, and I was with Steve? Or was I? Oh dear, this isn’t good. Definitely need to cut back on th’ould Mutzig ...
My memory kicks in properly again around 1930 when Steve met me at Blues Cafe on his way to do a radio interview (Alfred: Excuse me, ANOTHER radio interview!) about his involvement in the Rwandan music scene. Steve has been playing with a local band (he plays a traditional West African drum) and has already had a few concerts. On July 4th he will be playing for President Kagame as part of the Independence Day celebrations!! There’s posh for you. We did the interview (despite a power-cut) and then headed off to find something to eat.
Now you would think that 2130 on a Saturday night in a capital city, it would not be unreasonable to expect to find at least ONE place still serving food in the city centre. Not in Kigali. Ballymena on a Sunday morning would have more social appeal to it than this place! Every place we went to had stopped serving. One place did tell us that a restaurant called Chez Resto served food 24 hours a day, briefly raising our hopes, but then added ‘but not on Saturdays or Sundays’. WTF? You can get an omelette at 0400 on a Wednesday but nothing on a Saturday night? Eventually we gave up and went to Nakumat 24-hour supermarket and bought sausages and rolls and went home. Steve fried up the sausages with onions and we ate them around midnight with some beer.
Around 0400 that morning my stomach went on strike, which is hardly surprising given the abuse it had been taking – spicy German sausages at midnight after a day with little or no food was the final straw. I woke to find I had ballooned up like a patient with severe malnutrition and confidently expected to find myself drifting up towards the ceiling at any moment! Eventually I got back to sleep and didn’t actually get up until nearly midday. I hung around for a bit listening to Steve practising on the drums and then headed off to get the bus to Butare. En route there, Nidhi texted to say she was staying over there in the Ineza so I decided to do the same.
Nidhi was doing a wonderful John Wayne imitation when I met her, due to extreme soreness in her legs and thighs from having tramped all over Nyungwe Forest looking for chimpanzees - due to a mix-up over accommodation they had had to spend the night in Gikongoro which is miles away and then set off at 0200 to be there in time for the 0530 trek! Six hours of trekking and they saw 2 chimpanzees (Alfred: Hey, some people walk all day and don’t see any at all!). Anyway, we went for a Chinese meal and Andy joined us a little later. Later still, Ozzie Charlotte and her friend Sarah who is here on holiday also joined us, having gone on from Nyungwe to visit the genocide memorial at Murambi (Alfred: more about that some other time – maybe; underground mass graves is one thing but I’m not sure Ruairí has quite worked up the courage to visit Murambi yet).
It was a nice evening but the service was woeful, abysmal, disgraceful, awful (take the synonym of your choice)- there only seemed to be one person on duty and I suspect he was the owner or manager because he spent all his time drinking beer in a little alcove and had to be summoned whenever we wanted anything. A large group of Americans that had come in after us eventually gave up and left without their food. So would we, to be honest, except that Nidhi and I had actually eaten as we got their much earlier, Andy was in the process of eating and we weren’t going to vanish off and leave Charlotte and Sarah! The food was fine (given that 90% of the things on the menu were not available) and they had good tofu of all things (no beef, no chicken, only pork for the carnivores).
And so to bed - needed to be up at 0530 Monday to get a moto to Gisagara for the 0700 meeting.
Alfred: stay tuned for the next episode - killer cows, friendly soldiers, Showaddywaddy revivalists, the mysteries of Rwandan proverbs and how Ruairí has volunteered to teach someone the equivalent of the entire A-Level history course in four months!!! Plus an update on the knee ('Nairobi here we come' - or probably just him, to be honest, I never get to go anywhere ......)
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