dance party to celebrate the end of my time in Rwanda

I took my last cold shower this morning. It's my final day in Rwanda -- and not even a full one at that.

Tonight, I board a 8:50 pm plane to Brussels. By tomorrow afternoon I will be home in Brooklyn. According to the party planning committee an impressive series of homecoming events await me. If all goes as planned I'll be dining on some delicious izakaya and catching up on all the flicks that I've missed since I left 6 weeks ago!

Last night I said my good byes at a farewell party in our yard. What better way to bid Rwanda adieu than with a spitted and roasted goat and cold Mutzig draft. I have been wanting to prepare a whole goat in my backyard for several years now, but in Brooklyn goats are hard to come by. So I jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at this feast. Pablo sent out the invitation proclaiming that my Odyssey had come come to an end and quoted from the Odyssey:

Ulysses now left the haven, and took the rough track up through the wooded country and over the crest of the mountain till he reached the place where Minerva had said that he would find the 'goat'herd, who was the most thrifty servant he had. . . .

As he spoke he bound his girdle round him and went to the sties where the young sucking 'goats' were penned. He picked out two which he brought back with him and sacrificed. He singed them, cut them up, and spitted on them; when the meat was cooked he brought it all in and set it before Ulysses, hot and still on the spit, whereon Ulysses sprinkled it over with white barley meal. The 'goat'herd then mixed wine in a bowl of ivy-wood, and taking a seat opposite Ulysses told him to begin.

"Fall to, stranger," said he, "on a dish of servant's 'goat'. The fat goats have to go to the suitors, who eat them up without shame or scruple; but the blessed gods love not such shameful doings, and
respect those who do what is lawful and right.

Sticking with the Greek theme, we hired a mural painter to paint a Trojan Horse on the wall of our home. Mutzig beer flowed freely from a keg and Matilde and our friends at Papyrus provided a full spread of food. We danced to the music of a dj who lives on our street into the night.

Keeping with the Odyssey theme, we hired a mural painter to cover our wall with a Trojan Horse

Today, I joined the Hash Harriers -- the Kigali running club to do a run up and around Mount Kigali. The views from the hilltop were magnificent -- on one side of the mountain top the city of Kigali was visible; on the other the rural mountains and rivers were illuminated by the sun. It was a great way to end my stay here, though the run was delayed by an hour making it a tight race to catch my flight to Brussels. We'll see if I make it or if I'm stuck here until the next flight out on Tuesday. As much as I will miss this place, I'm hoping for the former.

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A few weeks ago I was dining at Papyrus -- a restaurant in my neighborhood where I go to get a healthy dose of American hip hop, to pretend I'm in the Hollywood Hills, and to dine on delicious homemade pastas and pizzas made with cheeses produced at Masaka Farm -- a local farm outside of Kigali. (They also make a really yummy tiramisu made with the farm's ricotta. Keeping in line with the gas, coffee, and at times, electricity shortages -- more often than not, Papyrus has run out of the tiramisu. I've started putting a slice on hold when I first arrive to ensure that dessert is waiting for me when I'm done with my meal.)

A group of diners came to our table, including a guy who introduced himself as "a dairy man." He told me he is the man behind Papyrus's dairy products. (He's also the first Rwandan I've met who has tattoos.)

Ever since I visited the grocery store with the regional cheeses of Rwanda I have been wanting to take a tour of a fromagerie. When he offered to show me his farm and dairy processing plant, I couldn't say no. So, yesterday I went on a tour of Serge's dairy farm to see for myself how he makes the ice cream, ricotta, yogurt, mozzarella, butter and creme fraiche. Serge learned to make these products in Italy, the homeland of his wife.

What follows is a photo tour of my visit.

Serge the milk man in his Mercedes Benz milk truck

Continue reading "The Milk Man" »

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two of my favorite typists

In Kigali, I'm living in the Voices of Rwanda House. During the day our living room is transformed into an office where a team of typists transcribe and translate video testimonies of Rwandans. VOR is an NGO committed to recording oral history as a form of transitional justice and as an effort to preserve the history of individuals and in effect, a country. Eventually, the video database will be used to educate high school students in the U.S. and around the world about genocide.

When the executive director, Taylor Krauss was starting the organization he arrived in Kigali expecting he would have no problem enlisting a team of typists to transcribe the interviews he was taping. He was wrong, but he turned this deficit into an opportunity -- an opportunity for himself and for Rwandans. In collaboration with a technology school in Kigali called E-ICT, he started a 6-week touch typing course to create a body of potential transcribers.

Yesterday, at the house we held a graduation ceremony to celebrate the first class to graduate from the typing certificate program. All the students graduated with distinction and many of the students already have found jobs. Several students are currently employed by VOR.

Inspired both by the students and the Krauss's efforts, I'm producing a documentary short called "TypingMaster 10-Finger Touch Typing," about the typists -- many who are orphans and survivors of the 1994 genocide and each with a big dream about where typing will take them.

My contribution to the graduation ceremony itself was as the executive in charge of decorating and as the chef on the dessert committee. Here is a photo of the cupcakes I made and assembled to resemble a keyboard.

The night ended with a game that is the Rwandan equivalent of Secret Santa, called cacahouette. Everybody draws a name of a person at the party and in two weeks (the night before I depart) we will all convene and give a gift to the person whose name was drawn. The intention of the game is to create an opportunity so that the relationship which started at the party continues on.

For more photos from the night continue reading...

Continue reading "Typing Masters & Their Keyboard Cake" »

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We are throwing a party tomorrow night at our house and I have volunteered to bake a cake. Cake ingredients here are easy to find if you know where to shop. I made an excursion to La Galette, a German butcher that has hard-to-find ingredients like pure cocoa powder and confectioners sugar.

As I was leaving with my bundle of groceries a man approached me. He was carrying a bucket that once carried clothing detergent but today was filled with freshly picked framboise. Actually, they looked more like the jelly candied framboise than proper raspberries and they tasted like a cross between a strawberry and a raspberry.

When I brought them back to the house, one of the Rwandese women who works here said she used to pick them as a girl but hasn’t seen them since.

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I awoke yesterday morning to discover that while our pantry was stocked with the delicious Rwanda coffee beans ready for percolating, the refrigerator was without milk. I took a stroll up the dirt road to my local “bodega” to stock up on a box of the stuff. While I was there a delivery of fresh sausage links arrived. Of course I had to try one.

Yesterday, I had a tapas style lunch of sausage, cheese, bread and olives. It’s been a nice departure from the brochettes et frites which have become a staple in my diet.

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Rwandan Mayonnaise

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is eating french fries that have been deep-dipped into a pot of mayonnaise. In Rwanda, french fries come with nearly every meal so this decadent indulgence is fast becoming habitual.

In most countries the frite would be the highlighted ingredient -- made better only with the richness of the greasy condiment. But in Rwanda the mayonnaise is so good that the frite is merely a vehicle by which to transport the spread from bowl to mouth. The mayonnaise here tastes lightly of lemon -- hollandaise sauce's close cousin. The rich buttery yellow comes from the dark orange yolks. The slight crust that builds around the edges is worthy of its own name. I'll even admit that I've been caught scraping off the congealed build up and devouring it as a delicacy as rich as fois gras.

Why is the mayonnaise so delicious in Rwanda? It's a question I have asked all the waiters and chefs I've encountered. No one knows the secret, but I have my theories. As with all things delicious, ingredients is key. After oil, the main element in mayonnaise is the egg.

There are choices when buying eggs in Rwanda. All are small -- two sizes larger than a quail egg, one size smaller than the Grade A Extra Large egg found in America. The choice comes with color. Brown eggs come from chickens that are fed fish feed. The resulting yolk is a pale white color, basically albino cholesterol. The white eggs are an entirely different entity altogether. They contain the yolks used for Rwanda's amazing mayonnaise. Occupying the majority of the space inside the white egg shell is a dark orange yolk sunnier and denser than the flesh of a pumpkin. It is the egg flavor and a hint of the native lemons that punches through the oil and sets this mayonnaise apart.

It's clear that the mayonnaise here hasn't been pasteurized and warm mayonnaise is quite common -- evidence that it has never seen refrigeration of any kind. In this way, perhaps I'm tempting fate. But considering all that I've eaten thus far, it's impressive that my stomach remains content and without incident.

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Yesterday, I woke up early to go to Nyamata - a town about twenty minutes outside of Kigali to pre-interview some people I may potentially film.

Before leaving Kigali I asked Papa Fred to stop the car at a market so I could buy us a round of water. He pulled over at a shop just down the road from Car Wash (which as its name suggests is a place to get your car washed. But it's also a watering hole where you can lounge and enjoy a nice cold Mutzig beer).

When I went to the counter to pay for my water, I noticed two refrigerators behind the cashier. Both were filled with creamy wheels of cheeses. Each shelf was labeled with a different region of Rwanda. Who knew that Rwanda has regional cheeses? I'll have to have a cheese tasting party. The only problem is even though the cheeses come from different regions of Rwanda, they all look the same.

I'll have to ask our cook, Matilde about her regional cheese preferences. Maybe she'll even tell me which cheese she uses in that delicious cheese and eggplant casserole she makes.

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During my first three days in Rwanda I spent almost every waking moment with my intrepid tour guide/cameraman. He has been living here off and on for the past 10 months and has been an incredible resource, helping me to navigate the town and translate my incomprehensible french and even worse kinyarwanda to a language that people living here can understand. But by Sunday it was time to cut the umbilical cord. I decided that if I'm going to learn how to find my way and communicate with people here, I need to risk getting a little lost and risk humiliation by speaking my limited french.

For my first exercise in independence, I set out to find the marche de kimironko -- where all the locals go to buy their produce. I had a craving for some juicy pineapples and bananas. Uncertain that I would actually reach my destination, but willing to take that risk to acquaint myself with Kigali, I threw caution to the humid wind and headed out to find a moto.

With the exception of a few main roads, there are almost no street names in Kigali. To give or get directions, people first state the neighborhood then describe a series of well known landmark buildings to help hone in on the zone that is the ultimate destination. The system would work fine if I actually knew where any of the landmark buildings are. When still in Brooklyn, I sent an email to find out the address where I would be living. I was told, "tell the taxi to take you to the Kimihurura neighborhood, near the house of Rubangura on the same road as Hellenique Restaurant." For someone who likes a lot of detail and lost-proof directions when embarking on a film production, this was the first ominous sign of the challenges ahead.

To hail a moto, I hike up the hill from my house to the main road and mimic the loud tshkch sound that I heard people make when hailing transportation. Somehow the sound I make works. In broken french I explain to my driver that I want to go to the market in Kimironko. My directions must have been okay, because after a short drive I am in the right part of town -- but my pronunciation of market, marche, was poor or maybe my driver couldn't imagine why a white girl like me would go to the market when most westerners hire locals to grocery shop and cook for them. Instead of taking me to the produce market he stops in front of tailor who makes customized dresses out of African prints. I explain that I want vegetables not vetements.

He looks at me as though I'm crazy, but then we turn around and in less than a minute I'm standing outside an open tent filled with produce, butchered goats, fish and fabric. I make the rounds testing pineapples and mangoes and practicing the four kinyarwanda words I know: mwiriwe=good afternoon; murakoze=thank you; amakuru=how are you; ni meza=fine -- except I kept saying mi neza. I'm not sure how that translates.

I buy a small chunk of rock salt. It comes from the floor Lake Kivu -- the lake in the west that runs along the border of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. Most people buy the salt to give to their cows, but I bought it because the salt crystals are so beautiful and it's a reminder of the history contained in the soil around me. I think of the stories I read in Alison des Forges book, Leave Not to Tell the Story about bodies being thrown down the embankment into Lake Kivu during the 1994 genocide and how mutilated bodies were seen floating along the shores. I touched my finger to the salt and taste it. I feel queasy even though all I taste is salt.

--

I walk back to the produce area to buy some food and purchase a small pineapple, a cluster of five bananas that look like stubby yellow fingers, and ingredients for guacamole -- a purple avocado, cilantro, tiny fresh limes, hot pepper and tomato. Now I just need to find a market that sells tortilla chips.

Heading home, I negotiate a price with my driver for even less than the ride to the market -- the equivalent of about $0.50. Not bad for a newbie.

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Before departing on our two hour bus ride from Butare back to Kigali we decided to stock up on some food for the road. Since there are no take-away joints and the market was closed, we turned to the simple, cheap and delicious alternative: bread. Rwandans are very very good bread makers. Any opportunity I get to eat some Rwandan bread, I take. You can find the most amazing, freshly-baked loaves of bread along the side of the road, in little store fronts and in this case, next to The Chinese Restaurant. We stocked up on a bread braid that looked like Challah and tasted like the warm oatmeal bread my mother used to bake. Then we raced to catch our bus.

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