Bar-hopping Rwanda Style

Some years ago I lived in Kigali in Rwanda in a small bungalow, with a guy called Peter, my Rwandan housemate who was a man of many talents; he was my gym training buddy, my security guard, a law student and a boxing champion for the Kigali Police First Team. One morning at breakfast on the veranda he demonstrated one further remarkable talent: an uncanny ability to tell the time by just seeing the position of the sun in the sky. 

Telling the time by the sun

At the equator at noon, he explained, the sun is always directly overhead. So you just have imagine 12 notches representing the 12 hours of daylight at the equator, in a semi-circle from the points of sunrise to sunset. One needs to allow for the fact that the shape of the sun’s movement in the day is a semi-oval, as opposed to a semi-circle, as the sun gains and loses rapid height just after dawn and just before dusk; at noon, its zenith, its path is flatter. We stood in the yard at breakfast holding mugs of tea squinting at the sky like a couple of morons, to test his ability. Peter, who had never owned a watch in his life, looked up at the sun, not directly at it but at its position in the sky, triangulating it with a leaf of a banana tree and the pole for the clothesline. He swayed his chin left and right deep in thought and then proclaimed: “7.15”. He was 2 minutes out, a remarkable feat nevertheless. 

Bar-hopping in Kigali

Peter was keen to prove that in Africa everything is shared and being aware of the incessant begging I was encountering daily on the streets as a foreigner, he wanted to show me that some things in life could be done for free without any hope of a payback; to demonstrate such benevolence he requested to wash and iron my clothes once a week. It was a thoughtful and magnanimous gesture so I brought him a pile of office shirts to wash. As he would not accept payment we agreed that every Tuesday he should let me take him out on a “beers and brochettes” evening at a nearby bar called Chez Lando in Remera. With its pool table and televised football, Chez Lando was little different to any bar in any city in any corner of the world, so he suggested we go somewhere more authentic close by down some dark back-alleys till we came to a house with an open door at the top of two stone steps. Some patrons were sitting on plastic chairs supping their bottles of beer in a silent semi-comatose stupor under a single light-bulb that made the shadows of their faces ghoulish on the back wall. The bar had no counter, was devoid of draught taps, there was no fridge, no beer posters. In fact there was no evidence that it was actually a bar. It could have been someone’s front room; infact it probably was. This homely bar had the slowest service south of the Sahara and after an hour our well-grilled brochettes and a fiery piri piri sauce arrived; on the drinks menu was Mutzig, the most popular beer of Rwanda touted on billboards as the “taste of success”; it is always best to pronounce Mutzig as Miitzing as the umlaut over the “u” makes it look like a double “i”. It is sold in 33cl and 65cl bottles with an alcohol content of 5.5% . Billed as a medium beer, it has a bright red and gold label with a jousting knight on a stallion and castle and lists hops, malt, water and CO2 in its ingredients. 

Bar etiquette

There are certain etiquettes to follow in a Rwandan bar. When ordering a beer one needs to specify that it should be a cold beer for many Rwandans prefer their beer at served at room temperature. If when you tell the barman your order, he raises his eyebrows, it means “yes, that’s fine I will get you your order”. It is a minimal gesture of affirmation, subtler than a nod. The first time I saw the raised eyebrows affirmation, I interpreted it to be a look of surprise, or not understanding, so I repeated the order several times; he raised his eyebrows several times; I ended up with several drinks. When asking where the bathroom is, instead of pointing with his finger the bar man may point with his chin. It is a slight and curious gesture, making it like he has a tick or a tinge of discomfort in a tight collar and it requires a certain intense observation to make out. In the homely bar, imported drinks are expensive, a glass of wine is over £2 a glass for Rwanda has no vineyards and wines are freighted overland from South Africa. Local drinks are urwagwa (a type of banana wine) and waraji a clear liqueur made from distilled maize or even mango or pineapple, which is sold in innocent-looking clear plastic packets which state in bright red capitals: “NO HANGOVERS, CHILLING, ORGANIC, AND GOOD FOR YOU.” And as an after-thought: “45%”. The clear liquid in a transparent packet looks remarkably similar to a saline drip and the clear wording serves to aid medical personnel in avoiding a catastrophe of either drinking saline or administering an alcoholic beverage intravenously to a patient. I don’t know what is worse. Rwandan beers are typically stronger than their European and American counterparts; an afterwork beer tastes more refreshing, more tingly on the tongue for in Rwanda one tends to be in a continual state of sub-hydration for Kigali is at altitude. 

A soup disaster

One morning in the yard I handed Peter a couple of packets of soup. I had brought 20 boxes of soup with me from London because at the last minute I realised that I was allowed double a normal baggage allowance as a VSO volunteer and soup seemed as good as anything to take. With each box containing 6 packets, I had 120 packets in all - a tad excessive I admit. Peter looked at the packets of soup inquisitively and I explained as I rushed out locking the front door that all he had to do was add hot water and stir. 

When I came home from work Peter knocked on the door. He had a perplexed look on his face. “The soap you gave me doesn’t work,” he said. 
“I never gave you any soap,” I replied. 
“You did. This morning. The two packets. Remember?” he said in his usual monotone. 
“That was soup!” 
“Soup? Qu’est-ce que c’est soup? 
“Potage.” 
“Oh merde.” 

Thinking I had given him soap, Peter had poured two packets of soup in to a bucket of hot water and stirred it just like I had instructed. When he found no soapy foam, he added some more and when that didn’t foam he just assumed that British soap was so good that it didn’t need to froth. Then he added my shirts to the mix and left them there to soak for the whole day. In the evening we both stared down at the bucket. It was a sorrowful sight: my shirts had achieved a tie-die marble-effect swilling about in a diluted soup of mushrooms, tomatoes, minestrone, peas which were by then juicily hydrated and floating croutons. “Oh merde,” Peter kept repeating but I accepted partial blame for the mix up, or rather the mix; soup said quickly enough can sound like soap and with our barter arrangement of food for washing, the deduction seemed logical. It took at least three more washes to get the shirts close to their normal colour and for weeks afterwards, at lunchtime, the warmest part of the day, an embarrassing soupy whiff would drift off me. 

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