Least and most successful beverage shops

Rachel owns a shop that sells banana juice sometimes and, despite the careful list of prices for products, not much else all other times. I have never seen listed prices in any other shop, though everyone seems to pay the same prices. She is a very optimistic shop owner, always smiling, and eagerly putting her three empty tea thermoses next to her for the photo I took of her standing in front of her empty shelves. Like a few of the other shop keepers in the area, she is not quite sure what her revenue or profits are - they are close to nothing, but not quite close enough to nothing to make closing the shop worthwhile, she says. Like other shop keepers, she does not distinguish between the money she pays to buy food she sells, and the money she pays to buy food for herself. Both foods include bananas and sorghum she grows in her field, in addition to extra bananas, amandazies and chapattis she buys to sell in her shop. Sometimes. There were none the day I came in.

Stapled to her wall is the tax receipt - the same receipt I see in all of the shops, indicating the payment of a flat 4,000 francs a month tax. A potential logic of a flat tax becomes clear when shop keepers tell me they are not quite sure what their revenue and profits are. Or, maybe, if there is a flat tax than shop keepers don't bother to figure out their precise revenue and profits.

Rachel hopes to get a loan for 200,000 francs ($336) and says she has the collateral for this - though not all the paperwork yet. She will buy sugar and rice to sell to customers for this money, which can't cover much else.

I will definitely check out her bannana juice later on. If only because she is so happy, cheery and positive-thinking. Well, only because she is happy, cheery and positive thinking. Bannana juice is sort of icky.

On the other end of the spectrum is the fancy boutique milk shop. "Our revenue" the shop keeper told after I asked her, through a translator,"is 12,000-13,000 francs a day." This seemed high. "It's 20,000 francs a day," the owner told me. That seemed way to high. But then I looked around. There were ten customers drinking relatively pricey milk - it cost 50 francs more than any other shop. "Why is the milk so expensive? 250 francs is a lot," one customer said, complaining - something I was sort of relieved to hear, as I was never quite sure if I was being charged more than other people. The customers were all sipping on milk or fanta or coca-cola, and munching on amandazis or chapatties. The small little child who was screaming in horror at my white complexion was being calmed with donuts and bread. All in all, this shop was clearly making ten times the revenue of every other shop I had visited. "When and why did you decide to get all the candy to sell?" I asked. This shop had the best rural candy. Even something that tasted vaguely like chocolate. "It's not such a high expense" I was told, "So we decided to buy it to sell."

While I was in the shop, the electricity flickered for a moment from over-use. The shop owner turned to the shop keeper and mumbled that their second refrigerator took up so much electricity compared to the first. In it was a freezer - a freezer! And in the freezer were cold beers. Just like in Kigali. I was impressed.

I don't know why this place makes so much more money and is so much more popular. Greater initial investment in the business? Location? Cold beer? She, to, has her 4,000 francs tax receipt stapled to her shelves.

The shop-keeper is her niece, adopted as an adult when the aunt discovered that she was still alive and living in horrible conditions with a family that had found her abandoned as a small child after the genocide. The girl, who is nineteen years old, never went to school, because she needed to take care of the small children of her adopted family and fetch water all-day. She is now much happier, has clothes and food security, though is not making an income - she works in the boutique shop as part of a sort of family business, and seems to get everything she needs from her newly adopted mother/aunt.

I asked a translator if she had ever learned how to read or write. "She tries" I was told.

Babies

A few months ago the students had a discussion in their families where they answered the question, loosely paraphrased, “Should you get married when you are younger or older?” Some of the points and arguments presented by the students:

1) If you get married when you are older you may not see your children get married. (In a country where the life expectancy is around 60 or less, this is a real possibility.)

2) The point of marriages is to have children, something difficult when you are older. The councilor pointed out that marriage is also about enjoying the company and life with your spouse.

3) If you cannot have children because you are older, then you should adopt orphans.

4) Not everyone likes babies, in general. For example, one of the students said, some of the volunteers from last year are reported to have no liked babies.

5) I told them I also did not really like babies. So the statement was later modified to “Some of the volunteers this year do not like babies.”

Speaking of babies: A little baby, barely walking, saw me in the sort of fancy-shmancy milk shop (upscale by rural Rwandan standards). He quickly hid behind his very tall mother so that he could not see me and I could not see him. His mother was slightly annoyed at this, so pushed him in front of her, forcing him, to his complete horror, to be exposed to my presence. He started screaming and crying. The shop keeper and his mother tried to comfort him, saying that I was “only a mazungu” and he had nothing to be afraid of. They offered him a mandazi (a donut) and some sweet tea to calm him, which he happily grabbed. He then looked at me, cried again, was offered another donut, which he happily munched on. He looked at me again and started crying again, then sort of looked at the donuts, hoping to score another sweet treat in between his bursts of tears. “The mazungu will eat you!” the shop keeper told the little toddler, warning him to stop crying and abusing the donut system.

I talked with one student who said that she did not want to get married. I asked some other students, in a separate conversation, if they wanted to get married, and they told that of course they wanted to get married – that everyone wanted to get married. The student who preferred to avoid marriage also did not want to have children but to take care of orphans and focus on her career. “Why do you not want to get married?” I asked. She said that men cheat on their wives, and potentially beat them, so she did not want to take a chance.

“Even if you found a man who is good?” I asked.

“I don’t want to take the chance,” she repeated.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this conversation already, but decided to post it, just in case I had not.

Livelihoods and Loans

There is one milk place, shown in the bottom two photos on the left, that always sells milk for fifty francs (around 8 cents) less than the other places. The shop keeper recently told me that it was owned by the local health clinic co-op, with 60% of all profits going to the clinic, she being a paid employer who made around 20,000 francs (around $33) a month. This co-op status also, perhaps, explains the presence of a swanky photo-copier, popularly used before each school term to photocopy forms for school. It also boasts sardines and chapatti, something her neighbor can’t afford, and other products, as you can see. Sometimes, I get to much change, a mistake that shop-owners rarely make. The shop keeper studied accounting in secondary school, which seems to be what every shop owner or keeper studies in secondary school.

Across the street, pictured on the top left, is a shop owned by Console, a brave entrepreneur who took out a loan of 500,000 francs, around $830, to pay for initial costs, including the 25,000 franc fee for registering a new businesses and additional costs for new furniture, electricity, 4,000 francs-a-month taxes, and other expenses. The store really does look re-vamped compared to the previous owners, who were running it when I first arrived. The milk? Eh, it’s a bit to fizzy and bubbly. Like I’m drinking half air. The radio’s a nice touch. The previous owners had a television that was always broken, with various boys from the neighborhood always fiddling with it, desperate for it to be fixed, and never succeeding.

I asked her how she took out the loan – was this something people could easily do? Her brother, apparently, co-signed. That helped.

Two other teachers in the area, who told me to call them “Old Jean and Young Jean”, told me about loans they can take out from a special bank through which they receive their salaries as teachers. Their salaries, as primary school teachers, are around 30,000 francs a month ($50), and they can obtain loans at a 14% annual interest rate, with about a quarter of their salaries deducted each month, they say. Old Jean is not much older but seems to be more quiet, wise, and responsible, took out a loan to pay for some land that cost around the equivalent of $100. Young Jean also took out a loan, but just for general expenses. “What else do people use the loans for?” I asked. “Sometimes they take out a loan to invest in a business,” Old Jean said. “Other times,” Young Jean chimed in, “they just take out a loan to drink and relax.” I asked if they use it to pay for university fees. “Yes,” Old Jean responded, “That is a good investment, so sometimes they do that.” With secondary school teachers, who must have a BA, making over four times what primary school teachers make, it would, indeed, seem like a good investment.

I wonder if it’s worth it to take out a loan to start a Milk Shop, the local equivalent of Starbucks, with all almost identical. The shop owner who took out the loan for her shop told me her revenue is 50,000 francs and her profit 20,000 francs, the same as the salary of her risk-averse neighbor.

“Everyone takes credit,” the teachers told me. “Nobody really takes credit” the local who was translating the Milk Shop owner (on the top left) told me, saying she was an exception. I guess 500,000 francs was, perhaps, the exception - it is pretty steep for 20,000 francs profit. And 20,000 francs may be an exaggeration, as I was told by every Social Science professor I ever had that everybody exaggerates their salary. She seems happy and proud of her shop, though she has only been in business for a few months. I will drink to her success. And the success of her six competitors.

Some chats about religion

I walked past one of the students studying at one of the local schools in Rubona. Jean (name changed) was wearing a traditional Muslim prayer robe and his usual Kafia, stylishly tied around his neck. “I thought you said you were Christian!” I told him, recalling an earlier conversation I had had with him, where he explained that, as a boy, he had secretly read the bible and decided to be Christian. “I believe Jesus is our savior,” he answered, “but I still go to pray in the mosque.” On that particular day, Thursday evening, he was opting out of prayer to help tutor some other students in the school. I accompanied him in his walk to the school, and he explained that “It is like a secret. I cannot tell anyone that I believe in Jesus because then the Mufti will not let me into the mosque.” I asked if he was a practicing Muslim. “Do you fast during Ramadan?” I asked. “Yes. I cannot eat during the month of Ramadan. I go to pray in the mosque a few times a week.” Curious, I asked if there were others like him – practicing Muslims who believed in Jesus. Like Jews for Jesus without the nice ring of alliteration. “Yes, there are many of us.” He could not tell me exact numbers, but he said it was common for some practicing Muslims in Rwanda to also believe in Jesus. It seems that any statistics would be hard to come by, as this isn’t something they like to talk about.

Today I bumped into Jean’s classmate, Jospeh (name changed), a Seventh Day Adventist on the way to church. His classmates were back at the school, doing chores, including cultivating the school’s bit of land, a common free-day activity in Rwandan boarding schools (and also something we do at Agahozo-Shalom). On Sunday morning he and other Adventists will do farm work.

Praying is one of the reasons students can receive permission to leave the school. Though the age ranges between twenty and twenty-five, those who are paying for boarding cannot leave the limited vicinity of the school without permission from the headmaster. I was surprised that twenty-five-year-olds needed permission to leave a school, and asked why this rule was in place – or, rather, why the students thought it was in place. Two told me, “There are some kids who create problems, like drinking” so there was a general rule that none could leave without permission and a good reason, with church or the mosque being one of a few limited reasons.

Walking past the local mosque, I am always happy to see the little W.C. indicating the existence of a public restroom by the side of the prayer room, something necessary for a religion with a religious law to wash hands before prayer. The initials feel like a little piece of cosmopolitanism that makes me feel cosily connected to the broader globe.

Yawning=Hunger?

Yesterday, I yawned more than normal, due to coffee-overdose-followed-by-down-time-sleepiness. "Are you hungry?" was what three different unrelated people asked me who saw me yawn. "Why do you think I am hungry?" I asked. "Because you are yawning," I was told. "So you are tired. So you must have worked very hard and used a lot of energy and are now hungry." I responded that, in fact, I was just tired and not for any justifiable excuse like physical effort that would also lead to hunger.

A random Google search tells me that this Yawning=Hunger is common in Colombia, as well.

The secretary at the school, from Uganda, also says that she thinks it means that you are hungry. Though she personally thinks it means you are tired "because not every time that I yawn I am hungry!"

And the State of Nature also thinks that yawning is a sign you should grab some food: according to an article in Buzzle.com, "Yawning is believed to be induced when the level of glucose supplied to the brain decreases, as in the state of hunger."

I guess I forgot the connection between fatigue, physical exertion and hunger. I have often experienced these feelings, but rarely together.

Coffee Buyers and Other Outsiders

The village recently had a debate in the families around the topic of Do Outsiders Help Africa? In my "family" the debate was even more heated than the one on "What do you think about Sugar Daddies and Mamas?" from a few months back. Every single student in the family thought that the vast majority of outsiders - both Africans going to other African countries, and non-Africans in Africa - were helping for their own profit, and that, therefor, they were not helping anyone. All the students comments that I can remember, though, qualified that Agahozo-Shalom was the exception. And then continued to talk about exploitation, profit-seeking, and disaster from everyone else.

When the discussion turned towards the general economic future of Africa as a whole, all strongly felt that the continent as a whole would never be on the same level as the other continents in the world because "the other countries won't let us get ahead." One girl kept on arguing that "God gave us equal intelligence so we will catch up" but all passionately responded that "people will take our resources and then sell them back to us for more, so that we have nothing." One example: Coffee. In Rwanda, drinking coffee is all imported from countries who buy non-processed Rwandan coffee beans and make it drinkable. And, trust me, it's annoying: coffee coffee everywhere nor any drop to drink. For less than three times the price in the United States.

I considered pointing out that making the coffee drinkable was an added-value that they would not have if they only sold it internally, or which would cost, perhaps, more if processed in Rwanda. But I didn't.

The conversation included many other examples of profit-seeking outsiders. Americans and Europeans in Libya was the star example, thrown around as a given. There was a discussion on DR Congo, and a longer discussion on how profit could include prestige of individuals who do charity work in Africa, and are therefor doing it for their own self-interest. While Agahozo-Shalom was, again, mentioned as an exception, they pointed out that staff members make a salary, so it is not self-less giving.

The conversation was wrapped up with more insistence that Africa would never catch up with other continents, with one stubborn girl insisting again that Africa would be ahead one day because of knowledge and education. Everyone either laughed at her or got upset. This particular lone optimist is fantastic at using social networking cites, e-mail, and computers, but is very much struggling in every other subject in school. She is social and likes to talk. She would probably be a great saleswoman.

At the end, I was asked what my opinion was. I happened to have read the New York Times book review for Charles Kenny's Getting Better in which he argues that African countries are advancing very quickly if non-economic indicators are taken into account, such as life expectancy and education. I mentioned this, and will hand out the article the next time I see the students.

I also pointed out that, just because people's interest is to profit does not necessarily mean they are not helping. Maybe Rwandans are becoming really productive employees, because education is sky-rocketing, so people want to come to Rwanda and hire Rwandans. And maybe MTN and Tigo cell phone service providers are helping Rwanda, even if they are here for profit.

I casually asked a young professional Ugandan living in Rwanda what she thought, shortly after the debate. "Do you think African countries, on average, will be at the same level as other continents? Will Rwanda or Uganda catch up?" She smiled and shook her head. "No, African will never be as wealthy." It was sort of a given for her. This surprised me because, at a casual glance, her lifestyle does not seem so different then the lifestyle of individuals with the same education in developed countries. She has a laptop at home and another one she uses from work, she rents an apartment in the city where she lives, she wears really nice suits. She goes on vacation, occasionally, to visit her family. She also sometimes splurges on ice-cream in a country where it is pricey by developed-country standards. She has dental insurance. I don't even have dental insurance. Which speaks about my own poor choices in prioritizing.

The students' insistence that exploitation of outsiders would prevent Africa from ever reaching the same level as other continents was very pessimistic, but I hardly doubt it will have any influence on their own life decisions to be as educated as possible and succeed as much as possible. Perhaps pessimism about the state of one's geographical region is not as important as optimism about one's own personal future.

"May your family have lots of milk"

The owner of the food-and-soft-drink-hang-out, or "milk cafe" as I call it, is named Giramata. Giramata, I was told, means "may your family have lots of milk." She was given this name at birth, and happened to fall into the milk-selling business. Me, Girmata and Marc, the trendy Kigali-born culinary school student, were sitting at her shop, chatting about how she had started the business. She is young - twenty five years old. Around five years ago she started working as an employee for the original owner of the shop who made a lot of money, I was told, from owning other businesses in different countries, especially one very successful one in Kibunga, DR Congo. He made so much money that he decided to move to Europe where his family was, and sell his small Rubona business to Giramata a year and fourth months ago. Giramata is an orphan with one younger brother who is eighteen. Using the profits for the business she supports herself and pays for the school fees for her brother.

She herself completed lower secondary school - until Senior 3, which is like Grade 9 - but could not afford to pay for both her own and her brother's fees. Her brother is studying accounting in his secondary school.

Speaking of accounting and the milk shop business: I asked Giramata around what her profits were. I made sure to check that this was in no way impolite before asking, and she responded that she made a profit of around 500 francs a day, after expenses. "What are expenses?" I asked and she answered, "The rent for my home, the rent for the store, my brother's school fees, taxes, etc." I asked if she knew what the expenses for her store were, and she again repeated all her expenses, both for the store and her life and her brother's life. I then tried asking, "Do you know around how much you spend for the food and drinks for customers?" I pointed to her snacks lined up on the shelves on the wall. She said that she did not know, because "customers do not always buy food, so not all the food is for them." She pointed to the oranges on the shelf as something she might eat, for example, if customers did not purchase them.

Marc told me, as an aside, "She is not married, but probably engaged." "Marc," I said, "You don't know that." He asked her, and she said that she would not get engaged until her brother finished secondary school. Once she was married she said she could not support a man outside her new family, so "getting engaged was a risk" she did not want to take at that point.

She mentioned that one of her biggest challenges was "customer care", an English phrased tossed around quite a bit and a subject in itself at the culinary course at the Vocational Training Center. "What is customer care?" I asked, and she said, "providing goods like vinegar and mayonnaise" which she could not always afford to initially buy wholesale. Her store is relatively basic - there is no fax machine like the neighboring milk store, nor has she done any recent re-vamping like the store across the road that has replaced it's wooden benches with the more sought-after plastic chairs with arms. Another challenge: "Things are more expensive than in Muhanga," she said. "Like biscuits."

At one point the electricity went out, which is common in all of Rubona, and with it her refrigerator. I vaguely remember the fun-fact that turning on a refrigerator costs a lot of money - far more than, for example, leaving it on for a few days. Her energy costs for cooling must be higher than in an area with electricity that stays on, and the cost of waisted milk that goes bad must be somewhat significant.

I thanked her for her time and bought a small package of biscuits. She smiled and turned her cell phone radio back on before I walked back home.

Culinary Connections Part 1

I sat down on the ledge outside the milk café situated at the edge of the town center. On the right of me it was raining. On the left it was not, but I could see the storm literally inching its way down the road, and heard it dropping on metal rooftops closer to me every second. A group of men were walking down the road into the rainy section with a gurney on their shoulders, carrying a body that had passed away in the local clinic. Sitting next to me were three students from the local culinary course at the Vocational Training Center (VTC). “When you are sick,” I asked, “Do you go to the local clinic?” The student who answered me spoke English and was a very extroverted, trendy, Kigali-born independent-minded orphan. He answered, “no, no, I go to King Faisal hospital.” He said that he paid his annual 1,000 francs premium for Rwandaise d’Assurance Maladie (RAMA). There he could see a doctor.

Today I walked into another milk café and tried to use a new phrase in kinyarwanda that did not go so well – I asked a man sitting down with his tea if I was saying it correctly, and he answered that he was not Rwandan, but Congolese. He was a nurse working at the local clinic. There are eleven nurses and no doctor, he told me, and he was the only non-Rwandan. In his early twenties, he was born and raised in Bukavu and studied in Goma, and was going to be in Rwanda to save up money before returning to Congo.

There are a number of students in Rubona who come from the cities of Rwamagana or Kigali to study in the local VTC which is one of the cheaper ones in Rwanda. I met a group of three hanging out outside a drink and snack bar – the ones I call “milk cafes.” They could not afford to pay Rubona VTC boarding school fees of 60,000 francs a semester and so pay 25,000 instead, working during holidays in their respective home cities and pooling their income for food, rent and electricity, along with two other students, for a total of five who share one long mattress in a small room behind the milk café I was sitting in front of. “We live in the ghetto,” Mark told me, borrowing the phrase he hears in rap and hip-hop.

When the rain subsided the culinary students invited me for lunch in their home. They had Ugali. Ugali, I had always assumed until that day, always had the taste and starchy consistency of shredded paper and Elmer’s glue. I was shocked and happy to taste delicious, moist, light and flavorful Ugali that I dipped into a rich, creamy, tomato and bean sauce. Unlike the mass-prepared Ugali of the school – rarely served because it just isn’t as good as rice – this ugali did not stick to the roof of my mouth for hours or sit at the bottom of my stomach for days. It could almost be served at a fine restaurant. Their living room/dining room was a dark barren square with a light-bulb at the top and a socket for charging cell phones. They had a very small short bench the width of a balance beam which me and Isaac, another student, sat on, while the others sat on the floor opposite us. We all washed our hands in a basin and, using our hands, picked up a clump of ugali from the communal plait and dipped into the other communal soup bowl.

Isaac says thing like “yalla!” and understands “achla!” because his father, from Sudan, was Arab, though his mother was a Rwandan who grew up in Tanzania. Isaac himself lived in Tanzania after his father died, moving in with his mother’s family for three years in primary school, so he speaks Swahili as well. He also must know some French, as that is the language of instruction for the culinary school, though the other subjects at the VTC of masonry and tailoring are taught in English, because apparently the English can build things and sew things, but they can’t really cook things. Isaac also writes rap songs – or is it hip-hop? They always get frustrated with me when I can’t tell the difference. He and Mark both like to write songs, which mix Kinyarwanda and English. Below are the translations of both songs – the Kinyarwanda versions were written in slightly illegible handwriting, so I will put off publishing them until I get the words right:

“The Pain and the Tears”

By Abumugabo Mark

Chorus:

The pain and the tears

Inside his heart

There is no one who comes

To listen to him about his problems

There is no one who comes

To help him.

[repeat twice]

Verse I:

This is the first boy n***a

In four of my hustlers

In that game N***a

They continue

That gangsta they grow up

In good conditions

His parents love him well

One day his mother and business and father

The bad story on TV

The accident about his family in the car

The bad story over the phone

They took them to the cemetery.

[repeat chorus once]

Verse II:

Because of his problems

He goes to boarding school [because he has no home]

The headmaster asks him

Where are the school fees?

The gangsta says

That there are no school fees

The headmaster said

Leave.

Because of this problem I took

My problem and left the school

When I reached home my house was already

Sold.

Yeah it’s a bad life men

[repeat chorus.]

This song includes a lot of venting about problems that keep coming up in conversations with 19-year-olds, who are often orphans: not being able to pay school fees or having a house.

Diane

By Isaac

Chorus: Diane you’re my love

I need you

You left me

Come back

I love you forever.

Verse I:

Diane when you left me on

Sunday at 5 May

At 5:00 o’clock

You caught the bus

I came to search for you in

Rwamagana at the

Guest house

You are with another guy

On the bed

The guy with the air force [my comment: this is a trendy kind of shoe that shows you have money]

When you look at my eyes you said

You are welcome in the house.

You began to talk to me

You said that I’m a poor man

You are a very, very poor man

You have no cash

I have other guys who want me

And thus the first verse ends, on a slightly sad note. There is apparently a second verse, though he did not have patience to write it out in one sitting.

There is almost as much to write about food as there is about shoes and clothes, so look out for the next installment about culinary arts.

First photographs? Shoes, of course

For around 10 cents the shoe repairman at the bottom is sewing together the plastic band of a flip-flop to its foam sole. The flip-flop costs around 1,400 francs, around $2.50. The shoe repairmen are all lined up in competing businesses, with stacks of heals, flip-clops, slippers, and sneakers, all waiting to be repaired on the spot.

The flip-flops I bought are made out of used tire rubber for the soles, string, and decorative beads. I paid 1,000 francs for them, though locals tend to prefer the brightly-colored flimsy imports rather than the much, much stronger rubber-soled recyclables.

For some reason, only men seem to repair shoes. Why is this always a male profession? Maybe because the nails are associated with building, which is associated with men. The tailors are almost all women.

I am putting together the best photos of the students in the village. I want the students to write their own bios first, so soon you will see more than just shoes. Which I could talk about all day. But still.