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.