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.
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