"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.