Kigali - Night

We pulled up to “Hill Top Hotel and Country Club”. “They have golf? Tennis?” I asked Zack.

“No.”

After a tense discussion at reception regarding my failure to bring my passport from Musanze, we checked in and I promptly collapsed on my bed. The TV sat on a short table next to my bed, in line with my face. Zack turned it on and began watching soccer.

Perfect.

For the next 15 minutes I tried to sleep over the soccer announcer shouting in my ear.

There was a knock on the door.

“Time for drinks,” said Ro, from the hall.

Zack got up to leave, “I’ll be there in a bit,” I said, “I’m going to try to take a shower.”

I went into the bathroom. There was no shower, per se. The bathroom was maybe 25 square feet. There was a shower head, and a bucket on the floor next to the toilet. I turned the knob, and water shot out of the spout at waist level. I looked for some do-hicky that would redirect the water to come out of the shower head. No such luck. The shower head had a hose dangling down from its base, so I tried shoving this into the waist level spout. Nope.

After a hot day in Kigali, I felt grim. Sweat, oil and dirt was caked over my entirety. I have to do something, I thought.

I looked at the sink. Frowned. Shrugged.

I turned on the sink. I stepped into the bucket.

…

Feeling refreshed if slightly ashamed after my hobo shower, I wandered out to the patio, where Zack, Ro, and Jeanne D’Arc were interviewing a candidate for the Medical Systems Coordinator position.

While we waited for the interview to end, Amber, Elie and I chatted. I ordered a coffee and a beer – not exactly the wisest combination, but I wanted to simultaneously wake up and relax.

When the waitress came with my order, I was pretty happy to find that ordering a coffee means you get the whole pot. Also, my beer was a full liter. Excessive, but appreciated.

…

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Restaurants in Rwanda are generally unreliable – for most menu items, you could get almost anything based on your order. In Musanze, I routinely am brought the wrong thing, or nothing at all. The best defense to this problem is to order Briochete and chips. Briochete is goat kebob. Everyone in Rwanda knows what Briochete is and how to make it and basically all Briochete tastes the same.

Ro, Amber, Zack and I made the safe play and ordered Briochete and chips.
While we waited for the food to arrive, we talked about Rwandan culture. Women’s rights issues are for some reason a favorite a favorite topic of conversation for all the women present.

“In Rwanda,” Jeanne D’Arc said, “If a man is with a woman who is not his wife, that is called a ‘mistake’ and if there is a child it goes to live with its father. But if a woman does the same mistake, the husband divorces her and takes all the children.”

Jeanne D’Arc is part of a local group in Musanze. They beat wife beaters. Seriously. The Mayor's wife is a member of the group.

“Yeah, I think Gabby mentioned that women cannot whistle?” I offered.

“That’s true, only men may whistle in public,” said Elie.

After long time of good conversation, the food arrived. At this point I was too hungry to care, but I did notice that my fries were dripping with grease. To save money or because of lack of supplies, sometimes Rwandan restaurants don’t change the frying oil as often as they should.

As we sat and talked more after dinner, I noticed the grease begin to work its magic – I was suddenly deep in a food coma. Everyone was excited to be going out to Cadillac, and Amber secured the positive RSVPs of Elie and Jeanne D’Arc – Ro, of course, was in from the start.

…

After dinner, we went back to the room. I was ready to fall asleep. I lay down on my bed, and began drifting off to sleep. Happily. Softly. Nicely.

“Mike, it’s time to go to Cadillac.”

“Nooooo,” I protested.

And then we left for Cadillac.

…

We rolled up to Cadillac around 10:30PM. Zack and I had both voiced concerns that this was too early for a dance club, but the team seemed unfazed. Zack and I went up to the guy collecting covers – “500 each,” he said, eyeing us. Zack covered me and Amber. The bouncer seemed annoyed to get up off of his stool.

We passed through the leather, padded double doors. The doors opened into a large, dark room. Sparkling lights covered all the walls, a dance floor at the middle of the room. I looked around. Empty.

I almost ran to the bar.

“A Jameson and a red bull on the rocks.”

“Double up that Jameson?”

“Absolutely.”


…

After a bit, people began coming into the club. Most gawked at the knot of Muzungus dominating the bar next to the door, and congregated at the other bar across the room. A short guy came up to me. “Hello,” he said in very accented English, “How’s it going? I’m Leonard.”

“How’s it going, man?”

“You like Rwanda? You like girls?”

“Yes?”

“Look,” he said, pulling out his phone, “I know lots of girls.” He began scrolling through his contacts, showing me entries with names of girls…Mary, Anne, Jessica.

“Great man, I’m really proud of you,” I said, hoping he’d get the hint and leave me alone. I turned my head and saw Zack and Ro giggling at my predicament.

Apparently he was not appreciative of my tone: “So where were you in 1994?”

Woah, I thought. “Uhhh, I was 8? In America?” I offered.

“So do you like Edgar Allen Poe?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The poet.”

Thoroughly confused, and experiencing one of the most bizarre encounters in my life, I decided that I had had enough, “I dunno man, I’m going to go talk to my friends.”

…

We all chatted for a while. Then Elie, Amber and Jeanne D’Arc decided to do a bit of dancing. My stomach rumbled – between my unsettling conversation with Leonard and the greasy fries and goat, my mood and stomach were both frothing. Zack’s next move didn’t settle anything.

Zack waved me to the bar, where he waited with a small bottle of Waragi and two glasses.

Waragi is a Ugandan banana liquor. The name “Waragi” comes from the British colonists in Uganda, who called it “War Gin”. It is among the most horrendous drinks I’ve ever had the misfortune of drinking. It is technically vodka but it tastes like bathtub gin.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said, as I drank the shot.

…

As the night wore on, a couple groups of Muzungus came in.

I thought about the dynamics in the club – a lot of Rwandans having a good time, and a handful of Muzungus coming in and grabbing a lot of attention.

Why do we get so much attention? I wondered. We’re …rich?
I make over 100 times the average salary here, I realized. I could be a Sugar Daddy! Just like the billboard!

I processed the implications of this realization. In Musanze and at Shingiro, I’m exotic, different, a who-knows-what-to-expect entity. But in Kigali, there are enough Muzungus that we’ve established a collective reputation. Apparently it’s not a great one at Cadillac on a Friday night at 1 AM…

Rich, foreign, predatory.

Where was I in 1994?

Woah.

…

Several old Muzungu men began dancing with their Rwandan ‘girlfriends’. These guys looked to be in their mid-50s to late-60s. Old. There are a number of unsettling realizations that come from watching these couples. The most glaring, though, is what dorks the guys are.

There’s a serious cognitive dissonance when a supposed ‘millionaire-celebrity’ goofily performs a cringe-inducing ballroom dance to “Get Low”. Not ballroom dancing like he’s some pro. Ballroom dancing like the man’s never had the courage to try to dance. Like how the theatre kids 'express' themselves at a high school dance. Damnit, it was embarrassing. And enraging. My blood boiled.

…

Making the easy choice not to share a dance floor with Neil Strauss, Mystery, David D’Angelo and their ladies, I began to recognize just how bad my stomach felt.

Ro, Jeanne D’Arc, and Elie were ready to leave, and so was I.

We said goodbye to Zack and Amber, who decided to stay and dance, and we made a happy retreat to Hill-Top Hotel and Country Club.

…

Kigali is a beautiful city at night.

We drove home, and admired the lights of the city, an abrupt difference from Musanze, which is very dark at night.

“It looks like the lights of LA from a distance, but we’re so close,” said Ro.

She was right, though the lights, being so close, didn’t twinkle. The black wall of the hillside passed from left to right through the windows on the opposite side of the back of the Land Cruiser. Each light represented an open door or window of someone’s home. They gently slid past.

…

The next day, Zack, Amber and I sat in Bourbon while the others did more errands. We had a good time chatting and people watching.

The most memorable group of people I saw was a disastrously representative American family of four. They fumbled about, completely unaware of how loud their cultural hubris was shouting. Each member of the family was overweight. Each wore an ill-fitting t-shirt with a completely non sequitur print: a “Just Do It Later” Bahamas souvenir, a shirt extolling the virtues of Yellowstone national park, a Wal-Mart knock off of an Ed Hardy print, and a shirt bearing Taz, the Looney-Tunes character. The husband was stocky, with a protruding gut and a shaggy brown beard. His wife’s brown hair fell long and unkempt – she wore no make-up. One of the boys dragged the mother by her hand to the counter display of pastries. The boy pointed at his selection - not demandingly, not even expectantly. He showed no anticipation. That he would get whatever he wanted was a foregone conclusion. I witnessed the last member of the family, he looked to be about 6, eagerly snatch a cup of hot cocoa from his mother. He took a big gulp of the steaming liquid and a grimace broke out on his face. To his credit, he didn’t cry or scream. He just looked puzzled – what have I done to deserve this unpleasantness?

…

The drive home was really nice. It was late in the day, and the temperature was perfect. We had an English-language quorum in the back of Gertie between Zack, Amber, Ro and myself. During one of the shopping excursions, we had accidentally bought an Indian version of Trivial Pursuit. It was almost what we had wanted, and all we could do was laugh about how hard questions about cricket and Indira Gandhi would be to try to answer.