Nyamirambo Nights

Saw this and couldn't help laughing.

Went over to Nyamirambo yesterday. It's the part of Kigali that never sleeps. The Muslim quarter, but also the hardest drinking, up-all-night, do-what-you-like side of town.

Lady Luck lives over that side, and as I still had a French photographer in my house, I decided it would be easier to go there to work on this research proposal we're writing. We've decided to focus on whether international funding priorities on MSM are further marginalising gay women. There's a call for papers backed by an NGO here. I think it stands a good chance, because nobody else is writing about it, and it's highly relevant to development at the moment.

Anyway, she wasn't kidding - she actually did cook for me! Very well. Goat and rice with salad. 

We started drinking, then her friend turned up, fresh off the plane from Nairobi, with a massive bottle of Amarula. She also had a couple of small bottles of wine, which she gave to me! Weirdly good wine for aeroplane wine - or perhaps I just haven't tasted wine in such a long time I've forgotten how it's supposed to taste?

Aaaand then we really started drinking. Went out to this back street Congolese bar. Nyamirambo is famed for the place where everybody and anybody intermingles. Most of Kigali looks superbly developed. My French photographer, who's been travelling around Africa for the past six months, can't believe how good the roads are and how clean it is. It's true - it's a great city. But step off the tarmac and you're soon on dirt roads through the land that time forgot. It's a stark contrast, but I love it. Little wooden cook huts with no lights, just the coals burning inside, the smells, the people sitting on doorsteps, talking, traders with armfuls of clothes they're trying to sell to passers by.

The only thing that I'm not so keen on is the sanitation. First time in a long while I've had to tackle eye-watering pit latrines, the ammonia so strong you have to hold your breath whilst you pee. No toilet paper, no ventilation, no drainage... blah. It's fairly hardcore stuff.

image source

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Nyamirambo or Camden Town?
Love the painted shop fronts.
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So, yes - the Congolese bar. Think my friend was a little worried what I'd think of it, but I loved it. We were then joined by some other people. Nice group, except my friend's ex turned up with her partner and was just a slight arsehole. The alcohol talking, but I stalked off to play pool with some guys on the other side of the bar. LL joined me, and proceeded to play a very good (for five bottles of Mutzig) game.

"Was trying to impress you," she grinned.

"Oh, I'm already impressed."

I dunno. We were having a queer old time of it. But I must admit, it's a double deformation: white and bi. I'm not sure if her ex hated me more for simply being there, or being there and white? Would the eyes have narrowed just a fraction less had I been Rwandan? I sensed a little bit of one-upmanship going on, her ex trying to control the conversation and how quickly we were drinking, LL with her arm around my shoulder, denoting ownership. To be honest, I didn't mind playing along. Soon ignored the ex and started snogging again. (Perhaps the Australian 'pashing' is nicer, it sounds more passionate). 

It was refreshing to be surrounded by people as happy with who they are. Ours was a table of love and laughter that night, which fascinates me why we drew such stony stares from a table of old women behind. They had been just as full of love and laughter as us a while before, then I suppose they saw who we were, and after a while their faces changed and the stares got harder. Firstly, I'm thinking 'You're wearing the veil and you're pissed as a newt - you want to judge me, really?' and then I just felt sad. Whilst our table was still full of love and laughter, they had chosen to kill theirs.

What a pity.

Still, love and laughter aside, jealous exes are something I can do without. Not only that, but all the lesbo lingo gives me brainache. One thing about being bi is that you don't tend to conform to type. You go with whatever feels good at the time. You love whoever you love, for their mind or their looks or their energy. What's between a person's legs is secondary, you're going to have fun either way. 

Speaking exceedingly bluntly here, what pisses me off about overtly lesbian cliques is their readiness to fight against discrimination, whilst at the same time developing a whole new language of discrimination. Femmes, butch, studs, chapstick - sounds like fairly innocuous descriptive terms, but that's never how they're used. I fear for young people coming out. They're told to 'find themselves,' but really, they're given a finite list of expressions to choose from and conform to. 

Can't be doing with it.

Just as many damaged people here as back home on the scene. Thankfully, just as many smart ones, too.

Gripe over.

As for me, dunno what I'm doing. 

Still having a dilemma. Me and LL are likely to be working together later in the year. I'm a bit older, and supposed to be wiser, but, frankly, she's far more professional than me half the time. Cue drunken slur:

"I very much want to work with your organisation, I very much want to take this job I've been offered, and I am definitely flirting with you. Is that a problem?"

Apparently not.

She asked if I wanted to stay over. I was ridiculously tired, drunk and ready to head home. But photographer dude has finally left for Gisenyi (back in ten days), so I have the house to myself again. Going to get it cleaned up and invite her over for movies (no, seriously, like 'cooking,' no euphemism there) and to help me decide which of my two massive beds we should wear out before I have to leave this place.