Early to Bed

I absolutely love mantises. I was doing my laundry the other day when I happened to catch in the corner of my eye that there was one sitting on my shoulder. He looked at me, I looked at him, but when I extended my arm to let him walk onto the hedge, he launched himself into a frying pan that was soaking on the ground. I fished him out with a ladle and let him dry off. Such a cutie. I didn't realise how good they are at jumping. There's quite a few around at the moment and when I see them I collect them up and put them outside.

The title for this post comes from a new ministerial order a couple of days ago. Our 9 p.m. curfew has been reduced to 7 p.m. but the order went out so fast that it seems many people didn't know. If you get caught out after curfew, you spend the night at the stadium. Someone in a Kigali forum took this picture the day the curfew changed - all the people who got caught out. I was lucky, a friend posted it in a popular city forum, but I wouldn't have known otherwise. It's probably a good move to restrict movement again, reported cases are rising rapidly, but a little more notice would be nice. An SMS or a post in the popular online forums when it's something as important, and as sudden, as a change to curfew hours.

I mentioned in my last post about food prices. I was in a popular local supermarket the other day and thought I'd just show the comparison. In the UK, a 100g bag of hazel nuts costs £1.50 in Tesco. Here it's over £9, and £10 for a pack of pistachios. My friend runs a restaurant with a pistachio salad. She says they literally sit there and count out the number of pistachios to include per salad, because they're so expensive.

Above, you can see a £2.99 box of cereal priced at almost £6 - and people buy this.

As we're a landlocked country, the goods arrive in containers at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania or Mombasa in Kenya, but it costs far more money to get the goods overland to Kigali than it costs to get them to the ports. So, things are very expensive. Yet, when you cross the border to somewhere like Bukavu in DRC, which is just as far from the sea, the shops are fully stocked and more reasonably priced. So, it's a constant conundrum. Even stuff that is made here is super expensive, such as butter. A 250g block of butter (£1.50 in the UK) costs almost £8 here, even though it's made in Kenya.

Of course, rice, beans and cassava flour are all very cheap, and you could live off those, but every now and then - actually, most days - you want something a little extra. The problem is that, after travelling to Africa by sea and then overland by truck, the products often suffer a drop in quality. It costs between £3.80-4.60 for a multi pack of Snickers or fun-sized Bounty, but twice in the past month I've splashed out and ended up returning them.

 

You wouldn't mind, only there's a very specific style of customer service you often encounter. Usually, customer service goes, 1) acknowledge there is a problem, 2) find a solution, 3) leave the customer feeling happy and willing to shop with you again. Here, it can be more, 1) deny there is a problem, 2) if you absolutely have to admit it, blame the customer, 3) hope the customer gets tired and goes away.

This works for these shops as the marketplace is small and there's hardly any competition. If you want to buy an imported product, there's usually only one or two places you can find that product. Sooner or later, you end up returning.

You'd think a shop might be interested to know there's a problem with their cold chain, so that they can hire some help and get it fixed. Instead, I received a long lecture on how they import quality chocolate from the UK, they're the only shop to keep it in the fridge, and how their warehouses are so impressive that I should come and see them and watch whilst they open their chocolate in front of me to prove it's okay. He stopped just short of offering to defend his honour by stabbing himself through the heart with a Twix.

Yeash, calm down. 

Lesson learned - just don't buy chocolate from there anymore.

A good friend gave me a lead on a South African shop selling chocolate near town, but you have to get in quick before they sell out. I'm going to see if I can find it next week.

Talking of chocolate, look what arrived!

This is a Christmas parcel sent by my aunt... in November. 

The post office is a constant sore point for all Kigalians. Stuff takes months to arrive, if it ever arrives. Recently, something seems to be changing. They've got a swanky new website and finally appear to be paying attention to social media.

They've also gone through their cupboards and published a list of almost 6,500 unclaimed items! They put it on a website that takes ages to load, but once it does you can search your name. They also published the list with everyone's personal contact details on because, y'know, why not? You can just look up anyone's name and find their phone number. Which sort of begs the question: if the post office have the person's number - why not call them and tell them they have a parcel?

I had three parcels, two of which appeared to be the same parcel listed twice, but on closer inspection, they could only find one. I was told that the reason it wasn't delivered to the PO box I pay 30,000 francs a year for was because the address was incomplete. As you can see from the above picture - it wasn't. It had my name, my PO box, the correct city - everything you'd need to deliver it to the recipient. It's not like I just arrived last week. I've had the exact same PO box for over six years.

Last year, my aunt's Christmas parcel arrived in March, so she posted it earlier this year... and it arrived even later. Dad's also arrived in March this year. Getting it out of the post office was a challenge. As you can see, it was damaged, so the guy kept telling me to go there and have a look. Not wanting to spend half my day in a socially-distanced queue at the post office, I suggested he WhatsApp me a picture, which he did. 'Great,' I said, 'no problem, I'm happy to take it.' So I sent a moto to collect it and asked for the momo information to pay.

Momo stands for Mobile Money, an extremely clunky way of transferring money between mobile phone accounts, for which you need a code about as long as your arm, full of numbers, asterisks and hashes. Anyway, he wouldn't give me the code to pay for my parcel and told me my driver could pay for it.

He also asked for 2,000 francs, which I'm still uncertain about, as owning a PO box is supposed to entitle you to a reduced parcel fee of 1,000. You have to pay to collect parcels, there's no door-to-door delivery in Kigali and the parcel collection fees, I assume, make up postal workers' wages as there probably isn't the weight of postage to do that by stamps and stationary alone. 

Anyway. Driver is already on his way there when the guy decides the driver also needs a letter of recommendation from me and a copy of my passport.

I was getting increasingly annoyed by this. What should have been a simple transaction (1. I have a parcel, 2. I pay you for that parcel, 3. the parcel gets delivered) is turning into a day-long outing through inconvenienceville. I explained that the WhatsApp message, in which I have given the name of the driver and the delivery company he works for, is my letter of recommendation. I WhatsApp a copy of my passport to both the post office guy and the driver going to collect the parcel. 

Just because he can, the post office guy then insists I call the director of the post office, for no sane reason. So, I do, to explain the situation and ask him politely to help get the parcel to the delivery guy...

Things you wish you never started. Anyway, it finally arrived and, guess what...

There was chocolate inside!

It may have been in the post for nine months, but it was still perfectly edible. 

Nomnomnomnomnom.

In between minor irritations, there has been some nice dining going on. My friend introduced me to these 'freezes' at The Hut. They're not on the menu, but they're completely delicious. Like Slush Puppies, but slightly less luminous and made with natural ingredients. Delightful on a hot day.

With a hankering for British stuff, I managed to convince a local bakery to make a batch of Welsh Cakes. I got a free taster batch. It's all good. I'm thinking maybe we try Scotland next, with a deep-fried Mars bar.

My friend Solv and I regularly eat at another friend's tapas bar, but tapas isn't always that filling, so Solv suggested we combine the pork with rice, and it went down a treat. Our own off-the-menu meal for a boozy night out. The staff did a lovely presentation.

Then, we come to the happy place. There's a new very expensive but very amazing restaurant recently opened, Meza Malonga. It's an event rather than a meal. I went with my lovely friend Jo as a special treat. Founded by a young gentleman called Dieuveil Malonga. He's from Congo-Brazzaville and trained in France to become an award-winning chef. The whole experience is delightful.

 

Fresh Ingredients

Nice View

Ten-month old passion fruit digestif.

It was such a lovely evening, and went a long way to relieving the tension we've been feeling lately, what with the plague and everything.

They also had some nice art pieces made from old moto helmets.

 

I've also done a couple of piano tunings recently. This lovely one with a hinged lid:

 

 

And this grand, which is the first grand I ever tuned and last saw three years ago. Where does the time fly?

Also been trying to get our piano build to work with Désiré. Definitely some issues. More about that here.

Sat down with a well-deserved cup of tea and an episode of Better Call Saul, in which I appear to have the exact same mug.

Graduated to a glass of wine. The not-so-good chocolate shop also sells red wine in orange juice cartons. I was highly sceptical at first, but it was cheap, so I took one home. I then went back and bought the last three cartons. It's very acceptable. It's been between 27-30c every day the past month, so I generally keep it in the fridge. It's been a real treat.

And one of my favourite shops has just gone online. It's run by my friend Flo, keeping the city supplied with fresh fruit and veg, bagels and ice-cream. I've realised that one of the greatest pleasures of being an adult is getting to eat an entire watermelon all by yourself. I hadn't had one for years, and now I'm slightly infatuated.

My lovely cleaner, Claudine, is here helping remove the plaster dust from - well, everywhere. My landlord very kindly sent some guys over to fix up the house this week. Unfortunately, due to a combination of dodgy imported cement and torrential rains during the wet season, houses tend to rot on a regular basis. They usually need patching up every couple of years. My living room was getting to that stage, so a guy came to replace the cement and paint the room. It required me to move all of my belongings into the guest room and stay there for a couple of days, but it looks really smart now.

 

(panoramic, click to enlarge)

Weird seeing the house so empty.

All finished.

Howl was not so sure about the situation. That look says he blames me entirely.

Had a meeting yesterday, then went out for a meal with my friend Chantal. We went to PiliPili and I was glad to see they'd solved their green pool issue. It was a lovely afternoon, and there was a misty haze on the horizon which layered the hills.