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.

 

What Year Is It?

 

Wow. It's been a really long time since I did an update.

I just haven't been doing anything. Well, lots of work, but nothing fun to talk about. Been staying home, staying safe. 

As with most countries, lockdown restrictions are easing here, despite the numbers going up. Though, relative to other places, they remain low. Only five deaths.

When movement restrictions eased, I did take a trip out to Bugesera Lodge to return a piano action that I was repairing. The job was only supposed to take a week, but then lockdown happened and, three months later...

Jocelyn fed me well, as always.

 

Had a couple of socially distanced drinks with friends. Dinner at Borneo, and a couple of trips to CasaKeza. A lovely lazy afternoon there last week. But you have to be careful as there's a 9 p.m. curfew, so we all set our alarms for 8:30 so that we have time to get home. If you get caught out, you're sent to sit in Amahoro Stadium for the night to be 're-educated.' Not something anybody really wants. 

Socially-distanced work meeting.

Going out is a risky business, though. One complete idiot was so happy to see me he came and gave me a big hug, despite me stepping away. I was pretty pissed off with him as I've avoided touching people thus far, and it was clear I didn't want to. He's also one of these people who knows everybody, so goes everywhere. A very likely candidate for corona.

Another punter out and about.

Life in lockdown has been fairly manageable. Work continues as normal for me, as I'm a paper pusher, and there's always paper to push and numbers to crunch. It's been a lot harder on my colleagues who work in the field, as they haven't been able to undertake any of our programme activities.

I've also been throwing myself into creative things. I'm turning one of my books into an audiobook with a very talented group of actors, I'm narrating a second one myself, and I have a book launch in a couple of weeks. All good stuff.

I've also embraced French. My whole life I've been useless with languages, except sign languages, which I did rather well at for a while. But spoken languages have always eluded me. Until now. They've suddenly started to make sense to me in a way they never did before. I'm finally getting to grips with French grammar. I think what it might be is that I've spent the past five years working as a proofer and editor for companies and other authors, and the extreme attention to detail (not in this blog, this is out of hours so proofread it your damn self), has rewired my brain slightly. I was a really late developer for grammar at school, but now I love it. I guess it's the same with languages. I just never stopped to really look at them before, and now I'm seeing patterns and have more patience for learning them.

I've also started Korean, as I've been watching so many Korean movies lately. The alphabet is utterly amazing. It's so intuitive. Apparently Korea has one of the highest literacy rates in the world because their alphabet is phonetic and so incredibly logical. Unfortunately, Duolingo sucks at Korean. It goes from 'cat', 'dog', 'person' to 'the singer is unpopular' and 'there are no rooms in Korea' (???) in the space of one lesson. Completely incomprehensible for beginners. But there's an excellent website called Talk to me in Korean, so if I still feel interested in a couple of weeks, I might sign up. It's just a really nice language.

Spending a lot of time learning creepy Gothic music on the piano and hanging out with my cats.

 

Howl

Sen

Sophie

That second one is Sophie chowing down on a ripe avocado which fell out of the tree. True thing - many cats love a little bit of avocado. 

Sadly, we have had one incident a couple of days ago. I opened the door in the morning and Howl was nowhere to be seen, which is highly unusual as he never misses a meal. Thankfully, I found him in the cat room (a spare room they can come and go from at night). Unfortunately, he had a nasty wound on his back leg, which necessitated a trip to our lovely vet. Apparently it's a deep puncture wound, possibly made by a thin piece of metal, rather than a bite. I'm mystified, but you never know what people do to animals when you're not there to protect them. I'm just grateful he made it home. He was an extremely brave boy. He seriously impressed the vet with his willingness to stay still during the procedure, and the vet couldn't check his heartbeat because he was purring too much. He was given a mild sedative and sent home with antibiotics and painkillers after having the wound washed out with iodine - ouch!

He's got house privileges at the moment, which means he gets extra meat to take his tablets with and gets to sleep in my bed, which is something I rarely allow because sleep and cats have never been a thing at four in the morning. But he's a strong little darling. The very next day he was back to normal. He has to go for a check-up once the meds are finished, but I think he's going to be fine.

Our local vet is lovely, PETS +. They have a new vet who drove all the way here from Milawi, and a brand new receptionist...

There have been a few tough moments being at home all the time. You do start to lose track of days.

At the moment, Kigali is having a real water shortage. It's common for my water to go off at least once a week, but it's usually back on again by the afternoon. So far, I've only had water about three days in the past week, and rarely enough pressure to run a shower. In a way, it's good I'm working from home because there's nothing worse than having an important meeting to go to and no shower. 

When I start to smell too badly, I soap myself down and throw cold water over myself from the emergency bucket in the garden.

It's particularly tough when my cleaner comes. If there's no water in the taps, she somehow manages to wash all the dishes with a minuscule amount from the emergency bucket and there's still plenty left when she leaves. I have no idea how she does it.

Someone pointed out that the new golf course runs a sprinkler system during the dry season, which feels a bit insensitive to be wasting water like that when most people can't make it come out of their taps. 

For the past six days, there's been a really irritating noise at night. It starts in the evenings around seven o'clock and goes right through the night. It sounds like an industrial pump or a generator, and I suspect it's to do with the golf course, which they're expanding to an 18-hole jobbie for international competitions. Whatever it is, it's a real pain and I'm suffering extreme sleep deprivation. No idea when things might return to normal.

Again, another reason it's good no one's got any meetings to stay awake through. I can remain at home, sleep deprived and stinky, for as long as necessary.

The final grump I have is the price of food, which is always expensive in Rwanda. £1.29 jars of pesto sell for £7, £2.69 boxes of breakfast cereal go for over £5, and a £1 bar of chocolate is at least £3, or £6 for a bar of local Made in Rwanda chocolate, which is basically imported chocolate melted and remoulded. The UK prices are still on the packaging, so you can see just how badly you're getting fleeced. You can survive off fruit and veg, but every now and then you wish you could walk into a Coop or a Morrisons and brows the BOGOF section or the discount shelf. In the UK, you can fill a shopping trolley with a week's worth of food for £60-70. I spent £130 the other day, got home, emptied my two shopping bags and couldn't work out what on earth I'd bought for that. Alcohol is expensive (except beer), snacks are limited and expensive, even noodles cost a fortune.

Still, I suppose you make it back in electricity, water, rubbish collection and rental costs, which are all very cheap by comparison. And beer, which is also extremely affordable. So it evens itself out, but it's just those days when you think, 'ooh, I could demolish a bar of Cadbury's or a bowl of potato salad.' (Don't get me started on the cost of Hellmann's).

My family used to send me goodie boxes, but a couple never arrived, and the last one that did took four months to get here. Rwanda's international postal system is not something to be relied on, and the other option of DHL is eye-wateringly expensive. 

To be honest, I think I'm just this grumpy because I've overshot my holiday time. I usually pop back to the UK every couple of years to refresh my stash of mayo, pesto and clothes, but of course I haven't been able to go this year. Knowing you can't go sometimes makes you want to go more. Like peeing. When you know there won't be a toilet stop for a while, you panic pee, even when you don't really need to.

Clothes are another reason it's good we're all working from home. After two years, I have nothing left to wear. My neighbour kindly brought me a bag of clothes to sift through, but clothes shopping here is tough. 

You know all those clothes you threw away and gave to charity because you didn't want them? Then, think about the clothes you donated that the charity shops couldn't sell, so they bagged them up to send to 'less fortunate' places. That's what we end up with here. Only, the West doesn't give those clothes for free, we have to pay for them. They're usually not bad quality, but they're rarely the sort of thing you'd pick off the rack if you had free choice. Plus, Rwandans are very smart dressers, so the bag was 30% jeans (which is the one thing I do have enough of), and 70% modest, long-sleeved outfits and formal office wear. None of which you're going to don to the pub in thirty-degree heat.

You try finding a sleeveless T-shirt, a strappy top, anything V-neck or a rock shirt in there, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

The only other option is the clothing level in the Chic Building, which is all imported Chinese polyester. Figure-hugging dresses you would never wear, that dissolve the first time you wash them. There is a clothes shop in Kigali Heights, but it's Primark quality at Harrods prices. You can get clothes made locally, but if you don't want igitengi (African wax print) you're going to need a second mortgage... and I don't have a first one.

Sorry, I know that's a complete offload, but I haven't been out much lately, so I've been storing it up.

I did see something nice at the store the other day. Baskets of dried legumes. I think you can take your own containers to fill. Looks very pretty. Though, you do have to soak most of them overnight... in water... which is something I don't have a lot of. Suppose I could go stand with a bucket under the sprinklers at the golf course.

Had a nice evening last week. My friend has just moved into a new place, so we had pizza there. I mentioned above that rent's pretty cheap, and it really is. It's perfectly possible to find a three-bedroomed house with private compound and a couple of bathrooms, five minutes from the city centre, for around 320-350,000 (£260-285) a month or a little less.

View of the city centre.

Night view.

Meanwhile, at home, I've been trying to get a bit more sun by moving my office onto the porch. I realised I've been going the colour of printer paper since the lockdown. No swimming, hardly going out, getting no vitamin D. This is helping slightly.

So, things are just plodding along as close to normal as possible. Cats are mostly fine, I'm fine. Haven't been blogging much because nothing much is happening. 

I will leave you with a ladybird who was helping me write a report.