Banana wine and chocolate - or, a very social weekend

Saturday and Sunday 8-9 October

A social weekend.

Saturday, gift shopping at a craft cooperative in town where almost everything is beautiful and it was hard not to buy more than I could possibly take home. Central Kigali may not be downtown Manhattan, but it's refreshing not to see cheap tourist traps selling junk everywhere.

Lunch with Rosine at the Bourbon Street Cafe - I had my favourite African coffee: expresso blended with milk, chocolate and ginger.

After shopping we had lunch with Rosine then she drove us to her place to meet her family who were absolutely lovely and genuinely thrilled to have us visit.

Rosine

 We know Rosine from when she did a Masters degree in Customs Law at the University of Canberra, and she became great friends with David and Mandy and Julie. She has been very generous while we have been here and it has been delightful to get to know her better.

Rosine's extended family

 Her family is quite big, with Mama and Papa, an uncle, a brother, two sisters and two nieces, plus a lady who helps out, all living at home. She also has three brothers living overseas.

Robert, Rosine's youngest brother, insisted on us having some banana wine - which I have to admit is not going to become my favourite drink. Sickly sweet (to my taste) with a very bitter burnt aftertaste. I managed a small glass but Robert said it was OK to have a Primus (beer) instead which I gladly accepted. Still, it's great to have the opportunity to try these things. The Rwandans also make a beer from bananas - which I'm sure is equally disagreeable!

Communication was fun as the older members of the family speak French but not English. But with translation from Rosine and Robert and a few bits of French thrown in, we managed very well. After a couple of beers, Papa engaged me in conversation in French which rather stretched me a bit with as it was a bit noisy and my conversational ability is rather rudimentary. However we persevered and with a bit of body language thrown in we sort of understood each other a fair bit of the time.

The only serious thing we did was to visit the memorial to the Belgian soldiers. This is the  place  where 10 UN soldiers from Belgium were  massacred on day one of the genocide . The soldiers had been deployed to protect the Prime Minister and when the fighting broke out Presidential Guard soldiers attacked the home, disarmed the Belgians and transported them to Kamp Kigali where they killed them. The camp is now a memorial site.

Machine-gun and grenade damage on the outside of the barracks where the Belgian soldiers were killed

The corner where nine of the soldiers died

Sunday we had a farewell brunch with Di who had been in Kigali for the last ten days teaching at the Central Hospital and was about to go back to Butaro. Di, who is the absolute font of all knowledge about eating places in Kigali, had suggested a new cafe called Shocolat Lite, about 15 minutes walk up the road, which is very nice and a bit of a discovery. They make the most amazing hot chocolate. It's in a new building housing offices, a nicely equipped pharmacy, a bank, two restaurants, and a very nice bookstore.

Di Longson, me and Julie

We browsed the bookstore and I could easily have gone crazy but the thought of trying to fit anything else into my luggage made me limit myself to an English-Kinyarwanda phrase book, which would have been useful four weeks ago instead of when I'm about to go home.

To wind the weekend off, Sunday evening we had a lovely evening with Melody and her family. Melody is the Executive Assistant to the Director-General and is just gorgeous.