Carnivore

On Tuesday, Mica and I dined at Carnivore, a famous restaurant in Nairobi. A Kenyan friend, Susanne, who used to be a manager at the restaurant, joined us.

The restaurant’s big draw is, of course, the variety of meats it offers, all cooked on a huge open grill near the entrance to the restaurant. Susanne had told me that menu choices suitable for vegetarians would be available, but I have to admit that I was skeptical. On several occasions, meat-eating friends have told me that meat-free options would be available at a particular restaurant, and I’ve ended up with an iceberg lettuce salad and a baked potato. You can imagine how happy I was to receive a special menu for vegetarians (the server announced, “We take good care of yoooo!”). The menu (“For the herbivore and piscivore”) featured vegetarian crepes, kumbi bhayi, vegetable pizza, vegetable cutlets, vegetable lasagna, limuru vegetable pie (a “fountain of potato cake and spicy vegetables on vegetable creole sauce”), and aviyal. I chose the kumbi bhayi, mushrooms and green peas in a delicious white sauce served with rice.

In the meantime, the meat had already started arriving for Mica. The server first brought a big two-tiered lazy susan full of sauces (chili, garlic, barbeque, etc.) for the different kinds of meat as well as fresh salad. At the top of the tray sat a little flag with the Carnivore logo on it. As long as that flag flies, the servers stop by the table every couple minutes with huge slabs of meat on skewers. They sliced off pieces of it onto Mica’s superhot metal plate. Various servers brought beef, chicken, ostrich, crocodile, lamb, pork, chicken livers, gizzards. When you don’t want any more meat, you place the flag on its side to indicate that you’ve surrendered.

Nairobi

What to say about Nairobi...I'm getting a somewhat slanted view of the city as activities are heavily influenced by traffic patterns. You plan your day around avoiding the horrific traffic jams that caused us to take over an hour last night to travel less than 5 miles. Eating exhaust while sitting still in traffic makes the experience even more frustrating. Also, foreigners are advised to avoid several parts of the city, which has a high crime rate, so we can't go downtown or to other places that might be of interest.

But it's an interesting place, much bigger, more chaotic, and noisier than Kigali, which seems absolutely placid by comparison. Yesterday we drove away from the city to the Kentmere Club for lunch. It's a small restaurant surrounded by a huge, lush garden. We had a quiet lunch of an egg and tomato sandwich (me) and fruitcake (Mica). Tonight's dinner is at Carnivore, which is billed as one of the two best restaurants in Africa. Some new laws limit the types of game they can serve, but it should still be a unique experience, at least for Mica. I suspect that I'll be eating bread and salad, but we'll see. I'll definitely share the experience in this venue.

So far, not so good...

I started feeling uneasy this morning the minute I tried to use curbside check-in and they couldn't find my itinerary. The kiosk couldn't find it either. By that time, Karen had driven away from the airport. The guy at the ticketing desk found my itinerary, but I didn't feel any relief because he stared at his computer for so long I knew something had to be wrong. My flight was to Nairobi via Atlanta and Lagos. Turns out I needed a visa for Lagos even though I would just be passing through and not leaving the airport, so I couldn't get on the plane! You can imagine my frustration.

I managed to get an Orbitz customer service rep on the phone and rebook the flight through London, but it cost a fortune and it doesn't leave until this evening, so I'm back home now--Bob came and picked me up. Tonight I'll fly overnight to Gatwick, transfer to Heathrow, wait 11 hours, then fly to Nairobi on an overnight flight that leaves London at 8 tomorrow evening. I'll be getting to Nairobi 12 hours later than my original flight.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but it just never occurred to me that I'd need a visa for a country that I was just passing through. The ticketing agent at the airport had never heard of that either. I found some information on the internet that says that it is indeed true, but it looks like Americans are the only people who have to obtain such a visa in Nigeria. Interesting.

It's part of a longer story that I'll tell you later (when I get home), but my advice is don't use Orbitz. I've used them before and all went well, but when you have a problem, they're the opposite of helpful, and one customer service rep was totally rude.

Have any of you ever heard of this or had a similar experience? Just wondering...

Return to Rwanda

More than a year has passed since my last trip to Rwanda, and it feels like a long time. Much has changed–the building boom in Kigali continues, the 15th anniversary of the 1994 cataclysm has been remembered (and the country continues to recover emotionally and economically), the Urukundo kids have grown a lot taller. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with people and places I’ve come to love. I’ll spend a few days checking out Nairobi with Mica (aka Micaela, my housemate from my last visit to Rwanda), then on to Kigali for three days. After that we’ll stay with the Urukundo kids in Gitarama for a week, and then I’ll slowly make may way back home via Kigali and Nairobi. I’ll be partying with my family and friends in Amsterdam the last three days of this trip to celebrate Erica’s graduation.

This trip will be much busier than the last one, so I can’t make too many promises about blogging, but I’ll try…

Spelling matters

Although most people here are Christians (which in Rwanda means no drinking), I had noticed that the city has an inordinate number of saloons. Signs are painted directly on the building, and with the abundance of saloon signs, I began to question the no-drinking rule.

Fast forward to this afternoon. I was about to take a well-deserved nap (aren’t they all well-deserved?), when Etienne arrived at the house to ask me to accompany him to get haircuts for the kids. Reluctantly, I got out of bed and went with him. He had some of the kids, and more joined us as we walked. As we climbed the dirt “road” (I’m not sure if it’s a road if you can’t navigate a car on it) up to the main drag I looked back and saw about 20 of our kids walking behind me and in front of Etienne. I knew the afternoon would be long with 20 heads to shave (girls too!)

When we arrived, I looked into the small room with four chairs and three guys cutting hair. The place was totally simple—just chairs, mirrors, scissors, hair clippers and not much else. The name of the place? BM Saloon. So see, folks, spelling is important because a saloon and a salon just aren’t the same thing. And guess how much the haircuts cost? 20 cents apiece.

Here is a cow

Nothing you can imagine is as dark as a Rwandan night. Few streetlights illuminate our dirt road, and because many people live without electricity, they don’t have porch lights to help passersby see where they’re going. Moonlight helps, but last night was cloudy. The street is partially illuminated near our guesthouse, but as we make our way in the direction of our house, the street becomes inky-black. I can’t see my feet or where they’re going.

I suspect that before she left for the U.S., Arlene instructed the guards, John, and Etienne that they were never to allow Micaela and me to walk in the dark unaccompanied by a man. Last night after I was finished using the internet connection at the guesthouse, Olivier, a worker there, offered to walk me home. I accepted, knowing that even if I declined, he would accompany me anyway. Olivier has a little English and is very soft spoken and a bit shy about using his English. I had forgotten my flashlight, so the night was especially dark. (Micaela and I are the only people in town who use flashlights. Rwandans walk in the pitch black as if the sun were shining.) As we strolled along the street on the 6- or 7-minute walk to our house we talked only a little, with Olivier occasionally pointing to puddles for me to avoid.

We walked somewhat slowly, as is the custom in Rwanda. Without even a hint of alarm or surprise, Olivier mentioned slowly in his quiet voice, “Here is a cow.” Simultaneous to his quiet comment, I realized that I was about to run smack into a cow! It was less than a meter away and I hadn’t even seen or heard it. We both laughed at my surprise at narrowly avoiding running into a cow and then walked on.

Being 50 in Rwanda

I remember, after being in my 20s for the usual number of years, the first time someone asked me how old I was after I turned 30. Same thing for 40. It was hard to say it out loud. The good news is that I’m getting a lot of practice saying that I’m 50 because people in Rwanda don’t have the Western hesitation about asking how old you are. People ask your age as a matter of introductory information like whether you speak French or English, where you’re from, why you’re in Rwanda, and how many kids you have. When I tried to explain the Western custom of lying about your age to the students in one of my English classes, they just looked confused even after Etienne translated into Kinyarwanda. In Rwanda, where the average life expectancy is about 53, advanced age is a badge of honor.

The fun part of being honest about my age is that no one here believes me. They’re actually aghast when I tell them I’m 50. Maybe I flatter myself, but I think their surprise is genuine. It’s not that I look particularly youthful; it’s that they don’t adhere to the Western custom of lying about age. In addition, people have hard lives, so many Rwandan people who are 50 look like they’re 70. Back home in the US, I look my age, but here people think I’m 35.

Last week John got around to asking me how old I am. He just about fell over when I told him. Then he and Micaela started laughing, a private joke or something. So here’s the story…they had to wait a long time for me at the airport when I arrived because I was waiting for my suitcase that didn’t show up. I was the last person out of the baggage claim area. In the meantime, John had gone looking around for me. He knew my age, and he reported back to Micaela and Etienne that he said that he had seen a muzungu in the baggage claim area, but he didn’t think it was me because the woman he had seen was much younger than 50. With this kind of flattery, I may have to consider moving to Rwanda forever.