Every time I think there cannot possibly be more people in my hosts’ family, I meet somebody new. It turns out that the father just has six siblings, of whom I have now met at least four. This time it was another sister, who has been studying in France for several years now and I think is just coming home.
It is always nice to meet someone new, and as a young person who has spent time in Europe she is an interesting mix of backgrounds: definitely Rwandan, but with different clothing, much more French infused in her speech and the only MacBook I have seen here apart from my own. I was delighted to hear that she wants to use her graduate degree to work in Rwanda and help her country; so many people would have jumped at the opportunity to live abroad.
She (J., let’s say) agreed to take me into town, at first on the pretense that we would go eat hamburgers somewhere because I probably miss them. (I hadn’t really thought of that, actually, but that doesn’t mean I would say no to a hamburger!) As it happened, we went to a place that served hamburgers, but ate other things there.
The place is called La Galette; located not too far from the city center, it is a grocery store with an attached café area; it is also, at least formerly, owned by Germans, and serves some more international foods that the guide says make it popular with expats. I do not know whether they see the irony in happily advertising their “German Butchery”; or maybe I’m the only one who finds it funny. I just don’t think you would see many American stores with that slogan on their bags.
The German and otherwise international part is just a part, though, and it generally caters to a local audience with the food it stocks and serves. I tried two new-ish Rwandan foods there: First, I have certainly had samosas back home, but these have become a local specialty (Rwandized as amásáambusa). Really, they tasted about the same as all the other samosas I have ever had, except they were cheaper. Second, I had a donut. Well, not a donut, though that is how I have seen íríindaâzi translated. Ámáandaâzi (the plural) are kind of balls of fried dough; I realize that sounds a lot like a donut. The difference is that they are ball-shaped and can get big (the one we split was the size of a grapefruit), with less sugar and heavier dough, and look like they might be cooked before frying as well. Maybe. I have only ever seen one.
Both of these were really good. There was also a little ball of seasoned beef that I had; I don’t know whether this was Rwandan, German, Indian or something else. It may also have just been a little ball of seasoned beef. Somehow all of these were a little bit more appealing than a hamburger, especially before lunchtime.
We also made our way to the Post Office, where I had to buy stamps and mail postcards. For the central post office of the country, it was very unassuming. In fact, it was tiny. Situated as a block of outlets in what looked a lot like the shopping centers on either side of it, I think there were about seven windows, and four boxes to put letters in: Kigali, national, international and unknown (unknown?), as well as another section with P.O. boxes that I did not see. From what I saw, it is probably the smallest post office I have ever been to, smaller than the ones in Harvard Square and Scarsdale. It is probably also responsible for serving more people than any I have been to, as it is one of only about 20 in either the city of 1 million or the country of 12 million. (I forget; I read that somewhere.) Either way, that number falls for short of the recommended international standard of one post office per 18,000 people (or was it 9,000?).
Given those two superlatives, it didn’t seem to be especially busy. I think only one of the windows was staffed, and I waited until the one person being served was finished. I bought my stamps (giving the National Post some good business) and spent some time affixing them to their envelopes before another person showed up and I moved out of the way to the next, unstaffed, window.
Rwanda does not have door-to-door mail delivery. As I think I have mentioned before, until recently most of its streets were not named and most of its dwellings not numbered. So everyone who wants mail gets a post office box, and anyone who wants to send things goes to the Post Office. (I also have not seen any mailboxes around Kigali.) The fact that it is so not-busy is a little bit surprising, but a little bit not.
I can actually think of two possible reasons: First, mail has never been part of the culture here and the average citizen doesn’t have much use for it. (A. did not know what a stamp was.) Second, this might be an example of a rapidly developing country skipping a step in its development. A definite example of that, as cited by Al Gore, is the rapid proliferation of cell phones here, even though there has never been much of a landline infrastructure. Here too, a majority of the use that people got out of mail delivery, whether for communication or advertising, has gone straight to e-mail.
It might not be a perfect comparison: there will, for the foreseeable future, be a use for postal services: to deliver things that cannot be sent by e-mail, like packages and postcards. It will be on a smaller scale, though, and though I would not be surprised if Rwanda’s postal service did try to implement the capacity to deliver mail in the future, it is not expanding faster because there does not appear to be a demand for it.
Afterward, we came back homeward where we went to an Internet café for an hour; in the afternoon, we went to visit A. and then followed her to school, again with the intent of getting online. That turned into an extended volleyball game with some people there, and then J. found some old friends, and by sunset I had just finished checking my e-mail.
New Vocabulary Words for the Day
- umúcyáari: urban person
- kwíiraata: to talk or act like you are better than someone. (Turns out I wasn’t the only one who had this impression of French people!)
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