Mango Season

28 December 2012

One of my personal side projects at my site was making wine. Part of the reason had to do with the fact that I was hell bent on using as many mangos as possible in the short, six-week mango season. There were different levels of effort that one could use to make homemade wines. Anywhere from using specialty ingredients, and serious equipment, to simply throwing fruit and sugar in a bucket and waiting. My approaches have been a little closer to the latter than the former. The only fancy thing I was doing was getting some actual champagne yeast and campden tablets. I had them sent to a volunteer that was visiting America and she was able to bring them back in the middle of January. I was not sure, though, when the mangos would stop showing up at the market, so I made my first batch without the fancy ingredients, hoping for the best. A bunch of mangos, sugar, water some tea, and citric acid was all I used. Between the jam and the wine, sugar was almost certainly my biggest expenditure since arriving at site. I made a huge mess and needed to mop my floor after. While the mango wine was able to start fermenting on its own, without yeast, it went very slowly. Weeks later, I would add some bread yeast, which supposedly would result in a bad flavor, but it was a risk I was willing to take. Time will tell I guess.

***

One day, when I was riding home from the market, the pedal on my bike simply fell off. I thought I had lost a nut or something, but upon closer inspection I saw that the threads on the crank had simply become stripped. It was further proof of what I already knew: this bike looks nice, but it is just a piece of crap. I walked back to town with my stupid bike, and a drunk guy talking at me the entire way. He kept telling me that he was an electrician and wanted a job at the cement factory in town. It took me a minute to realize that he was asking me to get him a job. I explained that I was not a Chinese cement factory worker, and that I was just a volunteer English teacher. He understood, but didn’t care. Somehow, with my light skin, I would be able to get him a job at the factory I had no association with. Whatever I said to assure him I had no power there did not seem to get through to him. This was the first of several times that people would come to me looking for work at the cement factory.

Back in town, I went to the bike mechanics, hoping they would have some solution for me.  One of them, who was something of a Rastafarian, told me that he could not fix it, but that he would take me to a guy that could. We walked around the corner to the local welder. I was skeptical, but what else could I do? He welded the pedal back on and we walked back to where the bike mechanics work. The Rastafarian noticed that my back break was disconnected. This was because the break was jammed, and I just hadn’t gotten around to adjusting it. This guy insisted on setting it right. I allowed him, thinking that a hundred francs was worth not having to deal with it myself. I quickly saw that he had no idea what he was doing, and was figuring it out as he went. After twenty minutes of fiddling, a moto driver came up, took a look at it and had it fixed in just a couple of minutes. I tried to commandeer my bike before they went classic sketchy mechanic on me. The Rastafarian kept a hold of it, and started tightening every allen wrenchable thing on my bike. I saw that he was just making up work for himself so he could jack up the price. I told him to stop, and I finally had to forcibly remove the bike from his grip. He told me I owed him 1000 francs. I was bracing myself for an inflated price of 500. I got angry and told him it was ridiculous. The moto driver started speaking in English, and asked me how much it would have cost back in America. I wanted to tell him that if I went into my friendly neighborhood bike shop they would probably have just done it to be nice. Instead I just told the Rastafarian that I would never come back there again. It was a silly thing to say, since I really didn’t have any other option in town. I got on my bike and rode away. Three rotations later and my pedal snapped off again. I think at that point I was more angry than I ever had in this country. Back to the welder. He reattached it again, for no extra charge, but I knew it was pointless. Long story short, I have never been back to the bike mechanic, because, with one pedal, my bike has been rendered useless. Officially, I have to take my bike all the way back to Kigali to get it fixed. I don’t see myself having the time to make that journey for a while, plus I don’t know how I will get my bike on the rackless mini buses.

The next day I would be leaving for New Year’s celebrations. So I spent the evening making mango liqueur, a recipe that I made up, to take along with me.

***

I left in the early afternoon to get to my nearest town. Everyone from my group of volunteers was meeting up in one of the lake towns. I might be the only person in the country that could not reach it in a single day. So I met up with Luke and Caitlan in our regional town so we could continue on the next morning. The hotel we stayed in was shockingly expensive. None of the other volunteers seemed to know of a cheaper option. Considering, however, that it was one of the nicest rooms I had ever stayed at in Africa,

I would assume that the town would have at least one divier option. We spent the evening eating roasted pork (southwest Rwanda’s best dish) and playing pool. When we went back to the hotel, I was tired, but I wanted to enjoy the room some more. So I took a shower, read a little and watched some of a movie. I regretted that we would have to leave so early in the morning, since I wanted to enjoy the comfortable room I had paid so dearly for.

The only bus that connects the lake towns of Kamembe (our regional town) and Kibuye supposedly left at 6 or 7 in the morning. So we left on foot at 5:30 AM. I think we all knew that we were being a little too urgent, but when there is only one bus per day, you can’t take chances. It was funny how comfortable I was waiting for an unknown amount of time. This is what I was used to. On the other hand, the buses leave my site on an hourly schedule. They are almost never on time and it drives me mad. I would rather show up and not know when the bus is leaving than to have a schedule that doesn’t really matter.

For the first time in Rwanda, I got to ride on a real bus. It was a real monster; decrepit and rugged. Luke looked at it and said, “well, at least it is less likely to tip over.” When going through the winding forest roads near our site, he was sure that we would flip our mini-van. Little did he know how unstable this ride would really be. It started out, innocent enough, on a paved road going into the hills that bordered the voluminous Lake Kivu. Within an hour, though, the pavement gave way to dirt and mud roads. What followed was five hours on the worst and most dangerous roads I had ever experienced in a bus. The work to pave this road had started a couple of years before, but little progress had been made. The distance between the two towns was only 130 km (80 miles) but it took six hours. To travel between the two towns, most people preferred to stay on pavement and go to Kigali first, then to Kibuye. This would add about three hours to the travel time, but for some it was worth it for the comfort and safety. And this ride was as exciting and adrenaline-rushing as it was beautiful. That is to say, very. Whenever taking blind, hairpin turn on a cliff at a rapid clip or making and dangerous pass on a narrow highway, I am usually calm. I know that the drivers do it all the time and they know the risks. This road, however, had me on edge. Rwandan drivers, I have noticed, are relatively cautious, especially compared to their Congolese counterparts. Our driver was doing the best he could but the roads were just too steep and muddy. There were multiple times when we were slipping and sliding on steep hills with steep cliffs a couple feet away from us. Even the Rwandans were getting scared. Maybe it seems I am being dramatic, but I will say that it was probably the second scariest drive of my life. Later I would hear stories of the buses on this road tipping over in the mud. One of my fellow volunteers who lives along the road says she refuses to take that bus, since she saw one go up on two wheels.

When we got to the edge of Kibuye we stopped in a place that looked nothing like a bus station. I knew we were in the edge of town, but I assumed we would make another stop in the center, since not many of the people got off. I confirmed with somebody sitting near us by asking if we were going to town. He nodded in agreement. I would later find out that the bus was continuing to Kigali, which can also be referred to as “town”. The bus continued on, and suddenly we were on a paved highway. When the ticket collector passed us and asked where we were going, we said Kibuye. Her eyes got real wide and just walked on. I got the sense that we had already left Kibuye, but she would not tell us what the problem was. She did not speak English, and assumed we did not know Kinyarwanda, so she didn’t bother to tell us the problem. When we realized we were quickly moving away from our destination, I made the bus driver stop and let us off there. We were at least 10 km outside of town by now. They suggested walking back, but I had no desire to do that. I assumed some bus or car would stop for us. After five minutes of walking, a white SUV came around the corner. I waved my hand and they stopped. I ran to the vehicle and found that it was a Chinese construction worker and his driver. He immediately gave us a ride in his car. I was happy with or luck but not all that surprised. I knew something would happen. The funny thing about the situation is the bad (or mixed maybe) reputation that the Chinese have been getting for their work in Africa. However, I know that if the vehicle had been from a major NGO there in Rwanda for “selfless” acts of development, there is no way they would have stopped for us. Once, when I was an intern for Catholic Relief Services in Ghana, we denied a ride to two guys who had just crashed a motorbike on a bush road. They were not critically injured, but they needed medical attention and had enough blood on them to make it the excuse of the drive not to give them a ride. They’ll get blood on the seats.

So the Chinese guy and his driver not only took us to town, but they drove us all the way to the hotel that we would be staying at. We walked in finding about ten of our fellow volunteers sitting outside enjoying some afternoon beers. Although we had only been apart for a few weeks, I was happy to see them. After sitting down, though, I felt overwhelmed. Everyone was loud and I felt our group was making a scene. I had to ease myself back into the idea of being in a big group again. I was relieved when a drizzle of rain came and most people went inside. A few others and I stayed out, knowing that it was just passing by. As much as I felt uncomfortable socially at the moment, I felt I might still be in for a good holiday weekend.