idiodyssey

(Inspired by Will Self)

I’m not exactly a food connoisseur. After all I’ve been frighteningly skinny for most of my life and it was only last year that I hit seventy kilos after becoming particularly enamored with my mother’s porridge. Once in a restaurant, I tend to just order a plate of fries and because I’m not particularly fond of meat (I like to tell people I’m a ‘wannabe’ vegetarian’ but I’m not really joking)I’d probably make a terrible restaurant critic. However ignorance has never stopped anybody before and its dammn well not going to stop me. So I’m taking it upon myself to tackle Kigali’s dysfunctional restaurants. It’s not so much the food as the service which is often quite shockingly lacking so my lack of appreciation of good food will not be a particular handicap. Or maybe it will-frankly who cares?

Legends:
The only restaurant in Kigali in which you could probably be assured of good, quick service is Legends. I first noticed this when I went with a friend some months ago and the waiter turned out to be so over-attentive that you could hardly tie your shoelaces without his input. This may have been because my dinner companion was evidently a very attractive woman or it may have been because this is indeed Legends ethos. Either way the service was outstanding and the view from the window was pretty wicked as well. The candle hurriedly brought to our table suggested that the waiter thought this was a date and I didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise as the poor guy was working so bloody hard. I was also appreciative of the art that was on the walls-any restaurant that tries to marry abstract art and hamburgers surely cant go wrong. It’s a clever ploy to make you think you are picking up a bit of culture.
So what were we going to have? Legend’s prices were eye-watering but I recommended the envelope du poulet to my friend. This exotically-named dish is basically chapatti wrapped around soft pieces of chicken. It’s not only ridiculously filling, but astoundingly tasty as well-and this is coming from a man who does not particularly appreciate meat. My friend trusted my judgment and as she scanned the drinks list, I dithered over my own choice. What is it about menus that they render you paralyzed by giving you too much choice? And worse, the long flowery descriptions of each dish meant that even for a fast-reader, my progress reading the menu was slow. The word ‘marinated’ appeared to be the star of the show as it is on many menus. Some of the dishes sounded like titles for Damien Hirst’s art pieces. As he asked me what I would like to drink, I had the sudden urge to mumble “We want the finest wines available to humanity and we want them now….” but I feared the reference would be lost and I would just look silly. I ordered a petit mutzig which at 800 francs, I could only assume had a few drops from the fountain of life. My friend asked for a glass of red wine. I wasn’t sure which one of us was Whitnail.
I finally settled on the intore burger which was more pocket-friendly although I was miffed to see it in the children’s section. The meal arrived promptly and we got to work. My friend who is usually charming and eloquent quickly became reduced to mono-syllables during consumption of the envelope. My burger meanwhile was solid and unspectacular but very effective-like Michael Carrick in the Manchester United midfield. Conversation which had started out witty and rambling was briefly suspended as we became mindless automatons to the culinary masters. Space-time became noticeably more wobbly.
My friend considered leaving a tip of 2,000 francs and I was aghast. “That is way too much!” I protested. Even for excellent service, that was over-kill. We snapped out of our stupor long enough to pay the bill and head off into the night.

Bonjour Café Resto
Despite the uninspiring name, Café Resto is at least a step ahead of Fido Dido which had owned the premises before and which had clearly believed very strongly in minimalism as a concept. I went there with my brother for lunch one hot afternoon and while he decided to risk the buffet, I settled down for my lunchtime read with the menu wondering idly how it would end. Would there be a killer twist on the last page?
As I cruised through –it was not as interesting as the Legends menu but it was decent although the characters were a little dodgy- I stumbled upon an interesting oddity. They were offering a ‘Hum sandwich’ and a variety of other ‘hum’ based products. I was mystified-what kind of sandwich was this? Did it hum as soon as it was placed on the plate? I wanted no part of it.
The waiter proved very elusive dashing from table to table and conveniently forgetting me In the corner waving my hand and shouting ‘Excusez!’ I briefly wished that my attractive friend who had accompanied me to Legends Restaurant had been present- I would have got much better service. The service was pretty shit, but in Kigali, that is the norm. My brother came back with his plate piled high with delicious looking food. A battalion of flies began to take a keen interest in our business-never a good sign. The restaurant is partly outdoors (wait, does that sound right?) so keeping out the flies would require the restaurant equivalent of the great wall of China. I’m fairly sure the Chinese didn’t build it to protect their noodles.
When the waiter finally arrived, I gave the menu one last look and looked up at him with a serious and pensive look in my eye.
“I’ll have a plate of fries” I told him.

UTC-Food court
The food court is a good place in a kind of bland corporate way. You can sit there and almost feel like you are in the center of Kigali watching dozens of people walk in and out every few seconds. The menu is unpretentious but meatier (metaphorically) than Bonjour Café and everything is spelled right. I briefly toyed with the idea of just ordering a plate of fries, but I figured I needed to be a bit more adventurous with food. It was a very sandwich-heavy menu and everyone around me appeared to be eating a sandwich.
I ordered a cheese sandwich and my brother ordered something a lot more exotic-sounding but which was basically a sandwich as well. Our drinks arrived fairly quickly but the waitress was one of those who was not going to smile unless she was under duress. Our meals arrived in about fifteen minutes and the sandwich was quite good although the fact that I was starving may have contributed to this. A bar of soap might have received three stars if it had arrived on my plate. In any event, the bill came to around 3,000 which was manageable. The paradox about the food court is that you want to eat your meal peacefully and not be bothered every five minutes by a passing friend, but yet you also enjoy the accumulated company of dozens of people eating and brooding all around you.

La Sierra
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this place. They do have a wonderful beef burger and the pastry section and supermarket inside is heavenly but they have some serious issues. For starters, they could make the positive step of firing every single waitress there because they are all completely useless. They see you sit down and they stand by the door gossiping and scowling at everyone. After a few minutes, they will stroll over painfully slowly dragging their feet and just stand there looking at you with a look bordering on contempt. Clearly a smile or a greeting would endanger their health because none is ever forthcoming. None of these women should be employed anywhere, let alone a respectable restaurant in the center of town. It is an injustice that must be righted sooner or later.
I don’t like to go to La Sierra because it is a depressing snapshot of the abysmal customer service in this country and bodes ill for the future. The burger also takes too long and the women just stand there watching you which is very creepy and fairly annoying. I hope to God they get rid of them soon.
A burger and a soda usually makes you 2,500 francs poorer which is manageable if it wasn’t for the crap service and the possibility of having your meal interrupted by someone you don’t want to see (passers-by can spot you from outside the restaurant)

Karibu
Karibu have what is probably the most outstanding buffet in Kigali and it comes in at a decent 1,700 francs. The catch is, you get it on a plate that is smaller than the norm. Cheeky! This is when you learn how to pile your plate with the efficiency of an exact science. I'm very fond of Karibu and their food but by Jupiter the joke has gone on long enough-give us bigger plates.

Find nothing but faith in nothing

I read two disturbing books quite recently- both quite disturbing in their own way. Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin and James Elroy's LA Confidential (turned into a classic film in 1997)
Shriver's book is-put plainly- about a mother and her son who hate each other and the dynamics of this relationship are fascinating although mainly in a kind of morbid way. Kevin's mother is fairly sure she'll have a conventional motherhood once she gives birth to him, but she gets increasingly more worried that she doesn't like him much. Kevin appears to dislike her even more intensely right from birth and the result is a string of awkward and chilling chapters leading up to Kevin killing twelve of his schoolmates in a Columbine-style massacre (although he uses a bow-and-arrow)You know he will kill them right from the start of the book so that's not a twist, but the book shows you how he gets there through his mother's eyes. She's trying pretty hard to like him but Kevin-whose behaviour suggests mental difficulties- has already made up his mind. He hates her and nothing is going to make him change his position. As the chilling conclusion to the book rolls around, Shriver delivers a grim twist that you never really see coming. It's not a book for the faint-hearted at all and there's a bittersweet revelation at the end regarding the relationship between mother and son.
Elroy's book is disturbing in an even more unconventional sense. It potrays 1950's Los Angeles as a kind of dystopia where the cops are as crooked as the criminals and everyone is heading merrrily to hell with scarcely a backward glance. Even the cop with integrity (Ed Exley played so well by Guy Pierce in the film) turns out to be a fairly dodgy character in certain places. Meanwhile there's savage killings, prostitution and corruption (plus just about every other crime you can name)plus gangsters and vigilantes and muck-racking tabloids that make national Enquirer look like The New York Times.. It's hell in bright neon and hot lead. Elroy writes the whole thing as if he is getting points for brevity-the books is long, but the sentences are not. Every single unnecessary word is cut out. Not for him long, flowery descriptions. The sentences are short and sharp and disorienting when you first start the book. The action is brutal and the language would make Eminem cringe. It's fantastic and was well worth my time.
These books reminded me of a cliche which is exploited by both film and book reviewers-the complaint that the characters are not 'likable enough.' Why on earth should that be a criterion? Why should the lead character be sympathetic? If art should at some basic level imitate life, then why this insistence on having a lead character people should like (and to a lesser extent identify with)Neither of these books has a conventionally likeable character (although Kevin's long-suffering mother comes close) but both received rave reviews (and in the case of Elroy's book is already a classic work of literature)There are no happy endings here, barely any redemption and a dark, grim message about our world. I dare you to read them without flinching.

We can remember it for you wholesale

So we are sitting at the Serena Hotel-Babu, Oscar and I- waiting for Marcel Desaily, Basile Boli and Christian Karembeu. We've been promised an interview with them and I figure this should be interesting-after all these are two world cup winners (Desaily and Karembeu) and a Champions League winner (Boli).However they are proving elusive to say the least. Lotto Rwanda-who brought them here- seem to be playing some kind of hide-the-football-stars game but they haven't even been kind enough to tell us the rules.
Wer'e fingering our PRESS badges impatiently-as contributing writers to 'Business Rwanda' we are only just discovering that you can put in thirty minutes of writing a week and still be considered a member of the press and it feels like having a skeleton key. We've been jerked around all morning and we are getting a bit sullen. THE NEW TIMES veers into view and the sports headline does not make for pleasant reading. JUST EX-FRENCH STARS COMING it says. Can you imagine the nerve of this newspaper? Three famous French footballers show up in Kigali and they start bitching that we didnt get more stars. The whiny tone aside, its still a pretty awful headline.
Lotto Rwanda aren't dont jerking us around just yet-now the interview has been pushed to later because the stars are heading to the stadium. We leap into one of their cars and get to the stadium in about 20 minutes. We stand outside for a while.
"Do we know who is playing?" I ask "Or what time?"
Nobody knows. We look around awkwardly wondering who to ask. The sky is beginning to grow dark and birds are wheeling around (Girlfriend: "What kind of geography is that Minega?") It's time to start writing. With great solemnity,I remove my notebook and pen and flip open to a blank page. I begin to think deep and profound thoughts about the sentence that will set the tone for the eventual article. With great ceremony I write the following sentence:
"We are the press, but we dont know what the fuck is going on."
****
When the match is over( Karembeu and Boli having made short substitute appearances for ATRACO and Mukura respectively) Desaily gets mobbed as he leaves his seat and dozens of excited fans are lining up to have their picture taken with him. As the last picture is taken and he begins to stroll away, one over-excited man jumps in and kisses him firmly on the cheek before vanishing into the crowd. Somehow I figure he didn't see that coming.
Amazingly it doesn't rain despite the fact that huge nimbus clouds has blotted out the sun for much of the afternoon. Babu figures the Lotto guys got in contact with a decent witch-doctor to ensure the launch goes according to schedule. He told us a funny story earlier: His former school was holding a big event to commemorate something or other and the centerpiece of this event was a giant mass. The event was slated to take place outdoors but some people were afraid the rain would 'get all up in the mix' as Babu would put it. They asked the school if they shared similar concerns.
"Oh dont worry about that" The school said "We've taken care of it"
The students were a bit mystified as to how the school had 'taken care' of the threat of rain (and were probably a little disturbed by the mafia-sounding undertones) but the answer came out soon enough. They had hired a witchdoctor to make sure the rain stayed away. Yes you read that right- they hired a witchdoctor to ensure that their Catholic mass went ahead smoothly.
Sometimes Africa's wonderful ironies just overwhelm you.
****
Eventually we talk to Basile Boli but he is in a bit of a rush and there's a large woman circling protectively around him clearly realizing that this fellow seems a tad important. He gives us the expected spiel about how wonderful it is to be in Rwanda and how open (HA!) the people all are. Then we leave him to his tea and the vulture. Talking to Karembeu proves a little more diificult but eventually he sits down to have a chat with us and he's a lot more interesting although a bit too intense- he doesn't smile until he tells us goodbye. He's a FIFA ambassador now and is also married to one of the world's finest women so I figure he doesn't cry himself to sleep at night. However thinking back to the game I wonder who would have predicted a World cup winner would end up on the pitch playing with ATRACO FC even if for only five minutes.
In the end we don't even get the chance to talk to Marcel Desaily. He's in a frightful rush and is possibly also terrified that another man might try to kiss him. He allows us to pose for pictures with him while he jabbers to someone else and then disappears into a fancy car. We wander off somewhere else and get ambushed by a few beers on our way home. All in all a good day's work.

They dont just deal with football you know...they tickle!

A few days ago The New Times had this headline on their sports page at the back:
'CECAFA tickles'

For the first few seconds, I was unsure over whether this was the worst headline I had ever seen or whether there was actually some twisted genius in there. Those seconds could have been better spent because it was a no-brainer-that's an awful headline whichever way you look at it. Or maybe CECAFA are a lot more laidback than we have previously been laid to believe....