Praise the Lord and pass the plantains: Pili pili and other false prophets of Rwandese cuisine.

For those who know me well, you know how much I enjoy cooking and eating, cooking in particular. Perhaps you’ve even had the pleasure (or dare I say, displeasure!) of sharing a meal of my own design and execution. Feeding family and friends (including fellow volunteers!), is at once relaxing, comforting, rewarding, and challenging. It’s unsurprising then that food usually shapes my adjustment to a new place, for better or worse.

Rwanda, thus far, has been less than promising. It’s not that there is a lack of food to be had. Nor do we want for dining establishments. Rather, for whatever reason, spice, flavor, and variety seem to be, well, afterthoughts. Quite frankly, it’s bland. I hate to judge so soon, but the outlook is not good.

If you bothered to read my first dissertation of a post, you’ll remember that the staple foods of a Rwandese diet are ugali, beans, rice, green bananas (usually mashed into ibitoke), potatoes (invariably in the form of French fries), and cabbage. Cassava plays a large part in the diet of Rwandese, too, and the pale, pasty blocks of tasteless ugali are alternately made from maize flour or ground cassava. Carrots, tomatoes, avocadoes, pineapple, mangoes, papayas, bell peppers, onions, and sweet yellow bananas round out the usual offerings at the markets and elsewhere. There’s goat and beef, sometimes chicken. Fish if you’re feeling really plucky. Milk and eggs are usually readily available, but cheese and yogurt are sadly rare. Various variations on fried or baked dough are common: thick, dense amandazi donut balls (think cake, not yeast), thin greasy Indian-style chapatti flatbread, inevitably stale white bread in either loaf or hot dog bun form, near tasteless cornmeal bread known as keke (yes, “cake”), and the bizarre potato bread, which has an unearthly yellow tinge to it. Creepy.

Now, Zach, you’re telling yourself, how can you be disappointed with such a bounty? Well, it’s not the raw material that usually disappoints, although the quality is not always desirable. Instead, the preparation is the culprit. The traditional, and probably habitual, Rwandese methods of preparing meals are staid when compared to the culinary heritage of other cultures. Boil, stew, boil some more, maybe fry something on the side. The basic lunch or dinner out is ninety percent starch: some combination of paper maché ugali, plain rice, thick cut chips, stewed beans, oily spaghetti, and tomato-laced cabbage if you’re lucky. Frequently you also receive watery tomato soup (in which some random meat was stewed). At most restaurants the soup is merely an eating aid, facilitating the consumption of so much dry starch; at a few, the soup is genuinely rich and delicious.

I thought Rwanda’s relative poverty might somehow affect the unwavering Rwandese aversion to spice in their food, but I’m not so sure. I’m not convinced that a lack of refrigeration is the culprit either. Consider, if you will, all the other great cuisines of roughly analogous latitudes (or at least my decidedly dubious and biased short list): Cuban, Jamaican, Ethiopian, Lebanese, Indian, Thai, and the show-stealer in my book, Vietnamese. Like Rwanda, each of the aforementioned, save Ethiopia, was a colonial ‘possession’ of some European power or another. Each has its fair share of severe poverty. And despite this, each has, I’m sure you’ll agree wholeheartedly, delicious food. Rwanda’s landlocked, isolated status probably plays some pivotal role, although I doubt this fact explains the phenomenon entirely. In any case, I’m not a food historian or anthropologist.

One potential saving element is pili pili, a clearish liquid, often violently orange in shade, made by soaking fiery hot chili peppers in flavorless vegetable oil. The peppers resemble Jamaican scotch bonnets and are sold by the handful from mesh bags hanging ominously in the cramped shaded stalls of the markets. Pili pili is commercially manufactured around east Africa, and thus most commonly dispensed from eye droppers, upping the weird factor. A small unassuming bottle is found next to the salt shaker and toothpick dispenser on nearly every Rwandan restaurant table. Unfortunately, pili pili is a false prophet, adding neither flavor nor satisfaction to beans and rice. Instead, it only adds oily capsaicin.

Another potential game-changer is icyai, or African tea. Pronounced E-chai-E, the name is almost certainly Indian in origin. Brewed tea is laced with fresh milk or Nido brand milk powder (thanks Nestle! Blaah!) and raw sugar, producing a cloudy, slightly sweet but surprisingly weak beverage. If done right, icyai could be so incredibly smooth and tasty. I hear tell that the genuine article, reportedly commonly available in Tanzania and Kenya, will put all tea debates to rest. Dark steamy tea, mixed with fresh milk, steeped with cardamom and other spices, and generously spiked with real sugar, is weak-knee material. Unfortunately, Nido seems to have captured the hearts and minds of many Rwandese, which is puzzling considering how expensive it is. Sigh.

In defense of the Rwandan diet, most Rwandese are farmers, many of them at or near subsistence level. Nutrition and yield obviously take priority over flavor and spice. I will also admit some Rwandese restaurants serve really, really good food, and I already have a favorite here in Nyagatare. French fries, or chips, are almost always a good idea, too. Fresh fruits are in abundance and are normally quite nice. Avocadoes, if you hunt and bargain, can be awesome. Smooth, nutty, fatty, plump – what every avocado dreams it can one day be. Mangoes, if you’re okay with awkwardly dissecting them, can be a treat, too. Like all else here, they require buckets of patience. Small, stubby sweet yellow bananas are a welcome and familiar addition. Pineapples, though, are truly outrageous. I have not had a bad pineapple since I arrived in Nyagatare, nor a mediocre or simply above average one for that matter. Each is unbelievably fragrant, bracingly sweet, easily prepared, and lovingly devoured in silence after dinner with juice running down our chins while gazing at the deep, dark, star dusted sky. Dessert couldn’t be more heavenly. Now if only the cassava was so tasty.

Signing off for now. Let me hear from you if you’re interested in more info about school, Nyagatare, or food. If you’d like to call, I do have a cell phone. Skype is about the cheapest option; contact my parents or me for the number. Sunday evenings Rwanda-time are best to reach me.

Ciao.

Into the breach...

School is finally starting, and I’m glad for the occupation of my time. The past two weeks have frankly been rather boring. Even once you accept the daily power outages, water issues (as in, lack thereof), oppressive heat, and general lack of tasty food products, the pace of everyday life is just glacial. Days were filled with sitting, chatting, watching movies, playing games with steamy Titanic playing cards, plotting dirty storylines to accompany steamy Titanic playing cards, fetching water from the near-empty rain barrel, contemplating a shower, deciding a shower can wait two more days, discussing tasty additions to dinner, begrudgingly accepting such additions are impossible, and, every so often, pondering when school will actually get kicking. Trips to town were our main distractions. Walking downhill to town takes fifty minutes; walking back up takes an hour or more on account of lunch, the stifling heat and searing sun, bags laden with groceries, and general accumulated lethargy. It’s a slow four kilometers, for sure.

Although school is certifiably starting now, some drudgery will remain. Eating requires special attention to cleaning raw veggies sporting lurking bad spots (or worse), careful consideration of water safety and quality, and laboriously nannying our single burner hotplate and cheapo aluminum pot and frypan, thin as tin cans and prone to excessive food stick-age and scorching. The pots will likely drive me mad long before some bizarre encephalitis-inducing tropical disease seizes me. Washing clothes in small plastic basins usually takes the better part of a morning: soak, scrub, rinse, ring, rinse, ring, hang, repeat. Clothes dry in no time flat, baking into hard fabric Frisbees creased in two along our spider web elastic clothesline. Keeping the house interior, front (or is it back? I don’t really know) porch, and ‘walled compound’ swept clean is supposedly a daily task. Presently it’s an every third day kind of thing on account of our nasty neighbors, the wasps nesting out either door. Judgment day will soon be upon them, or at least pack-up-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here day. Comfort will continue to be determined by the relative strength of breezes that meekly waft in through our screened double windows. Only when rain is on the way do we get a decent cooling sensation. Our tin roof will still creak and moan like an old rusty trawler lolling in heavy seas. Something about sudden extreme temperature changes. As long as she doesn’t spring a leak.

In case anyone was curious, I will be teaching Senior 4, 5, and 6 English. This is roughly equivalent to our 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. My task will be doubly challenging because English as a taught course at A-level is being reintroduced this year, and end-of-term examinations for Senior 6 (which determine if and where you may pursue post-secondary education) will be conducted exclusively in English. It is a tall order to help my students prepare for examinations and the wider world, but I’m happy and excited to be a part of their maturation and education.

Don’t hesitate to email or Facebook with questions or comments. I’ll respond as quickly and fully as possible. Maramuke from Nyagatare! I will be able to post more frequently now that school is starting up, and magically pictures uploaded today. Hope you enjoy 'em, many more to come.

Nyagatare bound.

Well, Evan and I now know what we have actually gotten ourselves into. Two weeks ago this last Sunday we piled into a Toyota diesel 4x4 double cab pick-up truck with Susan, another volunteer, a teacher from her school (the Teacher Training Center in Matimba), and a driver for the trip to Eastern Province. With Rwandan music playing softly from the tape deck and wind blowing in our faces, we climbed through a succession of twisting hills and valleys leaving Kigali. Driving north and east on the road from Kigali towards Akagera National Park and the Ugandan border, the land levels slightly, the vegetation thins into mostly scrubby trees, bushes, and tall grass, and the sun beats hotter and brighter. The road winds sinuously around the glimmering Lake Muhazi not far from Kayonza, another placement site for WorldTeach volunteers.

As we drew closer to Nyagatare, stunning panoramic vistas opened up so we could see for miles, and everything became decidedly drier. My travel book for Rwanda describes Nyagatare as something of a dusty pioneer town, since this part of Rwanda was always sparsely populated before part of Akagera was degazetted to accommodate newly returned refugees from Uganda and Tanzania. The terrain could easily be a savanna in Kenya or Tanzania.

After a quick stop to drop off some kerosene for the driver’s family about twenty kilometers outside of Nyagatare, before the fork to Matimba, Kagitumba, and the Ugandan border, we continued on to Nyagatare. We drove down the main strip of stores on the primary paved road until we reached the very end of town. There we disentangled ourselves from each other and clambered out of the rear cab to meet our Head of Studies, Francis. Francis kindly greeted us…and then proceeded to climb into the rear cab with us. I should not have been surprised since the bus taxis in Kigali pack you in like sardines, but it still caught me a bit off guard.

Down a dusty, red dirt road leading out of town, past a police station, primary school, noisy carpenters workshops, homes set on acres of maize and pastureland, and finally up a long incline, the school came into view surrounded by pastures for the school’s ten cows (a big deal, in fact). Behind us the mountainous ridges of Uganda to the north rose like an enormous curtain ringing the gently rolling hills of northeast Rwanda stretching upwards to the impossibly blue sky. The view is just simply spectacular from the hillcrest where our school property is located, especially at dusk.

Inside the chain link fence surrounding the school compound sits an administrative wing with offices and a large staff room equipped with wireless internet, a library, a cavernous dining hall, a canteen for students, and several rows of classroom buildings (including two computer labs, a chemistry lab, and a physics lab), all flanked by separate dormitories for boys and girls. Behind the dining hall is a garden with cabbages, carrots, beans, and other basic veggies maintained by a school club.

Our house is located about one hundred meters past the school compound on the same dirt road. There are three pairs of houses clustered together just behind a natural fence lining the school’s presently overgrown football field and play area. Each house has an enclosed outdoor space with a tall brick wall, two outdoor sinks (one stainless steel, one a deep concrete basin), and two outdoor stalls, one each for the shower and toilet (more a ceramic-lined hole in the foundation with a tank above it to flush). Inside there is a large living space, two spacious bedrooms with an abundance of built in storage, and a small closet-like space for the kitchen. The floors throughout are cool, smooth concrete. On the backside of the house there is a nice porch, but unfortunately the views to the surrounding countryside are screened by large mounded trees with delicate green leaves and radiant yellow clusters of flowers.

Volunteers from several different organizations have worked at Nyagatare Secondary School, including WorldTeach, VSO (U.K./Commonwealth), and JACA (Japan; not sure on the spelling). Two WorldTeach volunteers and two VSO volunteers left shortly before our arrival, and Sawa, a JACA volunteer, is our next-door neighbor for the year. Like the Peace Corps, she’ll serve two years; she’s six months in and her wisdom will be much appreciated in the months to come. Her kitchen is impressively stocked, with hanging shelving, an abundance of Japanese spices and seasonings, an electric kettle (in hindsight, the number one purchase we should have made on first leaving Kigali), and a fridge – yes, a fridge. She was fortunate enough to have support staff from JICA drive her from Kigali to Nyagatare with the fridge, and we are fortunate enough to live next to her!

It’s still not one hundred percent clear which subjects we will be teaching, and at what level. Secondary schools in Rwanda cover six years, roughly our equivalent of junior high or middle school and high school. Francis and Edward, our affable and very well educated headmaster (he did his studies in Wisconsin), have been dealing with a multitude of problems to start the school year. At the time of writing this entry, I am slated to teach English and computer science in Senior 4 and 5. Right now, I’m simply anxious to start the school year, find a rhythm, and learn my students’ names!