Bags, Bagels, and More

On Fridays our offices officially close at 1pm because all other weekdays we work 9.5 hour days. Sadly it is not often possble to take the afternoon off for many of us, since there is plenty of work to continue the full day on Fridays. However, as my time nears to a close in Rwanda and the office is staffed with my replacement, things have slowed enough for me to take my Friday afternoon off.

I called my trusted cab driver and friend Banner, and explained my errands for the afternoon. I had him take me home to drop off my usual US Embassy Friday commissary goodies (Diet Dr. Pepper, pickles, applesauce, etc) and pick up my gorilla hiking sticks. He laughed when I brought them back to the car, wondering if I was going hiking somewhere. I explained that I wanted to have a carrying bag made for them so that I can bring them home on the airplane. He thought this was pretty funny. I asked him to take me to Ineza, which is a Cooperative of women living with HIV/AIDS who sew and sell bags and other fabric goods. I've been there many times and have become friends with the supervisor, Maria. I always stumble through my choppy french when needing to explain complicated things like ordering a hiking stick bag. There were about 30 women working hard this afternoon. There was also a young American woman walking around looking frantic. Maria began to measure my hiking sticks and brought three others over to chatter in Kinyarwanda considering and discussing how a bag would be made for these sticks. The frantic American woman came over to explain that she was trying to get the women to complete a bag order for a large conference in California. She said the bags have to be shipped by Monday to get there in time, since there was a major delay in the project when the fabric company initially sold the women fabric with a drug company logo on it; which would not go over well at the conference. She seemed very stressed about this situation. I've always thought it would be really neat to order these colorful fabric bags for a conference, but I am not surprised there would be unique challenges to get the order completed. Maria happily arranged for my bag to be made and I agreed to come back in a week. I couldn't help but buy three other cool fabric items before leaving. I wished the conference planner luck and was off to my next errand.

I had heard a while back that a "bagel guy" exists in Kigali who will make custom-ordered bagels every Friday. This week I figured I would place an order. My colleague drew a complicated map to get to the "bagel house" and explained that I needed to send the order by text on Thursday and then pick them up between 2 and 4pm. When we left the bag place, I pulled out the map and rather than try to interpret another hand-drawn, no-street-name Kigali map...I turned to Banner and asked him if he knew the Bagel Guy. Not surprisingly- he did! He promptly drove me down a cobblestone road to the bagel house. The sign on the gate said "Speak- I Listen". I opened the gate and the house was pretty empty with sparse furniture. I walked to the back yard and saw a small separate building, which I figured was the kitchen with ovens. When I came to the building there was a guy with mounds of flour on tables. He smiled when I greeted him. I pointed to the mounds of flour and said- let me guess, those are my bagels? He laughed and said that everyone picks up their orders between 4 and 5pm, so my bagels were not made yet. Oops! I agreed to come back at 4pm and left again with Banner.

We then drove to Kablaki, a Cooperative of local craft sellers together in an alley with about 30 kiosks. It's always a busy place with at least 5 shopping tourists, and all the sellers vying for you to visit their kiosk and buy something. I had been there recently and found the perfect wedding favors...I had been negotiating buying them in bulk with one of the sellers named Claudine. I found her again and continued negotiations, trying to get the size and color for the price I wanted. She finally agreed! I noticed a man was standing near the kiosk watching us, and when I asked about him she said he waits to take 10% from each sale for the Cooperative. She asked if I would meet her at the gas station down the road to pay the deposit and avoid the 10% overhead for this bulk order that she would make directly from the distributer. I nodded and quickly purchased a small key chain so I could turn and smile at Mr. 10%. Banner then drove me to the gas station as I explained that I needed to pay a deposit off-site. He was skeptical that I should pay so much money without any product yet (an unusual thing to do here, although an order of this size is also unusual.) He pulled out a notepad and a pen and suggested I write a receipt for my plan. Good thinking Banner! So, I wrote out two notes explaining our agreement and specified the due date while we waited for Claudine to arrive. I then paid the deposit and she signed the agreements, while laughing at my jokes about us being secret gas station business women.

Unfortunately when we returned to the bagel place at 4pm the bagels were not ready. I sat down and introduced myself to a woman in the main room of the house named Beatrice. She looked tired and I asked if she had a long day. She said she had counseled over 100 women today! I learned that the bagel house is actually a local non-profit organization which counsels women and families grieving over the genocide or other losses in their families (and sells bagels on the side). I began chattering with her about social work and counseling. She is a wonderfully knowledgeable nurse who counsels hundreds of people in Kigali and in other provinces. We compared notes from our experiences conducting grief and PTSD therapy groups. When I described some of the tools and activities I've learned and used in the past, she mentioned how few books she can get her hands on for these techniques. I learned my bagels were ready, so we exchanged numbers and I told her I would introduce her to my colleague Kathie who I could try to send some books once I got home. It was so nice to meet and spend time talking with Beatrice.

When I got back to the outside kitchen, the bagel maker pulled the large wooden spatula out of the wood burning stove with just my six steamy bagels (3 cinnamon raisin, 3 everything) on it (why did I forget my camera today!?) He then asked where I would like to put them. I hadn't thought about bringing an appropriate bag! I quickly emptied everything from my handbag into my pockets and had him place the hot, fresh bagels in my purse.

As we drove back to my apartment Banner mentioned that he has driven a number of people to the bagel place before but had never seen a bagel. I told him he was in-luck today and quickly opened my steamy purse. I plucked out an everything bagel and handed it to him. He said- oh, it's round bread! He asked me what bagel means, and I told him I wasn't sure of the origin but to me it means round shaped bread with a hole in it. I told him it was an everything bagel and he asked "everything of what?" That's a tough one to answer, so I said everything they put in all the other bagels. He took a few bites and said it was surprisingly soft bread. He asked me how long the bagels would last and how would I prepare them after a few days; would I put them back in the oven? I told him I would toast them, and then had to describe a toaster. He laughed at my silly American ways!