A Chicken Dinner

A chicken dinner is a simple enough thing, or at least it should be. But it has proven to be more difficult than I imagined. There is not grocery store that carries prepared chickens (killed and “undressed”). One butcher shop in town advertizes them but every time I have gone there, they been sold out. The last time I was there, they assured me they would have more this week. I carefully explained to Josephine, my house help, what I wanted when I sent her to the market on Thursday. I emphasized that I DID NOT want a live chicken. Whether it was her poor English or my poor Kinyarwanda or her great desire to please, I don’t know. She returned with a live rooster, legs tied together, wings flapping as he squawked his objection. I have an aversion to live chickens. When I was in Malawi, my house staff and my sons knew that and handled any gifts of chickens for me. They know better than to buy one. When I saw Josephine’s purchase, I let out a shriek of my own. She immediately called Jean Baptist and made arrangements for him to handle the rooster when he came for the evening. In the meantime, she put it in the laundry room and it periodically voiced its objection with loud squawks.

The escaped rooster

When Jean Baptist arrived, the squawking increased. The cleaver rooster had freed his legs from the ties and when Jean Baptist opened the laundry room door, the rooster shot past him, escaping into the yard. He led Jean Baptist on a loud chase around the yard. At one point, he darted under the new fence, escaping the yard. He crowed boldly, as if celebrating his victory. Jean Baptist had to find his keys for the gate, since he could not squeeze under the fence. Just as John Baptist got out the gate, the rooster ran back through the fence and into the yard. The chase continued until I heard a loud squawk and a thud. Jean Baptist came to the kitchen door and asked for a knife and a pan of hot water. The rooster had lost the battle. About an hour later, Jean Baptist presented me with chicken parts prepped for the pot. Dinner could be cooked. Jean Baptist feasted on the head and feet, as a snack that evening, well earned from all chasing. I am more convinced than ever to avoid live chickens. This dinner was not worth the hassle to all involved.

The Flea War

 

The flea infested bamboo saga continues. The cutters came back Saturday. Saturday and Sunday they continued to chop at the stand of bamboo until every stalk but one was felled. For some reason, they left one bare stalk stand. All around it was the litter of its companions, in disarray just where the stacks had fallen when chopped down. My yard and the ground outside the fence was a massive jumble of branches and stalks, some 30 feet long. I had to step over the foliage to get to my gate. Monday morning, the workers retuned to begin to clear the debris. The idea was to salvage the bamboo wood. That meant stripping the foliage from the stalks.  With machetes in hand, the four of them set to work hacking off the green shoots, stalk by stalk, until each was bare, then stacking the wood spears outside the fence or in my yard. It was tedious work, but then so had been the chopping down for the small bamboo forest. I was amazed at the strength and stamina of these four slender men. They worked steadily for eight hours a day for four days, only taking a break at lunch time. The harvested bamboo will be used for fencing by the Presbytery, since the house and the bamboo are part of the Presbytery’s property. Hopefully that will include my yard, since the bamboo fence is gone.

The burning

On Wednesday, I was greeted by new sounds and smells. While for four days I had listened to consistent machete slashes and inhaled the aroma of cut greens, now I was greeted by the crackle of a fire and the smoky air to ingest. Ash residue floated over the house and against the windows. They had begun the burning of the foliage. The idea was to not only get rid of the foliage, but also of the fleas by burning their nesting spot. That presumes that they stayed put during the chopping. I’m not convinced of that but time will tell. The fire was built around the roots of the cut stalks and was fed from inside and outside the fence area. Flames lapped at the stumps as it ate the greens. The wind dispersed the plume of smoke throughout the neighborhood. And as with the cutting, the new activity quickly gathered a crowd of observers. Children on their way to school stopped to watch the inferno and then had to be prompted to move on to classes. The security guards from PIASS, across the street, leaned over the metal fence around the campus to watch the feeding of the flames. The only creatures absent were the birds. For four days, they had hovered, swooping in to feast on the bugs that were stirred by the chopping, but the birds fled when the fire began. There was no morning chorus.

I have a love-fear relationship with fire. I love to watch one in a fireplace or other controlled area, but I fear the sight of untamed flames – too many years around California wildfires. I spent Wednesday in the house, with the windows closed against the smoke and ash as fires blazed, at one point one in the front of the house, one at the side, in my neighbor’s yard and one in my back yard. I could feel the heat through the closed windows. .No one was concerned but me. A few of the PIASS staff members came to watch for a while and thought I should be thrilled that the burning was going so quickly. I tried to smile. I didn’t say anything. This burning is a common practice in many places in Africa but it makes me nervous. I remember one night driving down the Zomba road in Malawi, being seized with panic at the sight of fires along the side of the road. Those with me laughed at me. I had that same feeling all day Wednesday. I tried to stay away from the windows and keep myself busy, but the fires were always there, crackling and smoking.

On Thursday, the workers returned to finish the job, raking the yard and burning the last of the foliage. Every plant in my front yard has been crushed, burned or both. The area was a war zone. The war against imbaragasa (fleas) was fought in 7 days. Now we wait to see if the battle was successful and wait for the rains to replenish the crushed, charred ground.

The Oven

I was thrilled to get a stove with an oven. I had to go to Kigali last Tuesday to get the things I needed to be able to bake. I couldn’t wait to begin. I set to work on Wednesday. That is when I discovered that the oven does not have a thermostat. It has a timer, but no temperature regulator. It has to be lit with a long match since the electric ignition does not extend to the oven. That wasn’t a problem, but there is no way to set the temperature. The only options are high flame or lower flame, with no idea of the actual heat level. I feel like I have stepped back into the pioneer days of the oven in the fireplace. Yes, I know that generations of women have successfully baked like that, but until last week, I never had. This was a new adventure.

To tell the truth, I felt a little like Goldilocks – too hard, too soft, just right. That describes my cookie experiments. The first were too hard. They were actually burned. The fire was too high and even at 7 minutes, they had charred bottoms. But the ingredients are expensive and hard to come by, so I cut off the bottoms and ate them myself and shared them with my house help, but I wasn’t about to expose my experiment beyond the house. I made some adjustments to the height of the baking racks and the setting on the flame and tried again when the burned ones were finally eaten. I over compensated. It took 40 minutes for the cookies to bake. They were still a bit “chewy” in the center, but at least they were not burned. I could share them beyond the house help. So on Sunday when I had a few visitors, I was able to serve chewy oatmeal cookies with the tea. Today, I made a few more adjustments and tried again. They worked! The cookies were perfect and in a reasonable amount of time. Now, if I can just replicate the conditions, I can bake cookies.

The next step will be to move to roasting meat – Mom’s Sunday roast and potatoes with carrots. That will not be as exacting as the cookies, I hope. If I keep this up, by the time I have house guests in September, I may be ready for them, or at least I will have conquered the oven temperature challenge.

The Fleas Win

On Wednesday when I returned from English Tea, my conversational English class with staff, I found three of my colleagues in my yard discussing the bamboo stands on either side of my yard. The three, the Human Resource Director, the Dean of Students and the Academic Dean, who is also the Presbytery clerk, were investigating the source of an infestation of fleas at my next door neighbors. The pests were so severe that she moved out of her house after suffering multiple bites. Ironically, I have had no problems. Celestin, the Presbytery Clerk, was brushing the bugs off his clothing. He had gotten too close to the bamboo stand. They speculated that the dogs that had taken up residence in the bamboo earlier in the year had brought the fleas. The question was how to get rid of them. After much discussion, their conclusion was to cut down the offending bamboo and treat the ground. They figured they could use the bamboo wood for fencing, so it would not be a total loss. The bamboo is resilient and will grow back. Since I am just a renter, I have no say in what happens to the property. I can only watch and hope that their decision is correct.



 Bamboo Cutters

Early this morning, I heard the distinct sound of machetes in front of my house. Four men were outside my fence, busily chopping at the bamboo. All during the morning, people stopped by to see what was happening, and offer their opinions of the activity. At English Tea, the fleas was all anyone wanted to talk about. Several of the staff had come to see the progress.  Each expressed his own opinion about whether or not the cutting of the bamboo would stop the flea infestation. Just talking about it caused some to begin to scratch, sure they had been bitten when they got near the shrubs. One of the staff insisted that I could not walk past the cutting to get to my house. I needed to take a detour through the rector’s yard and enter my house from the left, to avoid walking past the cutting. I didn’t argue, but smiled to myself because some of the cut branches had fallen into my yard. The fleas were in the yard already. There was no escaping them, but I took the detour and thanked him for escorting me. It made him feel better.

About 4 p.m. the work stopped and the workers went home. About 1/2 of the stand of bamboo has been cut. There are piles of brush between the fence and the roadway and some in both my yard and my neighbor’s We’ll see if the workers return tomorrow or, since it is Friday, the job will wait until Monday, and we’ll see how long before the offending bugs are gone, or if they just find new homes, if the bamboo was their home in the first place..

All for a Cake

I have the stove with an oven, but I had no baking pans or cake flour or white sugar. They are not available in Butare. I’ve looked. So I needed to make a trip to Kigali. That proved to be easier said than done.

I waited until 8, when the business travelers had gone, before I walked to the bus depot. But I discovered travel was heavy. The next available seat was not until 10. I purchased a ticket, found a bench and read until it was time to leave. I try to always have a book with me for just such situations. Once on the bus, I texted the taxi driver in Kigali to meet me at the bus depot there. The last time I phoned, there was  confusion about where I was arriving and it took us over an hour to get it straightened out. His limited English and my limited Kinyarwandan makes texted a more reliable means of communication. He was there to greet me and take me to the mall I wanted. I asked him to pick me up at 3, sure that would give me enough time.

I exchanged money and went to an American style café, complete with lattes and milk shakes. I treated myself to a hamburger and a milk shake. I say treat because that little taste of the West cost me $16.50 with tip, but it was worth it, since it was my first in 4 months. Then it was off to shop. If you know me at all, you know that I hate shopping, but I plunged in, with my trusty list in hand. I was at a mall that hosts a Nakumart, a Kenyan style Wal-Mart. I wanted a hand mixer. There was only one in stock, so there was no choice, but it promised to be a good buy, since it included as chopper, something I had not counted on. I planned to pick it up later, to save carrying it through the store. Then I went to look for a cookie sheet and cake pan. The cookie sheet was no problem, but the only cake pan was a round spring-form pan, not what I was looking for. I decided to look in another store in the next building, so off I trotted, out of the mall and to the next complex. It was a futile trip because the smaller store had less of what I wanted, so I resolved to accept whatever I could find at Nakumart. They obviously had the best selection, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Then, I had to remember that whatever I got, I had to carry back to Butare on the bus, so I considered size and weight. I settled the medium sized cake round, for 5 kgs for cake flour instead of 10 and for 2 kgs of white sugar. With that and the mixer and the other items, I still needed another bag beside the tote I had brought. I bought one. After checking out, I went in to the mall area to repack my purchases. As I stood shifting things from the cart to the bags, I looked like an old bag-lady. I felt like one, too.

My taxi driver arrived just as I left the mall and took me to the bus depot. Again, I had to wait to get a seat, this time only an hour. Once on the bus, I tucked the one bag between the seat and my legs and held the second one on my lap. I was not the only one juggling cargo. The bus was crowded with people and packages. The young man sitting next to me had 3 large duffels. Once everyone and everything was situated, we rode in stillness. There was no room to move. The trip took 2 ½ hours because the roads were congested with large trucks with heavy cargo, too.

When we arrived at Butare, it was dark. As I stepped from the bus, with my two heavy bags and my purse, a motorcycle taxi driver grabbed for my bags. I didn’t resist. Riding in a skirt, on the back of a motorcycle with a heavy helmet on me head was preferable to lugging everything for a mile. In 5 minutes, I was home and had the joy of the wind blowing around me. It was my first motorcycle ride. Not bad at the end of a long day. It had taken me 11 hours of waiting, shopping, toting and bouncing in a bus– all of this for a cake.

Confirmation

We, my three Protestant pastor friends and I, sat about two thirds of the way back in the large Roman Catholic sanctuary in Muhanga, which could comfortably seat 3,000. Counting all those standing and pushing in to see, there were close to 3,500 to participate in the confirmation service. We were there to support our friend Jeremy, an accountant at PIASS, as his eldest son was confirmed. He found us seats and then went to join the parents of the 300 some confirmands who were seated in the center section of the sanctuary. I could have felt out of place for a number of reasons. We were Protestant clergy – two Presbyterians, one Lutheran and an Episcopalian – in a sea of Catholics, immersed in a liturgy with which we were not familiar, in a language that neither my Lutheran colleague nor I fully understand, since she is from Tanzania. She got more of it than I did because there is some similarity between the Kinyarwanda and Swahili. Then, I was the only umuzungu (white person) in the congregation.

Oddly enough, I did not feel displaced. First, the music, traditionally Rwandan, with drums and clapping, drew me in, Even if I didn’t know the words, there was a repetition that allowed me to join in and the clapping was inviting. Even more than that was the acceptance of the little girl who sat in front of me. When we started to sing, she was fascinated with the umuzungu seated behind her. She did not shy away. When we sat down, she turned to get a good look. When I smiled at her, she quietly reached out her hand to touch mine. She left it there, running her fingers over the white skin, then she slowly wrapper her tiny hand in my very white one and just comfortably held my hand, a sign of friendship in Rwanda. When the next song began, rather than releasing my hand so she could clap along, she patted the rhythm into my hand. We clapped together, her left into my right, just as naturally as could be. She only released my hand when the service moved to the Eucharist and it was time for her to go forward with her mother to take communion. She was dressed in a lovely new, white dressing, indicating, as I learned later, that she had just taken her first communion on Sunday. We, of course, out of respect for the catholic theology, did not participate. When my young friend returned, she took my hand again and I was once again invited into the fellowship. My clergy friends just smiled at us. I, the one who was the greatest outsider, had been welcomed into the fold – and a little child shall lead them. I never even learned her name.  When the service was over, she disappeared into the crowd, but her penetrating brown eyes will remain with me, confirming fellowship.

Simple Pleasures

I am easily entertained, easily delighted. That is what my house help thought this morning when I began dancing around the kitchen. The cause of the dancing was a 4-burner propane stove. It is complete with an oven and broiler that has a rotisserie and an electronic ignition. It is something that most Americans would take for granted, but I have waited 4 months for it. I am elated! It set me dancing!

The issue was getting it from Kigali where I could buy it to Butare where I live, a two hour drive. What was needed was a truck for transporting. There is no appliance delivery, especially not that far. I needed to wait until my friend Celestin was going to Kigali and was able to make arrangements to borrow a truck to transport the stove. We had been able to load the small refrigerator in the back of his Toyota Rave, but the stove would not fit. On Friday, he told me he had things arranged, since he was going to Kigali for a wedding, so I gave him the money. He knew what I wanted and he had done the negotiating for the other appliances. I was comfortable with him making the selection. We had seen a dual stove – propane and electric – that  he thought would be good for when the power goes out but about 4 p.m. on Saturday he text me to ask if I would accept all gas. It was less expensive and more reliable. As long as it had an oven, I was content.

I thought that Celestin and his wife would be back from the wedding in the evening. When they didn’t come by 9 p.m., I thought they must have stayed in Kigali overnight and he would bring the stove Sunday. But at 10:30 p.m. a truck pulled up to my gate, and honked to be admitted to the yard. The stove had arrived. In came my friend in his suit and clergy collar, accompanied by his wife, another pastor and the driver. In the dark, we unloaded the stove and set it in the kitchen, to install it on Monday. We needed the electrician to put a plug on it. The wiring was there but since the stove is made by an international company, they do not attach plugs since each country has its own plug system. So the stove sat, but at least it was here. Every time I went into the kitchen, I admired it.

Today, Tuesday, the electrician was finally available. He came about 11 a.m. I thought it would be an easy thing of wiring the plug, attaching the propane canister, which I already had, and I would be cooking lunch on my new stove. Nothing is ever that easy. There are not enough outlets in my kitchen for all the appliances and the power strips I have are not heavy duty. The electrician was emphatic that everything had to be safe. Praise God for that. He knew what was needed but he also wanted to be certain that everything worked. He had my watchman/gardener Jean Baptist assisting him. He instructed Jean Baptist in wiring the plug while he went to PIASS to borrow the correct power strip. We had to reposition the microwave for the power strip. That meant finding a small table on which to place the microwave and adjusting the position of the fridge so its cord would reach, too. When everything was plugged in and the propane tank was attached, we tested the stove. Nothing happened. The power in the area was out. We were experiencing “power sharing.” This happens daily. We had been so preoccupied that we hadn’t noticed that the kitchen light went out. This gave us an opportunity to test out the manual lighting of the stove, which worked perfectly. Fortunately, in about 5 minutes the power came back on and everything worked. That is when I started dancing. The electrician unplugged everything and took pictures of the power strip on Jean Baptist’s cell phone, so he would be certain to get the exact strip. The electrician packed up his things and left, sending Jean Baptist for the correct power strip at the market. He returned about 2 p.m. and we set all the appliances up as planned and I was in business. I have a fully functional kitchen. I think that is something to dance about.