A Taste of Rwanda

Timothy Keene (S.M. Waiter) updates us from Rwanda.

The day after Thanksgiving this past year I left for a three-week trip to the central African country of Rwanda. For those of you not familiar with Rwanda’s story, back in 1994 a civil war broke out that resulted in the genocide of 1,000,000 people in just one hundred days. This left hundreds of thousands of children orphaned and the country destroyed. In the past fourteen years, Rwanda has begun to recover thanks to the strength of the Rwandan people and the help of hundreds of aide organizations from all over the world. One such charity, Africa New Life Ministries (ANLM), has been running a child sponsorship program for children in the capital city of Kigali and the village of Kayonza. Over 2,000 children are now able to go to school, receive health care, and help support their families because of ANLM. I had heard about their work and decided that I wanted to be a part of it.

So for three weeks I had the opportunity to play with hundreds of kids, meet and deliver gifts and food to my sponsor child Patrick, watch as one local Portland church’s gift of $5,000 fed an entire refugee camp, and even teach an astronomy class. In that time, I also ate an amazing variety of food and learned a ton about Rwandan culture and cuisine. Here’s some key pointers I picked up:

• Rwandans love bananas and specifically Matoki, a type of banana that tastes exactly like potato. In fact they make mashed Matoki, fries, and any other potato dish you can imagine with the stuff.
• Rwandans don’t like pizza. Seriously, went to pizza places twice, they all chose something else. And yes, there are pizza places in Rwanda, and Chinese places, and Mexican, and a very Starbucks-esque coffee shop, and a mall, and giraffes.
• Don’t take a dinner roll off of a salad table in a buffet unless you’re prepared to pay for the whole buffet. If you say you just want the main course, just take food off the meat table because they will charge you $5 for that roll. And believe me, it is not worth $5.
• Rwandans prefer either German style beers like Amstel Light, Heineken, their own microbrew Primus, or home-brewed banana beer. The bananas can also be used to make a highly alcoholic liqueur as well.
• To show how important banana beer is, it used to be the final step in resolving a minor crime or lawsuit. The plaintiff and defendant had to share a bucket of banana beer once the verdict was announced in order to settle differences and retain friendships.
• Diet Coke is Coke Light and it’s gross, however Red Bull is still Red Bull and we went through about five cases.
• No one messes with Rwandan hot sauce, it’s too intense, stick to the stuff from Burundi.

For more information about child sponsorship through Africa New Life check it out here. And next time you’re in Salvador Molly’s be sure to check out a picture of Didine, the staff’s sponsor child!