Day 2: Lunch

Today was my first day in the office. The staff are all lovely. There is a cleaner (who they just call 'the cleaner') who cleans, and fetches anything the staff need from the shop. He took me around town at lunch time to show me where I could get my lunch from. We walked in silence as I cannot speak Kinyarwanda and he cannot speak English. After seeing three places (Camellia, Simba, and Fantastic) I chose the first: a 'buffet'. You help yourself to what you want and put it in a foil container. I got the impression that this was quite an upmarket place, as there were lots of foreigners and formally dressed diners. The dinner cost me 2,800frw.

In the container I put plain rice, spiced rice, pork, beef, fish (there was a sign on the wall about taking no more than two pieces of meet and one piece of fish), some chickpeas (or similar) some other bean(ything)s, a few potato(/sweet potato) dishes... and something green. I'll try to do better at the descriptions if I go again. It may sound like I was being greedy, but everybody was doing the same. It's difficult to show, but the portion was very big. The cleaner said something to the man who packed my food for me, and he unwrapped a giant bowl of fruit, and took out two miniature bananas (I'll get photographs next time) and something which looked a bit like a small mango with a stem. The miniature bananas were a lot more flavoursome and sweeter than our English (not from England) bananas.

Back in the office (where I ate), I was informed by Christine's boyfriend that the mystery fruit is called a red egg. He said it gives you blood, and they all confirmed this. To eat it, I had to press around it, bite a small hole in the top, then squeeze the (bright red) seeds and juice out through the hole into my mouth. Quite nice, but not when you're thinking of blood.

I felt bad about the cleaner having to walk me round town, and I asked the others how to say thank you in Kinyarwanda. Orakozi is thank you to one person, and Morakozi is thank you to more than one person.

Summary of words learnt:

Orakozi = thank you (singular)
Morakozi = thank you (plural)