WANTED IN KIGALI: One Aeroplane
The beer was kicking in and it felt good. This is not normally a healthy sign but was I had been living through recently wasn’t particularly normal either. And besides it was nearing 1730 and I had yet to have breakfast - any kind of calories were good news, the nuts that come with the beer were particularly welcome. I idly wondered how this was going to help me finish my document later this evening but for the moment it seemed beer was the quickest way to get calories in my system and to help distract me from the growing mound of shit in my life. In my time here I'd met G, a nice guy...or so I thought. Things ended badly when G realized my "demo version" was much better than the full package. As it transpires G seems to have a small problem with drink and when we ran into each other (as you are bound to do in a social scene as small as Kigali’s) he told me he had been ordered by his boss to patch things up with me. His boss was clearly under the impression that I was someone important – since then I’ve been trying to figure this out. Either G thought this whole story up (and I really have no idea how to judge the liars from the sincere anymore) or have acquired some actual or perceived importance in Kigali IT circles. If that’s true I don’t know if I like it very much.
Hmm...Food? Or another beer? Food? Or another beer? Like most major decisions in life I think I'll procrastinate a little longer. I appear to have made the wrong choice so many times; I am perhaps becoming pathologically afraid of making any decisions.
I'm unused to a having the private and business mix so thoroughly as they do here. EVERYTHING is political from the choice of boyfriend to who you might sit next to at a conference to even the minutest thing you might say or do. I'm not sure I'm equipped to deal with this. I'm used to representing myself only, and here what I say may be taken up as the opinion of my ministry, the national authority or the goddamned government of Rwanda. I begin to wonder if this responsibility is purely due to my position as a white so-called expert working in an African government or if perhaps the act and the fact of growing up entails that your views are no longer only your own but carry the weight of larger authorities and so you give up your right to polemic or to have strong views on anything - or at least, one that you can voice in public.
My officemate in Switzerland once said that one of my defining characteristics was as an up-setter of applecarts, someone who shook things up...probably by holding up a mirror to all I found lacking in wherever I went and being incapable of not sticking my oar in…inefficiency bothers me, deeply. None of this stood me in good stead for my current position.
The summer was certainly over now, the highlight of which had been when the movies came to town and the population of Kigali were subjected to yet another genocide feature. This time it was a BBC production on the events surrounding a school in Kigali which for a short time at the start of the genocide had been protected by Belgian UN soldiers. Many westerners and Rwandans took shelter there, the foreign nationals were soon evacuated, and the Belgians were ordered to retreat to the airport leaving the few thousand Rwandans there to be slaughtered. Cheery stuff!
The movie starred an up and coming young Brit (Hugh Dancy) and John Hurt and was directed by Michael Caton-Jones, the Scottish-born Hollywood director (Memphis Belle, Rob Roy etc). It was around the start of the production that I ran into Nick, an American who could use text messaging! He worked for an economic think tank in the States and his job appeared to consist of travelling around Africa and schmoozing people. Now I used to think I was pretty good on the cocktail party circuit but when I was Nick in action I knew I was a mere amateur.
Due to a fairly bizarre turn of circumstances, instead of spending two weeks in Rwanda and moving on to Burundi, Nick suspended his Africa touring plans for a few months to become the chief Casting Assistant for Mzungos (white people) for the duration of the movie and living in my house. Filming at the height of summer meant that the movie people were having trouble getting enough white people to play UN soldiers and fleeing ex-pats, they were in need of Nick superior sales techniques. Nick was more than happy to get involved for a small wage as he could use the crew’s computers at night to make reports to his organisation and casting for the movie allowed him to chat up anyone he fancied in Kigali with impunity. As a result of Nick’s presence, I met many ex-pats and hung around with the movie crew on more than a few occasions, and generally started to get a bit of a social life. Naturally I also starred in the movie…
On unexpected outcome of playing as an extra in the movie is that I now know how to cock and lock an Oozi (sub machine gun). There was a lot of hanging about on the set while different shots were being set up. All the people playing UN peacekeepers and French soldiers were armed, with real (unloaded) guns by Walter in props, the jovial German gun enthusiast. Most people had the standard issue Belgian rifle, the name I forget, and I learned first how to fire that. I never realised how heavy rifles are, nor how much strength is needed to load them. I surprised myself by being intrigued by their workings and slightly disturbed at how comfortable I felt when holding one (until my arm and shoulders started to register their protest). I learned who used what kind of guns, what kind of bullets go in which, and that the European rifles were better weapons but that AK47's, despite being inferior required much less training and maintenance...which along with their ubiquity gives them a starring role in almost every piece of television overage about coups and armed conflicts in Africa. Perhaps that why to me they looked much meaner that the UN weapons.
During this time I became friendly with the movie account and we hung out whenever his punishing schedule gave him time. Compared to a job for which he had to get up everyday at 7am and often work more then 12hours, he figured I had a pretty sweet deal. And compared to rushing through the London traffic, with its almost constant greyness, he reckoned I didn’t have much I should be complaining about in Rwanda. Although I didn’t immediately agree, I think by the time the movie shoot wrapped, I could kind of see his point. I guess I was never one to really appreciate a low stress lifestyle, especially when I had been doing next nothing in the final months of my last job. Also Switzerland was such a fantastically clean and organised environment in which to live and work that I didn’t immediately see the benefits to Rwandan life that someone locked in the rush and grim of London might pick up on.
My accountant friend also had an aeroplane…not a physical one like Steve’s but he had something else in life other than a job to keep him going; His aeroplane is that he loves to produce music. For the past five years I have been sadly lacking in an aeroplane, it was beginning to worry me. A friend in Kigali once discribed be as seeming "lost at sea", if this is the case, I believe that my lack of an aeroplane goes a long way towards explaining that.
How does anyone judge progress when they are not actually moving towards something? Or worse when no matter how they try, they cannot find something which grips and pulls them along?
Hmm...Food? Or another beer? Food? Or another beer? Like most major decisions in life I think I'll procrastinate a little longer. I appear to have made the wrong choice so many times; I am perhaps becoming pathologically afraid of making any decisions.
I'm unused to a having the private and business mix so thoroughly as they do here. EVERYTHING is political from the choice of boyfriend to who you might sit next to at a conference to even the minutest thing you might say or do. I'm not sure I'm equipped to deal with this. I'm used to representing myself only, and here what I say may be taken up as the opinion of my ministry, the national authority or the goddamned government of Rwanda. I begin to wonder if this responsibility is purely due to my position as a white so-called expert working in an African government or if perhaps the act and the fact of growing up entails that your views are no longer only your own but carry the weight of larger authorities and so you give up your right to polemic or to have strong views on anything - or at least, one that you can voice in public.
My officemate in Switzerland once said that one of my defining characteristics was as an up-setter of applecarts, someone who shook things up...probably by holding up a mirror to all I found lacking in wherever I went and being incapable of not sticking my oar in…inefficiency bothers me, deeply. None of this stood me in good stead for my current position.
The summer was certainly over now, the highlight of which had been when the movies came to town and the population of Kigali were subjected to yet another genocide feature. This time it was a BBC production on the events surrounding a school in Kigali which for a short time at the start of the genocide had been protected by Belgian UN soldiers. Many westerners and Rwandans took shelter there, the foreign nationals were soon evacuated, and the Belgians were ordered to retreat to the airport leaving the few thousand Rwandans there to be slaughtered. Cheery stuff!
The movie starred an up and coming young Brit (Hugh Dancy) and John Hurt and was directed by Michael Caton-Jones, the Scottish-born Hollywood director (Memphis Belle, Rob Roy etc). It was around the start of the production that I ran into Nick, an American who could use text messaging! He worked for an economic think tank in the States and his job appeared to consist of travelling around Africa and schmoozing people. Now I used to think I was pretty good on the cocktail party circuit but when I was Nick in action I knew I was a mere amateur.
Due to a fairly bizarre turn of circumstances, instead of spending two weeks in Rwanda and moving on to Burundi, Nick suspended his Africa touring plans for a few months to become the chief Casting Assistant for Mzungos (white people) for the duration of the movie and living in my house. Filming at the height of summer meant that the movie people were having trouble getting enough white people to play UN soldiers and fleeing ex-pats, they were in need of Nick superior sales techniques. Nick was more than happy to get involved for a small wage as he could use the crew’s computers at night to make reports to his organisation and casting for the movie allowed him to chat up anyone he fancied in Kigali with impunity. As a result of Nick’s presence, I met many ex-pats and hung around with the movie crew on more than a few occasions, and generally started to get a bit of a social life. Naturally I also starred in the movie…
On unexpected outcome of playing as an extra in the movie is that I now know how to cock and lock an Oozi (sub machine gun). There was a lot of hanging about on the set while different shots were being set up. All the people playing UN peacekeepers and French soldiers were armed, with real (unloaded) guns by Walter in props, the jovial German gun enthusiast. Most people had the standard issue Belgian rifle, the name I forget, and I learned first how to fire that. I never realised how heavy rifles are, nor how much strength is needed to load them. I surprised myself by being intrigued by their workings and slightly disturbed at how comfortable I felt when holding one (until my arm and shoulders started to register their protest). I learned who used what kind of guns, what kind of bullets go in which, and that the European rifles were better weapons but that AK47's, despite being inferior required much less training and maintenance...which along with their ubiquity gives them a starring role in almost every piece of television overage about coups and armed conflicts in Africa. Perhaps that why to me they looked much meaner that the UN weapons.
During this time I became friendly with the movie account and we hung out whenever his punishing schedule gave him time. Compared to a job for which he had to get up everyday at 7am and often work more then 12hours, he figured I had a pretty sweet deal. And compared to rushing through the London traffic, with its almost constant greyness, he reckoned I didn’t have much I should be complaining about in Rwanda. Although I didn’t immediately agree, I think by the time the movie shoot wrapped, I could kind of see his point. I guess I was never one to really appreciate a low stress lifestyle, especially when I had been doing next nothing in the final months of my last job. Also Switzerland was such a fantastically clean and organised environment in which to live and work that I didn’t immediately see the benefits to Rwandan life that someone locked in the rush and grim of London might pick up on.
My accountant friend also had an aeroplane…not a physical one like Steve’s but he had something else in life other than a job to keep him going; His aeroplane is that he loves to produce music. For the past five years I have been sadly lacking in an aeroplane, it was beginning to worry me. A friend in Kigali once discribed be as seeming "lost at sea", if this is the case, I believe that my lack of an aeroplane goes a long way towards explaining that.
How does anyone judge progress when they are not actually moving towards something? Or worse when no matter how they try, they cannot find something which grips and pulls them along?
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