peter marangi lookalike fails to impress

The first time I saw what I thought to be Peter Marangi in Kigali, yes, that Peter Marangi, I felt like walking up to him and hugging him like a long lost brother, nay, a long lost, rather successful and famous rib-cracking cousin that you want to brag to friends about. I couldn’t though and not just because it was from a 5^th floor window looking down, but mainly because, on second glance, “he” was a rough cardboard cut-out on a sign that said “Ask the experts” at the entrance to the premises of a paints dealership across the road.

            Several months later, the Peter Marangi of Kigali still remains a cardboard cut-out to me with a message that – putting myself in the Rwandan consumer’s rather large shoes - doesn’t even begin to connect with me, let alone give me that fuzzy warm feeling that gleeful Kenyan audiences whenever experience whenever Peter Marangi appears on television, on radio, or on the scaffolding of a new construction coming up, saying something like “Great! More work for Marangi”. I found myself concluding that although he is a celebrity in Nairobi, the character or any look-alike is totally lost on Kigali’s multinational audience, where the actual “painting experts” are mostly female. 

Oh I have seen the image several more times ever since, but all it does is look out of place. At the entrance to a certain Kenyan supermarket, it stands on a pull-up banner, its trade-mark lop-sided smile in place, but no matter how hard the agency seems to have tried to choose a line that should, on it’s own, relate to anyone who sees it, only a Kenyan who has been exposed to the original campaign can understand (let alone connect to the product), whatever joke “Mr Marangi” is cracking or trying to.

Quite reasonably therefore, I have walked around for months believing that with all the Kenyan building contractors, architects and interior decorators being some of the paint buying decision makers in the grand project to change our little hilly city’s skyline, maybe, just maybe, the hilarious painting expert has an audience after all; that having him here is no goof at all. But that was until one bright mid morning last week.

“Ona Marangi!,” exclaimed Victor from the back seat as we drove past the huge cardboard cut-out outside the paint company offices on the hill. His sister Mary looked up from the front seat. Mary is an events manager and interior decorator from Nairobi, the sister-in-law of an author friend who had thrust it upon me to baby sit the siblings on their exploratory virgin tour of Kigali.

“Mnk,” she snorted, a disgusted look momentarily marring her good looks as she scowled at the apparition that now, on close scrutiny, doesn’t even remotely resemble Peter Marangi. The clothes and the devil-may-care smile, yes; but the facial features have been altered with white paint to look less like a man from the slopes, more like a man of the hills.

“Peter Marangi wa huku hata si msupuu. ” (This one of here is not even handsome!). She snorted again.

She turned to examine the picture more closely as we stopped at the zebra crossing to let pedestrians slowly pass in front of the vehicles as if daring them to run them over. “He is not original; not the genuine article!” she added derisively, wagging an accusing finger at the cut-out.

Why, you wonder do I suddenly concern myself with the illiterate but humorous painting expert from Nairobi? There are a whole lot of reasons, really, not least of them, this fledging East African Cooperation. I see a cautionary tale here – not for Marangi’s creators, AY& R (the company Vernon Ayton created, no less!), – but to all corporate cross border operators; a plea for critical analysis and reason in the way advertising concepts translate across borders. The long running Kiwi shoe polish television ad has, for instance, been running for a while on local tv with dubbed-in Kinyarwanda voices and one cannot really tell that it was created in Kiswahili for a Kenyan audience!  

To the manufacturers of Duracoat, the paint with over 400 different colours, whose representatives in Rwanda, Akagera Paints, have been using Peter Marangi’s likeness at more and more depots, what can I possibly say? In a town where their main rival has taken over every available wall and used it to invite the public - in large colourful letters in French and English – to “Colour your world,” a relatively unknown Kenyan-comedian-look-alike builds few or no bridges at all – and may most decidedly harm a carefully crafted brand building exercise.

Unless he is properly repackaged and introduced formerly to the public, a Peter Marangi look-alike in Kigali represents what Roger Steadman would call a “wasted advertising shilling, ” An utter waste of space.

©Lloyd Igane, Kigali 11,11.10

kreative@earthling.net   

"THE WORLD IS FULL OF ‘EM"

My taxi guy Lenny is a nice young Rwandan.

Beside his tendency to play loud music and to talk too much and much too loudly over it, and to occasionally take too much liberty with the exactness of time (he once called me to inform me he was at my place to take me to the airport long after I had called the bluff on his “I’m almost there” mantra, taken another cab and had just made check-in by a whisker!), he is, in fact, a really nice guy. And I mean this in exactly the same way it would elicit the leering rejoinder “The world is full of them” from Vernon Ayton, if he, instead of you, were reading this.

Always eager to please (Lenny, not Vernon), he will, if you complain, lower the volume on the car stereo and apologise profusely for it. He will even ask you what kind of music you like and put it on at a friendly decibel level whenever you enter his always neat, sweet-smelling vehicle. His eagerness to please is, as a matter of fact, a character flaw of sorts. Why, just the other evening, in a classic case of how low the service standards have to be raised from in the city of Kigali, he lost my fare again - and not because he is a bad guy.

After I’ve been waiting outside the Nakumatt where he usually parks for almost a quarter an hour on a rather cold Kigali evening that threatens to burst into spontaneous showers, he saunters up to me with another man in tow and tells me what’s on his mind.

“This is mkubwa wangu (my big brother),” he explains with a wild wave in the direction of the goateed middle-weight guy who smiles eagerly at me and makes as if to board with me but stops when he sees the sura ya kazi look on my face. ‘Can he,” Lenny continues, “come with us as I take you home? Ako pia na mke wake hapa (he’s with his wife),” my cabbie adds with a respectful leer.

“But Lenny … ,” I grumble, pointing at the cigarette I have immediately lit as I settle comfortably in the front seat of the taxi voiture, “how do you expect me to enjoy my ride if you take your passengers?”

“It’s okay, they are smokers too,” he explains, missing the point entirely.

Now one of the good points for Lenny's cab is that I can always smoke in it without the guilt that comes with smoking in someone else’s car. He himself smokes some brand of Rwandan cigar that smells suspiciously like burnt grass and immediately after sprays the car with a sweet smelling perfume which he hides under his seat. But what he is proposing is different. Unless we are splitting the fare, I don’t see myself sharing the ride with these guys whether they smoke or not.

“Okay, let’s make a deal,” I say to Lenny reasonably, “you just take them first, then pick me up right here… No, it’s okay,” I insist when he offers -  rather late in the game I must add – to take me first then come back for his big brother and rastafarian girlfriend/wife. “I will go into Nakumatt and buy something I forgot,” I lie with a straight face.

As Lenny and his non-paying passengers pile into their nice-guy-mobile and take off in a direction, I take off in another and get into another cab belonging to another nice guy who quickly takes me home without much ado. An hour later, while relaxed in my dwelling, my feet up and a specially selected comedy DVD blaring away for my entertainment after a long day’s work, the phone rings and it’s Lenny.

“Hello my boss,” he yells above decibels in his car when I pick up. “I’m now outside Nakumatt.”

“Really?” I ask, thinking of a gentle way to let him know I had lied about waiting till he got back to the city centre …

Surely the world, Vernon was right, is full of nice guys.

©Lloyd Igane, Kigali, 30/10/10

kreative@ earthling.net 

Why I haven’t bought a Kagame t-shirt yet

As we celebrate Paul Kagame’s birthday today, I realise with a pang of guilt that although I own and proudly wear a shiny bronze pin adorned with the likeness of the president on a background of RPF colours, I have not yet bought a Kagame t-shirt.

“I am waiting for the price to come down” is the story I’ve stuck with ever since the rather too orderly august presidential campaigns when I watched awestruck as Rwandans and foreigners alike scrambled over each other to buy PK merchandise. Great high-quality stuff too; not the crap I’m used to seeing fought over at rowdy political rallies in Nairobi.

The 10,000 francs ($16) for the t-shirt is however not the real problem. Truth is, I’ve become pathologically apprehensive of certain people’s tendency to label me a self-appointed apologist for the RPF leader and CEO President. Why, just the other day while watching the news in Kenya, I caught myself hopefully scanning a line-up of regional dignitaries attending a summit in Nairobi and getting rather anxious that my personal favourite East African president was missing the photo op.

 “I read your blog,” says Manwa Magoma, a Kenyan acquaintance of mine who ran a regional ad agency in Kigali for a few months before scurrying back to Kampala. “I can’t say you sound quite like Kariuki Chotara of the Moi era, but you come quite close.”

. But why, pray, would one write about evil where one sees none? I write about poor service standards and the slow last-minute.com approach to things and bad TV, don’t I? And isn’t it a most ungrateful guest indeed who, after going walkabout in a strange neighbourhood, unmolested even at late hours, turns around and rails against the heavy presence of armed guards?

 “Every sweet-smelling rose has its thorns,” they tell me darkly when I insist that nighttime Kigali streets offer a far higher life expectancy than Nairobi streets in the daytime.

“But there are too many armed soldiers everywhere I look,” complains Manwa, refusing to see the logic that too many overtly armed soldiers are better than too many covertly armed thugs.  “You are too scared,” he accuses me, “of rubbing the government the wrong way.”

Yes, I am Manwa. I am so scared that, like King Julien of Madagascar, I have people for that.

I also have relatively big ears for the conventional wisdom of ages past. Consider if you may this story told to me when I was barely seven by a very old and wise grandmother (of a neighbour) who walked with a permanent stoop because “the white man’s black policemen” broke her back by walking all over it with hobnailed boots during the mostly inglorious hunt for the Mau Mau.

A long time ago, during the Famine of Many Monkeys, which was long before the Famine of the Great Corner, a boy and his mother walked a long gruesome journey on growling empty stomachs in search of the home of a one-eyed man called Mbutu, whose wealth and generosity were legendary. Another legendary thing about him was his aversion to any mention of his bad eye or even a hint of it by carelessly suggesting he had one good eye. When they finally got to the old man’s farm, the son could not help but marvel at the abundance of food. The barns overflowed with stored grain, the cows walked funny on account of painfully extended full udders and the farms were choking with ready-to-harvest cereals, fruits, and tubers. There were grains and bananas just being toyed with by noisy monkeys as birds and beasts came and left as they wished yet they couldn’t finish the food. Old, childless and too tired to give a hoot, Mr and Mrs. Mbutu just watched.  

“Wowee!,” exclaimed the boy scampering up a mango tree and biting into a succulent fruit, barely before a bewildered Mrs. Mbutu had finished welcoming them into her homestead.

”Remember,” whispered the mother sidling up to the mango tree to avoid being overheard by their hostess, “we can eat whatever we like; as much as we wish. But we can not______”

‘“____ mention the old man’s one bad eye,” said the son in the same urgent whisper.

As his mother went about chasing away the monkeys and other wildlife and generally helping the old couple with all the milking, harvesting, and storing, the young man jumped from tree to tree, barn to dining table to tree again, eating his way through his welcome, so to speak, not quite unlike the monkeys his mother was throwing little rocks at.

On the third day, the son, now brimming with over-fed confidence, his stomach bulging with food and his cheeks looking smoother and rounder, climbed up an over-laden mango tree for what would be his last time.

“Mum, Mum,” he shouted at the top of his voice for everyone to hear; he rubbed his stomach contentedly, “I am so full I could accidentally mention Mr. Mbutu’s bad eye!”

He was about to break wind contentedly but the old man’s anguished bellow stopped the wind in its tracks as mother and son were banished from the land of plenty, forever.

Now if you don’t mind, I'm off to see if those nice t-shirts are still in stock.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

©Lloyd Igane, Kigali 23rd October, 2010. kreative@earthling.net  

Virgil’s Town

(This story was commissioned by the East African (Travel Supplement). The premier regional  paper finally printed  it as .... Through the Eyes of a Community Leader & Bar Owner ... but they were short of space so they cut out all the good bits. This is the raw version.)

Early on a slightly drizzly Friday evening, Virgil Rugema stands near the little bar at the pool table end of club Passadena in the Gikondo suburb of Kigali, drinking Amstel beer from a short glass. So engrossed is he on the action at the pool table he seems totally oblivious of the contortionist movements of the dancers and singers entertaining patrons in the main club area behind him.

Nothing about the beady eyed average sized, casually dressed man in designer jeans and striped shirt tails suggests his prominence in any way; and only the reverence with which the club employees occasionally consult him seems to suggest he may be relevant in some way. Still, to a stranger, nothing distinguishes him as the owner of the club, another establishment out of town, and the adoration of millions of Rwandans (and northern Burundians) who listen to his nationally transmitted radio shows.

“He was the first man to open a club in this town,” Uncle Austin, MC, presenter at Radio 10 – where Virgil also works, says in an awed half whisper. “The club was in the city centre just below the main round about with the fountain and was closed because the authorities said it was attractive to school boys…. Later he opened this club and it became famous as Kwa Virigil, the only club where you can learn and dance salsa. Now there are copy cat Salsa places all over the town… that’s Kigali for you.”

            Virgil does not mention the first club, even a few days later when we pass the main round-about with the fountain on our way to the Ecole Belge (Belgian school) to pick up his lovely pre-teen daughter (his other daughter doesn’t do afternoon school today).

His is the story of a town he has deep roots in and even closer ties to; a town in which he employs over a hundred people, solves “the problems of my people” and entertains with “jokes and music on radio and fun, food and drinks at my clubs.”

He understands the brief; this is not about him. He explains though, that Club Passadena, like many other things in this town, has a personal connection to the genocide.

            “The place in Gikondo,” he says a few days later “used to be my brother’s house. He and his family were killed there and their house destroyed,” he goes on with a brave but sad smile. “Just a month before, he had just come from Pasadena in California, US. I built the club on the ruins of his house, so that people can meet there and have a drink, watch a show or even enjoy a massage or sauna all in the memory of my brother, the person who taught me to appreciate music when I was small; he was the only person in the neighbourhood who had a turntable. I named the club Passadena. The double S being my only addition to the name of the city he had come from.”      

            ******

It is early Saturday morning, the last of the month and Virgil Rugema starts the day by participating in the muganda, the once-a-month communal clean-up-your-neighbourhood exercise that’s one of the reasons Kigali is so clean. We’re in his neighbourhood of Kanombe, a far out of the city suburb near the Kigali International Airport, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. It has been a week of heavy rains and so the work today involves correcting the destruction the rain has left in its wake.

As he shovels sandy soil out of drains, rights leaning plants and spears dead leaves off the lawns, he seems a completely different Virgil from the one of the night before. People still seem to consult him a lot and he tends to lead the discussion at the closing.

“I am the leader of our Mudugudu in Kanombe,” he explains as we drive in his classic Toyota Land Cruiser GX to his next function at Remera Kiporosso, just a few kilometres down the road.  Mudugudu is what replaced Nyumba Kumi in the hierarchy of Rwandan local government. It’s administrative unit consisting of 30 to 50 houses. Several mudugudus make an Umurenge and a few umurenges make a Sector. “Kigali is made up of 3 sectors, namely Nyarugenge, Kicukiro, and Gasabo,” Virgil concludes the civic lesson as we arrive.

            Today, all the sectors are launching the new buildings recently erected to accommodate the nine year basic education system in all Rwanda. The function turns out to be a great gathering of people with all sector officials present. Virgil is the Emcee, a job he performs remarkably well in Kinyarwanda and French.

‘I am an emcee by profession,” explains the former Health Communication Consultant for PSI and UNICEF when I ask him how much he’s getting paid to do the job, “but this is not a job. It is my personal contribution to the community.”

*******

            Monday pm, we are in the Tele Dix (Radio 10) studios on the 4^th floor of the Tele Dix building, about four kilometres down the road from Kiporoso, at the turn off to Nyarutarama, the posh residential area of ambassadors and rich people.

Virgil is the “Lundiose Doctor” – lundiose being some kind of Monday hangover that he cures with a two hours dose of slow French music and chit chat in Kinyarwanda and French. His other shows include déjà vu 80s music programme on Fridays and a Vox Pop programme called Hanzaha (Around Us) on Sundays.

“Once in a while,” he says as he scrolls down his laptop to select the next song, “when people bring a dispute to me as mudugudu leader and fail to agree, I just record them and, with their consent, I air their problem and have listeners call in to suggest solutions. And it works!”

 “I can’t possibly live anywhere else but Kigali even though I hold two passports,” he says earnestly, “I’ll give you an example: If I walk out of my house alone with some money and I want to go out to a pub for a drink, I will always find someone to drink with in Kigali. Not so in other countries I’ve been to. I like the TURI KUMWE attitude of Rwandans. That’s why I run clubs, I could have got into any other business and made more money, but I stick to clubs…”

And does he make a lot of amafaranga as a radio DJ?

“The DJ at Passadena earns more money than me,” he says with a self effacing laugh. 

***

On Wednesdays after his shows, Virgil hops on his bicycle and, using panya routes, rides 20 km out of the city and back. Sometimes he rides 40 km out to Bugesera where he was born 47 years ago. Bugesera is also the unusually flat area beyond Lake Muhanzi and across the Akagera River, where a lot of people were slaughtered during the genocide in 94. There is a genocide memorial there, a small shopping centre, and, right next to the principal road, Virgil’s new club, Le Chantier, which is French for Under Construction.

“So far,” Virgil tells me as we drive out to the club right after the Landiose show, “only the bar, the kitchen and roast places, the children’s swings and the band stand are ready. But every weekend, the place is packed to capacity as people from Kigali flock here with their families. They sit at tables laid out on the grass and enjoy an afternoon away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Yes, they love the live band.”

Will the name change when the construction is finished?

“We’ll see,” he looks doubtful. “Fourteen hectares is a big area to finish construction on. There is still the pool, the sauna and massage places, accommodation and bigger play areas to do…”

As we drive back into Kigali, Virgil’s town, I can’t help seeing a metaphor of it in Virgil’s new club. Like Le Chantier, the city is fully functional and teeming with life; yet it is still massively le chantier.  ENDS.

© Lloyd Igane 2010     kreative@earthling.net

Where to eat a what in Kigali city

(This story was commissioned by the East African (Travel Supplement). The premier regional  paper finally published published it as Eating Out in the Land of a Thousand Brochettes but they were short of space so they cut out all the good bits. This is the raw version.)

Like in any other city the cost a cup of tea or a snack depends entirely on where one takes it.  A cup of tea at Chez John in downtown Kigali wont cost the same as a cup of tea at the Kigali Serena, One of the best ways to judge the cost of food is by following the cost of a traditional Rwandan Buffet and the cost of Rwanda’s favourite delicacy, inherited from the Belgians, no doubt, the brochette.

“Every meal has beans in it” – a new Kenyan in Kigali

Almost every eatery in Kigali offers buffet style dining. The offerings, always in covered, shiny silver warmers, vary with establishments but include white rice, coloured rice, pilau, fried and boiled bananas, peas, beans, boiled cassava, chicken, beef (fried with oil or fried without), ugali, salads, cassava leaves, cassava ugali (aka kaunga), groundnut soup, and fruit – usually a ripe banana or a tree tomato.

The cost of the buffet per person ranges from as little as little as 900 Rwf at the Rwasco Staff canteen, stabilising at 1200 to 1500 in most downtown eateries and the many “restos” of the cities. At classier establishments like the food court outside Nakumatt, the buffet comes at around 2,000 Rwf. Jus a stone’s throw up the hill, it is 2,500 Rwf at the Blues Café (powered by wifi). There are other establishment however where the buffet costs 3000 Rwf (5USD) or even 4000 Rwf (6.8 USD) at the spectacularly appointed City Valley restaurant tacked a little off the baten path, in Nyabugo, not far from the Nyabugogo cross-border bus terminus..

The hotels have their own buffets too and the cost of a plate ranges from 1500 Rwf at the Isimbi Hotel to 4,500 Rwf  (7 USD) at the Impala They also offer the luxury of a la carte, especially for the foreign guests who are not as fond of the buffet as Rwandans are.

A restaurant called Happy Rwanda offers the best Italian buffet in the city centre for as little as 3500 rwf (6 USD), just like the African buffet at most upper class establishments in the suburbs..

“Welcome to Heaven” – An usher at the entrance of Heaven, a posh restaurant in Kyovu

Few places in town offer a la carte menus. Besides serving the best coffee in Kigali (powered by wifi) Bourbon Coffee also serves juicy burgers, and cakes and sandwitches accompanied by chips. They are situated in the same building as Nakumatt (UTC), MTN Centre in Nyarutarama, and the airport. The food court at UTC building also serves chips and chicken, tea, coffee and sodas besides their Rwandan buffet; so does The Blues Café next door and Simba Restaurant just up the hill in the CogeBanque Building.

An excellent a la carte menu is to be had at Heaven Restaurant in Kyovu, just a few hundred yards from the Central Bank buildings. But the business you take there had rather be worth the price of the meal. Heaven is reassuringly expensive. Down the same road is Republika, an enchantingly pan African setting with a Rwandan slant. The food is great, the prices accommodating.

“If I see another brochette am going to commit ritual suicide on a stake,” anonymous tourist

There are no fast food places in Kigali to speak of. It is possible though, after a long walk, to find an obscure all-yellow kiosk-like food place near BCK Supermarket that makes a decent special omelette. Consisting of eggs fried with onions and tomatoes and chips, it comes in 5 minutes flat and costs 700 Rwf (1.2USD). A few bar and restaurant establishments such as Chez Venant in the city centre also serve this (not quite uniquely) Kigalian delicacy – but not in five minutes, and not at that price.

            Kigali’s and Rwanda’s official snack however, is most decidedly the ubiquitous brochette – bits of goat meat, or chicken or liver or fish alternated with fried onion and tomato and roasted on a stick. They can be eaten with roasted potatoes or chips or or baked bananas or just enjoyed on there own, and cost anywhere between 300 Rwf to 200 Rwf per stick, depending on the vendor. Every establishment with a Kitchen or just a charcoal burner will whip up these delicacies in the fastest time any food can be served in a Kigali establishment – except of course the aforementioned special omelette.

“This goat does not taste like ours” – a Kenyan customer at Car Wash

There are goat roasting places in Kigali but most are not near the city centre and certainly not as advanced as Kenya’s Carnivore or, on the other end of the scale, Kwa Njuguna or Kia Michael in Nairobi.

But there are two places that a Kenyan who can’t wait another day for the usual Nyamchom and mukimo or Ugali or even chips. One is the place called Little Kenya or Car Wash, and the other, a relatively new establishment in Kichukiro called La Place Kagarama, Both places serve –beside the regular brochette and Kinyarwanda buffet, a regular helping of goat ribs or leg for anything between 4000 Rwf (almost 7USD) and 10,000 Rwf (17 USD) depending on the size of the helping. Accompaniments cost extra. These Kenyan joints even serve Kenyan beer and occasionally include chapatti and real ugali in their buffet lunches.

Alimentations and supermarkets

Huge shopping malls and supermarkets are just now making their slow and sure  way into the Kigalian’s shopping conscience. Every neighbourhood has a little shop that sells all sorts of household needs and has a few stools that people can sit on and drink Prinus, Miitzig and Amstel beer at recommended retail prices. At the busier shopping centres like Remera, Nyamirambo, Gikondo and Kimironko, one can find mini supermarkets. The big new entrants, the Kenyan Nakumatt and the Rwandan Simba Supermarkets are the main supermarkets in the city centre. They can not be said to be in real competition because whereas Simba is famous for value, Nakumatt is known for variety and convenience – it is still the only 24 hour supermarket, in this aspect, equal only to the alimentations of a 24/7 section of Nyamirambo called Mirongo Ine.

The Chinese Supermarket T De Mille (T 2000) offers both variety and value, but not as high quality as the bigger two.

“That is expensive, it comes from Kenya,” – a Kigali clothes vendor

Most Kenyans in Kigali kick themselves when they want to buy something they forgot to buy in Kenya ornly to be told it costs more in Kigali. These include things like apparel, accessories, shoes, etc.

Generally, life is more expensive in Kigali than in Nairobi. We couldn’t understand what Kenyas were complaining about when the price of unga hit 120 Kenya shillings. Around the same time, the Kenya shilling equivalent of the same packet of Unga at Nakumatt, was about 185/-!

      

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