Arrival Part Deux, or, Goat is Good

I’m still here.

Meaning I’ll flesh out my previous post with more details.

So I’ll go back to Monday night. Had my last last last dinner at Le Perroquet, the café we go to all of the time. Couldn’t decide between my favorite pita and my favorite salad, so got both! We’d had a late start because I had met Yves for a drink since he was out of town this weekend. By the time I’d gotten home it was almost midnight and there was still a lot (ok, all) of the packing to be done.

I stayed up the whole night packing, cleaning and organizing…well, as close to organizing as I get. Because we are going to have to reduce the size of our shipment in order to stay under the OTF limit (no sense spending 1000s of dollars to ship our junky stuff), I also tried to have some semblance of top priority, mid and low for Hannah to tell the movers. I unfortunately left her with some unpleasant tasks of having to get rid of large pieces that we can’t ship.

So, one all-nighter later, we left at 7:45 to head to the airport. Bought some Belgian chocolates as gifts for my new coworkers, checked in, and promptly went to sleep. I woke up as we were descending into Kigali at 6:45pm – late enough for it already to be dark (unlike the 10pm summer sunsets in Brussels)

Stepping off the plane I was a little groggy, but just so excited to finally be there! The airport is bigger than I was expecting, but certainly not huge. It is close to the city center – only 5km – so stepping off the plane into the warm air with all these little twinkling streetlights on the darkened hills could have almost been a scene in the Hollywood hills.

There were two other coworkers on the plane with me – one had interviewed in Boston at the same time as me, and one was a Director who did the interviewing. The three of us were met by the Director responsible for Africa and the manager of the car fleet. We were driven to one of the houses OTF has a long term lease on – and a couple more OTFers were there to greet us. The cook had salad and beer and “pizza” (in quotes because it wasn’t exactly pizza, but was quite good!)

I won’t go into much detail about the house because I have since seen the one I will be staying in for at least the first three months and will go into details in a later post. But I will say that I slept under a mosquito netting for the first time in my life. Restrictive.

Wednesday we got up and went into the office and met the rest of the staff based in Rwanda. Nice to put faces to all the people who have been so helpful over email. Got our laptops set up, chatted a bit, etc. Came back to the house for a lunch of boulettes (meatballs) and rice. Really good, actually.

In the afternoon, Jeremy (other new hire) and I went to the Commercial Bank of Rwanda to set up accounts in Rwandan Francs. There are a few ATMs in Kigali, but none accept foreign cards, only accounts from local banks. My salary is paid in US dollars and I can transfer enough each month for living expenses to this bank and they’ll convert it to francs. And then use the ATMs to get cash.

We needed a passport photo, passport, and letter from a Rwandan employer to open the account. I hadn’t thought to bring passport photos (stupid rookie traveler mistake, as you always need them at the most random of times). Jeremy took one of me with his digital camera and we took it to a strip-mall-esque place with a camera/photocopying shop in hopes of getting it printed. After much conversation in French, English and Kinyarwanda (Jean-Claude from OTF was with us…), and several failed attempts by the shopkeeper, I got nine too-large, too-pink, but at this point let’s just take them passport photos.

We sat down with the bank clerk, started filling out paperwork, everything going very smoothly. She asked if we wanted to make a deposit, which I did since I had a fair amount of cash on me, and Jeremy even more. So, I handed over 300 US dollars, and she took it and put it in her desk drawer. And said, ok, I’ll open your accounts later. She gave us an official looking receipt though, and said she’ll call us later when the account is opened, and then we can come back and order the ATM card. It’s a bit strange to have just given over the money, but I’ve been assured its perfectly normal!

Tonight we went for dinner at a restaurant in our neighborhood. Basically a bar in a converted house and tables out in the yard, with a big barbeque in the back. The menu consisted of goat brochettes (kebabs) – the most commonly eaten food, apparently – and fish brochettes. More out of my massive disdain for fish than a desire to be adventurous, I went for the goat. It was served with fries and was actually really really good. A bit chewy but in a good way. Tastes like…lamb, actually. I can see it becoming a staple. Baa!

This is becoming obscenely long, and I know if I keep reporting this miniutae I’ll lose all 3 readers that I have fast. If you’re still reading this, please please please leave a comment, as I love that feature. Also, I have a cell phone number now, and a mailing address. Let me know if you want them. Soon I will force them on you as I demand care packages!

Finally, thanks SO MUCH to everyone who has written me. I appreciate it and love hearing from you. For those of you expressing concern, don’t worry I am being safe, etc etc. But I have a good feeling about this place. The only bummer is being away from y’all. I will digress for a minute about omens/signs. I believe in them. When I worked at the Korean Embassy in DC, my coworker Megan and I would leave almost every day at the same time to walk to the Metro. Almost every day for two years we would be passed on Massachusetts Avenue by this little, little Hispanic man. 5 feet, tops. Running at top speed, no matter the weather, hot or cold. He’d constantly be looking back over his shoulder to see if the bus was coming. Sometimes he’d be so tired he’d give up and wait at the bus stop, and sometimes he just kept on running. But we never saw him catch the bus. We never talked to him, but created a whole backstory for him. Decided he was working a job at an Embassy on Mass, got off work at the same time we did, and had another job to get to in the suburbs. Anyway, on my very last day, he was running at top speed, turned around, saw the bus was coming, raced even faster, and caught it! And the last image we saw was his face in the window with the broadest grin you can imagine. And then I had this overwhelming feeling that everything was right with the world.

Anyway, on Saturday night in Brussels, I was walking home from my going-away party and I got lost in the Bois de la Cambre, a huge park/forest near our apartment. I was wandering around for a long time, it was about 5am and while it is not a dangerous area per se, it was late and I wasn’t totally comfortable. I had that awful feeling of going in circles, and on paths through the forest it is impossible to know where you’re going. All of a sudden, I looked up and saw the skyscraper that houses the McKinsey offices (and yes, the lights were on, even Saturday at 5am!). I was so thrilled because I knew exactly where I was and where I should go, and my thought was, McKinsey has literally helped me get my bearings – perhaps a good metaphor for the past year.

Since I’ve arrived in Kigali, the moon has been full, and the thrilled feeling hasn’t subsided. A la prochaine…