Royal wedding Rwandan Style
on Melissa Hipkins (Rwanda), 30/May/2011 12:51, 34 days ago
From time to time the British diplomatic staff in Kigali get it in their heads to meet and greet any Brits in the country. Normally the time to get the bunting out is the Queen’s birthday but this year I think for reasons of economy they had decided to bring the event forward in favour of the Wedding. We had received invitations to attend but the venue was not the Embassy, or rather now that Rwanda is in the Commonwealth, the High Commission, but at the High Commissioner’s residence. The only qualification to be invited is to be a British national, but even that seems to be pretty elastic; members of the Commonwealth were equally welcome.We had missed last year’s Birthday celebrations because I was in Musanze and Melissa doing school visits. Co-incidentally, Lucy flew back to the UK on that Friday so we had to be in Kigali to see her off anyway. It just meant finding somewhere to stay that night as the party began at 18.00 and was scheduled to end at 20.00. We left Lucy at the airport with plenty of time for her 15.00 departure so we went back into town to do some shopping and pass the time until the evening.Rwanda television is a government sponsored organisation and there is only one channel. It’s all there is unless you want to go to the expense of getting a satellite dish. Most bars have a television and those with some eye on customer demand use the screen to show interminable pop DVDs instead. On this Saturday, Rwanda television chose to broadcast The Wedding to the exclusion of allelse. On a big screen in one of the main shopping precincts in Kigali, the only ones watching were us, trying and not succeeding to name the guests filing into Westminster Abbey. It was embarrassing to think that someone considered this to be prime viewing for a population that was so palpably indifferent. The interesting part for us was to see who had got invited and who had been overlooked, so once the ceremony proper looked imminent, we drifted away.Getting to the residence turned out to be a greater challenge than we had imagined. Together with my acceptance to the invitation I had tacked on a request for directions to the venue. These were duly furnished but they referred to surrounding buildings and embassies that no-one had heard of. Kigali is a pleasant city for the most part open with great views across its hills and valleys, but one thing it lacks is an effective system of street names and signposts. We had to instruct moto drivers knowing only that we were looking for somewhere within a kilometre of the American embassy.In order to have a successful relationship with a moto driver it is necessary to haggle over the price for the journey before you set out. Once done the cost is pretty much fixed. However, the relationship gets edgy when despite all efforts the destination isn’t where they thought it was. We needed three drivers to carry our party and you could tell they were cooperating to find the place by the way they were shouting to each other and pointing at us.The groups of smart cars and taxis at the bottom of the drive showed we had arrived and so long as your name was on the list you were in. I could see that some people had brought their passports for ID but that was a bit over the top I thought. I got in with no ID at all. After all we were on British soil now.You could see the cuts are beginning to bite. The punch had absolutely no alcohol in it and the Wedding highlights were being shown on a not so big screen. By the look of it, someone had videoed them to produce an endless loop. The food was passable but very scarce. For some reason the drinks were being served exclusively by Americans. Some sort of diplomatic trade off I suppose. I expect at the 4th of July celebrations the expats will find themselves served by defeated redcoats.Things drew to a close at a creditable 22.00 and we had to walk back towards the American embassy to find more motos. Having found 3 more, they drove straight back past the Residence and took the direct route back to the hotel. Needing a proper drink we headed to the nearest bar. While supping our lagers, the television was still churning out the highlights of the Wedding to a crowd of drunks who did seem to be more caught up in the atmosphere. I’d love to have been able to make sense of their comments.