by Gaile Parkin
“You mean they must become entrepreneurs?”
“Mm!”
“Do you know that professor who teaches entrepreneur-ship at KIST, Professor Pillay?”
“Mm, he’s coming to speak to the girls this week.” “Oh, here’s Titi with our tea.”
Titi was edging sideways down the steps into the yard, trying simultaneously to watch where she was putting her feet and to keep an eye on the mugs of tea that she was balancing on a tray. Sophie jumped up from the ground and went to meet her at the bottom of the stairs. Taking the tray from her, she said, “Asante, Titi. Thank you.” It was one of the few things Sophie knew how to say in Swahili.
Titi beamed at her and then went back up the stairs as Sophie carried the tray over to Angel.
“So, anyway, some of the girls have at last understood what I’m on about, and they’ve formed their own club, and to flatter me as their English teacher they’ve given it an English name. It’s called Girls Who Mean Business.”
Angel clapped her hands together. “Eh, that’s a very good name for that club! And that club is a very good idea.”
“Mm, and once every two weeks they’re going to invite someone to come and talk to them after school. Professor Pillay will be the first, and he’ll give them some background on the whole idea of entrepreneurship. Then after him they want to ask women who run their own businesses to come and tell them their own stories.”
“To give them some steps that they can follow themselves?”
“Mm, and to inspire them generally.” “That’s a very good idea.”
“So, Angel, will you come and inspire them a fortnight after the professor?”
Angel had been about to take a sip of tea. She put her mug back down on the tray and looked at Sophie. “Me?” Then she clapped her right hand over her chest and asked again, “Me?”
“Of course you, Angel! You’re a woman! You run your own successful business! You’re ideal!”
“But what would I say to them?”
“Just tell them how you started your business; maybe tell them about any mistakes you made or any important lessons you learned along the way.”
“Eh! I remember at first I didn’t know how to calculate how much I must charge for a cake. I only thought about what the customer would think was a good price to pay. I didn’t know about counting the number of eggs in a cake and calculating how much I had paid for each egg and what-what-what. It was a while before I learned how to make a profit!”
“You see? That’s exactly what the girls need to hear! And you can tell them about your successes as well, and show them your photo album of all the beautiful cakes that you’ve made.”
Angel was warming to the idea. “And I can speak to them about what it means to be a professional somebody.” “That will be wonderful, Angel.”
Then suddenly Angel stopped smiling and looked at Sophie with a disappointed expression. “But, Sophie, how will I be able to tell them anything? I don’t know Kinyarwanda! I don’t know French!”
“No problem,” assured Sophie. “Their English is okay; not great, but okay. I speak enough French to help out if there’s anything they can’t follow, and I’m sure some of them will understand if you want to use a few words of Swahili. We’ll all translate for one another and everyone will understand.”
“Are you sure it’ll work?”
“Listen, if people want to understand something, they find a way to understand it. I know those girls. I’m sure they’ll all be very interested in what you have to say.”
“Okay. And I can show them my Cake Order Form, the one you typed for me. That speaks many languages.”
“Good idea. Practical stuff is what they need, not just theory. I suspect Professor Pillay is going to be a bit too theoretical, so they’ll need loads of practical stuff after that. And that’s why I want to order a cake from you; I want them to experience your product!”
“That’s a very good idea! Of course they must taste my cake! And of course I’ll give you a very good price because you’re a volunteer.”
“Thank you, Angel. And thank you for agreeing to come and inspire the girls.”
“I’m happy that you invited me, Sophie. And I’ll be happy to meet your Girls Who Mean Business. Now, what is their cake going to look like?”
“Oh, I’ll leave that to you, Angel, I’m sure you’ll have much better ideas than me. There’s still two weeks to go, so there’s plenty of time for you to think about it. When you’ve made a decision and calculated a price, just let me know and we can fill in a Cake Order Form and I’ll give you the deposit.” Movement on the stairs into the yard caught Sophie’s attention. “Grace! Faith! Hello!”
“Hello, Auntie Sophie,” said the girls as they took turns to bend down and give her a hug.
“Grace,” said Angel, “before you sit, please run up to the apartment and bring Mama’s diary and a pen.” As Grace turned and dashed towards the stairs Angel said to Sophie, “I must write this in my diary now. Eh, imagine if I forgot to come and talk to your girls! That would not be a good example of a professional somebody!”
Sophie laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you forget. Now, Faith, would you and Grace like to come and play on my laptop upstairs for a while?”
“Ooh, Auntie, yes, please!”
“Are you sure, Sophie? They won’t be in your way?”
“Of course not. You know I love them; they remind me of my nieces back home. And Catherine’s out with her boyfriend, so they won’t be disturbing her.”
“Okay, let’s all go upstairs, then. There’s no need for Grace to come down here with my diary. Go and tell her, Faith.”
Faith shot off up the stairs as Angel and Sophie gathered their four empty mugs on to the tray, shook the red soil from the kangas that they had been sitting on, and headed back up towards Angel’s apartment.
“Eh, Sophie, by the way!” said Angel, stopping a quarter of the way up the flight of stairs. “I know another woman who runs her own business. Perhaps you can invite her to come and inspire your girls as well.”
“Great! Who is she?”
Angel paused for a moment, then looked at Sophie and said, “Jeanne d’Arc.”
The two women laughed all the way up the stairs.
ANGEL FELT THE perspiration collect into a droplet and begin to trickle slowly downwards from her temple, but she was unable to move either of her arms to extract a tissue from her brassiere. Her left arm was pinned to her side by a very old man who was sitting half on her lap and half beside her, while her right arm was immobilised by the thigh and left buttock of the young man who stood next to her, bending right over her. Her eldest grandson pressed himself on to her lap, snivel-ling miserably. Really, this was not a convenient time for the Change to be asserting itself.
Unable to see ahead clearly, she hoped that it was safe to assume that she would not be the only passenger wanting to alight from the minibus-taxi at her stop, which should be coming up very soon. She was right: two or three other passengers began to hand their fares forward to the conductor who stood over her, signalling their intention to disembark at the next stop. She clutched the money for their fares in her right hand, but recognised that she would be unable to give it to the conductor without either squeezing her fist up between the metal of the minibus’s door and the man’s buttocks or pushing it up in front of him between Benedict’s back and the man’s private parts. She decided to risk neither.
As the driver brought the taxi to a halt, the conductor skilfully slid the door open with his right hand behind his back and stepped out backwards. Angel handed him her money and he assisted her by lifting the child from her lap and placing him on the ground so that she could step out herself, clearing a space through which others could disembark and new passengers could board. The taxi drove off, and Angel led Benedict to the shade of a flamboyant tree, where she delved into her brassiere for a tissue with which to dab at her face and another for Benedict to use to wipe his eyes and blow his
nose.
It was still early; they had had the first appointment of the day, and they would be home before half-past nine. She took the boy by the hand and they set off together towards their compound that lay at the far end of the dirt road. As they walked, she did her best to comfort him.
“You were very brave, Benedict. Nobody likes to go to the dentist, but you were strong like a big boy, a teenager. Mama was very proud of you.”
Benedict attempted a smile.
“Now, I know that when we get home you won’t be able to eat because your mouth is still hurting, but you can drink. Would you like Mama to make you some tea, or shall we stop at Leocadie’s shop and buy you a soda?”
“Fanta, please, Mama!” Benedict declared emphatically.
Of course, the dentist had just lectured Angel on the advisability of cutting down on the amount of sugar in her children’s diet. He had even specifically mentioned sodas and cakes as being very bad for a child’s teeth. But this dentist came from an island somewhere far away in the Pacific Ocean, and he had the strange idea of being a Christian but worshipping on a Saturday instead of a Sunday—just like Prosper. Angel knew that it was very unfair to judge an entire congregation by the regrettable behaviour of one of its members, but Prosper was the only Adventist she knew personally, so it was difficult for her to be objective. If she could become acquainted with some others who were more sensible than Prosper, she might be able to convince herself that this dentist’s advice should be taken seriously; but until somebody could persuade her that his advice was indeed good, it was better simply to ignore it. She would try to remember to ask Dr Rejoice about it.
They walked past a high yellow wall over which deep red bougainvillea blossoms spilled. Behind the wall, invisible from the road, sprawled the big white house that was shared by the families of two of Pius’s Indian colleagues, where the boys went to play with their school friends Rajesh and Kamal. Miremba, the Indian boys’ young Ugandan-Rwandan nanny, had become a close friend of Titi’s, and the two girls had gone into town together this morning.
As Angel and Benedict neared Leocadie’s shop, its owner stepped out of it, and saw them approaching.
“Mama-Grace!” she called, giving a wave and a big smile. Really, she was so much happier now that the business with Modeste’s other girlfriend had been settled. Apparently the girl had decided to go with her baby and stay with her aunt near Gisenyi, right up in the north of the country.
“Benedict, why are you not at school today?” she asked, when Angel and the boy reached her shop. “Are you sick?”
“I went to the dentist,” replied Benedict, opening his mouth wide to show Leocadie the hole where a tooth had been extracted.
“Eh!” said Leocadie. “You’re a brave boy. Was he brave, Mama-Grace?”
“Very,” assured Angel. “He had to miss a day of school because those dentists don’t work on Saturdays. He’d like a Fanta citron now to help him to feel better, but all our empties are in the apartment.”
“No problem, Mama-Grace, you can take a Fanta now and I’ll remember that you owe me one empty.”
“Thank you, Leocadie. Now tell me, have you and Modeste started to make plans for your wedding?”
“Not yet,” said Leocadie, stepping into the shop and reaching into the fridge for a Fanta. As she opened its door, the fridge cast just enough light into the dim interior of the container for Angel to make out the still form of Beckham, lying asleep on the lowest shelf between the bags of sugar and the rolls of pink toilet paper. “But what plans will we make, Mama-Grace? We have no family, so there’ll be no negotiations about bride-price. And we can’t have a wedding party because we don’t have money.”
Angel suddenly felt very sad for this girl, whose only happiness was that her fiancé had chosen her above another girl who had had his baby, too. And, Angel noticed, Leocadie had now reached the stage of disowning her relatives—incarcerated and in exile—as family. Perhaps Angel was partly to blame for that, because she had given Leocadie an honest account of her meeting with the girl’s mother in jail in Cyangugu: her mother was simply no longer there. Then Angel thought about her own daughter, and about the silence, the distance, that had grown between them.
Had Vinas ever felt that her mother, like Leocadie’s, was simply no longer there?
Suppressing the startling urge to sob, Angel heard herself speaking before she even knew what it was that she was going to say.
“Leocadie, it is not true that you have no family, because I’m going to be your mother for this wedding.” “Mama-Grace?”
“I’ll help you to plan everything, and of course I’ll make your wedding cake for the reception.”
“Eh, Mama-Grace!” Leocadie’s eyes began to fill with tears. “But we cannot afford …”
“Nonsense! God will help us to find a way. You leave everything to me. Now, take my hundred francs for Benedict’s Fanta so that I can take him home and put him to bed. He needs to rest after all his fright and pain.”
Leocadie reached for the note that Angel handed her. “Thank you, Mama-Grace. You’re a very good mother.” Then she began to sob. “I’m very happy that you’ll be my mother for my wedding.”
“Don’t cry, Leocadie, you’ll wake up Beckham, and then he’ll cry.” Angel did not add that she might join them.
After saying their goodbyes, Angel and Benedict walked the last few metres along the road, past the big green Dumpster that had at last been emptied of the neighbourhood’s rubbish, towards the corner where their compound lay. They could see Gaspard and Modeste standing there with two men who had apparently paused for a chat on their way up the hill. Each of the men carried a wire cage, the larger of which held a large grey parrot and the smaller of which held a small monkey. There must be a market for such creatures—many could be seen for sale on street corners—but Angel found it hard to understand why anyone would want to share their home with an animal that needed to be fed but contributed nothing in return. A chicken or a cow was a useful animal; but a parrot? A monkey? Uh-uh.
Benedict, on the other hand, was fascinated by the small grey monkey whose button eyes gazed absently from the black of its face through the bars constraining it. He squatted down beside the cage, which the man had now put down on the ground, and said hello to the creature. Something in the boy’s voice—perhaps the kindness of his tone—awoke the monkey from its stillness, and with its eyes never leaving Benedict’s, it took hold of the bars with both hands and flung its body around violently within its prison, all the while screeching like a terrified child. Letting go of the bars, it flung itself against the side of the cage and toppled it over sideways, screeching all the more loudly and appallingly. This unleashed an echoing wail in Benedict, clearly distressed at having triggered such wretchedness in the creature, and as the man bent to right the cage, Angel scooped the boy up in her arms and carried him inside.
A while later, after Benedict had been calmed and had finally drifted off to sleep tucked up in his bed, and after Angel had changed out of her smart, tight clothes and settled down to review what she was going to say that afternoon to the Girls Who Mean Business, a soft, continuous knocking began at the door. Recognising it as Modeste’s knock, and knowing that it was futile to call for him to come in because he did not feel it was his place to do so, Angel went to the door and opened it.
“Madame,” said Modeste, “here is a customer for your cakes.”
Next to him stood a soldier, an earnest-looking young man dressed in camouflage uniform and khaki Wellington boots with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. The thick welt of an ugly scar snaked its way down from below his left ear and across to somewhere under the right lapel of his uniform.
Angel thanked Modeste as he left, and then turned her attention to the soldier. “Unasema Kiswahili?” “Ndiyo, Bibi. Yes, I speak Swahili.”
“Good. I’m sorry that I cannot yet speak Kinyarwanda to you.”
“Hakuna matata, Bibi. No problem.” He flas
hed a smile of chocolate-coloured teeth at Angel.
“Bwana, you are very welcome in my house, but I’m afraid that your gun is not welcome here. My husband and I do not allow guns to come inside.”
“Hakuna matata, Bibi.” The young man removed his weapon from his shoulder and leaned it up against the wall outside the door to Angel’s apartment, clearly intending to leave it there. Angel felt a stab of panic.
“That is not a safe place for a gun to rest, Bwana. There are children who live in this compound. One of them could pick it up and then there could be a terrible accident.”
The soldier glanced at the gun. “You’re right, Bibi. Let me leave it with your security guard outside.” He ran out with the gun to give it to Modeste and then came back and sat down opposite Angel in her living room.
“Allow me to introduce myself, Bibi. I am Calixte Munyaneza, a captain in the army.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Captain Calixte. Please call me Angel; I’m not comfortable with Bibi or Madame.”
“Sawa, Angel. I’ve come to you because they tell me that you’re somebody who makes cakes for special occasions.”
“That is true, Captain Calixte. Do you have a special occasion coming up?”
The soldier nodded. “I’m taking a fiancée.”
Angel clapped her hands together and beamed. “An engagement! That is indeed a special occasion! I’ll make tea for us and you can tell me all about it. Meanwhile, you can look at my photos of some other cakes that I’ve made.”
Angel prepared two mugs of sweet, spicy tea and put a few cupcakes—iced in red and dark shades of green and grey—on to a plate. She carried them on a tray into the living room, where she found the soldier examining her photo album studiously.
“Do you see any cakes that you like?” she asked, placing the tray on the coffee table.
