Food for Thought

Many have asked - how is the food? It’s a lot of carbohydrates – potatoes, rice, which are very good, vegetables and proteins which are overcooked or dried out to my taste, and either too bland or spicy. Until another guest at the hotel told me to order fish brochette, which is off the menu and I didn’t know about, the only thing I was ordering was spaghetti if I eat here. Funny enough, this fish brochette is moist and delicious and all the other fish on the menu is very dry. I find that to be true at some of the other restaurants. My first really good tasty meal came at Sylvie’s, the woman who runs the amusement park. I’m managing and it’s fine – except I made a huge mistake and drank the water and it was Montezuma’s revenge in Rwanda.

The Rwandan water is not drinkable and everyone boils their water before drinking it and washing their fruit and vegetables. The hotel has a sign in the bathroom saying the water doesn’t meet World Health Organizations standards so just drink the bottled water. I pride myself on being a seasoned traveler in developing countries and am a fanatic about brushing my teeth with bottled water, not eating salad, eating fruit you can open yourself, etc. HOWEVER, the other night I got up in the middle of the night and drank almost a full glass of water from the tap before I realized what I was doing. (2 bottles of water were right there but I was half-conscious). So I was out of commission Thursday afternoon, rallied for appointments on Friday but had to miss a Friday afternoon event – the college graduation of Evas, one of our translators, which everyone else was going to and I was so sorry to miss. It’s Sunday night now and I’m fine, in fact, I was able to get to a few genocide memorials over the weekend. More about them later.

I was able to reschedule the one appointment I missed, so since I last blogged I’ve visited with 3 more of our Associates, Languida, Console and Pascasie.

Languida lost her husband, brother, cousins and 15 of her in-laws; they were killed. Her house was completely destroyed. She had been separated from her children during this period but reunited with them afterwards and went back to the tailoring she had been doing. In 2003 she started the funeral home business. It’s not really a home, it’s more of a small store where the flower arrangements are made and a few coffins are kept. People are buried as soon after death as possible so her business is in supplying the coffin, the flowers for the church and transporting the body from the hospital to the church to the cemetery. She felt everything in the HR workshop was important and we re-worked her job description for a front-desk manager and reviewed how to interview.

Phyllis and dairy bar owner Console.

Console is one of 5 survivors in her family of 48 – her parents, all 8 brothers and 36 of their children were killed and their property was destroyed. She survived with her 2 children, her elder sister and one nephew, and rebuilt the small dairy business she and her husband had built. In 2006 she started a party supply business both of which she is trying to expand. She’s now keeping a file on each employee, has employees signing in and out each day (she has problems with lateness and absenteeism), and says she has started praising her people as well as correcting them. The management style here tends to be more command and control and emphasizing positive feedback is a real shift.

Pascasie and her husband and 3 children fled the country and escaped the violence but when they returned everything they had was destroyed. Bascasie has built a successful beer distribution business where she has represented the Bralirwa brand at international shows. Bralirwa is consolidating distributors which means someone like Bracasie had to build a bigger warehouse or she could not be one of their distributors. And she’s doing it – the structure is up and on its way to completion. It’s amazing and so is she. She says that without Bpeace she would not be where she is, from the laptop which all the women received, to Richard insistently beating down the doors of the brewery to tell them they had to support a woman who wanted a larger distributorship. We talked about the turnover of drivers the business was experiencing and considered different ways to attach them to her company through recognition, some teambuilding and a career path. Actually, one of her largest problems is from what I understand typically African – her relatives think she owes them jobs, and not the driver or loader jobs – that’s beneath them. She now has 4 relatives working for her. She can’t say no to them so we strategized different ways of handling it – “just say no” doesn’t work in this culture. People help support their families and it is expected and in many cases demanded.

There’s more to write but I think I’m going to call it a day and send what I wanted to say now in the next blog. In case you’re interested and have the time, here’s a link to a new article in FastCompany on Rwanda and how the president , Kagame, is trying to brand it with wealthy business people in the West. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/134/special-report-rwanda-rising.html?page=0%2C0

To those who have emailed me and left comments on my blog, thank you, I love hearing from you. And to all of you, your support has meant the world. You have supported an effort that is much more personal than the usual donation to a cause and I think about that responsibility all the time and it informs everything I’m doing here.