Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

  “Then you must come in and drink tea with me and tell me all about her!”

  “I can’t come now, Auntie. I still have to unpack Mr Akimoto’s vegetables in his apartment and take his crate of empties to Leocadie for sodas for his party, and then I must fetch him from his meeting.”

  “Then tell me quickly now, Bosco. Who is this girl that you’ve met?”

  “Do you remember that when I came to fetch the cake for Perfect’s christening, I gave a lift to Odile?”

  “Eh! Odile! You’re in love with Odile! I was just telling the ladies in the salon about the place where she works.”

  Bosco laughed. “No, Auntie, it’s not Odile that I love. When I took her to her house I met her brother Emmanuel and his very, very beautiful wife.”

  Angel felt her heart sinking. “Bosco, please tell me that you have not fallen in love with Emmanuel’s wife.”

  “No, Auntie!” Bosco tried to look annoyed but he was too busy smiling. “Emmanuel’s very, very beautiful wife has a young sister who is also very, very beautiful. That sister has a friend called Alice. Alice is the one that I love.”

  Angel shook Bosco’s hand. “Eh, Bosco, I am too happy! You must bring Alice to meet me soon.”

  “Yes, Auntie. But I think Modeste is waiting for you. He is with a man. Perhaps he is a customer.”

  The young man with Modeste was indeed a customer. Arriving at the compound, he had asked Modeste in which apartment he might find the Madame of the cakes, and Modeste had reported that Angel was out but would probably be back soon. She had not waited for a pikipiki-taxi at this corner, and she had not gone along the unsurfaced road to where she could catch a minibus-taxi; she had gone up the hill on foot, so she had not gone far. The man had decided to wait. Now he sat opposite Angel in her apartment, dressed in a suit and tie and looking extremely handsome and smart. There was something familiar about him, but Angel could not place him.

  “Madame, allow me to present myself to you,” he said in English. “I am Kayibanda Dieudonné.”

  The local formality of stating a name backwards with the first name last had initially confused Angel, but she was accustomed to it now. She still found it too uncomfortable, though, to introduce herself to anyone as Tungaraza Angel.

  “And I am Angel Tungaraza, but you must please call me Angel. May I call you Dieudonné?”

  “Of course, Madame.”

  “Not Madame. Angel.”

  “Forgive me.” The young man flashed a smile that made him look even more handsome. “Angel.”

  “Do I know you, Dieudonné? There is something about your face that makes me think that we have spoken before.”

  “We have never spoken, Mad … Angel. Not you and I. But I have spoken to Dr Tungaraza when you have been with him. I’m a teller at BCDR.”

  “Eh! Of course!” declared Angel, suddenly able to place her guest. Her husband’s salary was supposed to be paid into his account at the Banque Commerciale du Rwanda at each month-end, but for one or another reason payment of expatriate salaries—in U.S. dollars—was invariably delayed. It was only Dieudonné who could explain the situation clearly in English to Pius’s colleagues from India. Many of the Indians would not deal with any other teller.

  “Your English is very good, Dieudonné. I know that your president wants everyone to speak French and English equally now, but that is new; most Rwandans are still learning English, but you’ve already progressed very far in the language. That tells me that you’ve spent much time outside your country.” “You are right, Angel.”

  “Then I’ll make tea for us and you can tell me your story while we drink it. Here is my photo album of cakes for you to look at.”

  Angel made two mugs of sweet, spicy tea and brought them into the living room on a tray along with two small plates, each holding a slice of pale green cake with chocolate icing. She handed tea and cake to her guest and then settled down opposite him. Dieudonné cut a mouthful from his slice of cake with the side of his teaspoon and tasted it with obvious enjoyment.

  “Mm, delicious!” he declared. “But this is not my first time to taste your delicious cake. In fact, I’ve found a picture of the very cake that I’ve tasted before.” He indicated a photograph on the page at which Angel’s album lay open on the coffee table.

  “Oh, that one I made for Françoise, for one of the parties that was held at her restaurant.”

  “I was at that very party, and in fact I was the one who arranged it. My house is in the same street as Françoise’s, so I know her place. When I asked if some few of us from the bank could celebrate a colleague’s promotion there, she told me that she could get a cake for us. Never before had I heard of eating cake after chicken and tilapia, but Françoise told me it is modern. She said that a cake can say anything that a person wants. This is the very cake that I asked for.” Dieudonné tapped the picture with a slim finger. “In fact, the colleague who was promoted was too, too happy when Françoise brought the cake to the table. Eh!”

  As Dieudonné spoke he made large gestures with his hands and arms. This was not the usual Rwandan manner, which was calmer and more controlled; perhaps there was no space for big gestures in a very tiny country that had to accommodate eight million people. No, Dieudonné moved his body more like Vincenzo, Amina’s husband who was half Italian. Angel watched him as he took a sip of his tea.

  “Eh!” he declared, and took another sip. “I haven’t drunk tea like this since I was in Tanzania!”

  “You were in my country?”

  “I looked for my family there for almost four years.”

  “They were lost?” asked Angel. “Did you find them?”

  “They were not there.” Dieudonné took another mouthful of cake.

  “You know, Dieudonné, I think you should tell me your story right from where it begins. I’m sure it’s interesting and I don’t want to become confused by starting to hear the story in the middle.”

  Dieudonné smiled. “In fact, I could have told you my story last week, and I would still be in the middle of my story and I would not yet know the end. Eh, last week I didn’t even know that the end of my story was going to come this week. But this week I’m able to tell you my story right up to the end.” As he spoke, his bold gestures emphasised his words.

  “Okay, Dieudonné, let us leave the end until the end. Start at the beginning, please.”

  “Then I must start in Butare, because that is where I was born. My father was a professor there at the National University of Rwanda. I was still a small boy when Tutsis were chased from the university.” He paused, interrupting his story. “Forgive me, Angel, we do not talk of Tutsis and Hutus anymore; we are all Banyarwanda now. But I must use those words to talk about the past because in the past we were not yet Banyarwanda.”

  “I understand,” assured Angel. “You can speak freely with me, Dieudonné, because you are my customer and I am a professional somebody. We are confidential here.”

  “Thank you, Angel.” Dieudonné cleared his throat and swallowed some more tea. “My father was killed and we fled with our mother into Burundi, but only for a short time because then we fled again, this time to Congo, more specifically the town of Uvira. Eh! There were many refugees there, and there was a lot of confusion. I became separated from my family and I found myself being transported south to Lubumbashi with some other small boys. We were schooled there by nuns. I was a good student, so the Sisters arranged for me to go for secondary schooling with some Fathers at a mission school across the border, in the north of Zambia. One of the Fathers there became like a father to me.”

  “Let me guess, Dieudonné. Was that Father from Italy?”

  Dieudonné looked startled. “Eh! How did you know that?”

  Angel laughed. “The way you make gestures with your arms reminds me of someone I know who has Italian blood from his father.”

  Dieudonné thought for a while as he chewed and swallowed another mouthful of cake. “There are ways to father a child even when t
hat child does not have your blood. Father Benedict loved me like the son he—”

  “Father Benedict?” interrupted Angel.

  “What’s wrong, Angel? Do you know him?”

  “No, no, I don’t know him. It’s only that you’re telling me about a man called Benedict who fathered you and he was not your father; meanwhile, I’m mothering a son called Benedict and I am not his mother.”

  “Eh?”

  “Eh!”

  “Perhaps God has moved in a mysterious way to bring me to meet you and order a cake.”

  Angel contemplated this idea. “Perhaps. But what can His purpose be?”

  Dieudonné laughed. “God will reveal His purpose only when He is ready!”

  “You’re right. Please continue with your story, because so far it sounds like a very big international adventure.”

  “Okay. So Father Benedict was helping me by making enquiries to try to find my family, although it was difficult. By then many years had already passed since I’d been with them in Uvira. And at the time we became separated I was still small and I didn’t know my mother’s name. You know we Rwandans don’t have a family name; there can be mother, father and six children, and no two of those eight will share a common name. In fact, by the time Father Benedict began to help me, I could no longer remember the name my parents had given me because the nuns in Lubumbashi had given me a new name: Dieudonné. It means God-given.”

  He paused in his story to sip more tea and finish the last of his cake. Angel took his plate into the kitchen and cut another thick slice for him.

  “So anyway, Father Benedict got news that two girls who might be my sisters were living in Nairobi. By then he had learned that my father had been called Professor Kayibanda at the university, and that my name had been Tharcisse. So he managed to get papers for me with the name Kayibanda Tharcisse Dieudonné, and through the Church I got a scholarship to go and study accounting in Nairobi. I found those two girls, and they were not in fact my sisters. Eh, that was a very sad day for me! Anyway, I stayed in Nairobi for three years until I qualified. In that time I got to know other Rwandans living there, and one of them was convinced that he had met one of my brothers in Dar es Salaam. He said he had even been to my brother’s house in Dar and found him living there with my mother.”

  “So of course you had to go to Dar yourself.”

  “Exactly. I went to the place where the man who was supposed to be my brother was supposed to be working, but they told me there that he had left some months before. They thought he had gone somewhere inland, but nobody knew exactly where. I went to the place where he was supposed to have lived with my mother, but the people there didn’t know where they had gone.”

  “Eh! That was a very difficult time for you.”

  “Very.” Dieudonné shook his head. “Anyway, I took a job in Dar doing the accounts for an Indian gentleman’s businesses, and on weekends and holidays I travelled to almost every town in Tanzania. Babati. Tarime. Mbeya. Tunduru. Iringa.” With each town he named, he gestured in the air as if pointing to its location on a large map suspended from the ceiling between them. “Everywhere! I did that for nearly four years, but my family was not there.”

  Angel tutted sympathetically as Dieudonné ate some cake and swallowed the last of his tea. She wanted to ask him if he had been to her home town of Bukoba on the shores of Lake Victoria, but she knew it would be wrong to direct his story towards herself.

  “Anyway, by that time it was 1995. The genocide here was over, and many Rwandans in exile were coming home. I hoped that maybe my family would be among them, so I came home, too. I went to the UN High Commission for Refugees and gave them all the information I knew. I never heard anything from them until Monday morning this week …” Tears welled up in Dieudonné’s eyes. He reached for a wad of toilet paper from his inside jacket pocket, tore off a length and dabbed at his eyes.

  “Forgive me,” he said.

  “There is nothing to forgive you for,” assured Angel. “There’s no shame in a man shedding tears. If a man doesn’t cry when he needs to, those tears that have not been cried out can boil in his body until he explodes like one of the volcanoes in the Virunga Mountains. But I’m going to leave you here to cry the tears that you need to cry while I make some more tea for us.”

  When Angel came back from the kitchen she saw that her guest had composed himself enough to finish his second slice of cake. Fortunately the cake from which his two slices had come was on the tray that she now carried in from the kitchen, together with their fresh tea. She cut him another thick slice and he held out his plate to receive it without offers needing to be made or accepted.

  “Now,” said Angel, settling herself back in her chair and trying to get comfortable despite the restraints of her tight skirt, “tell me about what happened on Monday morning.”

  “A lady from the UNHCR telephoned me at the bank. She told me that they had found my mother and one of my sisters.”

  “Eh!”

  “In fact, they had crossed back into Rwanda from DRC at Cyangugu and they were looking for me. The lady told me that they were on their way to Kigali that very day, and would be reporting to the UNHCR offices by that evening. Immediately I went to my boss at the bank and requested compassionate leave because my family was alive.”

  Again tears welled, and again Dieudonné dabbed. Angel found herself reaching into her brassiere for a tissue and dabbing at her own eyes. Dieudonné calmed himself with a sip of tea before continuing.

  “I went home immediately and prepared my house for their homecoming. I went to Françoise and told her my news, and she agreed to cook tilapia for my family’s dinner and to send someone with it to my house that night. Then I went to the UNHCR offices and waited for my family to come.”

  “That must have been a very difficult wait,” said Angel, now extending the use of her tissue to dabbing at some perspiration that was beginning to form on her brow. “After all those years of looking, finally you were going to find them.”

  Dieudonné blew his nose. “Yes, it was not easy. They gave me a chair to sit on but I couldn’t sit for more than a few seconds. But when I stood, my legs didn’t want to hold me, and I had to sit. But I couldn’t sit still and I had to stand up. Eh! I was up and down like the panty of a prostitute.”

  Angel laughed, and Dieudonné laughed with her. “You must have been very happy and excited.”

  “In fact, no,” said Dieudonné. “What I felt most was fear. I was afraid that they had made a mistake and that the people would not be my mother and my sister. And I was also afraid that I wouldn’t recognise my mother. I had been such a small boy when I had last seen her. But in fact, as soon as my mother stepped into the UNHCR compound I knew it was her, and she told me that she had seen my father’s face in mine the very minute that she saw me. I was so relieved! Of course my sister and I didn’t know each other, but we couldn’t stop smiling at each other and crying.”

  “Eh, Dieudonné, you have told me a very happy story!”

  “Yes. And it’s only this week that it became a happy story. Last week my story would still have been a sad one.”

  They drank tea and ate cake in silence for a few moments, both of them thinking about how suddenly sadness and happiness can change places. It was Angel who broke the silence.

  “And what about your other siblings?”

  “My one brother is late and the other is still lost; we will continue to look for him. My other sister was violated by some soldiers and she gave birth, but the baby was ill and then my sister became ill and they’re both late now.”

  Angel heard the word that he was not saying.

  He finished his third slice of cake. “So, Angel, I’ve come to order a cake because on Sunday afternoon my friends will come to my house to meet my family and help me to welcome them home. One of my father’s former colleagues from the university will travel here from Butare to attend the party, and he’ll bring his daughter who played with my sister when they were
small. That will be a good surprise for both of them.”

  “For sure it will be a very happy party. I can make the cake on Saturday and deliver it on Sunday morning on the way to church. If you’re in the same road as Françoise, I’ll find your house easily.”

  “You’re very kind, Angel.”

  Angel laughed. “You may think that I’m kind; meanwhile, I’m curious! I want to shake the hand of the mother and the sister that you’ve told me about in your story, so it’s not a matter of kindness that I’ll bring the cake to your house.”

  “Then I must thank you for your curiosity.” Dieudonné reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out a piece of paper. “Here, I’ve drawn a picture of the cake that I’d like you to make. Down the left side here it’s red, and down the right side here it’s green, and in the middle it’s yellow.”

  “Like the flag of Rwanda.”

  “Yes, but our flag has a black R for Rwanda in the middle of the yellow. On the cake that R is still there, but it’s part of the word KARIBUNI, which is written going downwards on the yellow.”

  “Eh, you are a clever somebody, Dieudonné! This will be the perfect cake to say ‘Welcome home’ to your family!”

  Just then Titi arrived back from one of her frequent trips to the Lebanese supermarket to buy flour, eggs, sugar and margarine for Angel. She seemed a little agitated and Angel suspected that Titi wanted to speak to her alone, so she declared that Dieudonné had already been away from his family for quite long enough, and that they should complete the formalities of the Cake Order Form as quickly as possible.

  As soon as Dieudonné had left the apartment, Angel went into her bedroom to release herself from her tight skirt. When she emerged dressed in a comfortable kanga and T-shirt, Titi broke the news that she had just been told by Leocadie: Modeste’s other girlfriend had gone into labour. Modeste would go after work at the end of the day to see if she had delivered yet. Very soon the sex of the baby would be known, and that could determine which of the mothers Modeste would choose.

  Angel longed to rush upstairs to share the news with Amina at once, but the children would be home from school very soon, and lunch must be prepared for them. Titi put some water to boil in a big pot on the stove and then began to slice some onions. Angel set a smaller pot of water to boil and started chopping some cassava leaves into very small pieces.