Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

  Then she became aware that something very important had happened. She had been sitting out here next to the same night-blooming plant that grew in Vinas’s garden in Arusha, and she had not been thinking about her daughter. She had not felt overwhelmed by her death. She sniffed the air. Yes, the plant had indeed been exhaling its perfume as she sat there. But the scent had not undone her.

  “Eh!” she said to herself, unsure if it was right or wrong to have let go of some of her grief. She took off her glasses to give them a clean, but saw that they did not need it, and put them back on again. She closed her eyes to get a better sense of what she was feeling. Yes, she was still very sad. But somehow, in a small way, part of her despair had changed. It had turned to hope.

  When she opened her eyes, Kalisa was emerging from the total darkness and approaching her with a small child dressed in reeking rags. The little girl was running her small fingers around the inside of the bowl before licking them clean. She handed the bowl to Angel with a big smile.

  “Murakoze cyane. Thank you very much,” she said.

  THERE WERE TWO things that pleased Angel the following Sunday morning, and one thing that jumped around anxiously in her mind like a monkey in a wire cage.

  The first thing that pleased her was that, on the way home from church that morning, the family had seen a man at the side of the road selling bags of senene. They knew the senene had finally arrived in Kigali for their second visit of the year because, for the past two nights, they had seen them swarming around the streetlights on the tarred road next to their compound. Last night they had taken the paraffin lamp that they kept for use during power failures, and they had put it outside in the dark yard to attract the bright green grasshoppers. Daniel and Moses had had a great deal of fun—though very little success—trying to catch the insects in their hands and put them into the empty Toss jar that Faith held for them with a piece of cardboard covering the top. Faith did not mind holding a jar full of bugs, and she did not mind sliding the cardboard aside for another to be put inside—but whenever one of them flew into her or actually landed on her, she would scream and drop the plastic jar, allowing all of them to escape. At last Angel and Pius had called a halt to the children’s fun by summoning them in, concerned that the lamp might be attracting mosquitoes as well as grasshoppers. At that stage there were only eight senene in the bottle: one for each member of the household.

  But now they had bought a whole bagful of them, and their lunch was going to be delicious! Pius had pulled off all the wings and legs for Angel, and she had already simmered them in salted water for half an hour. The final step in preparing them would be to fry them, but Titi would do that just before the meal so that they would be crispy and piping-hot.

  Alone in the apartment now, Angel looked at her watch. What was she going to do for the next half hour or so? Jenna had gone to church with them that morning, and when they had found the senene-seller on the way home, Angel had offered to cook some grasshoppers for her—but Jenna would not hear of it. If she had accepted, Angel could have been busying herself with their preparation right now. But unfortunately she would have to find something else to occupy her time.

  Without wanting to be there, she found herself standing at her work table, looking down at the cake that she was to deliver that afternoon. No cake had ever disturbed her quite as much as this one. Okay, it was not the cake itself that disturbed her. In fact, it was a very beautiful cake indeed: a round vanilla sponge in two layers, iced in pure white with a sprinkling of tiny red roses with green leaves across the top. What disturbed her was the occasion for which the cake had been ordered: the cutting of a girl.

  Of course, she had heard of this practice, although it was not part of her own culture. Catherine had told her—in response to Angel’s discreet enquiry—that it was not something that happened in Rwanda; yet it seemed that some groups of people who practised it at home in their own countries were also practising it here. It was not an idea that Angel liked at all, and she would certainly not choose it for Grace or Faith. To cut out and stitch up a girl’s private parts to make them look more attractive to a man was surely not a reasonable thing to do. And people said that it made sex painful for the girl when she grew up, so that she would not be tempted to do it with anyone other than her husband. But what kind of husband would be able to achieve pleasure for himself, knowing that what he was doing was causing his wife physical pain? There were many complications from the practice—even from the less severe form, where less of the girl was cut—and if the girl did not die from an infection, her baby could easily die during delivery if there was nobody there to cut her parts open again to let it out.

  So why had Angel agreed to make this cake? She was still not entirely sure, although she knew that her reasons were complicated. Okay, she could have refused. She had refused to bake a cake for Captain Calixte, because if he became her customer, professional ethics would not have allowed her to warn Sophie about his intentions. But in this case, who was she going to warn that the girl was going to be cut? The girl herself? She had no right to do that. The Rwandan authorities? She could not do that to the girl’s family. And in any case, she had been sworn to secrecy even before she had agreed to make the cake, so she would not have been able to tell anyone, even if she had refused the order. Eh, this would be a very difficult ethical dilemma for the Girls Who Mean Business to discuss!

  But something else gnawed at Angel like a monkey chewing away at the bars that restrained it: was the reason why she had accepted the order because she was … curious? She had been invited not just as a cake-maker but also as a witness. Was her curiosity about the idea of cutting more important to her than the girl’s pain? Eh! That was a question she might not want to know the answer to. She must stop thinking about it immediately, otherwise she was going to give herself a headache.

  She went and sat on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table and gave her glasses a good polish with the edge of her kanga. As she did so, she felt heat rising up her throat to her face. She closed her eyes and examined the sensation: it was not because she felt ashamed about what she was going to do that afternoon, and it was not because she was bothered by her unclear motives. No, she was simply flashing again. Really, this was becoming very tedious indeed—although, in truth, it had been happening less and less. She must remember to ask Dr Rejoice exactly how long it was going to go on. Surely a woman could not be stuck in the Change for ever? Surely she would eventually arrive at a point where she had … well … Changed? Angel mopped the perspiration from her hot face with a tissue and decided to think about something happier.

  Her other reason to be delighted that day—apart from the senene—was that very soon Grace and Benedict would be home after spending two nights away. She cast her mind back a few days and recalled how it had come about that they had gone away for the weekend.

  She had just come back into the building after going out to buy sugar at Leocadie’s shop, where Leocadie had shown her the beautiful wedding veil that the sewing class in Biryogo had made for her. The cloth that they had used was the bed-net that Sophie and Catherine had given her when Beckham was born, and that Leocadie had never used.

  “They told me my baby must sleep under that net every night,” Leocadie had said, shaking her head. “Eh, these Wazungu! Do they think that mosquitoes live only in our bedrooms and bite us only when we’re sleeping?”

  “Wazungu are very afraid of malaria,” Angel had answered.

  In truth, one or two Wazungu had succeeded in persuading her at least to consider putting nets above the children’s bunk beds; and when she had discussed the idea with Dr Rejoice during Benedict’s last bout of malaria, the doctor had told her something that had convinced her that it was a very good idea indeed. Dr Rejoice had explained that, if a mosquito that was not carrying malaria bit Benedict while he had malaria, that mosquito now carried malaria because of Benedict. Then that mosquito could take Benedict’s malaria and give it to somebody who was too s
ick to fight the disease—somebody who already had AIDS, for example. That had made Angel see malaria in a new light—and she did not want anybody in her family to be responsible for somebody dying because their body was weak with AIDS. It was not just a matter of protecting her family from malaria; it was a matter of protecting the health of others in the community as well. She had gone the very next day to the pharmacy to ask about the bed-nets that Dr Rejoice had told her to ask for—the ones that had the special mosquitocide on them—but they were much too expensive. The pharmacist had told her that they were priced high for Wazungu, because only Wazungu bought them. She had resolved to buy some in Bukoba when they went home for their holidays at the end of the year, because they would be cheaper there.

  But she had not told Leocadie any of this, because she had not wanted the girl to feel badly about using the bed-net to make her wedding veil—which was, after all, very beautiful.

  As Angel had come back into the building with her bag of sugar, Omar and his daughter had been coming down the stairs. She had already met Efra, who had spent some time in the Tungarazas’ apartment watching a video with Grace and Faith. She was a slight girl who could have been gorgeous had it not been for the replica of her father’s enormous nose dominating her face. Unfortunately, it was not possible to forget about her nose by not looking at her face, because her voice seemed to come out of it when she spoke, in the same way that her father’s did. But at least her laugh came out of her mouth—and did not make people think about animals that were mating.

  “Angel!” Omar had trumpeted. “I’m so glad that we saw you. Efra has decided that she would like to go and see the gorillas this weekend, and we wondered if a couple of your children would like to join us?”

  “Eh, Omar, that is a very nice idea, thank you. But it’s very expensive to see those gorillas …”

  “Oh, it’ll be my treat! It won’t cost you anything; I’ll cover the cost of the permits, the hotel, everything. It’ll be my pleasure. And Efra would love to experience it with other children. Please say yes!”

  “How can I say no to that, Omar? Thank you very much. Let me speak to them tonight and see who would like to go.”

  “Just two of them, Angel, if that’s not going to cause too many arguments. There won’t be room for more in the Land Rover. Sophie will be joining us, too.”

  “Sophie?” Angel’s surprise had been obvious.

  Omar’s laugh had reverberated around the entrance hall and hurtled out of the door, where it had stopped a boy who was walking down the road with boiled eggs to sell. He had looked towards the entrance of the building with both surprise and fear, as though a fully-grown hippopotamus might lumber out of the doorway and attack him at any moment. Angel had noticed Efra’s embarrassed, downcast eyes.

  “Sophie has forgiven me since we spoke about our little misunderstanding concerning a certain spice. Thank you so much for explaining things to her, Angel. I know a volunteer can’t afford a trip to the gorillas, so I offered to take her with us at my expense to compensate for any embarrassment that I caused her.”

  “Eh, you are a very generous somebody, Omar!”

  “Not at all. No need to let me know which two of your children are coming. I’ve booked two suites at the Hotel Muhabura in Ruhengeri; boys will share with me, girls with Efra and Sophie. We’ll leave after school on Friday afternoon and come back Sunday morning. I’ll have them back before lunch, guaranteed.”

  That evening, Angel had discussed Omar’s offer with Pius before saying anything to the children. They had agreed that it would be best for them to choose which two would go, rather than to let the children decide amongst themselves. It would be best, they had reasoned, for Grace and Faith to go; they were the eldest, and they had already made friends with Efra. They had told the girls about Omar’s generous offer just before putting them to bed.

  Later that night, when Angel and Pius had turned off the television after the nine o’clock news in English and were about to retire to their room, Faith and Benedict had slipped quietly into the living room.

  “Mama,” Faith had appealed to Angel, “I don’t want to see gorillas.” She had been on the verge of tears. “They are very big, Mama, and I’m still small.”

  “Baba,” Benedict had appealed to Pius, “please let me go instead of Faith! I want to see the gorillas. Please, Baba. Please let me go!”

  And so Grace and Benedict had gone—which was good, Angel and Pius had reasoned after the children had gone back to bed: the eldest two children of their son Joseph would have a small holiday together, and perhaps it would help to create a closer bond between the two.

  Now, sitting on the sofa in her empty apartment and fanning her hot face with a Cake Order Form, Angel waited for them to return. A quick jolt of excitement shot through her as she heard a vehicle drawing to a halt outside the building, but then she recognised the sound of the engine: it was Pius in the red microbus, back from sending emails from his office computer. Upstairs with Safiya, Faith heard the vehicle, too, and ran down the stairs, only to be disappointed when it was not her brother and sister who walked in through the building’s entrance. Both Pius and Faith joined Angel in the living room. No sooner had they sat down than the sound of children’s voices came in from the street. Faith ran to the building’s entrance and was disappointed again: it was Daniel and Moses coming back from the Mukherjees’ with Titi.

  At last, when Faith was nearly out of patience with waiting, and Pius was nearly out of patience with Faith’s restlessness, Grace and Benedict arrived home in a flurry of excitement. Omar, Efra and Sophie came into the Tungarazas’ apartment with them.

  “How was the trip?” asked Pius, shaking Omar’s hand.

  “Excellent!” declared Omar. “Great fun! I think your two enjoyed it, especially Benedict.”

  “He was like a different person,” said Sophie. “I couldn’t believe it, Angel! Normally he’s so quiet, but he hardly stopped talking all day yesterday. He talked to our guide all the way up the mountain, and to one of the trackers all the way down the mountain. Then at the Park headquarters we met a vet who treats the gorillas and we could hardly tear Benedict away from him.”

  Angel was surprised. “What was he talking about?” “You’ll have to ask him,” said Sophie. “They were speaking Swahili.”

  “And did you see any gorillas?” asked Pius.

  “Oh, many,” answered Omar. “How many did we count, Efra?”

  “Eleven,” Efra said through her nose. “But we’re not sure, because we might have counted the same one twice. It’s hard to tell them apart, but the guide knows all their names.” “Eh! They have names?”

  “And, Mama, there was a baby!” said Benedict. “The guide said it was born in July. The mother was sitting on the ground with her back against a tree, and she was holding it just like Leocadie holds Beckham.” Benedict mimed a mother cradling and rocking her baby.

  “Eh!”

  “We stayed in Gisenyi last night,” said Omar. “Your children said they’d never been to Lake Kivu before, so we decided to drive there yesterday after we’d finished with the gorillas, rather than spending another night in Ruhengeri.”

  “Eh, Omar, you’ve been too kind to them!”

  “Not at all. I was happy to treat them, and it was good for Efra to have their company. But let us leave you now and they can tell you all about it themselves. Come, Efra.”

  “Yes, I must go, too,” said Sophie, “if my legs can get me up those stairs. Honestly, Angel, I thought I was fit, but trying to walk on all that slippery vegetation at high altitude really took it out of me. My legs felt like jelly for hours afterwards!”

  A few minutes later, Angel went into the kitchen where Titi was stirring a large pot of ugali to accompany the senene. She carried in her arms the clothes that the children had worn when they had climbed up the mountain to see the gorillas.

  “Just look at these, Titi!”

  “Eh!” Titi stopped stirring and covered her mou
th with both hands, staring with big eyes at the filthy garments. Caked in mud that had hardened, they were stiff like cardboard.

  “Now how are we going to get these clean?” asked Angel.

  Titi thought for a minute, tentatively touching one of the garments. “After lunch I’ll take them outside, Auntie. I think if I hang them on the washing line and hit them, a lot of this mud will fall off.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Then we can rinse them in water to get more of it out, and soak them in Toss until tomorrow morning.”

  “That sounds like a good plan. Eh! But you must see their sneakers! Those I’ve put outside on the balcony. I don’t want to think what those children looked like when they came down from the mountain dressed in these clothes!”

  “Ooh, uh-uh,” said Titi, shaking her head and picking up the wooden spoon again. “I think they looked like the mayibobo in our Dumpster.”

  “Uh-uh!” Angel shook her head. “I hope not.”

  Lunch was indeed delicious, and the family happily tucked in to the ugali and senene as Grace and Benedict told them all about their adventure.

  “We had satellite TV in the hotel,” said Grace. “And we telephoned the kitchen from our room and they brought us tea!”

  “Eh!” said Titi.

  “The big gorilla,” explained Benedict, “the one who’s the boss of the group that we saw, his name is Guhonda. He’s called a silverback because he’s old and the hair on his back is grey.”

  “Like Baba’s?” asked Moses.

  Benedict looked at Pius. “Yes, but on his back. Eh! He was very big, even bigger than Baba.”

  “Were you not afraid?” asked Angel.

  “The gorillas didn’t want to hurt us, Mama; they’re gentle and peaceful.”