Being Jewish in central Africa

After work today, I headed to the Kimironko market (one of the largest markets in Kigali) to help a friend who's preparing to host a Seder on Sunday night. (The Seder is a traditional, ritual feast that marks the beginning of Passover.) We had already decided on a menu so we were going to the market to pick up all the ingredients we needed. The experience ended up being hilarious.

We entered the market through the fabric and clothing section and had the bright idea of having kippah made with traditional Rwandan chitenge. So we stopped at one of the stalls of a fabric vendor and began the process. Since Judaism isn't exactly common in Rwanda, no one had any idea what we wanted, so we had to describe exactly how we wanted the "petits chapeaux" (little hats) to be made. What followed was a conversation that at times included as many as six to eight people, drawings on the back of a random piece of cardboard, random scraps of fabric from the nearby sewing machine, elaborate hand motions, demonstrations and measurements on various persons' heads and much hilarity. After at least half an hour of this, when we were convinced the tailors might have some vague idea of what we wanted, we left with the understanding that we would return in a bit to see a sample.

While waiting for the sample to be made, we headed toward the food section of the market. The first item we decided to look for was chicken liver for chopped liver. When we finally found the chicken section, at the opposite end of the market, of course, we picked a stall and began to try to ask for liver. After stopping several passers-by to ask "do you speak French?", "do you speak English?", "what is the word for 'liver' in Kinyarwanda?", etc., we were able to communicate what we were looking for to the man who owned the stall. He then pulled a chicken out of his small cooler and pointed at it, telling us that the liver was inside the chicken. I'm sure he thought we were crazy when we then explained that we just wanted the liver, without the rest of the chicken. After more multi-lingual conversation, he said that he would have the liver by ten o'clock on Sunday morning.

The next venture took us to the produce section where we quickly obtained a following of half a dozen people. We began with potatoes, which we wanted for roasting. We were specifically looking for small potatoes (the size of red potatoes in the U.S.), and before long had a dozen men running around the potato section of the market, picking out the smallest potatoes they could find for our approval. Eighty potatoes later, we moved on to finding leeks for potato leek soup. One of the young men who was following us literally ran from us when he realized what we were looking for and came back a few minutes later with the largest leeks we'd seen. Soon a number of other people were running around and coming up to us with various vegetables - "cilantro?" "tomatoes?" "onions?" "legumes?" Before long, we were seeing vegetables and spices that we'd never seen before in Rwanda and just buying them because we were so surprised to find them and because we were so impressed with the vendors' commitment to finding something we would buy. Soon we had two large bags filled with potatoes, tomatoes, avocado, leeks, fennel, basil, green beans, mint and who knows what else. Note that finding all of this produce involved translating between English, French and Kinyarwanda and bartering for prices, both of which added quite a bit of time and quite a few laughs to the shopping experience.

We headed back across the market to check on the "petits chapeaux" and found two samples. The first sample - a traditional Muslim hat - must have been a guess based on our comment that the hats were for a religious festival. The second one - a large disc that vaguely resembled an oversized beanie - was closer. More hand gestures, demonstrations and explanations, and we left with a plan to return on Sunday morning to pick up fifteen of the final product.

I'm sure the written description isn't nearly as amusing as the entire experience; I really wish we could have caught it all on camera. It was absolutely hilarious, and, typical of life in Rwanda, each thing took so much more effort than it seemed it should have. But we either found or made plans to return for most things on our list, and I'll now admit that being Jewish in Rwanda is no simple task.