Baking Cakes in Kigali (3 page)

“I only know about these ideas myself because I spent some time in Germany with my husband when he was there for his studies,” confided Angel. “The women in Europe have many modern ideas.”

“I believe so. And is it not true that too many ideas drive wisdom away? Angel, I’m relieved that no harm will be done to your girls! I was confused to think that your neighbours are lesbians. They’re simply volunteers.”

It was clear to Angel that Mrs Wanyika found the idea of volunteers—disconcerting to her as that was—less alarming than the idea of feminists. She looked for a fresh direction for their conversation, and, glancing at the coffee table between them, cried,
“Eh!
What am I thinking, Mrs Ambassador! Your cup is empty and cold! Let me make some more tea!”

Mrs Wanyika began to protest as Angel collected up their cups and saucers. But just as she did so, somebody called from the open doorway.

“
Hodi!
May we come in?”

“
Karibuni!
Welcome!” greeted Angel as a young woman and a girl entered the apartment. The woman’s beautiful bright
kangas
, patterned in orange, deep yellow and turquoise, swathed her entire body, including her head, so that only her face, hands and feet were visible. The girl, lighter-skinned than the woman, wore a red and yellow short-sleeved dress that ended half-way down her calves, while a bright orange scarf swirled over her head and throat. Angel had always thought that both mother and daughter were thin enough to make a pencil look overweight. She introduced her guests to one another in Swahili.

“Mrs Ambassador, these are my friends from the apartment above. Amina and Safiya, this is Mrs Wanyika, wife of the Tanzanian Ambassador here.”

All the guests shook hands and exchanged greetings. Then Mrs Wanyika said, “Amina, you’re speaking Swahili, but I don’t think you’re from any country that I know. Where is your home?”

Amina’s smile was beautiful, a flash of bright white against the darkness of her skin. “I’m Somali,
Bibi
, from Mogadishu.”

“Ah, Mogadishu!” declared Mrs Wanyika. “That’s where those American helicopters were shot down, isn’t it? How many Americans died, Amina? Eighteen?”

“Something like that,
Bibi.
And a thousand Somalis were killed, too. But I don’t tell many people here that I’m from there. There are people who say that the Americans refused to come here to help Rwanda because of what had happened to them in Mogadishu. It could happen that Rwandans could blame me for the Americans not coming here, or it could happen
that Americans could hate me for their soldiers dying in my country.”

“These things are very complicated,” said Mrs Wanyika, and the way that she said it—without seeming to give it any thought or inviting any further discussion—made Angel suspect that it was her standard diplomatic response in conversations concerning political matters.

Amina smiled. “Yes,
Bibi.
But in fact I have two nationalities. My husband has Italian citizenship because his father was Italian. So I’m Somali and Italian. I like to tell
Wazungu
that I’m an Italian. They don’t know how to arrange their faces when I tell them that!”

The three women laughed, and Safiya smiled shyly at the adults’ laughter.

“Let me guess. Is your husband here with the Italians who are building the roads?”

“Yes,
Bibi
, he’s in charge.”

“And Safiya goes to the same school as the children,” said Angel.

Safiya’s smile was as bright as her mother’s. “Grace and Faith are my best friends,” she declared.

“Eh, but why are we just standing here? Let me make tea for us all!”

“Oh, Angel, I’m sorry, we cannot stay for tea,” said Amina. “We’re on our way to Electrogaz to buy power. We just came here to tell you that when we looked at our meter downstairs, we saw that your power is almost finished also. Shall we buy some more for you while we’re there?”

“Thank you, Amina, that’s very kind! But Baba-Grace has already planned to buy power after he’s finished at KIST this afternoon.”

“
Sawa
, Angel. Mrs Wanyika, I’ve enjoyed meeting you.” “Amina, I’m leaving now myself,” said Mrs Wanyika. “Unfortunately I can’t stay for more tea, Angel. Amos and I
have been invited for cocktails at the Swedish Embassy this evening, and I must go and get myself ready. My driver is waiting outside. Can we give you two a lift to Electrogaz?”

Amina clapped her hands together. “Thank you,
Bibi.”

“Angel, I’ll send my driver for the cake next Friday afternoon. I’ve enjoyed my tea with you so much. Thank you.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs Ambassador. Please come to see me any time. In my house it’s tea time all the time.”

“Thank you, Angel. And once or twice a year we have parties for Tanzanians and friends of Tanzania at the embassy. I’ll make sure that you get an invitation.”

“Thank you, Mrs Ambassador. I’ll look forward to that.”

Alone in the apartment, Angel discarded her tight, smart outfit in favour of a comfortable T-shirt and
kanga
before gathering up her good china from the coffee table and taking it through to the kitchen. She filled the sink with warm soapy water, thinking as she did so about the deeply disappointing cake that she would have to bake for the Ambassador’s wife. It was not going to be a cake that would inspire people to come and order their own cakes from her—unless, of course, there were some
Wazungu
at Mrs Wanyika’s party who did not know any better. No, it was going to be a cake that would try to hide its face in shame. The best that she could hope for was that nobody would ask who had made it. Or, if they did feel inspired to ask, perhaps they would see from the Wanyikas’ wedding photo—the one of the couple cutting their wedding cake—that Angel had been obliged simply to copy the original cake, no matter how unsightly that had been.

Having washed the cups and saucers, she set about scrubbing the milk saucepan, finding it rather satisfying to take her disappointment out on it. Pius had warned her that morning that she was expecting way too much from the visit, but she had assured him that he was wrong: Mrs Wanyika might not
be a big person in the way that Ambassador Wanyika was, but she was a woman who entertained; and, as a woman who entertained, she had the power to tuck a great deal of money into Angel’s brassiere. The afternoon could have gone quite differently: Mrs Wanyika could have ordered a beautiful cake with an intricate design or an original shape and lots of colours; it would have taken centre stage at the Ambassador’s party, and nobody there—surely almost all of them big people—would have left without knowing that Angel Tungaraza was the only person in Kigali to go to for a cake for a special occasion.

She set the pot on the draining board to dry and looked at her watch. Pius would be home from work before too long, and it would soon be time to start preparing the family’s evening meal. In a short while she would go upstairs to fetch the girls from Sophie’s apartment, and she would send Titi to fetch the boys from their friends’ house down the road. But before all of that, she had some time alone to enjoy one of her greatest pleasures, something that would surely go a long way to undoing the terrible disappointment that the afternoon had brought.

Drying her hands on a tea towel, she went into her bedroom and took from a shelf in the wardrobe a white plastic bag, inside which lay a bundle tightly encased in bubble-wrap. Back in the kitchen, she placed the bundle on the counter, and her fingers began to search for, and unpeel, the strips of sticky-tape that bound it. She did this slowly, prolonging the pleasure, building the anticipation.

The parcel had come to her all the way from Washington, DC, via a neighbour in the compound who returned there regularly to see his wife and children. Ken Akimoto was happy to act as a courier for Angel, and his wife never seemed to object to being sent to the shops on Angel’s behalf. In fact, June Akimoto regularly enclosed a card for Angel, usually to
thank her for being a friend to Ken or for baking such beautiful cakes for him. And here was one of those cards now.

Snatching it quickly from inside the bundle, Angel spun around and leaned back against the counter to read it. She had managed to take it without yet seeing what was in the bundle: her pleasure would be all the greater for the delay. This time, June was writing to express her admiration for the cake that Angel had made for Ken’s fiftieth birthday party, a party that had been especially loud, Angel remembered, on account of its disco theme. What a great idea it had been—June wrote, having seen Ken’s photos—to make, for a man who so loved karaoke, a cake in the shape of a microphone. Angel remembered the cake with pride. It had not been one of her most colourful cakes, of course, although a cake for a disco party should really have had swirls of many different bright colours; after all, nobody had been afraid of colours back in the era of disco, not even
Wazungu.
But more than just a disco party, it had been a party to celebrate Ken’s birthday—and it was difficult for anybody who knew Ken to think of him without a microphone in his hand, occasionally singing into it himself, but mostly pressing it on one or another of his guests. So Angel had made the cake in the shape of a microphone lying on the cake-board, in black and grey with a small box positioned on it to make it look like it belonged to a particular TV station, like those microphones that were always being pushed towards the faces of big people at important events. The box on this microphone—red on one side, green on the other, blue on top—carried on all three sides the word
KEN
in white above a large number 50, also in white. Ken had reported afterwards that everybody at the party had praised it; and now here was praise from Washington, too.

After reading June’s card twice, Angel knew that the moment had come for her to turn around and savour—slowly—
the contents of the bundle. Ken had delivered it to her earlier that afternoon, on his way home from the airport, and she had resisted opening it immediately, because Mrs Wanyika would be arriving soon. As she had put it away in her cupboard, she had thought that perhaps she would delay opening it until the following day, because—surely—the commission of a beautiful cake from the wife of her country’s Ambassador to Rwanda was going to provide more than enough pleasure for one day. But now she was very grateful that she had the bundle to lift her mood this afternoon.

She turned around. Gently, carefully, lest any of the contents should fall from the counter and spill over the kitchen floor, she peeled back the folds of bubble-wrap. What treasures lay inside! Yes, here were the colours that she had asked for: red, pink, yellow, blue, green, black—all in powder form, of course, not like the one or two bottles of liquid food colour that were available at the Lebanese supermarket in town; those were not at all modern—some big blocks of marzipan, and, as always, June had included some new things for Angel to try. This time there were three tubes that looked rather like thick pens. She picked one up and examined it: written along its length were the words
Gateau Graffito
, and underneath, written in uppercase letters, was the word
red.
Reaching for the other two pens—one marked
green
and the other
black
—she saw a small printed sheet lying at the bottom of the bubble-wrap nest. It explained that these pens were filled with food colour, and offered a picture showing how they could be used to write fine lines or thick lines, depending on how you held them. It also guaranteed that the contents were kosher.
Eh
, now her cakes were going to be more beautiful than ever!

This conviction made her feel emotional, and tears began to well in her eyes. Pulling at the neck of her T-shirt with her left hand, she reached with her right hand for the tissue that
was tucked inside her brassiere—next to the deposit for Mrs Wanyika’s cake—and dabbed at her eyes. Then she became aware that her face was beginning to feel extremely hot, and she extended the dabbing to her forehead and cheeks before picking up the card from June and using it as a fan.

Really, this Change business was not dignified at all.

THE BUILDING IN
which the Tungaraza family lived clung to the side of the hill over whose crest the city centre sprawled, so that the apartments that were on the ground floor at the front of the building—as was the Tungarazas’—were one storey up at the back as the hill sloped steeply away at the rear. Angel’s work table stood in the corner of her living room, which was at the back of the apartment, in front of a large window which afforded a good view out over the wall encircling the compound. From there she could watch, as she worked, the busy comings and goings of people and vehicles up and down the hill, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the children as they played down in the compound’s yard.

Today the boys were kicking their football around noisily, while Faith and Safiya were quietly and patiently braiding Grace’s hair into neat cornrows. Titi had gone down to the yard to bring their washing in off the line, and was chatting there with Eugenia, who cleaned for the Egyptian upstairs.