two girls and a bag of charcoal...

after the memorial we had to go and do our shopping for the easter brunch/bbq/housewarming - so off to the market we went. first we went to the nyabugongo market (as described in the travel guide) - a bus 'terminal' (i.e. a big dusty field with hundreds of little white mini-vans) and people selling random things. there was one guy who was walking arount trying to sell one tie; that's all he had, one tie - I'll never get it. then there were stalls selling mainly travel equipment, such as suitcases, bags, shoes, t-shirts, mobile phones and music - loud music blaring out of speakers; the bass way too strong for the capacity of the speakers... and everywhere people bustling around, arriving departing; taxis honking their horns and negotiating prices. we walked across the street to the shop-building (a multi-storey building with loads of little shops in it) to find out where the food market was and promplty hit the language barrier; but we managed to find someone who told us the name of the market and the moto-taxi drivers understand names of places and can say the price in french - all you need! so we arrived at the market in the end where we did all our shopping for about 7 quid... amazing! never going to buy fresh produce in the supermarket again! it was fun bargaining with the people and I know for sure that they ripped us off; but to buy a kilo of potatoes for 10p really isn't too bad!
the last thing we bought on the market were the eggs; the woman wanted to sell them for 90 francs a piece but I knew that they were not supposed to cost more than about 80 francs (at least that's what they'd cost in town the last time); so the guy next to the lady sold us 30 eggs for 80 francs a piece without flinching; they were the big brown eggs too, so we thought we'd got a good deal. when we got home and cracked them open we found that the egg yolks were extremely pale and in one case even almost white - so maybe they're eggs from sick chickens, who knows? they tasted fine though ;-))

once we'd managed to buy all the groceries we only had the meat and the charcoal left to buy. so we went down to the german butchery to get the meat for the bbq and to try and find out about where we could buy charcoal. eventually this guy told us that if we walked past the sky hotel along the road that leads into nyamirambo there was a lady on the right hand side who sold charcoal. so off we traipsed with our shopping in search of the charcoal lady; we found her. of course there was the language barrier again but with pointing and gesticulating and smiling I got her to sell me what I wanted; she started filling up the bag whilst christine was standing near the road and me observing the lady - in turn being stared and sniggered at by a bunch of locals; again, we were massively ripped off (but how do you know?) and when we left she said something along the lines of, 100 francs for transport (up the little slope to the street) I just laughed; then she said something in kinyarwanda to the guy carrying the bag and I went - quoi? - and they all started laughing heartily - I will never know what that was all about, but it doesn't matter. then we were faced with the challenge of getting home with all the charcoal - I know: moto-taxi! no problem - christine on one with the meat and the toilet paper swinging in the wind; me on the other one with a bag of charcoal between myself and the driver. the amazing thing is, I was wearing a white t-shirt and managed to not stain it - beat that!