two girls and a gallon of kerosene

the fun never stops in my life! with my new and wonderful home came a new flatmate and friend - and now we're playing house - it's so much fun! part of me is a bit gutted that I did actually have loads of things that could have been really useful for the new home - at the same time it's cool to get to buy it all over again - half the fun is choosing your things.
because our favourite spot in the entire house is actually outside we bought a couple of kerosene lamps when we went to T2000 - a chinese sells-everything shop where we got blankets (the nights in kigali can be quite chilly) and a kettle (tea in this country ROCKS). so we spent all afternoon anticipating the evening on the terrace with the new lamps and how good they would look - we only needed the kerosene.
so off we went to the petrol station after work - we needed to get cash power (electricity) anyway and that is purchased at the petrol station. we enquired about kerosene - and got a blank look (they call it petrol here and actual petrol is essence - took a good hour to figure that one out) - so we just pulled our lamps out of the bag and pointed - big smiles (and a look of - do they think we sell the stuff by the decilitre?) but no - no kerosene here - you have to go to the other neighbourhood. off we trudged down the road to the next petrol station where a lovely young lad looked at us and went, can I help you? yes - do you have kerosene - again; what do you want? pull out the lamps - and his face broke into a smile: 'don't you have electricity where you live?!' as a matter of fact at that precise point in time we didn't but we explained about the garden and the romanticism in the petrol lamps - he didn't stop smiling but sort of semi-understood (I think) - but didn't sell kerosene - so we went to the bigger petrol station across the road where there was a kerosene pump. so we enquired with the dude who sat next to the pump - he didn't speak a word of french or english and generally looked like he'd inhaled slightly too much of the fumes... not sure what his job was - probably guarding the pump. they were also selling big yellow canisters of stuff and we asked whether this was kerosene - the guy just went, no, no, this is petrol - so we waited for the other guy who could help us - he eventually turned up and explained that petrol was kerosene and that the 1 gallon container was the smallest they had unless we had our own container which we didn't. so we ended up buying something like 20 litres of kerosene because we absolutely could not wait another day to light our lovely lamps... and now we have kerosene to last us for the entire 2 years I think!

this morning I was telling my colleague and she started laughing - hahaha - 2 muzungus buying kerosene, how funny is that! - turns out kerosene is for rural people - here it's electricity and for the event of a power cut you have rechargeable lamps - not very romantic - but I guess a symbol of progress and prosperity. I'm sure this was not the last time we did something that will seem bizarre to the rwandans - and I'm happy to provide a good story for the dinner table!