There was a time during the mid 90s when things were very tough for us. Those were the days when Aggrey and I used to work at an NGO situated in Gikondo - Nyenyeri.

Things changed from one boss who was too kind to another who appeared so tough to us, so much that our salaries were deducted. Our only saviour was the newspaper deal.

First we worked under the supervision of a tall pipe-smoking expatriate who used to spend a couple of hours resting in his tent.

At the end of the month, he could call us into his tent to receive our salaries. The cash was not in form of Rwandan francs. No way!

He paid us in nice greenish crispy US dollars. This pattern continued until our boss was recalled to his headquarters.
Apparently, there had been some sort of mini-auditing which revealed an unpleasant top management at the NGO.

This meant that we were going to receive a new boss at the NGO; indeed, within a week, we received a fax alerting us about the new boss.

"You are required to go and pick the new boss from the airport,” read the fax note. Aggrey and I did not know what to expect but we had a number of questions. Would the new boss be as considerate as our fired expatriate?

Would he also forget and give us double salaries during the month? Would he forget that he had given us salary advances during the course of the month?

Anyways, all we had to do was to wait and pray. So, Aggrey and I jumped into the NGO Land cruiser and headed for the airport. While at the airport, we lifted a placard with the names of our new boss "Mr. Smith.”

We waited for almost one hour but there was no sign of Mr. Smith. Passengers walked out until there was no one left in the lounge.

We were about to leave for our Gikondo office when we were approached by a stranded lady. She looked at us straight in the eyes and asked "Are you the guys from the Gikondo NGO?” We affirmatively answered.

That is when she proceeded to blast us, "Then why did you bring a placard with the names of a man? Were you not asked to come and pick Mrs. Smith?”

Ooops! Aggrey and I had obviously forgotten to check whether our new boss was male or female. Apparently we had started our new life on wrong footing.

All the way from the Airport to Gikondo, our new boss was just cursing, abusing and was almost at the verge of slapping us.

"You guys are worthless! I’ll have you fired at once!” Things had become elephant-ish for us. We had to find a way of smoothing ourselves into her cruel heart. That would include such things as bootlicking and working extra hours.

In order for us to survive this hard new regime at the NGO, we had to be prepared to boil tea and coffee for our very strict boss.

She immediately made sweeping changes. She cancelled all our allowances. She introduced a payroll – no more cash payments. She religiously reduced all our salaries. This left us very poor indeed.

As our cash supplies were abruptly quashed, we resorted to forced fasting. I call it so because we could not consider ourselves born again Christians.

These born again friends of ours decided to fast in an attempt to defeat the devil. For us, it was because we could not raise some bucks for lunch.

That is why we just hanged around the NGO compound yawning with bouts of serious hunger. When things became even tougher for our stomachs, Aggrey and I began to hatch up a plan.

This time it was real because by hook or crook we had to feed our ailing stomachs, so we sat down and came up with a plan to storm Kigali restaurants and eat food for free.

The hitch of the plan was how this could be achieved. We needed a bunch of fake keys and a couple of newspapers. So, Aggrey and I started to search for old and abandoned keys.

We gathered all the old and current newspapers from our boss’s office; some were really dusty but we tried to clean them.

These were the weapons we used in order to get ourselves free lunch. Aggrey and I majestically marched into first class Kigali restaurants where we proceeded to attack the nosh with little mercy.

After cleaning up our plates and glasses, we would beckon the waiters for the bills after which we pretended to scrutinize the amounts as if we were auditing for accuracy.

As the waiters went back, Aggrey and I would place the bunch of fake keys on the table. We would also spread out the old newspapers as if we were reading The Financial Times all the way from London; this made us look millionaires, just back from kyeyo of high sort. 

Once the newspapers and keys were at our tables, Aggrey and I would pretend as if we were going to the washrooms. Then through the backdoor, we would disappear never to be seen again. That is how newspapers saved us from starvation…

E-mail: diaspoman@yahoo.com