Many years ago, I encountered fire. This happened when I hooked up with a born again lady during the mid 90s. My intention was to be united with her in a bid to become one in holy matrimony. You see, Aggrey and I had decided to convert from gold-diggers whose sole interest were to milk us until our pockets were as dry as the Kalahari desert itself. That is why we decided to chase after the ladies whose priorities included fasting and praying from Friday to Monday morning.   So, my new lady escorted me to this posh and exclusive joint at the hill top of Kiyovu. I had managed to convince this lady to abandon the idea of fasting so that we could share a romantic dinner amidst soft music and a cool breeze sweeping across Kigali. Everything was on track until I mistakenly poured chili sauce made in Chandrapur in India. And after a seemingly long prayer led by miss born again herself, I hungrily took in a mouthful of the very hot rice. As the Chandrapur products sank in effectively, I realized that my mouth had become an oven.   What I really needed at this point was a bucket of ice cubes pronto! But since I happened to call myself a total man, I had to swallow the pain by all means. But as I swallowed, tears flowed from nowhere. They flowed so furiously that you would have mistaken me for being the real source of river Mississippi.   After several pleas from my date for an explanation, I told her some nice words that must have sounded like jazz music in her ears. That is why she had no choice but to give me a serious hug and several chants of halleluiahs. She was singing and praising because I had just told her why the tears were flowing. I had confessed to her that my tears always flowed whenever I remembered how my dear lord and savior suffered on the cross over two thousand years ago.  What she never realized is that the tears were as a result of those damn hot products from Chandrapur. As she hugged and congratulated me over my testimony, my mouth refused to cool down. Instead, the heat continued to mount until I could no longer breathe properly. So I told miss born again that I had to rush to the "Gents” so as to wipe away my tears. She offered to escort me but I assured her that I would be fine. Besides, I wanted to find a quiet place where I could meditate for a few minutes.  That quiet place where I went for meditation was not the toilets. No way! Instead I sneaked myself all the way to the counter at the bar. I looked around like a thief. I did not want anyone to recognize me since I was supposed to be a born again person. So, instead of meditating about the cross, I found my mouth ordering for some very anti-born again products. I found myself asking the barman to get me a very cold bottle of Amstel. As my mouth continued to behave like an oven, I proceeded to attack the unpleasant heat with the ice cold frothy Amstel beer. I gulped down the first bottle before downing a second and a third one.   All this time, my date was left alone waiting for me to return from my meditation exercise. After several minutes, she decided to look for me. During those days, there were no mobile phones. Once someone disappeared from a place, you would just have to trust God that he or she would re-surface. So, my date waited until she became impatient. She then mounted a search for me. First place was at the toilets. She searched but found nobody. She continued to search in the parking area but still could not find her future breadwinner. Just as she was about to give up, she heard a familiar voice emanating from the bar side. That voice belonged to none other than me. The voice was not singing out hymns from gospel books. Instead the voice was booming out with words like "Ndombolo ya solo” and "Motema n’angai”. As I hit those very high notes, I kept gulping beers like there was no tomorrow. My date was shocked. I believe that was the very last time I ever saw her…