My visit to Buja is still on track. The other day my boss, in Kigali where I have a kiraka in his ICT firm, called me to check on progress. “Are we signing up new contracts?” he asked. I answered: “Yes, yes – very many indeed. I assure you that our market share will triple!” The truth of the matter is that Diaspoman had not signed even a single contract. Instead, I was busy blowing away the per diem that I signed for in the name of “Misiyo”. With my dwindling francs, my host, Claude, has been quite generous in terms of wetting my throat. That is why every evening we hit the road and enter pubs where we do real justice to frothy beers. Claude tends to attract many female friends who come in to drink and chew for free. Claude is so generous that I feel I should warn him about cost-cutting. I want to take him aside and inform him about a certain friend of ours who believes so much in cost-cutting that he has made it a religion. That friend of ours is known by the name Baptiste. This guy is a top miser. He is a notorious guy who cares for no one apart from himself. He always comes to the bars alone and heads straight for the counter. He then orders for his favorite Amstel beer. When the barmaid opens the bottles for him, Baptiste insists on keeping the bottle tops. To him, these bottle tops are important as he just keeps them in his pocket for purposes of accountability. When the bill finally arrives, he pulls out those bottle tops and compares the number against the bill. If any variance in the numbers emerges, Baptiste raises hell. One day, Baptiste surprised us when he walked in escorted by three dashing ladies. He told us that one of the girls was his fiancée whereas the others were her close friends. They settled down and as usual, the barmaids were on top in terms of customer service (NaYombi). Then, to the ladies’ surprise, Baptiste kept all the bottle tops in his pocket. Everything progressed on quite well until the bill finally arrived. Baptiste in his typical police like fashion proceeded to compare the bottle tops against the bill. Everything tallied. However, it was time to verify the quantity of the roasted meat. Unfortunately, the ladies had not kept count of the pieces of meat that they had chewed. Baptiste became furious. “How on earth could you eat meat without counting the pieces? How do you expect me to verify the bill? Now I may be forced to open your mouths and count all those pieces of meat that you have mercilessly swallowed!” At this point, Baptiste’s future bride started to cry in shame. We never got to see her again! Kudos! Now I want to introduce these nice lessons to Claude so that he can learn how to save cash! Buja, here we roll……
