Diaspoman: When we found keys for combating starvation

During the mid 90s, Aggrey and I were kings of kings! We enjoyed salaries in form of crispy green U.S dollar cash notes. We spent like there was no tomorrow. But when our expatriate boss was recalled from his tent to report back to Europe, things suddenly became monkey for us! In other words, we were informed that a new boss was on his way and we had to wait for his arrival at Kanombe international airport. Aggrey and I did not know what to expect? Would the new boss be as considerate as our fired expatriate? Would the new boss 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. Okay, at the airport, Aggrey and I lifted a placard with the names of our new boss “Mr. Jones” We waited for almost one hour but there was no sign of Mr. Jones. 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 us straight in the eye and asked “Are you the guys from the Gikondo NGO?” We answered in the affirmative. 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 pick a Mrs. Jones?” 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 the wrong footing. All the way from the Airport to Gikondo, our new boss was just cursing, abusing and on 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 very 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 deducted all of our salary deductions. This left us very poor indeed. As our cash supplies had been abruptly quashed, we resorted to forced fasting. I call it forced fasting because we could not consider ourselves to be born again Christians. These born again friends of ours decide to fast in an attempt to defeat the devil. For us, the fasting was because we could not raise small bucks to buy us lunch. That is why we just hanged around the NGO compound yawning with bouts of serious hunger. But when things became even tougher for our stomachs, Aggrey and I began to hatch up a plan. We had to feed our ailing stomachs by hook or by crook. So we sat down and came up with a plan. This plan was to enter restaurants in Kigali and eat food for free. But how would we really achieve this? Well, it was easy. What we needed was a bunch of fake keys and a couple of newspapers. So, Aggrey and I started to search for old and abandoned keys. We gathered so many keys and bundled them into several bunches of keys. As for the newspapers, we gathered all the old and current newspapers from our boss’s office. Some newspapers were so dusty. We tried to clean them and fold them into a readable material. These are the weapons we used in order to get ourselves free lunch. With these tools available, Aggrey and I majestically marched into the top 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. Upon receiving the bills, we would pretend 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. 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. Those were the keys to combating starvation… diaspoman@yahoo.com