Diaspoman: Surviving on birakas in Kigali

A company is faced with difficult auditors from the Tax authorities who want all kinds of supporting documents for all expenses incurred by the organization. Since this kind of data may date back two years, the organization is faced with a hurdle. How can we get all these old documents from the archives, and photocopy them and arrange them in a huge box file so that the tax officials can examine the paper work? In such circumstances, the bosses opt to hire temporary staff to sort out their dusty files. That is where yours truly comes in. Since I have been so jobless and needy, I tend to rush for such birakas. And at the end of the week, I walk off with a cool 50k. I cherish this kind of job because it does not only get me my daily dose of Amstels but also helps me feed my ever empty stomach. I find myself buying rounds of roasted meat for myself at the Gikondo pubs. Then my SFB friends join me and we proceed to crush the brochettes like there is no tomorrow. For the last two weeks, I have been stationed at a company where I have been spending the whole day bending and picking archived files from a very dusty store. I was joined by a young gentleman who has also been very jobless for quite some time. We cracked jokes to pass time. At the end of the day, we could be seen sneezing and coughing. But we strived on. Apparently, the boss was impressed by the speed and efficiency of our work. He promised us a heavy lunch as a sign of his appreciation. Wow! On top of the weekly cash, this guy wanted to buy us lunch! This really motivated us. So we cracked and cracked and by last Sunday, we had covered 99.99 per cent of all the work. We then took him our report and he jumped up and down, so pleased! “Hey guys, now these tax guys will not have any claim against us! Well done. Tomorrow prepare yourselves for the lunch that I promised you! Okay?” So we ran off like little excited children. We began to prepare our stomachs for a mega feast. On Monday morning, we rushed back to the office to finalise the remaining data. We completed by mid-day and then rushed upstairs to the reception area. We sat down waiting for our boss to come. Within a few minutes, he came down whistling in a joyous mood. He was swinging his car keys from side to side. He called us quickly “Oh my good fellas, let’s go for our lunch!” We swiftly jumped inside his Jeep and cruised down towards the best hotel in the entire country. But to our surprise, our boss headed towards a place called Gatenga. He drove through the dusty and bumpy roads at breakneck speed. Apparently, he too was very hungry. But which latest hotel had been opened in Gatenga? Wapi! It was not a hotel. Instead it was our boss’ own home. In a shanty looking area, the boss entered through a dirty gate. He rushed inside the house and started to lambaste the house girl “Where is the food? We are hungry! Hurry up!” The house girl frantically rushed behind to the kitchen where she proceeded to distribute mountains of food on the plates. No way! It was not chicken and chips. It was not fish and rice. Instead, the mountain of nosh on our flat plates was comprised of white posho accompanied by black beans. In addition to that, we received huge mugs of drinking water. That, my friends, was the mega lunch that our boss had kept for us. In our disappointment, we pretended to be enjoying the delicious food lest we lost our birakas… Contact: diaspoman@yahoo.com