St. Patrick's Day in Kigali

Abanyakigali / Kigali Lifers,

There will be a celebration of St. Patrick's Day on
Wednesday March 17th at Salt & Pepper (aka "Cohan's
Pub," the Irishized name of Kokan the Indian owner!) in
Gakinjiro, Kigali city centre. Saint Patrick's Day (March
17), most of ye will know, is the national holiday of
Ireland, and a celebration of drinking and craic
(Irish-style revelry) the world over.

There will be no admission charge and "Irish" American DJs
will be spinning their Celtic MP3s well into the wee hours.
Guinness, Baileys, Jameson and Bushmills will all be in
plentiful supply at reasonable prices (as well as Mutzig,
Primus and Amstel, of course) and mzee Cohan will be serving
up roast potatoes (the reason ibirayi are called "Irish"
potatoes!) @ 100RFr each, brochettes @ 500 RFr
each, and authentic Irish-Indian samosas for 250 RFr each.
So comecelebrate in the great Irish(-Indian- Rwandan)
tradition the great Saint, Patrick was supposed to be!

Time: Traditionally celebrating St. Paddy's Day starts in
the morning but feel free to come anytime, and probably
because this year it falls on a Wednesday most (working and
late sleeping) people will come from say 6pm onwards...
Place: Salt & Pepper ("Chez Cohan"), located just
opposite Gakinjiro's hardware market in the centre of
Kigali(Gakinjiro mu mujyi, hafi Kwa Gasasira - just where
the Nyamirambo road meets town).
Date: Wednesday 17th March (aka St. Patrick's Day)

Hope to see ye all there
Sláinte






This year we celebrated St. Patrick's Day in style by planning a party - initiated by our fun-loving Indian friends - at Salt & Pepper, a small Indian Restaurant turned Irish Pub (for the sake of the event) located in town. We decorated the venue with green, white and orange (technically yellow) balloons, set up a rocking sound system featuring the beats of Dropkick Murphy's, U2, Bob Marley, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga ("just jig...it'll be okay") and others, created paper flags that accidentally honored Cote d'Ivoire (orange, white, green in that order) instead of Ireland, and enjoyed a night of celebrating St. Patel. I mean, St. Primus...no, St. Patrick.

While this description may make us party-planners sound a little resourceful, we were, in fact, a lot resourceful. As you can imagine, living as a volunteer in a developing country fosters this quality in one's self. An excellent example of our ingenuity put to action was the creation of 3x5 foot "Irish" flags. One week prior to the party, Rachel and I visited Kimironko Market, the largest and most diverse market in Rwanda. Here you find buyers and sellers of banana, rice, green peppers, cooking oil, shoes, clothing, cell phones, adaptors, empty bottles, fabric, baskets, carvings, pineapples - almost anything you can purchase in Rwanda exists here. We spent about an hour roaming the seemingly endless stalls of patterned African fabrics and selected three (in the rough color scheme of green, white and orange) for our Afro-Irish flags. Below is a photograph of one of the two the we patriotically sewed and proudly displayed at our party.