MTN CENTRE

Welcome to Rwanda's mini Planet Cafe at MTN CENTRE

BY GEORGE KAGAME

It's one in the morning in the once dull but now busy Nyarutarama suburb. The nightlife at the MTN Centre and the area's near-permanent non-stop party is just getting into full swing. The barman at the counter is mixing a cocktail but he is doing it with such finesse that would make the Russians wish he was born in Stalingrad.

Reggeaton music echoes from one bar where Kigali’s new twenty-and thirty-something residents drink Mutzig beer and Uganda Waragi from the bottle.

Crossover, a mixture of new school rap and techno music belts out of Bose speakers in an adjacent corridor; where almost identical-looking customers in black leather jeans and jackets with hoods do the same. This is the famous MTN Centre.

MTN Centre is one of the most amazing architectural sights in Rwanda and the Virunga Pub inside the building is just as cozy as the centre.

Kigali’s leading corporate class wannabes hangout at the MTN Centre as one of several attempts to escape the ‘lower class folk’, the class with smelly armpits, poor French or English accents and an even poorer sense of fashionable attires.

There’s never any need for theme programmes or Gahunda so to speak at Virunga Pub; since MTN Centre is always happening every weekend. All the patrons and students especially from the nearby up market schools have to do is dress up in the flashiest of attires and head towards Nyarutarama.
Here your typical drink on the weekend is more than the golden stuff in the glass; it’s a carnival; the girls gyrate their bodies like they don’t have bones in them and the boys dance with such vigour that you could not be wrong to think all the patrons here are members in one of Kigali’s myriad troupes.

I arrived at MTN centre after attending midnight prayers at the nearby Christian Life Assembly church. Standing in the parking lot, I noticed that more teenagers came in on foot and in groups-at the hour of one o’clock the parking lot was fully occupied and I wondered who was driving the vehicles, when most clients were walking.

The majority of the men (boys) at Virunga Pub are simply clad in overflowing jeans and extra large t-shirts; there are a few who are in G-Unit outfits complete with bling that is slinging around their necks; it makes them resemble the famous slaves during the Atlantic trade years and their chains in early 1850s.

The girls, however, seem to be a lot more fashion-conscious. Leggings, dress tops, hot pants, revealing and body-hugging tops, shorts, transparent and inviting short dresses and boots are what most of them were wearing. The hairstyles were quite as exotic as the make up on their faces.

From the way the boys and girls pose while smoking and how they avoid other people looking directly at them I can tell that they just began the habit.
Many of the people around the two bars inside MTN Centre are dancing in groups of single sexes — very few groups are mixed up.

From where I am seated at the Virunga pub, I can see a group of girls whose outfits and dance moves are unmistakably from MTV. They dance in a similar manner to the now popular Brick and Lace and there is another circle of boys standing next to them and watching in awe. Behind me, another girl has found her friends and the shrieks of joy lose all the words that she is saying.

The make up on the girls’ faces and squeaks suggest that they invested a lot of time in watching Nigerian movies; while the boys are testimony to the new Kigali. A Kigali of designer clothing, exotic languages and even more exotic music and dance.