Welcome to the township and its eternally celebrating La Buvette Bar
BY GEORGE KAGAME
Many a lonely night have been spent here, many more beer bottles broken, small sticks collected across the country to take care of the popular 'Brochete' delicacy here. This is La Buvette Umubano bar.
Talk about strategical location in whatever terms, and you have an idea of this poor man's version of a tavern. It is a tough attempt to describe the geographical location where the bar is found, but if you are familiar with Kigali's 'elaborate' social life, you probably know about Mayak Cinema. One of the foremost feature among the concrete jungle of Nyamirambo township, otherwise known as Biryog. And so far, the only public movie theatre in the city. La Buvette is found next Mayak and even then a client needs good knowledge of the grids of bars to identify the place if you miss seeing the only advert of the bar on top of the entrance in white paint.
The bar opens anywhere after midmorning and remains in service till the last customer leaves, and the clients are not the kind that 'buy me a rose, call me from work", the last customer rule therefore is the one among many that are liberal. This is probably the only place in the city 'real' and random karaoke takes with no aid of technology. Extremely loud conversations spanning the entire bar, even louder music videos playing on the television positioned strategically such that barman is also watching it most of the time instead of listening to his orders, and traditional Kinya-rwanda drama and songs. All the above in no particular order but on many occasions they are simultaneous.
An advertising manager would call this a wonder in terms of market segmentation. In this bar, you can have circles of patrons standing close to each other and dancing in full gear but to different tunes. one from the music video showing on the mandatory television set and the other from live performances among the patrons in the other circle singing to a Kinya-rwanda or Congolese tune. Wild laughter breaks out occasionally but for the most part, the atmosphere inside this bar is either of a heated political debate-lately and mostly about a certain Barack Obama-, cursing about a delayed order-which the barman never heard about because he was watching music video a prostitute that has been cheated by an irate client.
La Buvette serves mainly beer at the normal retail prices, fairly decent Brochete and roasted bananas, irish potatoes which, in the ranges of 500 to 750 Frw is pocket friendly for the eternally joyous patrons here and makes the 'Brocheteman' the busiest and most important staff of the La Buvette, good relations with him are crucial if you intend to have a good time here.
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