Baking Cakes in Kigali

Set in post-Genocide Rwanda, Baking Cakes in Kigali focuses on Angel Tungaraza, the wife of a visiting professor at the Kingali Institute of Science and Technology. The Tungarazas are from neighbouring Tanzania and have taken the foreign posting in order to afford the care of the five grandchildren they took in when the youngters' parents died. (It is eventually revealed that the Tungarazas' daughter had AIDS -- and her husband left her when she became sick -- their daughter-in-law died of AIDS, and although the disease would have claimed their son's life at some point, he was shot and killed in an attempted robbery.) In order to make a bit more money, Angel operates a professional cake business out of their apartment in a secure compound that houses foreigners, especially workers in aid foundations and NGOs. 

This book is a series of vignettes and each one is pretty much the same: Someone comes to the apartment door, reveals an interest in ordering a cake, is served tea by Angel while they discuss the details, the customer will say something worrisome ("I need a Christening cake for my niece 'Goodenough' -- Goodenough because she wasn't a boy but the parents had to name her something" or "It's my daughter's birthday and I don't care what the cake looks like"), and Angel will start rubbing her glasses on her kanga; to help her think; to see more clearly. Angel will slyly say just the right thing to prompt the customer to make a wiser choice and everyone becomes a better, more caring and moral person because of the lessons the cake impart (The baby girl is christened "Perfect" or the ambivalent father, after much prodding says that his daughter likes airplanes, and the resulting cake makes her feel special and loved).

Along the way, Angel deals with the issues of child prostitution, child soldiers, homeless orphans, female genital mutilation, AIDS, the lavish lifestyles of the UN workers, racism, sexism, promiscuity...pretty much every evil that might lurk in a community rears its head in Angel's apartment. Most customers reveal their deepest secret with the following, typical conversation:

"Can I speak freely with you Angel?"

"Of course you can," she assured him. "You are my customer. I'll never repeat what you say to me because I know how a professional somebody is supposed to behave."

I was confused by the code of confidentiality between cake maker and customer but Angel stays true to her professional ethics and finds a way to help everyone without breaching their trust. This is a very simplistic book, and although it makes an effort to touch on important issues, there's no art in it. 

I picked up Baking Cakes in Kigali because I recently read Running the Rift (about the lead-up to and horror of the genocide from a Tutsi perspective) and Shake Hands With the Devil (about the UN's inability to prevent or stop the genocide as it was happening). I thought that a novel set in Rwanda's capital fifteen years or so after the genocide would be an enlightening glimpse into life there now, especially as it is written by an African. What I didn't realise until I started reading was that this is a book about a black African woman written by a white African woman -- if I was in a book club, I'd love to discuss whether other readers think that even matters. I appreciate that Gaile Parkin was born and raised in Zambia and has "worked in Rwanda, counselling women and girls who had survived the genocide". I understand that she says in this book she is sharing some of the stories of people she has actually met. But this doesn't feel like it is her story to tell. It also felt more than strange that all of the white people in Baking Cakes in Kigali are idiots (and amusing that the only Canadian is a total jerk). 

If I hadn't already read some on the genocide, I don't think I would have understood the nature of the tragedy from this book, but maybe it's not unfair to expect readers to have a basic understanding. The most interesting post-genocide comment I found was this:

Forgive me, Angel, we do not talk of Tutsis and Hutus anymore; we are all Banyarwanda now. But I must use those words to talk about the past because in the past we were not yet Banyarwanda.

Is this the official policy in Rwanda I wonder? Can the virulent racism that caused former friends and neighbours to pick up machetes and hack every Tutsi they found to pieces be avoided in the future by just not using the words "Tutsis" and "Hutus" anymore? That the book ends with a marriage between a Hutu and a Tutsi, with all those in attendance finding their own inner purpose fulfilled, seems like a happily-ever-after-fairytale-ending that rings false with the litany of evils that are described as lurking in the shadows throughout the book.

This part, about a widow -- a Hutu who with her husband tried to hide Tutsis during the massacre -- who survived the genocide but helplessly watched as her husband and child were killed, felt more honest:

Do you think I feel blessed to live in this house with the ghosts of everyone who was killed here? Do you think I feel blessed to go in and out through the gate where my husband and my child were killed? Do you think I feel blessed to see what I saw that night every time I close my eyes and try to sleep? Do you think I feel blessed not knowing where the bodies of my husband and my first born lie? Do you think I feel blessed in any way at all, Angel?...There are many survivors who feel like I feel. There are many who regret surviving, who would like to make the other choice now…As Catholics we know that we will go to Hell if we suicide ourselves…And what's the point of going to Hell after we die? Because we already live there now.

But this leads into another point that I found annoying : Angel frets throughout the book about the chilly relationship she had with her daughter before she died and finally confronts the fact that Vinas must have committed suicide, likely to spare her family watching her waste away. As a strong Catholic, Angel is certain her daughter has gone to Hell, but Jeanne D'Arc, the young prostitute with the heart of gold says:

I think that Vinas chose to do what she did in order to save others, Auntie. When she suicided herself, did she not save her parents the pain of watching her suffer? Did she not save her children from the pain of watching her die? I think that when a person dies to save others, Hell is not the place for her soul. I think the Bible tells us that such a soul belongs in Heaven.

After this being Angel's big existential crisis, these few words were enough to make her think, "Hey, maybe that's right. Problem solved." This kind of triteness pervades Baking Cakes in Kigali and, as a result, it is not for me.

And one last complaint: A Muslim family orders a cake to celebrate their daughter's "cutting ceremony", and although Angel is conflicted, she decides that she is curious enough about the custom to not only provide the cake but to accept an invitation to watch as well. The whole thing turns out to be a trick on the father (cutting the girl's fingers to draw blood while he waits in the kitchen and listens to her fake screams), but the Angel character went not knowing what she would see. The scene is meant to be an opportunity to comment on the barbarism of the custom but I just don't buy that the wise and kindly Angel would be curious enough to watch a young girl have her genitals mutilated.