Annemarie:
OK, so I’m supposed to be looking for community bakeries but how could I resist locally made ice-cream? We discovered a fabulous café, Inzozi Nziza, in Huye, Southern Rwanda, set up in 2010. It serves the most delicious cinnamon ice-cream, locally produced coffee and of course cakes and biscuits. We had to visit three times (for a consistency test of course) and I can say that the banana bread is consistently delicious and a lot better than my recent attempts.
The café’s profits go to support a cooperative of women from a drumming group called Ingoma Nshya and the women we met, including Louise in the middle of the pic, told me about their work and how happy they are with what their project is achieving.
The name of the café, Inzozi Nziza, translates as Sweet Dreams and the project has featured in a film of the same title created in 2012 Sweet Dreams. It tells the story of how a Rwandan theatre director, Kiki Kitese, set up the women’s drumming group to help those widowed and orphaned after the 1994 genocide. On a visit to New York she enjoyed ice cream at a Brooklyn ice-creamery and invited the owners to help her set up a shop in Rwanda. The film traces the path of the women in the drumming group and their involvement in setting up the café and ice cream shop, giving an insight to what they suffered and how they are recovering - as well as the joy of drumming and ice-cream!
Chatel who served us is on the right of the pic and gave her email in case anyone wants to contact the café for more information.
Hmmm, ice-cream and cake supporting social change; that can’t be bad!