The umuganda we attended was not in our neighbourhood and had a more than local flavour. In fact, about 2,000 people came, including First Lady Jeannette Kagame, who dug trenches for new housing foundations and shoveled dirt into the brick-making machine along with students, soldiers, police, football teams, locals, and of course the villagers for whom these new houses are being built.
The houses are being built under the Bye Bye Nyakatsi program. Nyakatsi means thatched roofs and the government is on a major campaign to eradicate every thatched roof in the country by the end of May in order to improve living conditions for the poor. One target is the historically marginalized (the Batwa) and the umuganda we participated in was for new housing for the historically marginalized of Bwiza. Another target is vulnerable women and on international women’s day the Chief Gender Monitor said that over 2,000 houses are being constructed for these women, one in each cell (the lowest administrative category) under the Bye Bye Nyakatsi program.
There have been criticisms of Bye Bye Nyakatsi. One old fellow interviewed in the newspaper found his new metal roof far too hot and preferred to hang out under the cool thatch of a still allowed outbuilding. I sympathized with him as I lived under thatch for a month in Kenya and found it comfortable, cool and sanitary. I wondered at the determination to eradicate so quickly, so completely, the traditions of the past.
(I am sure they will leave standing the replica of the king’s palace in Nyanza, an extraordinary world constructed entirely of plant matter. It was like standing under a giant upside down, exquisitely woven basket. It smelled of heaven.)
Early in the program there were serious problems when houses were torn down and the sheet roofing required for new houses had not yet arrived. One human rights organization insists many Batwa have been left homeless by this initiative. Others say that the early mistakes and problems were acknowledged, discussed in December’s national dialogue, and then corrected.
I have my own doubts, especially about this housing for the Bwiza residents. It’s down the hill, now only half as far a walk to the market at the bottom of the hill, but it is a good twenty minute walk from their terraced fields and their goats and cows. I don’t understand why it is not being built up on the hilltop on the land that they apparently have title to.
But at umuganda the spirit is joyful and infectious. There’s so many people that the work is done in turns and no one has to work too hard, although the guys carrying giant rocks on wooden pallets are going all out in an enthusiastic macho kind of way and the soccer team is barefoot in a mound of red dirt, singing loudly as they vigorously wield their hoes.
Children in school uniform pass newly pressed bricks from hand to hand while on the lower slope, a row of military fan out to break sod.
The ‘historically marginalized’ of Bwiza are pitching in with everyone else. One of the village leaders is pushed forward to talk to the First Lady and she engages him in conversation for quite some minutes. Later he tells us she asked him questions like, are your children in school, and do your children eat before they go to school? This is all good but the villagers say that no one asked them whether they wanted to move, where they wanted to move to.
But for the most part, the villagers appear happy. They are being acknowledged, the community has turned out in force to build them homes, and so they feel uplifted into society. They are willing to leave their substandard grass huts, interwoven with scraps of plastic. They don’t mind leaving dirt floors and flooding rains. This morning, they seem to feel a part of the much promoted one Rwanda.
And I pitch in too, under the watchful eyes of young policewomen in blue uniforms, grateful that in my youth I learned how to use a shovel. I dig and they say, ‘more’ and so I keep digging and I’m willing to go on and on but one of the women suddenly says ‘enough’ and so I relinquish the shovel. They are politely testing me – I have passed because they clap - but they are also protecting me.
It’s not that long, maybe two hours, before there’s no more dirt or cement for bricks, no more rocks to carry, and the work slows down. A microphone is set up and Jeanette Kagame shares some encouraging words. A Bwiza woman speaks, saying they are grateful and will take good care of their new homes. The Bwiza singers are determined to sing for Jeannette Kagame and push their way forward through the crowd. I can’t really see the singers or the couple of dancers, but I become fixated by the soldier on the far side of the circle.
He is leaning just slightly forward, and he is clapping in encouragement, in appreciation, in joy. He is wearing glasses and in Rwandan not many people wearing glasses, more soldiers than others. I’m not sure if it’s good health care or an intellectual army. The soldier in front of me on the bus the other day was busy reading a stack of English printouts about Sudan. But I am fixed on this soldier because he is surrounded by civilians; he is integrated into this mass of people and not set aside. He is part of the community.
And that’s an amazing part of this umuganda. We were seriously patted down on our arrival, not a part of the body missed. Rwandan pat downs are not for the modest but at least there’s gender sensitivity and I don’t object to the serious woman who feels me all over. But after this, I see no weapons, even with the First Lady here, and the soldiers and police are working with everyone else. And that’s why I’m drawn to the young man in uniform, his enthusiasm for the raised voices of the ‘historically marginalized’ who sing their appreciation to the government.
I look at the soldier and think: he could have been a teenage rebel soldier in the Virunga Mountains, determined and disciplined and studying in what has been called ‘Kagame’s university’; he could have been a young survivor who attached himself to the RPF on their traumatic march through a bloody landscape in 1994; he could have joined the army later for patriotism or security. Most amazingly, he could have a member of the murderous Interahamwe genocidaires who fled to Congo and continued killing for many years until he came home to re-education camp and was then offered a place in the Rwandan army.
As the crowd breaks up I hold the possibility that the ‘new Rwanda’ might just make it. As for the villagers, they will be here every Saturday participating in the building of their new homes. Security forces will be assigned here to work on these homes. With no mechanization except the trucks that bring the materials and a couple of mobile brick making machines, the homes will be ready in a few weeks. Time will tell how they adjust and what will happen to their land.
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