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Rwanda

Uncomfortable Truths

next to Lake Kivu. I would be passed by three and sometimes four young African women
walking towards the nearby border post, each carrying on her head a very large bowl full of

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strawberries. These were not the small 'washing-up' bowl we m'zuŋ u know of. Bowls of
perhaps 3 times that size.
And around the main border post you can see something else. Servicing the large

number of local traders, a whole role of butchers’ shops, umpteen rice and other grain
wholesalers, are teams of various types of porters. Teams wearing their team overall,

coloured differently from others. And in these teams, you will see this porter or that who is

in some way physically handicapped. Such a person will be on a large specially adapted
tricycle, adapted so that his pedal power coming not from his feet but from his hands and

arms. And such a person, helped along by perhaps two ‘pushers', will be hauling several of

those 'hundredweight' grain sacks.
Gisenyi seems to have a number of different types of teams. I refer to them as 'co-

operatives' but exactly what their status is I am unsure of. What I do know is that the

drains along the main street, should the latest rainstorm block a drain with debris, are
cleared 'same day'. Every day a team come co-operative clears the road and area adjacent

to Lake Kivu.

In one way or another, Gisenyi has created jobs for many ordinary Africans. And for
those who read and recall “Robert, the 2nd class bicycle mechanic” from Uganda, who was

content with his USD 2 per day, regular jobs for ordinary Africans mean a lot.
And the minor urban roads of Gisenyi provide more jobs for ordinary Africans.

When it rains in Rwanda, the ‘land of a thousand hills’, the rain can be expected to be strong

enough as to erode the soil. And Gisenyi, lying next to the large water mass that is the 90
km or so long Lake Kivu, gets rain. When I was last in Gisenyi, there were still some minor

urban roads where the erosion had left ruts so deep even a genuine 4 wheel drive would
have to go carefully in order not to be 'bottomed'.

And so to the paving of some minor roads in Gisenyi. The system used to pave these

minor urban roads is not unique to Rwanda. But it’s very definitely part of a holistic
approach to roads and people employed by Rwanda.

A team(s) of ordinary Africans make cement based bricks, akin to the shape of a UK

house brick but thicker in dimensions. They do so with perhaps two people creating the
mixture and slapping it onto a metal frame that looks something like a 'noughts and