After the
second day in Rwanda Id more or less gotten over the bliss of the great
moto-touring roads and the uncharacteristic cleanliness of the roadsides… And I
started to notice some things that didn’t quite feel “right”…
First
off. There are no “Old” people… not
anywhere!... Now I admit that my age-guessing for Africans is not nearly as
good as for Europeans or even for Asians now that I live in Vancouver, but
seriously, I swear there are less than 5% of the population here who are over
45 years of age???… And that’s just plain wrong!
Second. The whole country seems shiny and new… nice
new roads and new public buildings everywhere you look… But there are also a
vast number of village hoses that are shiny and new too… and they are not small
village houses that you would expect a simple country farmer with a few
chickens and a couple of goats and some banana palms and corn growing on a 50m
square lot in the hills would have… No, these are BIG houses with half a dozen
rooms and architectural roof lines and shiny new roof iron and gutters and
steel doors and concrete stucco… These are mansions! And its not one or two either, its 75% of the
buildings in every village I ride past???
No farmer with a few goats and some banana trees can afford a home like this!
This is what a real farmers house looks like...
And this is what a real farmers village should look like!
All those shinny new roofs on shinny new unoccupied houses.
Third. There are new houses everywhere but there are
virtually no private cars at all… People get about the place either on foot or
on the back of small taxi-motorbikes. And petrol is not that expensive, in fact
its cheaper here than it is in neighbouring Uganda and there are lodes of other
vehicles on the roads there???
…
Something is not at all right here!!!
I spent
my third day paying more attention and thinking and asking a few questions of
people and this is what Ive come up with so far…
The lack of
elderly people is real and is apparently due to a combination of things but
mostly due to AIDS and the few years of post-Genocide famine and lack of
medical services. But whatever the cause it makes for a society without elders
and that has pros and cons (no strong traditions which means the culture is
unstable but can also result in rapid change that would otherwise be resisted) .
And on the “flip side” I notice that there are vast numbers of children all
over the country. I mostly notice in the early mornings and afternoons when
they are all along the sides of the roads in their school uniforms walking to
and from school. Its good that they are attending school which absolutely was
not the case 10-15 years ago… The social systems were not yet back up and
running and the children were just wandering about and getting into trouble…
But on a darker note, if the “breeding” continues at this pace there will be
BIG problems because the country simply does not have space and food for too
many more people… Its about 12 million people at the moment in an area of about
25000 sqKm… that’s world class population density!
The new
houses in all the villages seem to be a bit misleading… A bit more careful
looking shows that while the big new houses are a very high percentage of many
villages, they appear to be largely unfinished and unoccupied!... How can that
be? Well it backs up the idea that the
true occupants of the villages cant afford such houses and it suggests that the
big houses are owned by someone else!... I believe its all land speculation by
rich people from the cities. I think that some Rwandan people have recent access
to large amounts of capital and have been buying out the village peoples land.
But they seem to have so much money available that they are then choosing to
build big expensive houses on the properties, completing the houses to “lock-up”
stage and then leaving them un-occupied… presumably with the idea of renting or
selling them later, but to whom I cant imagine since there is no way the locals
will ever be able to rent them let alone own them?
And this
ties in with the lack of private cars on the roads too… If you were to give the
general public suddenly increased wealth in some form then I guarantee you
would find most families would spend a substantial amount of their new wealth
on a car of some sort (particularly men and less so women), but thats clearly
not the case here… The spending seems to be exclusively on land and buildings,
and NOT on homes that are to be used immediately! And definitely NOT on cars! The
only way that happens is if the money is not in the hands of the general public
and/or if the “money” is in the form of government subsidies on building
materials like cement and steel and corrugated iron sheets (and Im sure that is
the case for some of the money since many of the remaining smaller huts that
are occupied also have shiny new steel roofs while the hut remains small and
made of mud-brick). So, I think there is a HUGE amount of land speculation going
on by Rwandans (not foreign investors) who have recent access to huge amounts
of money!
This
looks REALLY bad for the people of Rwanda… Not only are the country people
being dispossessed of their only asset (their hereditary land titles) to become
tenant farmers! But someone has access to masive amounts of money… and that
money is in my opinion very very likely to be misappropriated “aid funding”
from the international community! Yep, huge amounts of foreign aid have been
pouring into Rwanda for the past two decades from the “guilty consciences” of
the international community that let the Genocide happen when all the warnings
were there to see. You see all sorts of signs declaring this aid fund and that
NGO and another social program etc all over the country. And there is no
question that this money has done a great deal of good and the country seems to
be in remarkably good condition given that it was a total “melt down” just
twenty years ago… But it also looks like the “people in power” are doing what
people in power are so often tempted to do… doing the best they can for
themselves at the expense of others!
… And just
one more glance at the possibilities/probabilities leaves me feeling sick in
the stomach… truly nauseated…
When the
Genocidaires (as they are called) were finally driven out of the country after
three months, it was by a group called the RFP… And who were they? They were a
group of about 5000 rebels coming from Uganda in the North… They were largely
Tutsis who had been displaced in the preceding decades of racial violence and
they were funded and armed by the Tutsi minority (formerly the ruling elite of
Rwanda prior to the change of power from democratic elections!) So while there
was definite justification for rebellion (after 30 years of racially targeted
violence), there would not have been violence in the first place if the ruling “elite” Tutsis had been at all
fair to the oppressed Hutus… And so once the Genocidaires had been removed
(just to the side-lines because they are still a big active part of the
militias and rebels and armies that are still causing all sorts sof strife over
in the DRC where they fled) from Rwanda
and things started to get put back together with all the international aid…
Guess who formed the new government?? Yep… The Tutsi “liberators”… "Its Déjà vu all
Over again!" (yes I know that's a redundant statement... its a quote :) )
This time
however there are a few Hutus included in the cabinet of the government and to
be sure there are no more racial identities in Rwanda… Not Tutsi or Hutu… They
are all just Rwandans… But damn if it doesn’t look like that might be just a
little self-serving!.... They cant blame the “Tutsis” next time, They are
making sure you cant use that label on them, but to my jaundiced eye, it looks
like its more or less the same people in power doing more or less the same
self-serving exploitation of the masses as they have always done!... Maybe next
time the people will learn that it’s the corruption
of the oppressors that’s the problem and not their race! And that the only
solution is to drive out corruption and that has to start at the bottom… Don’t Steal,
Don’t cheat, Don’t Lie… Same rules for everyone, starting with you and me!
Like I
said, the thought of it honestly makes me feel nauseous!... I don’t care how
beautiful the country seems at a casual look… I don’t think it will last
because as soon as the aid money dries up, those corrupt people in power who
are used to milking the “aid goat” will want to maintain their funding supply
some other way… and that will mean the money for public service and
infrastructure will no longer make to where its supposed to go and the general
public will once again be “milked” for all they are worth! And though this is
all just speculation, its not as if it hasn’t happened before or wont happen
again L…
I hope Im
wrong, but I think the writing is on the wall!
Something
is still definitely not right in Rwanda!
p.s.… And
I strongly recommend that the international community cease pretty much all
material aid (not counseling, monitoring or volunteer aid tho) to Rwanda as
soon as possible… It is materially already substantially better off than
Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,,Malawi, and, Mozambique as far as I can see!
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