Me, I’m contemptuous of statistics. Because, come to think of it, what do mere numbers tell you? Give me a story any time and fiddlesticks to your cold, heartless numbers!
Over the last five years, one million Rwandans have been lifted out of poverty. Yes, our government has to keep track of what’s happening in crisp figures. But do these figures tell even half the story?
For instance, there is this enchanting story that I accidentally picked on one of our many local FM radios, last Wednesday evening. You know how it is. You want to listen to news but the moment you turn the needle, you are assaulted by noises from so many radio stations jostling to catch your attention: advertisements, phone-ins, music, the horde. Anyway, I fell upon an interview that a news anchor was having with an old widow.
Now, this was a story. In fact, it was not a story. It is (yes, it’s happening) a mine of stories!
The lady hails from central Rwanda and her surname is such a mouthful that it has been imprinted on my mind: Nyirarivuzumwami. She was among the early beneficiaries of the Girinka Programme, a programme introduced by Government in 2006.
It will be recalled that the programme involves Government offering a cow to a poor family to help them combat poverty. But, for reasons of her “identity”, said Nyira— (I shorten with apologies!), she could not keep it. She shared it with her “community”, instead, and there was a beef feast.
After that, she continued to eke out a living the way she always had; going around neighbouring homes to beg. Senior (in age) citizens will have understood what her “community” and “the way she always had” meant.
Those were days when Rwandans saw themselves as fixed, unchanging blocks of Batwa, Bahutu and Batutsi. Batwa were supposed to hunt and beg; Bahutu to till the land; Batutsi to keep cattle.
That’s how things had always been, in spite of sharing everything (language, culture, etc) and so she went back to begging (remember proffering palms for local brew as alms?), since hunting was no longer feasible. Then, some communities were outcasts!
And then came the Nyakatsi Eradication Programme of 2008, a government programme kicked off to move poor citizens from un-sanitised settlements of tiny thatched huts to sanitised, airy and more decent housing.
She was put in a Mudugudu (cluster settlement) where she has two particularly close friends, both belonging to different “communities” from hers and from each other’s. Seeing how destitute she was, the ladies persuaded and offered her a heifer each, offspring of their own programme benefits. And there, says she, the genesis of the “miracle”.
The miracle is that today she is a farmer! The cows have calved three times and at their pick, in a day she has been getting 35 litres of milk on average. At 250 – 300 francs a litre, you can calculate and see her monthly income. In a word, she has become rich. When you add income from her land, she is “wealthy”!
Starting off with looking after the cows herself, she sold most of the milk as she needed only little for her consumption. With time, she was able to hire an able-bodied farmhand to look after them. As she continued to sell milk and offspring of the cows, without counting the offspring she gave to other families in the relay programme, she was able to buy a piece of land and hire another farmhand to work it. Today, the two young men are like his children and, as they continue working for her, they are able to provide upkeep for their own families, too.
Seeing as she was alone, Nyira— (remember the name?) has adopted two orphans. The children are educated free, all right. But still, it means providing uniforms, scholastic material, health insurance (the ubiquitous mutuelles de santé), mosquito nets and others.
Asked if she’ll continue to support them even after the free 12-year basic education, she countered: “Who else do you think will?” After all, said she, she has incomes galore: from her cows; their manure; the extra from their feed; maize, beans, sorghum, Irish potatoes on her pieces of land.
Yes, this transformation, modest as it may seem, was truly remarkable. But, in truth, what was more remarkable was what she capped the interview with. Asked what community she’d say she belonged to today, she answered vehemently: “There are no communities in Rwanda. There is only one community; that of Rwandans. I grieve when I think of the primitive ethnicity-boxes past leaderships had locked us in. If we’d started off as we did in 1995, we’d be a Whiteman’s country.” By “Whiteman’s country”, of course, Nyirarivuzumwami meant a developed country!
The interview must have been thirty minutes but you could develop a tome from it. For all I know, this “ex-begging-community-box” lady does not feature in the “one-million-out-of-poverty-citizens” statistics. Yet she is the real story of Rwanda. Who thought humble Gir’inka would contribute so immensely to exploding the myth of ethnicity? Those thirty minutes!
Me, give me a better definition of unity, reconciliation and poverty alleviation and I’ll give you the meaning of nonsense on stilts!
