June 22 2016
Time was when I used to bemoan our incapacity to work hard as Rwandans, when you compared us with the Chinese, for instance. When you read stories of a fifteen-storey hotel being built in six days in China, prefabrication notwithstanding, and then thought about how our single-storey buildings took none-too-few years, you couldn’t help despairing.
Today, this desperation has vanished. The other Monday I was pleasantly surprised to find three roundabouts where there had been one, the previous Friday.
Late on Friday evening we were kindly requested not to use sections of some roads only to find those sections had begotten two roundabouts and their accompanying roads in two days, flat.
Of course, cynics will sneer at it as having been a single instance whose urgency was petitioned by rushed preparations for the African Union (AU) summit hosting this July. However, AU summit or none and whether or not there are finishing touches to be done, the point is that the work could be done day and night.
You’ll appreciate this if you remember that there was a time Kigali residents did their things so languidly that you couldn’t spot one moving about before eight in the morning. At midday on the dot, it was a stampede as everyone, in government and in private business, rushed home for their precious two-hour ‘pause’ that involved a tipple, a generous ‘bite’ and a one-hour-‘short’ siesta.
Woe betide thee if you interrupted a shopkeeper’s hurried journey to their midday nap at closing time, enquiring about the price of anything — you risked being trampled! The law itself prohibited overtime work, no less. Not even the additional pay involved could dissuade the law-overlords from exacting punitive measures!
If there was urgent work to be done, workers had to be shipped in from neighbouring countries, far-flung ones too, as was the case during the construction of the Serena Hotel building.
Only in the village was life somehow animated, though it meant nothing more than tilling land unproductively. Still, productive or not, most people were happy to kill to appropriate that land or any worthless property in towns from others, one of the reasons 1994 happened.
So, it’s worth celebrating when, twenty-two short years since, we see that Kigali is among only a few cities in the region that do not fret, hurriedly cleaning up, when there is an event to host. Its name is now synonymous with cleanliness, as is the country’s name, and the authors of this cleanliness in their shifts are hard at work from dawn to dusk and dawn to dusk.
It’s especially laudable that the private sector, which paradoxically latched on late, is slowly catching up with the public sector in embracing hard work.
Talking of roundabouts for Kigali, then, this new-found energy should be directed into creating beauty with a traditional theme through them, taking a cue from the Kigali Convention Centre that has been inspired by our traditional round-hut.
And while we are at it, is it the ‘Queen’s English’ “centre” or the American “center”? And if we have Urugwiro Village, for instance, why not Isangano Centre?
Anyway, if the big roundabout near the city centre and the ones at the Convention Centre and at Gisimenti are any indicator, roundabouts don’t only look beautiful (especially taking a bird’s-eye view) but also reduce gridlocks, as are common on road junctions.
So why not replace these gridlocked junctions with roundabouts, making sure to make these latter big enough to accommodate floral beautification?
The priority casualty junction list could include ‘Sopetrad’, Gishushu, ‘Prince-House’, Giporoso and ‘Kuri Km12’ (here with a flyover, leaving existing road to heavy-load traffic). Then there is ‘Yamaha’ and at Kinamba to the right, or directly at Nyabugogo and Gitikinyoni. (Here throw in planting a new tree ‘for the birds’.)
In Kimironko there is ‘Le Printemps’ junction and the one to Kibagabaga. Towards Kicukiro, there is the junction to Gikondo, that at ‘Rwandex’ and the one at Kicukiro centre, without forgetting pacifying the sloping road down from Inyanza.
With more roundabouts, who knows, as we have “Rwanda, the land of a thousand hills”, so could we slowly begin to talk about Kigali as the city of a thousand rings.
Maybe not the most savoury for a brand, but the resultant greening could add to the green places promised by our city mothers to blend in with the green-rolling-hills of the countryside.
Come to think of it, how about ‘domed roundabouts’? As mentioned, Kigali has always set the trend for the rest of the country. It could as well summarise the story of the country: its history, its geography and its projected development path.
Moreover, those green roundabouts can neutralise the gritting effect hurled at our eyes by these concrete and glass structures that seem set to completely colonise this, our humble capital.
Apart from reflecting our rolling hills and round huts, some of the domed roundabouts can represent our valleys, waterways and even volcanoes.
And if it’s true that the volcanoes used to experience eruptions in their history, this also can be brought out. I’ve seen colour-lighting schemes play interesting tricks on fountains like our own in the big roundabout near the city centre; let’s build more fountains.
Roundabouts and the Convention Centre can tell our re-energised story.
