As our eminent visitors here for the AU Summit meet to discuss our continent’s problems and contemplate solutions, I hope they’ll take time off to listen to the humble dome that hosts them.
The Kigali Convention Centre has a story to tell.
When I got occasion to tour this new facility, it was with my usual cynicism. The world has seen many construction wonders – cloud-camouflaged skyscrapers, miles-long sky-hanging bridges, apparently-unending tunnels, etc. So, how could a simple hall impress?
But, after touring it, I saw that Rwandans are coming of age – traditional age!
‘Uti’ how? It’s exactly that lack of effort to impress that’s impressive about it! That domed structure summarises the story of this country’s adaptation of positive modernity and fusing it with what’s relevant in tradition in a simple way.
In the hall you’ll see a similitude of twigs, tree-trunks and rope coming together to form a spire, ‘agasongero’, atop a modern building that looks every inch traditional.
The round dome as home goes as far back in history as Rwanda’s birth. It was the habitation of Rwandans until colonialism came and put paid to it, with modern architecture.
As a complete habitation it was not much to look at, appearing, as it did, like any other primitive improvisation for shelter. However, in producing that ‘improvisation’, people would have come together and painstakingly put all loose bits of Mother Nature together to produce an amalgamation that was simple yet beautiful in a rather sophisticated way.
Those who’ll have occasion to visit the King’s Palace Museum-Rukari will see how it can only be a product of the accord of many hands. Of course, KPM-R has more intricately-made bundles of twigs, ‘imbariro’, where this one has only one ‘rubariro’, as it’s only an imitation.
Anyway, from time immemorial, that simple dome had not only kept the elements and wild animals at bay but also gathered and kept Rwandans together as a family, whose members formed a web, ‘injishi’, in which they were all connected, in their lives.
It was not the way Maasai put together their ‘manyata’ or Eskimos their igloos, for instance.
Which answers the question of many an analyst: how have a people torn by a devastating genocide managed to come together again in a mere twenty years?
As to why Rwandans don’t vigorously highlight the fact of how suspects of Genocide perpetration are embraced in government and how victims and perpetrators live together, to counter allegations of a government instigating fear through autocracy and human rights abuse, who doesn’t know those are empty claims?
But these Western accusers make them, anyway. There is an agenda to fulfil and they’ll always ignore what they see to fulfil it, correction rejoinders or none.
Otherwise, a return to traditional values is incompatible with the prevalence of fear, autocracy or rights-abuse.
Traditionally, that domed ‘residence’ may have belonged to one family but it was home to every Rwandan.
As an example, whenever you travelled, usually for many days, apart from your loincloth and stick, you took nothing else on you. Of course, there were men whose thirst (!) always required a gourd of some brew near. Otherwise, a traveller knew that their every need would be catered for.
And, sure enough, the family head would rouse all the able-bodied inhabitants of that dome out of slumber to assure your comfort even in the middle of the night. Often that included hurriedly preparing a meal of chicken for you! Friend or total stranger, you were at home.
Understandably, this ignores some selfish and malicious rogue elements, ‘abasasamigozi’, who would wrap you up in a mat in your sleep and dump you in a swamp, just for the pleasure of it! Indeed, today these malfeasants are a dime a dozen, as in other societies.
Luckily, though, as everybody knew everybody else, those were known and whoever momentarily managed to escape society’s retribution was avoided like the zika virus.
And, like those ‘basasamigozi’, unclean compounds were given a wide berth.
So, as everybody strove to be exemplary in society, they tried to play host to many travellers and to keep their compounds spotless clean at all times. The dome’s residents thus swept their compound every so often, including kilometres of paths that led from it, thus this ubiquitous cleanliness you see today.
Look at those marbled floors; they, too, existed. When you mixed clay with green leaves like those of sweet-potato plants, you came up with a ‘green marbled floor’ to beat modern floors!
That domed hall represents the story of how Rwandans returned to their traditional values to liberate themselves from the evils wrought by colonialism, its accompanying foreign religion and the genocide they brewed.
Esteemed visitors, know that you are in one of the safest places on this globe but remember to guard your property against that occasional modern malfeasant. And also remember to call out the head of the Rwandan family, President Kagame, on that chicken any time!
In fact, even the Thursday of every week that’s otherwise reserved for Rwandans is at your disposal. That’s how seriously Rwandans take their visitors.
‘Ikaze mu’ Rwanda, a blend of past and present!
