We are in Jomba, Northern Kivu, Congo-Kinshasa (as D. R. Congo was called after independence) in 1962. Your home was along a dust road, with houses lined along both sides of the road, urusisiro, now known as umudugudu. You lived in a house that was surrounded by other houses, instead of fields! You went to the market to buy foodstuffs, instead of taking them there, so as to sell them and buy things like salt, a pot, a calf, etc. You spent the whole day playing because there was no work, and the afternoons were for songs and dances. We called ourselves scouts, but actually we were street urchins. We were the young rascals today known as fazeurs or shegues in Kinshasa, bingumbi in Bukavu, mayibobo in Kigali, ibirobezo in Bujumbura, abayaye in Kampala, chokora in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, where people are respectful, they are called watoto wa mitaani, street children.
That was the life in Jomba, Northern Kivu, Eastern Congo. That is the life that I call kalimusoko life. As I was explaining last week, Calcul Kalimusoko was the title of a song, which was so widespread in the Congo that it stood for not only all the songs in the country, but life there generally. Imagine trying to lead an urban life in the remotest part of the Congo, where even Kinshasa is not sure if it can be counted among cities! It is like trying to manufacture a lunar rocket when you haven’t even started manufacturing a bicycle; it is a pipe dream. And that is what life in Jomba was – just a dream. A life of leisure, idleness, consumption and no production is no life at all. Vast lands of dense, tropical forest surrounded us. Yet only about a tenth of the area was under cultivation. And maybe even today you would be surprised if you looked at the whole country. How much of its natural wealth has been exploited? All its vocal cords yes, but what else?
Talking about work, however, how do we rate ourselves, here in Rwanda? I don’t think we can impress any gapita worth his whip. If you were born the other day, a gapita is a Kinyarwanda corruption of kapita, itself a Kiswahili corruption of the word ‘captain’. What it actually meant is ‘supervisor’, during the colonial days. During the colonial days because a supervisor then did not work like today’s supervisor. A supervisor then worked with a whip, which meant that he didn’t have to bark orders. He just pointed and the work was done. If it was not done, he struck with the whip. This was so because, in the beginning, the supervisor was a Belgian, in the case of Rwanda. The Belgian colonialist did not have a language of communication, so he used sign language, if not sheer force. The only language he could try was Kiswahili, so if you could speak it approximately, you were guaranteed any job. You didn’t need any other qualification papers, nor a number of years’ experience, nor going to Monsieur le Notaire to get your papers endorsed.
But I am digressing as usual. We were talking about work: today, a gapita would do us a lot of good in this country; we seriously need heavy whipping. We may be pretending to work, as my black friend says about civil servants, and the government may be pretending to pay us, but that is no excuse for not working. I know of only one ministry where you may find somebody in the office at eight sharp. For the rest of the ministries, you would need a gapita with the most ruthless kiboko, whip, so as to haul them into office at ten in the morning! And yet if you listen to some of these civil servants going on about being patriotic, you would think they are the ones who invented the word. If you work outside the normal working hours, they will make sure word has gone round that you are just out to please so and so. If you concentrate on your work all the time and you do not engage in gossip, your colleagues will call you ikigwari, a dumb-wit, and all sorts of names. So they will come to your office and tell you about a relative who is sick, they want to make a telephone call; they will crowd in your office and now start on endless, humourless jokes. They will talk and talk about how they are overworked and underpaid, how they are under-utilised and deserve better, how so and so is favoured because he/she knows somebody or comes from a particular area, how nothing moves, etc. An interesting example: somebody will spend a week looking for a facilitator to get him to the director who signs ordinary passports, so as to get a passport. But do you know what? The same fellow could just pick the necessary forms and fill them, pay the mandatory 10,000 Franks and within a few days the passport is ready for the picking!
Anyway, the civil servant may not put effort in work, since he is not a direct beneficiary of the product of his work. Granted, but what about the one who is self-employed? Again, a simple example. A shoeshine boy sits near Nile Grill Restaurant, in the centre of Kigali City (?), so as to shine as many shoes as possible, and thus get maximum earnings. So, you bring yourself to him, you ask him if he can shine your shoes, you ask if you can sit on that stool which, you can see very well, is meant for his clients like you, etc. All the time the fellow was just nodding as he talked to his friends, but he had not failed to extract your reluctant handshake from you. Then starts the process of removing your shoes, after which he goes across the street to pick a cigarette butt from his friend, then he will observe how your shoes have seen better days, how others of their age are long gone, etc. Then starts his monologue: ntakigenda, nothing is functioning these days – as if he would give it a chance! He deserves a better job in a ministry, but he has no big relative, his relative is sick…. The same rigmarole, as you know it in the office! By the time he starts washing your shoes with water, then putting them in the sun to dry, then putting polish on them, then putting dust on them, then later shining them, then polishing the shoe-laces…You can imagine the agony! Why does he have to put dust? Search me!
So, for over three hours, two people have been held hostage of a simple, five-minute job, him and you! In Kampala, at least the shoeshine boy will tout you until you accept his offer of a good shine, then offer you lugabire sandals so you can go about your business, then he can go ahead and take his sweet time with your shoes. Not so his counterpart of Nairobi. This one will literally drag you to his stool, stick rubber pieces into your shoes – to protect your socks – with such force that you may scream! He grabs a piece of wet cloth and swishes it over your shoes, does the same with a dry one, and then with a brush. Before you can take a second breath the shine is so good that you can use it as a mirror! Make the mistake of removing your shoes, however, the way you do it in Kigali or Kampala, and before you can say Moi, the fellow will have disappeared with them! A vice, of course, but at least done with speed! Because, just compare them with our robbers in Kigali. A bunch of them come into a shop with one lonely pistol, the pistol-brandishing one murmurs “Stick them up!” and the shopkeeper hands over the money so fast you’d think he wanted to get rid of it! Then the gang of thugs sedately walks to the taxi-park and starts to negotiate the fare!
We have so many vices that it is hard to enumerate them. For instance, catch anyone admitting a mistake. In this country no one makes a mistake, it is always because of someone else. If you are late, there is the taxi to blame. If you drive, it is the car. Your work mate, if it is in your place of work. If your boss makes a mistake, he will blame you for being too independent if you make decisions. If you don’t, you have no initiative!
