I'm an American journalist traveling way outside my comfort zone, living for half a year in Tanzania and trying to cast a fresh pair of eyes on the complexities of development in one of the poorest places in the world.

Theme by nostrich.

9th April 2010

Photo

Having lived in Tanzania for three months, there were a thousand-and-one things I noticed in Rwanda that would never otherwise have caught my eye. Some of them were big and obvious, like the customer-friendly 24-hour grocery superstore in downtown Kigali offering a joyous abundance of hard-core western consumer goods. For weeks now I had been starting to have some pretty vivid dreams about just 15 minutes in a Target superstore — and finally I had something resembling that chance. Alas, after wandering deliriously through the aisles for 15 minutes, the only thing I could think to buy that I really needed was mouthwash and conditioner. Apparently, I just need to have a superstore nearby to be happy — I don’t actually need anything in it. Even the book section was enlightening: English language titles about business and accounting and self-improvement (also present, a British self-help title that, remarkably, the perpetually gloomy Brits probably need more than Rwandans. The title: “It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit.”). Outside was a genuine western-style coffee shop, complete with wireless Internet and lattes. I nearly wept with joy at the sound of the hot foam infuser. Best of all, over three consecutive dinners in Kigali, I got my first taste of real beef in ten weeks, including a good meal at the Hotel Milles-Collines, made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” It was a nice escape. Mostly, however, it is the little things that you notice and that add up to a picture of a country, in spite of everything, moving forward. Some of it probably falls under the category of the “broken windows” theory — that little successes and visible improvements contribute to an overall atmosphere of progress that make other improvements easier. There are street signs and well-paved highways between the cities. In the west we passed military barracks being converted into high schools. In every village you see people all along the roads, but you generally do not see people carrying water between villages — because nearly every village has its own bore hole for water. In Tanzania, you often see people carrying jugs over long distances, not to mention dipping them in filthy ditches and irrigation canals. In Kigali, there are numerous buildings under construction, and even in the villages you see people putting up simple brick structures for stores or homes. In Moshi, our home in Tanzania, the city, though vibrant, is littered with half-completed and abandoned concrete shells, overrun with weeds. Street lamps make Kigali feel much safer at night, which gets more people out and about. All of these things add up. Rwandan cows are fatter. It’s more common to see a group of 10-12 people working together in a field instead of just one person — the result of what seems to be a fairly successful system of rural cooperatives where labor, land and resources are shared so crops can be grown more efficiently. On the final Saturday of every month the entire country stops working to perform several hours of mandatory community labor. There are more people moving around and fewer, it seems, sitting around. The public vans and buses are crowded but everyone has a seat; laws against piling people in until they‘re hanging out the doors are strictly enforced. There are fewer random police checkpoints and the opportunities they provide for petty corruption. The central authority is visible; most villages have a town hall and some kind of medical center, even if it‘s just a tiny clinic. There are young, recently planted trees along the sides of the highways — in how many developing countries do you see people planting trees? The leading newspaper, while hardly a journalistic masterpiece and apparently toeing the government line, has letters from citizens complaining about things like potholes, and is full of ads for university-level study opportunities.

Having lived in Tanzania for three months, there were a thousand-and-one things I noticed in Rwanda that would never otherwise have caught my eye. Some of them were big and obvious, like the customer-friendly 24-hour grocery superstore in downtown Kigali offering a joyous abundance of hard-core western consumer goods. For weeks now I had been starting to have some pretty vivid dreams about just 15 minutes in a Target superstore — and finally I had something resembling that chance. Alas, after wandering deliriously through the aisles for 15 minutes, the only thing I could think to buy that I really needed was mouthwash and conditioner. Apparently, I just need to have a superstore nearby to be happy — I don’t actually need anything in it. Even the book section was enlightening: English language titles about business and accounting and self-improvement (also present, a British self-help title that, remarkably, the perpetually gloomy Brits probably need more than Rwandans. The title: “It Is Just You, Everything’s Not Shit.”). Outside was a genuine western-style coffee shop, complete with wireless Internet and lattes. I nearly wept with joy at the sound of the hot foam infuser. Best of all, over three consecutive dinners in Kigali, I got my first taste of real beef in ten weeks, including a good meal at the Hotel Milles-Collines, made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” It was a nice escape.

Mostly, however, it is the little things that you notice and that add up to a picture of a country, in spite of everything, moving forward. Some of it probably falls under the category of the “broken windows” theory — that little successes and visible improvements contribute to an overall atmosphere of progress that make other improvements easier. There are street signs and well-paved highways between the cities. In the west we passed military barracks being converted into high schools. In every village you see people all along the roads, but you generally do not see people carrying water between villages — because nearly every village has its own bore hole for water. In Tanzania, you often see people carrying jugs over long distances, not to mention dipping them in filthy ditches and irrigation canals.

In Kigali, there are numerous buildings under construction, and even in the villages you see people putting up simple brick structures for stores or homes. In Moshi, our home in Tanzania, the city, though vibrant, is littered with half-completed and abandoned concrete shells, overrun with weeds. Street lamps make Kigali feel much safer at night, which gets more people out and about. All of these things add up.

Rwandan cows are fatter. It’s more common to see a group of 10-12 people working together in a field instead of just one person — the result of what seems to be a fairly successful system of rural cooperatives where labor, land and resources are shared so crops can be grown more efficiently. On the final Saturday of every month the entire country stops working to perform several hours of mandatory community labor. There are more people moving around and fewer, it seems, sitting around. The public vans and buses are crowded but everyone has a seat; laws against piling people in until they‘re hanging out the doors are strictly enforced. There are fewer random police checkpoints and the opportunities they provide for petty corruption. The central authority is visible; most villages have a town hall and some kind of medical center, even if it‘s just a tiny clinic. There are young, recently planted trees along the sides of the highways — in how many developing countries do you see people planting trees? The leading newspaper, while hardly a journalistic masterpiece and apparently toeing the government line, has letters from citizens complaining about things like potholes, and is full of ads for university-level study opportunities.

Comments
blog comments powered by Disqus