DON'T GIVE UP ON US A Rwandan Experience
by Ashmead Ali
By Harry Drayton
Guyana Journal, July 2009
In this his first book, Ashmead Ali has done far more than might be anticipated from its simple title. He has used the experience of his journey to Rwanda, and his stay in the capital Kigali at “Hotel Rwanda”, as an opportunity for a passionate, though restrained, commentary on the evils of poverty and underdevelopment, especially in the newly independent countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He ponders also the efficacy of solutions imposed by the World Bank and IMF, and finds - though expressed ever so gently and subtly - that the loan “conditionalities” of both the old Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) and the newer Poverty Reduction Strategies offer no real solution, leading only to unsustainable Debt Burdens.
But Ali's book is not by any means a doctrinaire political tract. It is a succinct account, written with great sensitivity, honesty, and occasional flashes of humor, of a trip to Central Africa, far away from his home and family in metropolitan Toronto. He e-mails his wife, as promised, every evening from the internet café outside his hotel; and he is ever on the alert to the possibility of a military coup or of being kidnapped. He is awakened early in the morning by the “dawn chorus” of birds, and by the crowing of cocks from not so far away; and goes out on his balcony to observe how similar some of the birds are to those in Guyana or even in Canada. One gets the feeling too that his selection of “Hotel Rwanda” on that first Sunday afternoon was determined very much by the beauty of the flowering plants in the front and all around that building. His admiration of the flora and fauna is Ali's compensation for the ugliness and dangers which are the consequences of Man's insults to our natural environment.
He was persuaded by Edward, a Rwandan he met in Toronto, to travel to his country to propose a sewage disposal project to the authorities in Kigali, but while bemoaning Edward's disdain for punctuality, and the slow pace at which events seemed to unfold in Rwanda, Ali uses the 'free' time to satisfy his interests in Education, Health and cultural issues generally. He visits the main Hospital and is bowled over by its cleanliness and orderliness, and, after visiting a well run secondary school, he is equally shocked at the relatively high fees charged. When he does meet with the mild-mannered Minister of Education he is surprised also to learn that both Primary and University education are free, i.e., are paid for by Government. Implicit in his comment is the unanswerable question: where will they get an ample number of recruits for University? And despite the slow pace, Ali finds time to paint some fine pen portraits, not only of Edward, but also of the wife of Edward's friend, who heads up the National AIDS organization; and Juliette, the documentary film maker, whose remark during their conversation probably gave him an idea for the book's title. But my real favorite was “Mr. Mayor” who puts him at his ease by telling him that he didn't care much for honorific salutations.
To sketch the context of his visit to Rwanda and the project he was prepared to present, Ali gives us right at the beginning, in Chapter 5, “a brief history lesson”, but, in keeping with the present Government's outlawing of any discussion about ethnicity, he seldom makes any mention of either the Hutus or the Tutsis. Indeed, he only identifies the ethnic Pygmy who was Manager of an Advertising Agency and spoke with him in his hotel, as belonging to the marginal Twa group. Near the end of the book, Ali makes clear “The present Government banned the use of identity cards to distinguish the different ethnic groups, which had been taken for granted for years.” But he doesn't quite follow through with a full explanation of just why “it had been taken for granted for years”. He only allows himself the liberty of alluding to the “great and sometimes everlasting power of indoctrination”; and to the “artificial system of differentiation of the three ethnic groups” that had been introduced by the German colonialists. In fact, it was the Germans, who not long after they were ceded Rwanda at the Brussels Conference of 1890, who first identified the minority Tutsis as being of a “superior racial type” by virtue of their tall stature. Together with Roman Catholic officials, the German rulers put them therefore in charge of the majority Hutu farmers, and on the local ruling councils. The issue of ethnic identity cards was a later embellishment of the system. Those were the seeds that were sown by the colonialists - the Germans and later the Belgians - which bore the bitter fruit of Genocide in 1994.
And at the end, when he is preparing to return home, Ali's honesty and optimism shines through: “My work was now complete. We were not able to finalize a contract for the sewage waste management system, nor did the airport director contact us about the passenger boarding and baggage facilities proposal. But we still hoped that some kind of commitment and eventually agreement would be concluded in the future.”
Based on his experience in Rwanda, Ashmead Ali offers some solutions to what in fact has been, and is still, his overarching concern, how to facilitate the elimination of poverty and the arduous process of Development.
Ashmead Ali is to be commended for a well written book which is truly a most satisfying read.
Main
Writings
©GuyanaJournal