Irifuti!!! Irifuti!!

THE ROAD TO BUGESERA

I was sat in Kigali with nothing to do, apart from shoot the breeze and eat meat while drinking beer, which is a major pastime here. A friend of my uncle then invited me to see his farm in Bugesera, a rather dry and desolate dust-bowl in the South of Rwanda. To mention Bugesera to a Rwandan is to talk of famine and hunger, while the rest of Rwanda is a food-basket overflowing with abundance; a place like Bugesera was seemingly godforsaken. Not anymore, the man who was my host had seen the good sense to buy land in this area which was cheap, hoping to irrigate the hell out of it but he was blessed with rain. All of a sudden Bugesera has become a veritable Garden of Eden compared to its past and is now a parable for development. The government has taken Bugesera to be a metaphor for the development of Rwanda; meaning that if Bugesera can develop, then Rwanda finest moment is just a step away.


Firstly we had to acquaint ourselves with the finer rules of driving if we had to get to Bugesera. Rwandan driving is refined and not a lot of people understand its rules, here are a few pointers

Never stick to one lane, always weave between two lanes. Be sure to confuse the driver behind.

Always drive 2 cm behind the driver in front of you. Do not drive 1cm behind, as this is dangerous.

When pulling out, always wait till a driver is just near before you pull out. To wait until it is clear is unsafe and will mean you be late for your appointment.

When lights go red it means that the next 5 cars can go through.

Do not take any notice of Moto’s, they are expendable.

On Zebra crossings, zebras have priority, people do not. You get 10 points for an ordinary pedestrian, 5 for a child, 2 for a dog or wild animal.

Overtaking should be done only in the most hazardous of circumstances.

Always stare at the man driving next to you, do not pay attention to the road, size up the guy in the next lane, wonder how much he earns, whether he is Nani’s cousin and various other gossip.

When turning left pull right and vice versa, always anger the drivers behind you.
Always drive slowly in the fast lane and fast in the slow lane.



Armed with this information we set out on the road to Bugesera, the first landmark was the bridge, which was freshly completed and beautiful. It was like we drove cautiously, as if we did not want to leave any marks on it and leave it a perfect as it was. The tarmac was so fresh it was still wet and with the scorching sun, it glimmered like a black mamba that stretched into the distance. The locals were still amazed with their new road as they were inspecting it like a cricket pitch. Pedestrians walked in the cycle lane, cyclists rode in the road and paid little heed to the monster 4x4s behind them.


The town of Nyamata was our last big town before our destination, Kigali is going to extend to here, it is frightening to see how they are just going to keep extending, till they get to Burundi and then Intersec is going take over till Kigali is going to reach Bujumbura. The airport is going to reach here so logically the City should extend here. But why not leave a gap of green between? It is like the canon of development has to destroy any patch of green, because green represents under-development. Nyamata could thrive as a town in its own right, not as an appendage of Kigali, which is a sprawling mess. It is like a mushroom ring that is just parasitically consuming virgin lands around. It desperately needs a greenbelt, which will help it go back over neglected inner city areas, the slums that shamelessly stand defiant in our fine capital. It would revalue land and those slum dwellers could get a handsome reward for leaving.


So Nyamata is just outside Kigali, a perfect industrial zone, duty-free zone whatever you want it to be but the beast of Kigali needs to cannibalise it, we bid farewell to it in its current state and sunk into the horizon. The usual hooting match ensued, before we set off, we had made sure the horn was working, after all it is the most important part of the car. Without it we would kill dozens of idle-minded idiots walking along the road. This girl made me laugh; she was laughing with abandon at a joke her friend said and was just about to step into the road when we hooted. DM, our driver saved the lives of dozens as he beeped just before they step to their deaths. It made me wonder how funny it would be to die laughing. That girl would be laughing her head off and St. Peter would appear in front of her and all her friends would have disappeared.


As we got further down the road we saw the road-building in progress and a quirky sight. A tanker truck was spraying water over road for the rollers to come in and compact the ground but some resourceful locals were using the water-truck to fetch free water and hardly a drop was touching a road. We turned onto a dirt road to see the farms, along this way I heard a familiar sound “Irifuti! rifuti! rifuti!” I wondered what this new craze was? I wanted to try this Irufuti thing out. “It means LIFT.” DM to me.



Alex showed me his farm; he is a former soldier that got a piece of land with his demobilisation package. It was modest but earnest little beauty if ever there was one, local materials, rustic, mystic and all a simple man wants. He had an orchard, mixed-culture gardens with various crops. His land extended into the middle-distance and he told me of his plans to buy more land but the prices have sky-rocketed. This little secret was now out; Bugesera was now the hot cake.



There are certain sounds and smell that instinctively delight the heart, even for a city-dweller, it can be liberating. At DM’s farm we saw this first-hand. The smell of cow-dung was this first, emerging mysteriously from a distant field. The sound of banana leaves rustling around was so soothing; sugar-cane flittered away in another field. We entered his banana field and saw a make-shift barrier that protected it from thieves. “I put barbed wire up, but they stole it within 2 hours. They love charity here. They usually picked the full-moon to steal bananas.”



The beans he planted were called Coltan, a homage to the most valuable metal mined in neighbouring Congo. These fetched a dollar a kilo at market and even more on export. He was able to plant just a day before it rained; he watched meteorological reports and consulted local wise men. “If I had given them the seeds a week before planting, they would have cooked them with Ugali. I told them to plant that day in order to save the seeds and boom! It rained.”



In Rwanda if you buy land, you effectively buy the people who live on it, because they cannot go anywhere, you are stuck with them. If you want to use the land for residential purposes then you expel them but if you want to use it for agriculture then you are bound to employ the locals. The buzzword among the locals was “koperatif” a recent government policy that had been adopted whole-heartedly by the locals but had expanded to a wider philosophy. DM had asked to plant these Coltan beans but the “Koperatif” had decided to plant a less profitable variety that suited their tastes. This was democracy or stupidity, he explained that they had cost him $20,000 but how do you explain to them that they could have all bought radios and bicycles as well as their favourite beans.


The Koperatif had extended to building services and had relieved his house of most of the corrugated iron sheets. All the locals came by one by one claiming innocence, each claiming to have witnessed the robbery, but none got a proper look at the perpetrators faces. The ones who had brand new iron sheets on their mud huts were particularly vehement in their denials. The village had all agreed their alibis and held their nerve amid some serious interrogation.


It made you realise that in some ways Rwanda has not changed much in centuries. When you have rural peasants tied to land and urban land-owners, it is inevitable that a feudal hierarchy will exist. The locals were tied to the whims of the land-owners and had to strike a balance between his needs and theirs. The farmers thought they had done the right thing by planting the beans they usually eat, it made sense to them to think about their tastes but the price they would have got for the other type of beans would have been a windfall. Subsistence is living for the day, no plan can change that, they are stuck in their mindset.


A lake sprawled before us, this lake was not even on any maps, but it was enormous and full of fish as fishermen dotted the surface. I started to walk down towards that lake, which had an apron of green papyrus marshes around it. I instantly attracted weird looks from the locals as they could smell the “City” in me. But they let me be in their own way after they got an eyeful. Coffee groves were the next level down as they needed more water. More bananas; then a coffee nursery by the water, the fishermen had already left to collect their nets and would not be back till after dark. Meanwhile I had to get back on the trail before it was dark as I would be lost to the elements. So we were leaving and on our way to Ririma, the road to Bugesera is long and winding but we’ll get there.