To Ahmed and Micheal

Hey Michael;
How are you doing?
Maybe you are at school, or at home or in a dormitory, wherever you are, I just thought about you today. I thought I would write you how I spend my typical day.

I stay at a place called Kimironko, if you have ever lived in Kiwafu after Kansanga that is the equivalent of Kimironko in Kigali.
Anyhow, I work as a journalist in an English newspaper called The New Times, it is also the equivalent of The New Vision in Uganda.
I work as a Staff Writer, normally that’s another name for reporter, I report about news events, issues, personalities and anything else that can make news, sometimes I also help in the creation of news, from my own room, then I call other people who are important and they speak to the public through me. Sometimes, the news to write about is not even there, and so I begin thinking, maybe I’m going to loose my job tomorrow, the God sends a story from somewhere, which can keep busy the whole week. All I do really is write in my notepad what people say and then I type it from my room, listening to music.
Right now aim listening I think to Eric Clapton and Baby King. Byaba Bazungu nyo I cannot understand it, but I downloaded the music when I was idle one day at work.
So my day begins at 6am, I report for work at seven, and read majors events of the day, sometimes, aim invited to events, where I spend the day attending an event just to write 400 words about.
Then sometimes events present themselves, like today I went to a job interview FOR A vacancy that I applied for in February from the national social protection company. NSSF, we were so many that I felt crazy, there were only a couple of jobs and we about 300, we occupied a all university campus and finished all the drinks in the canteen.
So I went to do the interview and it occurred to me that I had come to the wrong interview, my job interview was the next day at 9am/
I met Doryn, my classmate at university, she was also coming to sit for the same interview, we chatted and laughed about the old days at university.
I told her that I was proud of her to have helped me and she should be proud of me for not letting her down.
She however is a big official with the Kigali City Administration, for which I was also a regular reporter. Doryn sometimes also gives tips for news; she is the International Relations Officer for the Capital City administration. So when I have no news I call, however she complains about her job, she says wants to work in a more dynamic company like MTN, which is where her future husband works.
So we all went to the wrong interview, while we were chatting away and revising for tomorrow’s interview, then someone called from for the Rwanda Centre for Support to Small and Medium scale enterprises. This office caters for government and donor support to the growth of small enterprises like kiosks, canteens, bars, hotels, libraries and all of them like salons.
I applied for a job there maybe two months ago, then I chilled, one time they called me for an interview, then today they called me for another interview. When I went there I found it is the crazy routine. So I will go for tomorrow’s interview and hopefully finish doing the exercise in time for me to hand in weekend stories. I have three columns that run on Saturday and Sunday.
So right now am at home after going the wrong interview, and then dropping off another copy of my CV at the centre I told you about.
I have finished my weekend sports column, aim going to edit my Sunday feature story and then write two stories for the news desk.

The one about the city administration concerns the newly developed Kigali MASTER plan which is a blue print for developing a fully planned city growth. The master plan was developed by the current administration of Mayor Dr Aisa Kirabo, it was presented at the International Investment Conference held in Kigali in June 2007.

So the master plan is going to be presented to cabinet and thereafter launched.
So I walk to the offices of the organisations involved and anyone interested or affected by the master plan and when I do that I have a job. Sometimes it happens in two minutes, sometimes four, and then a day, two days, sometimes it can take six months to make one story.

Yet, am paid according to the stories I have published by the end of the month, which means sometimes the salaries varies, sometimes I can afford have many stories and therefore a good salary, sometimes the stories ate not there and then salary to disappears. I spent eight months staying in someone’s house to afford the house rent for the place in which I live currently.

And yet, the house rent is due, the landlord has asked back his house; apparently she wants to sell it. I have got a new house, the new house which I rented from an old man who signed an agreement with me and did not leave me with a copy.
So the house is really far from where I can pick my taxi to work, every morning, I will have to walk 15 minutes to get to a bus point. That is not good, but am consoling myself, you need the exercise.


It is 5.25pm right now, by the time I have done all the things I wrote above it is usually at this time. If I have money sometimes I go to the gym, when I don’t the money.......like today, which unfortunately is quite often, I sty here in my room and listen to music.
Am now listening to a song with lyrics that goes;
“
The sun is setting in the west; the cattle go the stream/ the red wing settling in the nest/ Its time for a cowboy to sing. Purple lines in the canyon/ that’s where I long to be/with my three good companions, just my rifle my pony and me. Weevil wheel in the willow sings a sweet melody............”
Its nice song.


So I will write you much more tomorrow.



“He is here, the one you have been looking for, the one who finished your family during the genocide, now he is here shouting in the taxi park.” Petero Muzeyi, (not his real name) shouted at a passenger in Nyabugogo mid last year.


Muzeyi was part of a group of youth that lounge in Nyabugogo during the day and vanish to neighbouring sharks during the night. That Sunday evening, they were having fun as they called upon passengers in the taxi park. I happened to be traveling to Lake Muhazi’s Jambo for beach for an assignment on Bralirwa’s annual Mutzig nationwide annual folklore musical drive.



Gaaki Kigambo a fellow journalist who was traveling with me was intrigued with the remarks of the boys, who looked to be enjoying the above scene describing the 1994 Genocide. He was caught between the drama and the fact the youths were so eager to talk about the genocide in such a way; “maybe after 50 years, even the Rwandan Genocide will be a matter of history left to chit chats and jokes,” he remarked.
No one else in the bus understood Gaaki’s English to offer a discussion and I was lost between my anger against the taxi touts and their jokes or the humiliation of the passenger. The passenger seemed not to be bothered with the antics of youths; other passengers looked on in amusement.

Fast forward to April 2007 in the newly built taxi park, a group of beautiful endowed adult and teenage ladies walked inside one bus, one of the taxi touts in the park asked the conductor of the bus; “Hey.........are you going to Masisi?”, the conductor was impassive, and his colleague offered the explanation; “the girls you have packed inside that bus can only be residents of Masisi.”
The same month in Butare’s NUR, Peter entered a restaurant one dark evening; the moment he stepped in the dining room electricity went off. One of the diners in the room remarked; “this is what happens when a stranger walks other diners in a place. Peter was not a stranger and it was not a joke either.
Peter was offended!
For some reason a parliamentary commission in december 2007 discovered with the help of percentage rates that in many Rwanda’s schools especially in the Northern Province were breeding pupils and students along identities which the parliament members termed as ‘Genocide ideology’.
The ideology got its name from investigations that school children labeled each other as Hutu or Tutsi, the students thereafter began to write their determination to eliminate their supposed opponents, such ideas the commission went on to report caused the 1994 Genocide.






The report caused alarm to many observers and politicians, to date headlines still appear in the media about genocide ideologies, either politicians urging their people to avoid the ideas here or an attack against a genocide survivor there inspired by what researchers have termed as ethnic hatred. In some cases, the attacks have been motivated by one victim testifying against one genocide perpetrator. In many cases, the names are different, but the motive is always familiar. Yet, in the same month that these events happened, the nation was in mourning for over 937000 victims of the 1994 Genocide, the same month; conferences were taking place in Canada disputing the Rwandan Genocide.

Professor Lwakabamba
In the past we had issues where students wrote abusive language in the toilets and their hostels. We have stopped this writing.
Lwakabamba however admits that during guild elections, genocide related ideas come in to play in student politics; “genocide ideas come into play especially in election time. However, here they take the rivalries between Anglophones and Francophone students.”

Francophone is the Kigali speak for someone that speaks exclusively French as his second language while Anglophone is foe the English speaking lot.
Lwakabamba adds that there was too much competition for guild seats; “students fought by all means to get to these positions because they earn a lot of money.”
The university has adopted an intelligence network to report about genocide related incidents among the students; “we have put up security agents to check and report back to the administration about the situation concerning genocide ideologies.”

The government has committed resources to assisting genocide survivors throughout the country, Protais Musoni the Minister of Local Government says, “We have established the number of vulnerable people that survived the genocide who cannot afford basic materials as houses.”
Musoni said that number currently stands at 30000 according to Ibuka, he says that government has committed resources to eliminating genocide ideologies in the country; “through programmes like Ubudehe, Umuganda, community policy committees, we have promoted a culture of people solving their own problems, if citizens have initiative to solve their own problems, they cannot be manipulated, we worked to achieve a universal feeling of self esteem among Rwandans. Musoni says such ideologies will be eliminated in the long run as Rwandans become more hard work and inspire competition .among the citizens on exploiting government policies instead of ethnic thinking that was indoctrinated into people.


Professor Frank Chalk a genocide expert that has offered to assist Rwanda in eliminating genocide ideology says
..............











Is there genocide ideology in the country?
What is government doing?
Itorero
Ubudehe
Beyond forgiveness to reintegration
FDLR publicity
Can it be eliminated?
Frank Chalk
At The nightmare came on a horse back screening at Gisozi.

Musoni and giving Rwandans self esteem
International condemnation of French and Spanish warrant dramas
When poverty is eliminated and as Protais Musoni says; it is important to raise the self esteem of our people so that they accept that some people are rich and other are poor, to avoid being indoctrinated with harmful thinking about each other.”
Frank Chalk agrees, poverty is very easy to be manipulated
It is easy to sell an ideology to a poor man


Bloom Hotel

BY GEORGE KAGAME

Put a lake nearby and you have the perfect resort motel right in the middle of Kigali Kimironko’s Bloom Motel has a wide expanse compound beautifully coloured by a clever lining of flowers right from the gate to the reception.
The motel is well set apart from the normal lifestyle around Kimironko yet it is less than 30 metres between the main road leading to the prison the other side of the suburb, and connecting to main roads leading to Kibagabaga hospital, the main market and the national stadium.
Sitting on the patio of the motel, the above features look so many hundreds of miles away, because while you sip a cold Amstel from the bar facing the main, the indications are quite clear that you have to a place where fun is in plenty.
The wide gardens behind guestrooms are used to host parties and should a guest want to stretch with a ball in the compound, no problem according to the Manager@@@@@@@

Bloom Motel serves fresh meals prepared in the in-house kitchen where the chef regularly comes to the crowd in front to receive special orders.
There are well made fried chips and equally tasty fish brochette, but the beef brochette is not tender and the vegetable servings are very little too.
The chips are also made in the shape of chain saws as is the case in many eating restaurants in the city.


The rooms have a very good view; the front of the motel gives way to a virgin hill across, which gives the place a very rural outlook, the well maintained and good looking little garden with a wide collection of flowers.

The back view gives a fresh looking view is large flat field with a single tree that looks isolated in the middle, the other trees are outside the compound.



It is normal in the evenings seeing Kigali's corporate wannabes that reside in nearby areas with laptops heading to the hotel. These Yuppies; (young urban working professionals) are a common feature with their lone laptops and headphones on the tables and beer bottles as company.



There’s fresh chicken prepared Ala carte chicken, the man chicken serves traditional dishes as is ordered.

Fish brochette costs Frw 2500 for two sticks, while a whole fish costs Frw 5000, chips will take you back Frw 1000, while beef brochette is Frw 600.

The unique selling point for Bloom Hotel is their garden, which is so huge it can occupy a football field Ideal for children as their nothing to break, just well maintained low trimmed grass.