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Sunday, 09 August 2009 at 01:56 | Edit note | Delete
Health workers applaud President Kagame at the National Stadium recently
BY GEORGE KAGAME
The children in the community where I went to elementary school were normally warned against giving out information about our respective families to anybody, from neighbours that were not in the ‘friends’ circle of the family to government agencies.
In our communities, the name of your family simply stated whether you could be recruited to help government machinery and therefore join the table where the national cake was cut or you waited to clear that table at end of the feasts.
The authors of the rule to be uncooperative to government reasoned that it was not delivering any services in this community and therefore not speaking to it was only reciprocal.
But there were no services to speak of. The local governments never built schools in the locality, school age children walked the whole of 16 miles daily to and from school. And yet after seven years of making this trek even that school never had a registered examination centre.
So upon completing seven years at the local school we had to walk another 16 miles to the nearest primary school with an examination centre to be able to sit for the national primary leaving examinations.
One day at school a friend shoved me and I stepped on an old sharp nail that was pointed upwards protruding from broken furniture lying in the classroom. The nail pierced through my foot. There was no clinic at the school or nearby to help with stopping the bleeding.
If it had been there, my brother and I would not afford to pay the bill and there was no health scheme from which to benefit. Had the scheme been there, I would not be eligible to access it because there was no way of identifying who I was. Our people never had any identification documents.
So, with such a nature of things, our people never felt any need or desire to work with local government authorities and as a result governments continually ignored them. Only when one political force showed up and promised them this and that they got interested in government. But this relationship was usually short-lived.
Perhaps it was because at the time, local government institutions were mainly used as forums within which targets for benevolence and sheer cruel power of government was channelled.
Since my community had little chance to be invited to the government dining table they saw it prudent to close out.
In 2007 at the onset of Umurenge performance targets, I was watching a pirated music video when a Mudugudu official dropped in and handed me a piece of paper that had a list of items which the local authorities had promised the central government that they, the local leaders would encourage us, the dwellers to have in all our homes in a given period. The nature of my relationship with government was increasingly changing I observed.
The list included such items as radio sets-for sensitization, television, (in the hope that Rwanda Television would improve the quality of its programming or some merciful investor would introduce an affordable alternative,)-for entertainment, health insurance cover and whether we had a toilet and kitchen.
Looking at the list and my inbred mistrust of people that want information from me, in this case being the arm of government, I wanted to scream to the official and swear in the names of many cows that he gets the hell out of my house. But cooler instincts prevailed.
In comparison to when local government’s major function was to, and whether that individual was on ‘this’ or ‘that’ side and control who moved to Kigali local authorities today run their affairs differently.
My first place of abode in Kigali was in the outskirts of the famous Nyabugogo hub. Two days after moving in, it was demanded of me by my neighbour that I visit the Mudugudu chief to tell him, as Ugandan musician Bobi Wine sings that, “Wendi.”
Next I had to get a Mutuelle de santé cover card, Indangamuntu, and RAMA, the health insurance scheme for Rwandans in formal employment and so forth.
For many slightly arrogant visitors to Kigali and its aficionados -the Ipod kind-this sort of arrangement is too controlled and therefore boring. Added to the monthly Gacaca and Umuganda sessions and you have many cynics comparing the country to a catholic boarding school setting. Initially I belonged to this gang but I have come to learn that fences, strict rules are not limited to Rwanda alone.
The media stories this week tell of multi sectoral approach to achieving the various dreams of the government as enshrined in all programmes. The amalgamation of the CDF into a centrally managed fund, the entry of ICT buses-such that even the folks down in Gisagara can see and feel a computer following right in the footsteps of the One Lap Per Child Programme and finally the big meeting between Presidents Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame.
These things come at the sacrifice of many things. Like my cooperation with the Mudugudu chief.
The commitment of all local and national health officials to increase coverage to 100 percent of all cases, their promise to encourage family planning with gusto, encouraging their patients to have a toilet in all their homesteads and importantly to discourage public spitting also make creating a healthy Rwanda possible in the medium term.
Soon, we’ll be heading to the Umurenge offices to ask whether they have received the phones that Kagame promised to give us on Monday.
Ends
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