Has it occurred to you that ‘Nyanza’ is found in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and who knows where else? Well, it is.

Did you also know that there are other such commonalities in names of people, clans, animals and common words in the supposedly different languages in the Great Lakes region? True too. This came out in a presentation titled ‘Ethnocentrism in the Great Lakes region’, by Ambassador Denis Polisi, MP, to the Rotarians as the latter marked World Understanding and Peace Day on February 23, 2012 in Kigali.A little background would be useful here. February 23 marks the birthday of Rotary International. Rotary International, the world’s first service-club organisation, comprises more than 1.2 million men and women in nearly 33,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas. They carry out the ideal of ‘Service above Self’. This date, in February, has thus been annually marked by Rotarians (members of Rotary Clubs) since 1905 when Chicago attorney, Paul Harris, started the Rotary Club of Chicago. It is also known as the World Understanding and Peace Day. The ultimate goal of Rotary International has always been to rid the world of Polio. After 25 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this scourge, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.Rotarians also do other community service projects. In more than 34,000 clubs, worldwide, you’ll find them volunteering in communities, at home and abroad, to support education and job training, provide clean water, combat hunger, improve health and sanitation, and, of course, eradicate polio. In Rwanda, for example, the Rotary Club of Kigali Virunga came up with the idea of building the country’s first public library and, today, with government support, the magnificent Kigali Public Library is almost complete – right behind the American Embassy, at Kacyiru. The club has recently completed a water supply project to a village in Gitarama, in partnership with Rotary Clubs of Forest Hill in Canada, the Urukundo Children’s home, Soferwa among others. There another four Rotary clubs and each runs similar projects as well.  Back to the ethnocentrism presentation, Ambassador Polisi clearly demonstrated, based on research done under the aegis of the Amani Forum (an association of regional parliamentarians), just how much we, in the Great Lakes region, are ethnically related and connected.If one looks up the proper definition of the word ‘ethnic’, which is a group of people who share common (communal) traits such as customs, language, etc, you will be astonished that not only are Rwandans one ethnic group, but they are properly a part of a major ethnic group spanning the Great Lakes region with other 12 (I say more) members.These group members largely understand each other’s language, share clan names and customs, among other things. Depressingly, though, these people have each considered themselves different from each other and within themselves. Thus, they have all along discriminated and into conflict with each other.Naturally, the discussion then steered to solve this unfortunate situation. It was instructive that people in the audience, from each of the Great Lakes country, and as far out as South Africa and Zambia agreed with the lawmaker’s sentiments. Thus, more work needs to be done in this area to establish our ‘points of convergence’ and educate us on the same. More importantly, however, the conflicts are normally economic in nature (resource allocation quarrels, really) and ethnocentrism is just a guise. There needs, therefore, to be an economic basis in the search for solutions mainly through encouraging regional trade at all levels.Two more things; one more research needs to be done in this area and, two; some good linguistics scholars should help us discover the Bantu Latin – it seems like all Bantu speakers had one language not very long ago! Sam Kebongo is a skills and business consultant.