And so it goes......

That you are standing by the roadside, at a spot in Kicukiro district, at the building housing Simba Supermarket, to be exact. You look at the shops, single-storeyed sprinkled with multi-storeyed ones, more in the construction process. You look at the highway leading from the Sonatube roundabout, in Kigali, all the way to the border with Burundi.

Here, looking at the surrounding area stirs something in your mind that you just can’t place. The cleanliness and order? Nope, this is Kigali, if not the whole of Rwanda. If it’s so, it’s a given.

Still, something nags at a strand of your brain but, what with your cognitive impairment condition, you can’t immediately tell what.

So you give it time and let your mind wander off and back in time to what Kicukiro and Gikondo were. Not so long ago, they were the epitome of dirty dust.

Those days, hanging washed clothes on the line was like removing them from dust and rolling them in deep mud. In your house, you’d cover all kitchen utensils with trays – using cloth gave you no chance in hell – or else your nourishment consist of more dust than food.

To eat, you covered your plate with another plate, opened it a crack, quickly picked your portion of food and covered it again as you quickly pushed the portion into your mouth. Needless to say, water and other drinks required more agility and speed.

The respite came with the rainy seasons. But even then, woe betide thee if you ventured out. If living on slopes, it was an unintentional ‘skiing’ adventure, without the necessary kits. You’d ski down on the seat of your trousers or skirt, using your hands as ski poles. If on your way up, you’d need mountaineering skills and tools.

Owners of motorised vehicles got parking space only if they had friends who inhabited flat areas.

Talking of which friends, bingo! It has pricked your cognitively impaired mind.

And reminded you that you beheld the Sandton area in 2012, when you visited a friend. Sandton is a commercial and residential district north of the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. At the time, it was a marvel of order, cleanliness and beauty like the Kicukiro of today. A huge relief from the sore sight of messy and unruly Johannesburg City.

But an even bigger relief from the dusty or muddy and cramped Kicukiro rukarakara (mud-brick) houses of the time that were simply a big offence to sight and smell senses.

Alas! With reports of load-shedding in the whole of South Africa, where electricity supply is allocated to one area at a time while other areas await their turn, you can imagine what has become of the bundle of beauty that was Sandton, in particular. And South Africa, generally.

It means everything is negatively impacted. Health facilities. Schools, especially technical institutions. Homes and other buildings and their maintenance. Water supply. Shopping malls and their electrical appliances, lifts, escalators. Vehicular flow without traffic signs. And the mother of all problems: halting industries. Practically everything comes to a standstill.

When you remember that South Africa was the exemplar economy of Africa, you despair. If the canker of corruption can leave it tottering on the cliff-edge, like it has sunk many other African countries, what’s the next hope?

Ethiopia was rising at an impressive speed but from nowhere civil war tore it down its middle. There are some steady economies which, unfortunately, have some parts of them gnawing at them.

Mauritius, Namibia, Botswana and a few others must stand up to be counted. Rwanda has done her humble best. Other countries have to be called out to deal with little leadership hiccups while others have to be pacified.

Africans have to come together to effect the African Continental Free Trade Area, after eliminating every single barrier. Because as a South American slogan said: a people united will never be defeated.

Rwanda craves it. How did tiny she, in the middle of nowhere, no natural resources, landlocked and with all negativity, have a chance in a million of rising?

Well, if she can surprise you when you’ve been watching her for all of that short life of 29 years, which country can’t? I guess none should underestimate the power of the human resource, especially when it’s empowered with good, hard-nosed, caringly principled and far-sighted political guidance.

Mind you, the growth registered by Rwanda this far hasn’t had the chance of taking all those 29 years (if you remember the 2012 state mentioned above).

First, there were teething problems of rising from the dead to deal with. Uniting a torn people; fixing watertight security of the country’s sovereignty; fashioning a home-made democratic dispensation; erecting unbreakable institutions that are impervious to any form of corruption; ensuring the welfare of every single citizen; seeking to turn enmity into strong bonds of friendship among friend and foe, near as well as far and wide.

And so the three cardinal principles for this land: remaining united, being accountable to one another, thinking big. May the whole of Africa take them to heart and apply them!

And so it goes......