Technology phobia and ‘Khaki envelop’ phenomenon

In Rwanda, job seekers are called ‘Khaki envelops carriers’. This is because people who seek for jobs, carry application letters in Khaki coloured envelops, as they move from one point to another, in search for employment. Job seeking is not healthy for the employer, the one seeking it and society in general. That is why Rwanda, like other developing countries, has been calling her people to create their own jobs and avoid job seeking. Ironically, the demands do not have a foundation, laid properly to produce job creators. We do not have strong technical schools that can give our children the skills required to employ themselves. Even the few technical schools we have are ill equipped because of the little value the society gives them in general. Carpentry for example, is regarded as an employment option for children and people with learning disabilities- academic dwarfs or the deprived. This kind of attitude towards what other developing countries embraced so many years is our undoing. The same point of view explains why we do not have small-scale industries in Rwanda. You will find for example, Ugandan and Kenyan trucks carrying remains of old vehicles and other metals ( commonly known as ‘scrape’), to their small scale local industries. They in turn sell to us, saucepans and plates made out of the raw materials they picked from us at a give away price. Places like Katwe in Kampala and Jua Kali in Nairobi will shorten the story for you. Rwanda cannot therefore, afford to remain in the darkness of its own shadow. Not giving our children specialized skills at an early age, is shying away from technology, a situation that creates the ‘Khaki envelop’ phenomenon- technology phobia. So policy makers should think about giving the idea the weight it deserves. Jua kali for example plays a very important role in the economic development of Kenya and yet it had a humble beginning. “Among the initial urban Jua Kali enterprises introduced were motor-mechanics, carpentry, masonry, tinsmithery and blacksmithery. With time, the indigenous Kenyans soon entered the market and gradually expanded the industry by producing a wide range of such items as jikos (braziers), cooking and frying pans, steel windows, tin lamps, motor spares and leather artefacts. Today the Jua Kali industry represents an enormous conglomeration of products in many towns and villages across the Republic of Kenya”, John A. Maudu once remarked when presenting a paper on non-formal education in Harare. Some few, young and dynamic Rwandans are venturing in the obscure world to discover for themselves what others do and gain. We thus have some people out of their own initiatives who have become prominent carpenters. Carpenters are highly skilled crafts persons who fall into two basic categories. Structural carpenters are involved in the construction of buildings, whereas detail carpenters work to create, maintain or refinish items such as furniture. Kazarwa Alice, a 24 years old girl, is a quite successful carpenter who falls in the latter category above. She is the only girl who works among men, in a quite big carpentry workshop in Rwamagana district-Eastern province. She has been in the job for the last three years. You know it is not common to find a Rwandan lady in a workshop like this, practicing carpentry. This kind of background affected my determination at the beginning of the training,” Kazarwa explains. Contact: mugitoni@yahoo.com