Kick the ‘bigman syndrome’ out

The spirit of the Rwandan or African big-man was captured very well by Emma Kabanda in one of his recent Sunday Musings. Kabanda illustrated how his endeavours to get paid for his services to an unnamed company had taken him over two months. In one instance the boss of the company was not available to sign his pay slip, in another the accounts office had misplaced the slip. This back and forth played itself out in over a month or so while the pay slip was doing the African administrative dance and finally the poor man forfeited his earnings out of frustration. When I shared this story with a European colleague he confided in me that his people have a joke that ‘Africans have watches while Europeans have time.’ This certainly made sense when I remembered that sheer size and price estimate of the watch on one of my boss’ hand! The musing was important because it tried to tackle all the crucial ideas that Rwanda has been striving to achieve in the past five years and even more important because many people in the country could relate to it. It pointed out our well elaborated desire to develop efficient customer care strategies across all sectors of the economy. Establishing and developing self sustaining institutions beyond the people that head them plus exposing the folly of the famous performance contracts. More important however, and why the pay slip is alluded to here, is the fact that the example is an embarrassment to the ‘regional service hub’ cliché going on in the country. Writer after writer have come to remind The New Times readers over the years about the acute shortage of basic customer care traits in the country and their experiences/humiliation with this problem. Ahead of this campaign to illustrate our congenial client relationship problems is the Nyamirambo based American journalist Josh Kron, (speaking of Kron and the nature of Rwanda’s relationship with customer care.) Onetime I shared a bus ride with the American from Bujumbura to Kigali at the beginning of this year. Since we all speak one language in the country, it is easy to start a conversation in a public place and have everybody in the place participate; it is possible that one simplistic comment can become a public discourse. And so while the bus was leaving Akanyaru boarder post, Kron requested the bus driver to reduce the volume of a very loud and blurry sounding music system in the bus. This seemed to be the only chance of the bus driver to feel some power over an American. He refused to reduce the volume and said some mambo jumbo to his passengers. The entire bus erupted in conversations about the protestations of the American against the clearly disturbing noise. Since indeed very few Rwandans have had the experience to travel to foreign places and suffer the humiliation of having people seated next you and speaking a strange language that they cannot understand, it is next to impossible to paraphrase the humiliation that Kron was going through in this situation. Yet there’s an up side to this complaining about the quality of service provision in Rwanda and that is that service providers can be excused for their lacklustre efforts to the population. If this is the kind of clientele (as the bus experience with the American illustrates) that public and private service providers in the country target. It is less surprising that a journalist can wait for two months to get his pay, a visitor can be told off in the bank that he is a foreigner. It also gives credence to another The New Times columnist Liban Mugabo’s serial argument that Rwandans must let loose all entry points to people from outside to come and run our affairs. Although South Africa’s recent experiences make this only an academic option! If South Africans-with all the advances they are supposed to have in their society-kill fellow Africans on the basis of taking their jobs, one is left to wonder whether the same might not happen elsewhere…even here. The problem of service in the country is rooted in the belief of the big-man, no important person in this country can claim to have been treated with disdain at a bank, in a shop, pub, hotel and motor cycle taxi (locally known moto) riders because our culture has been construed that way. Where I grew up all the power was in the hands and legs of the husband of that family. Whenever we saw him coming in the compound, we run away and squeaked in dark corners. We also ensured that before he left the house each day we noted the shirt he was wearing such that on his return journey we’d easily notice the impending danger of his arrival back. If he left any instructions to be carried out while he was away, nothing else was supposed to be done before the tasks he assigned were completed. This arrangement did not even spare his wife. This kind of arrangement is outplayed in today’s service provision in the country. In the banks, there’s a line for us, the mere mortals and then none or one for the big-man even when he does not subscribe to VIP sections of the bank. When the big-man enters, he is welcomed very properly by the cute smiling bank tellers, led to a special corner and immediately served. Sometimes a modern big-man even feigns signs of embarrassment to other clients. In the final analysis, before we eliminate the big-man culture, we will continue with our disillusionment about customer service in the country or until I become a big-man myself and change the rules of service. donuwagiwabo@gmail.com