Reflections on sunday : Death-traps should not be for staying in

There is a Kinyarwanda saying that roughly translates as: “Hanker for freebees at the risk of getting your nose nipped” (Wifuza iby’ubusa wabibona bikaguca amazuru). For living freely on others’ sweat, I’m in this predicament. I’ve been living in a ‘nyakatsi’ (a grass-thatched house) since I came back from exile without giving a thought to the government directive to change to safer habitation. Yet I should know better. What do I mean? That August 1994 when I was leaving Kigali for Nairobi, falling off a moto (motorbike taxi) and ripping parts of a jacket and a shirt off the back of a motorcyclist were not my sole ‘pickings’. I’d also secured a free executive mansion and a fully stocked computer shop! So, I was going to Kenya only for a whiff of fresh air and then I’d be back to a life of luxury. In Rwanda then, apart from the small number of genocide survivors, all Rwandans had empted into Zaīre (D.R. Congo today), Uganda and Tanzania. All their properties were here for the picking. All you needed was to check over the property and, if it was to your fancy, write in bold letters on the gate “Hafashwe” (this property has been taken over). Then you looked for a mammoth padlock and secured your new treasure and contentedly whistled your way back to wherever you were staying. I was staying with my nephew who’d got himself a three-storied building that had a restaurant in the basement, a shop on the street level and a residential flat on the first floor. The evening I arrived from Kenya, he’d wheezed to me: “Welcome, Uncle! Make yourself comfortable for the night and rest early because early tomorrow we’ll set you up as a property mogul! We don’t want to find the properties already taken up.” And thus I became propertied! After going back to Nairobi, I was proudly recounting my wealth as I was listening to Radio Rwanda when I was interrupted by the mention of my nephew’s names: “…., you are kindly requested to vacate all the properties that you are occupying illegally. All those occupying properties that don’t belong to them will be forced out if they don’t do so voluntarily.” My heart sank and I cut my animated account mid-sentence. Within the space of a few hours, I’d fallen from grace to grass again! If that is not having my nose nipped, I don’t know what is. However, again in Kinyarwanda there is a saying that crudely translates as: “It’s not every time that a man falls that he breaks his b-l-s” (Uko umugabo aguye si ko amena a-----ya). I decided that I’d go back all the same. After all, I was going back home, not in search of wealth but because I wanted to see an end to the shame of being stateless. Back in Rwanda, however, even after resolving never to go for freebees I could not resist an offer. That is how I took up the asbestos residence. Many warnings of the danger of living under asbestos have been sounded but I became hard of hearing! Moreover, being urbanite I reasoned that, after all, these houses are not as unhygienic as ‘nyakatsi’. I have continued to delude myself that those before me would have died if asbestos were that poisonous. What I ignored is that asbestos-related diseases take anywhere up to 40 years to manifest themselves. And they are myriad, as I was told by a doctor. For instance, exposure to asbestos dust causes mesothelioma. That is doctoral mystification for what is cancer that grows on the lining of the lungs, the gut or in the lining of the cavity where the heart sits. When diagnosed, it can kill you within six months. Asbestos dust also causes lung cancer and it has been established that for every mesothelioma death, there are two lung-cancer deaths. Then there is asbestosis, which is a form of pneumoconiosis, the grandiloquent name doctors give to an otherwise straightforward damage on the interior of the lung. It has a complicated part to it, nonetheless, which is that it has no cure. Another disease is pleural thickening. Again, in simple English that means what occurs when the lining of the lung hardens as a reaction to asbestos fibres in the lungs. From the thickening, you get pleural plaques. These are small areas of localised scarring of the lining of the lungs. Again, there is no cure and you are condemned to a life under constant threat of a collision with fate. So, are my neighbours and I happy that we have been given notice to quit these death-traps before fifteen days are over? Well, we may confound you, but we are crying foul and want to defend our extended stay! If it’s not the now-infamous over-zealousness and insensitivity of Rwandan local leaders, who else can choose the middle of the month as the time to evict a salaried worker from a house? Otherwise, of course, this is a timely wake-up call to a seemingly suicidal bunch of us! E-mail: ingina2@yahoo.co.ukBlog: iyigihanga.wordpress.com