Amabrakaberi and other things

It is always interesting to watch a nation going through the rapid steps of development; Rwanda is making up for 30 years of isolation with a voracious consumption of modern culture and technology. They are not having time to process what they are seeing and often regurgitate what they are seeing but in a Rwandan way. I heard a radio advert saying “Tufite amabrakaberi, ama ayifoni, ama terefoni ziz’ubwengye.” We got Blackberry’s, I-phones, and telephones with intelligence. Priceless, we now have a word for smart-phones in Kinyarwanda, what next then? The interesting thing is the concept of “Phones with intelligence” or smart-phones, the quality of intelligence is almost seen as tangible. Seeing as we come from a traditional spirit culture, we tend to view things spiritually, by spiritually I mean we think that spirits still control our feelings, and on top of that, objects are imbued with spirits. So the Blackberry or I-phone is imbued with the spirit of intelligence, this is something brand managers spend billions in the West trying to achieve and it is automatic here. That is why Rwandans worship Bazungu, because they are the representation of modernity, though not modernity itself. This is the result of how we were Christianised, there was not enough adaptation of our spiritual concepts and that side was ignored to be replaced by rationale and ritual. So when you talk to a rural uneducated peasant they can say “in 1994 there was a spirit of murder which took over Rwanda.” In essence this is true, but ignores that the Genocidal slaughter was planned to minute detail. This is the problem we have in trying to fit into the modern world; the biggest philosophical question is a person’s relation to fate, circumstances or whatever. Rwanda is going through fast change, before we can even take stock of what we have changed, we change again, before we even rationalise it, it is gone.. In seeking modernity, we seek the signs of modernity. It is called commodity fetishism, fetishism has deep roots in African culture. Fetishism is to take an object and make it symbolise something then it can give you that quality. A gun fetishise can power, a phone can fetishise modernity, a car can fetishise success. But the fetish will always be just that, just an illusion, a symbol. The concept behind the symbol will always be too to grasp. Back to the Brakaberis, I had a hilarious conversation with a random guy on the street after I heard that advert, the man said in Kinyarwanda “Why would I go and get a phone that is cleverer than I am? That just wouldn’t work; it would always find ways to con money out of me. No I will stick to my Karasharamye.” Rwandans are curious but apprehensive of new technology. Technology might replace education as knowledge is all available online. When our basic understanding of the world was dismissed as “ubupagani” or Paganism we became dislocated mentally and we need to get back to the core of our value system in order to make sense of amabrakaberi. Ends