As the clouds form, shoe shines are smiling to their dining tables

With the nimbus clouds pregnant and the skies in the mood to let loose, it’s not just farmers who are smiling with their heads up. On strategic corners in town, are a group whose trade benefits a lot from the rains. Shoe shines they are. During the dry season, dust gives them clients, but not as many as the wet weather can effect. Jean Pierre Kanane, from Tale Sector in Rulindo District, is Ngarama centre’s ‘Most Valuable Shoe-shine’. He is an early bird who seeks to catch the eyes of people going to office, so 6am is his ideal time to trudge to work. The 54-year-old says he had a dream of going to Kigali, but felt it would not be safe to leave his family and start a new life in the city. Also, he is not educated. Kanane was jobless and needed to feed his family. “I don’t earn much but what I get can cater for family’s basic needs. It is better than going to Kigali and start coping with new life, which can take me long to settle,” he says. Kanane, a father of six, says some of his children are under the 12-Year Basic Education. He started shoe shinning two years ago and he vows to continue with the job. “Mostly, I get customers during rainy season or when it rains. I make a lot of money because that’s when more people bring their shoes for polishing and washing,” the says, adding though, that the village setting he works in means fewer clients compared to towns. Rukundo Joshua Rukundo, 35, a cobbler in Kimihurura Sector, Gasabo District, says shoe shining and repairing has changed his life. He has been in the business since 2007 after failing to continue with his studies following a shattered dream in the wake of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Rukundo says in repairing shoes, he charges between Rwf100 and Rwf500 depending on the service. “I completed lower primary and never sat Primary Living Examinations due to the instabilities that were in the country at that time,” he says. Faced with a bleak future, he turned to shoe shining and repair, where he expends all his energy. “This has uplifted my standard because I pay school fees for my children, pay rent for where I am residing in Kigali and also Mituelle de Santé (medical insurance) for my children,” Rukundo says. On average, he earns Rwaf3,000 per day the figure is worth a bank’s trot for his status during the rainy season. Today, he says he has not regret, but he will not handle anyone who despises odd jobs with kid gloves. “Some of the youth who are despising jobs should be encouraged to invest just little money in such a business and earn a lot,” he says. From Uganda with ambition Frank Mutoro, a cobbler operating at Nyabugogo Tax Park, started repairing shoes seven years ago from Uganda where he left and continued with the job in Rwanda. “I have trained more than 13 boys in shoe repair and how to shine them up to the maximum so that they can earn a living. All these boys are successfully running their own ‘stalls’ today,” Mutoro says He says many people despise the kind of odd job, but he has built a house in Uganda from proceeds of his labour. To the youth, he says: “If they can put in more effort and stop despising some of these odd jobs, we won’t have all these job-seekers in our midst.”