allAfrica.com: East Africa: In Burundi, Rwanda Residents Clean City (Page 1 of 1)

Unlike other cities whose cleaning is done by salaried persons, in Bujumbura, additional cleaning is a communal business done every Saturday.

On this day, No vehicle is permitted to move, except the emergency, military and perhaps government vehicles and only on special duty.

During this day, everyone is expected to participate in communal activities that include cleaning of the roads, removal and disposal of garbage, etc.

This clean-up has actually borne dividends. Even though the roads may not be perfect, at least they are clean and many of them put Kampala roads to shame.

Rwanda, I am informed, also has a similar day. It happens to be once a month, however. On this day, collective work is done. Woe unto you if you become a habitual dodger of this exercise.

Perhaps you can get away with it if you are an alien, or a visitor. Rwanda went a step further in this cleaning exercise to include the cleansing of the country from plastic bags.

You are not permitted to enter Rwanda with any plastic bag. If you do, you will be politely but firmly asked to dispose of it at your point of entry into the country! Kigali, I observed, is Kavera (plastic paper bag in luganda - a Uganda dialect) free and this changes the look of the entire city.

This clean-up exercise has the dubious side effect of affecting business on the days it is carried out. In Bujumbura, we could not exchange money to pay for our hotel room; neither could we buy any breakfast.

The entire city goes to sleep! However, I must say I did not see much cleaning activity when we arrived.

Maybe it was done earlier on in the morning, I cannot tell. Mercifully, this exercise only goes on till about 11:00 a.m. Then we were able to exchange some money at the forex bureau.

While waiting for the day to start, the nearest item we could access was drinking water. I enjoyed the cold water which had a kind of 'mineral water' taste but looked on in consternation as the waitress walked to the nearest tap and topped up the beaker and took the beaker to the fridge. "You mean I have been drinking tap water?!" I wailed. "What kind of hospitality is this? I want to see the manager!" Whereupon the waitress gently explained to me that the water treatment system in Bujumbura is first class and it is safe to drink the tap water.

"Are you sure," I asked, rather sheepishly. In Kampala, you can be accused of attempted suicide if you drank water 'live' from the tap.

I took the risk of believing the waitress. I did not have a choice anyways. Besides, the smile with which she said it seemed genuine, and she had a pleasant bearing. I later realized there was a general beauty about Burundians and if one was to hold a beauty contest, there would be no shortage of contestants. This was illustrated quite poignantly when we visited one of the beautiful beach hotels on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

There was no shortage of beautiful people and dotted among them, the ubiquitous well-built US marines and other peacekeepers.

I stared in amazement at the beautiful white sand beach. Sand, all the way up to the lake and on into the water! I looked around and realised one thing; this place is way under utilized. On a warm sunny week-end, there were a half dozen or so people splashing around. Where were the motorboats doing all kinds of water sports? Where were the sailing boats? Where were the yachts? Man, this place is wide open to receive and host visitors!

There is also no shortage of beautiful hotels and on the week-ends the places are full of people. There is also no shortage of restaurants and trendy eating places.

On a Wednesday, our host was taking us out to dinner. We asked him to take us to any trendy place. We went to this good place, but there was something amiss. Where were all the people? We asked him to take us to another place, but three places later, we discovered there was indeed a problem. Bujumbura seemed to be strictly a week-end place! During weekdays, people here seem to prefer the safety of their homes. I think this might have something to do with the recent insecurity in the country.

During one of our drives in and around town, we discovered some interesting facts. Bujumbura, apparently, is an old city. We were shown a hospital which was built before the 1940s. The hospital has been kept in operation and there was evidence of recent renovation.

We also saw a Mercedes Benz plant. Later, I learned that in Africa, Mercedes Benz has only 16 distribution points. In East Africa, there is only Burundi, and south of the Sahara, it is only Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa. We were also told, by our kind host, that the original headquarters of the PTA Bank is actually located in Burundi! We visited this building and learned that the headquarters is actually being re-located back to Burundi.

As we drove around, looking at buildings, we were pleasantly surprised to see a Uganda telecom building. Or was it a Uganda telecom building? The symbol was the same. On second thoughts, I had seen some signs in small kiosks.

The signposts were advertising 'Mango' telephone services. In a later meeting with the top executives at U-com, we learned the mystery. This was a telecommunications company that had been brought to Burundi by the same person who had bought shares in Uganda telecom. So, in a sense, they are similar. Did you know that of all the East African Nations, Burundi attained independence in Earliest? In the center of the capital, a memorial stone proclaims that Independence was on July 1, 1961, the same date with Rwanda. It was followed by Tanzania, December 9, 1961. Uganda followed on October 9, 1962.

Kenya brings up the rear in December 12, 1963. It is interesting that all the East African Countries had their independence in the early 60s and that the first countries, Rwanda and Burundi, just happen to be the last countries to join the EAC.

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