Feats of Strength: Part II

One clump of dirt at a time…

Rwanda often speaks about the fact that one of their most abundant resources is their people.  In fact, they are right as Rwanda does have the distinction of being the most heavily populated country per square kilometer in Africa.  Due to this dense population concentration, it seems that when there is a job to do there are plenty of people around to help do it; in the process shunning all machinery to do these jobs whether on purpose, or otherwise.

A very fancy mutatu.

As I ride the motos and mutatus (mini buses) around Rwanda, other than in the capital city of Kigali, and even there the sightings have been few, I have not seen a bulldozer, backhoe, tractor, jackhammer, mill, or any other kind of road, farm, wood works, or infrastructure building machinery in use.  To be honest I think the only machinery I have seen is a jackhammer in Kigali.  Instead I see roads, houses, gas stations, stadiums, bridges, culverts, ditches, parking lots, water lines, electric lines, furniture, and hotels being built, dug, tunneled, mined, nudged, excavated, moved, broken, and sawed, along with crops plowed, planted and harvested by human exertion; sweat pouring, muscles focused.  In other words, Rwanda is most definitely a country built by a great and many fabulous feats of strength.

One of my favorite of these feats is to see a person slowly and methodically chop down a good sized tree with a machete, remove the branches, and then get a friend or two to hoist it onto their heads or shoulders to help them carry it a few kilometers and perhaps up and down a few steep inclines to a local “mill”.  The mill (and oh how I wish I had a picture of this) consists primarily of three large logs fashioned together so that the first two are positioned at an angle with the third across the top of these about five feet above the ground.  This design allows the recently cut tree to rest on the cross beam where someone with a large saw, somehow, perfectly saws it into beautifully straight and even planks.  From there the planks may be used as is, and while I have not yet seen the step in which the bark is removed I have no doubt it is done by hand, or they may then be sawed in half and be subsequently hand planed into gorgeous two by twos, which are then transported back to the original owner for their chosen use on the top of someone’s head.  To Rwanda’s green ambition credit not a drop of fuel is used in this process or in the many to follow, just lots of human energy, patience, and endurance. 

When I first arrived in Nyamata the district offices I work out of were in the process of getting a new parking lot.  No tar or heavy machinery in sight, just sand, bricks, a few hand tools, string, and a crew of about ten.  My first thought was that this would be a one or two month project as each brick had to be fit into place and made level for this significantly large parking area.  However, to my surprise, the project was complete in a mere two weeks.  Complete, perfect, happening almost as if by magic, and the first of many examples that makes me believe that Rwanda must have some of the finest bricklayers and stone masons in the world.

I say this as I have seen gorgeous stone walls go up in a week, a taxi park the size of several football fields have a two foot wide and three foot high cascading wall built around it in a short three weeks along with other such examples of stone and brick work to salivate over because it is done so attractively, expertly, and seemingly naturally; meaning I do not see a lot of talking, measuring, angling, or hesitation in the work, just self confident movement.  Interestingly, many of these stone workers are women, not just as transport for the large stones on their heads, but as actual stone workers in the process of building.  Also, because Nyamata is booming in anticipation of the new international airport, I have seen large banks, conference halls, shops, and other buildings go up in short order using only basic log scaffolding, hand tools, and hard work. (Usually going up next to small homes of mud with no water or electricity, but I suppose those will change soon too.)

If you closely you can see half a gutter done.

About three years ago a beautiful German-engineered highway was built from Kigali through Nyamata, and on south to the Burundi border.  However, for whatever reason the side gutters are still kilometer by kilometer being built.  Just like in Japan I find this foot and a half wide side gutter on either side of the road a bit dangerous and concerning, but that is the style here and the speed with which a dusty side of the road can be transformed into a stone lined gutter gains pure admiration on my part.  Part of this infrastructure construction is being done by folks who have fallen on hard times and need work to make ends meet, part of Rwanda’s initial attempts at a kind of social welfare.  Therefore, alongside the expected young man of twenty-something in his tank top masterfully placing and moving rock, you may see an older gentleman who seems impossibly thin, in worn suit coat, dress pants, and faded fedora working alongside a young woman in her long African fabric wrap around skirt and sandals doing their best to add to the work’s completion.  What is lovely to see it that none seem concerned about the differences of ability and rather continue to work at their own task as that is the purpose-the work.

A little early morning wood collection for school.



For about two weeks in May as I rode the moto about I saw feats of community strength as all able bodied persons seemed to be out working on maintaining the country’s dusty side roads.  In mass, and I mean in mass, communities would be out clearing brush from the side of the road, filling in potholes, cutting a cleaner edge to the road, hauling in gravel, and all other tasks assigned to any road crew anywhere.  Tiny little children too young to be in school would be moving rocks, elderly men and women would be taking a turn with a hoe or pick axe, while folks of every age in between took on work of varying difficulty to ensure a mwiza umuhanda (good road).  The work was over in about two weeks and while it lasts the bumpy roads of January, February, March, and April have given way to level, bright iron red, side roads that rival any gray, machine grated dirt roads in Montana, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.

 

 

My best, but not great shot of lining up for water.

 Recently I was without electricity for two weeks as the underground cable that had been delivering power to my home to heat water for my all important morning cup of french press coffee had had it.  While I know many folks with ready electricity might think living without electricity for two weeks was a feat of strength, not a single person here could even understand why I would even mention it as only roughly 5% of the people in this district have electricity, and after the fourth or fifth blank stare I did indeed stop mentioning it, buy some candles, and enjoy the ritual of heating my water by candle light-literally.  However, that is not the point.  The point is the single man that for five or six days toiled away to unearth several kilometers of underground electrical cable with a pick axe, swing, by methodical swing to find the problem.  When I would catch a glimpse of him in those hot sunny days I only saw him resting once, sitting briefly to take a sip of water, before taking up the pick axe again for a fee unknown to me, but one that I am guessing would motivate very few of those with ready electricity to do the same.  He is one of many examples of feats of strength here that are both mental and physical in nature and that I admire so much.

The primary occupation of nearly everyone I pass on my moto rides is farming.   Farming by the sweat of one’s brow, strength of muscles, determination of mind, and a serious garden hoe.  Every clump of dirt and weed moved and taken out by the swing of this implement and every seed placed by hand.  With the end of the rainy season beans, peas, peanuts, and coffee are now being harvested in earnest.  Large bundles of the legumes are being carried down the road on top of mother’s and their children’s heads.  These bundles brought back to homes alongside roads or far off into the bush to be thrashed with long thin tree branches by men young or old, girls, women, or anyone else who hopes to benefit from their selling.  This thrashing leaving behind piles of dried foliage that is then moved to compost the still growing corn plants.  Once the compost is moved off colorful beans, dried peas, and tiny peanuts are picked off the ground one by one, placed on a sheet of some sort, cleaned, dried, packed, and transported in a rice sack on the back of a bicycle or on top of one’s head to the local sector pick up point to be sold for a price quite unknown to me, but one I may be staggered to consider knowing the calories burned in the effort.  Coffee beans are also currently being harvested, but with a kind of attention to selection that makes me wonder at the persistence and patience involved.  Coffee beans here are watched and monitored so that each is picked at its full ripeness, bean by bean.  There is no shaking of the tree or machine for this work, but rather beans picked a fistful at a time.  A process so delicate and meticulous that I no longer wonder why Rwandan coffee is in actual fact so delicious.

 

Feats of strength indeed, everyday, all day acts of physical labor are performed to build an ever increasingly sophisticated infrastructure, maintain the infrastructure already in place, feed a nation and one’s family, and grow the country’s crucial exports.  What strikes an American like myself watching all this is the lack of complaint, the consistency and simplicity of the day in and day out physical labor, and the focus of this work.  Faces do not contort in pain or effort, hands do not fly up to lower backs as the person leans back to loosen sore muscles, necks do not get cracked or twisted, and children do not flail and cry on the ground when there is work to do.  This is not to say that this work does not wear on those who perform it.  I see the sweat, the steely resolve of the eyes, and the grim determination required, especially from the older workers.  However, I also see that there is an understanding that work is work and without it there is no life.  I also see some of the fun and benefit to a life lived so close to one’s labor, children diving and tumbling through the chafe of the bean plants like any child in the north woods playing in a pile of recently raked leaves, families or neighbors chatting as they sort through millions of beans or peas, husbands and wives picking coffee beans together as their child sleeps in the shade of these trees, a commute that involves no traffic jams, flat tires, gas fumes, or expense, children spending their days with mothers, fathers, and siblings to maintain their home, and loaded bicycles ridden with free abandon down hills trying to get every inch of glide possible for the sweat inducing upside.

Bicycles…perhaps the king and queen of Rwanda’s feats of strength and the final installment of my countrywide homage to these incredible feats of strength.  Until then…