Rwanda Cleanliness

Sacola dancing, Prefecture de Ruhengeri, Rwanda.

Arriving in Kigali, it is impossible to miss the emphasis on keeping Rwanda’s capital clean. Posters declare that message, and you will not see a piece of litter anywhere, even though this is one of the most densely populated places in Africa. Cleanliness is maintained, as my guide Steven told me, not by bribing or punishing people, but through a sense of common purpose—what Rwandans call umuganda.

Since the genocide in 1994, there has also been a mental cleanup. The government does not tolerate mind pollution in the form of ethnic division. “Tutsi and Hutu are words that are not said, for here we are all one. We are one people, belonging to one nation—Rwanda,” Steven explains. “We are the same. We are all good and bad. What is in our control is what we choose to focus on, and I choose to focus on forgiveness.” It works because Rwandans are obedient, disciplined, and community-minded.

You will see this on the last Saturday of every month, as traffic stops for three hours to allow umunsi w’umuganda, a collective tidying-up of towns and villages across the country. All able-bodied adults are required by law to participate. Can you think of any other place in the world that drops everything to clean up?

Rwandan cleanliness reaches beyond the environment. Personal cleanliness is important too. If a child comes to school in the morning with a dirty face, he is sent home to wash. In 2018, Rwanda banned the import of secondhand clothing, a policy partly designed to prop up the domestic textile industry. Nearly every form of work requires a uniform. Needless to say, they are invariably crisply ironed. Steven even irons his T-shirt for Casual Friday.

All understanding of modern Rwanda must begin with the horrors of the 1994 genocide. No Rwandan will ever forget that out of a population of seven million, up to one million, the great majority of them Tutsis, were hacked or shot to death by Hutus, their fellow Rwandans. But if the horrors of the past cannot be wiped away, there is still an overwhelming desire for a clean slate and fresh start, one that the obsessive focus on cleanliness seems to embody.

I was approached by a woman as I was waiting at the airport for my bag on the conveyor belt. “Do you have any plastic in your luggage? In Rwanda it’s forbidden. If you have any plastic bags, we confiscate them. But don’t worry,” she reassured me. “We replace them with cloth bags. Welcome to Kigali!” I was given a sweet smile that also managed to intimate that in Rwanda there are no exceptions to the rule: the national ban on nonbiodegradable plastic bags was instituted in 2008. I had heard that Rwanda was one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, which, by implication, means one of the most law-abiding.

I had been keen to visit because I wanted to know how Rwandans were getting on with their lives since the genocide. I was particularly interested because Sikhs experienced genocide in 1984 in north India. What could we learn from Rwanda about moving forward?

President Paul Kagame, an exiled Tutsi, had led the guerrilla force that halted the genocide by chasing the genocidaires across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, and elsewhere. This feat has invested him with the moral authority to transform the country’s darkest hour into an opportunity to reunite a fractured nation and start anew.

When the government decided to no longer be francophone and to join the Commonwealth instead, the country switched to English overnight. Literally. One afternoon lessons were being held in French. The following morning the teachers were using English to teach from an English curriculum.

There is a price to be paid for such totalitarian management. There is no freedom of speech. Journalists and political opponents have been jailed. Beggars, sex workers, and the homeless are rounded up and detained. Rapid progress, it seems, comes at a cost.

The application of any value can become distorted when it is extreme. Even so I took away with me a sense that with cleanliness comes order and transformation—“a fresh start.” It is a simple, practical act that anyone can undertake. For those who are doing it, it can be as beneficial as a religion, education system, or cultural tradition. Cleanliness is celebrated in Rwanda, as it is by Sikhs and others, as being next to godliness. There’s a lesson in that. We need cleanliness in our homes, our places of work, and in our minds to succeed. It clears away both the mental and physical clutter that can impede us in pursuing our goals. Mess is a distraction, an inhibitor, and something that weighs us down. By contrast, when you are surrounded by a clean environment, the way ahead starts to seem clearer. You’re more focused: ready for anything.