Order

Order- that’s the first word I would use to describe Rwanda.  Considering the country is most known in the west for an incident filled with chaos and that currently about 45% of people live in poverty, it was completely unexpected until I arrived and saw so much structure, orderliness and organization in almost all parts of daily life.  This is atypical of the region and I spoke to a woman who had just arrived from a neighboring East African country who also said the biggest difference between her home country and Rwanda was the stability here.

Where's the trash?

The most glaring example of this orderliness is the lack of trash.  Africa, and the developing world in general, is notorious for trash strewn in all public places, but it is absent even on the busiest streets.  The country is one of the cleanest I have ever seen, debatably cleaner than the United States.  This is helped along by a ban on all plastic bags in the country.  All people use sustainable, reusable bags, greatly reducing the amount of waste on the sides of the road. 

Kigali Town Center

In that same vein, many institutions and public roads are beautifully landscaped.  It is fascinating to me that establishments take time to maintain such pleasing aesthetics.

Beautiful Benebikira Sister Compound

I had been visiting Save (pronounced saw-vay) to see more of the country and the programs to improve human welfare.  Today it was time to go home so we took a bus from Save to Kigali and then Kigali to Nyamata, where the school is located.  We were told the bus would leave Butare at 10:00 AM, pick us up in Save and then head to Kigali.  Also, we had a seat reserved for us.  I was surprised that there was even the possibility of reserving a seat or they counted the number of people they would accept on the bus.  The first example of orderliness from the woman mentioned above was that the bus drivers do not try to cram as many people as possible into their vehicles.  Sure enough, a few minutes after 10:00 the bus came and there were two seats available, just enough for us before it filled to capacity.  We comfortably road along to Kigali, listening to ‘N sync and Bob Marley for much of the way.

Notice how the bus came on time.  So does pretty much everything else:  schools, meetings, apparently buses.  This initially fascinated me.  I expected everything to run slightly behind, with no one in much of a hurry.  But that has not been the case so far.

Trash bins

Rwanda has impressed me so much.  They do not let poverty take away their dignity, perhaps obvious, but I get the impression many people view Africa and its people as hopelessly waiting for a savior.  This has not been true in my experiences and it is definitely not true here.  In fact some of their customs I would definitely recommend to the Western world!