Ah, Rwanda, that sibling in East Africa who always has to prove they are “one of the cool ones.” First, it was pedestrian jogging tracks along city streets complete with such great lighting that jogging at midnight sounds as appealing as eating ice cream at the beach.
You know, they did this as everyone else in the region was still figuring out how to keep their sidewalks from being overtaken by bodas, cows, and occasional goats.
And now Kigali has gone a step further, launching bus-only lanes complete with bus traffic lights and airline-style coordination. Really, Kagame? Pole pole sio muendo, the old African adage says. Africa hakuna matata, another adds.
Why are you hellbent on trying to make the rest of us look bad?
At this rate, we should expect to see a Rwandan holding an exotic blonde toy with gleaming eyes, sipping a cappuccino on one of these bus lanes, declaring themselves mzungu while the rest of us are stuck in boda boda traffic, dodging cows, and wondering why sidewalks exist in movies only.
Why this obsession with looking like Las Vegas in the middle of the Great Lakes region where the Congolese are killing themselves for breakfast? Are bus lanes the new bling, a way to make everyone else feel underachieving?
I hear they have deployed traffic cops around to ensure that taxi-motos do not takeover the bus-only lanes and that the bus-only stops are being guarded like the President of Tanzania!
These chaps in Rwanda, they hum along as if democracy was invented in Kicukiro and shipped wholesale to Mesopotamia. No dogs unleashed on opposition supporters during campaigns to elect Uncle Paul, no bullets fired to fell excited supporters, just a sweet-looking belle quietly locked in from the ballot and left to cry to Belgian press and CNN.
We are tired. We want parity. This is East Africa, and we should be one. Together. Pamoja. Anything else is ugenge mpya, lugezi-gezi, and must be rejected with the contempt it deserves.
So, Rwanda, enough of the show-off energy. Jogging tracks, bus-only lanes, and airline-style bus management—save some style for the rest of us! After all, even our pedestrian lanes are taken over by bodas and cows, and now you want to add bus-exclusive VIP lanes?
Sasa, tukumbuke: hakuna matata is African. Pole pole. Not everything has to be Las Vegas.
