Saturday, June 25th, was my first (and only) Umuganda day in Rwanda. Umuganda is a national-wide morning of community service that occurs on the last Saturday of every month. You can read about the fascinating history and meaning of Umuganda here.
John, our gardener, woke us up with his booming voice and fervent gestures that morning, insisting that we join in the work being done. Happy to see another side of Kigali, I threw on clothes and harassed Lizzy and Kerrlene into coming with (just kidding, they actually volunteered quite readily). We hiked down the winding road for 15 minutes, led by two Rwandans John had arranged for us, before encountering a group of 20+ Rwandans and wazungu lined up along a brightly painted wall outside a coop and one of our favourite cafes. The wall was being painted with a massive with the more complicated portions already sketched or painted in. We picked up plastic cups full of varying colors of paint and washed off some paintbrushes. After a few hours of painting triangles, rhombuses and frilly swooshes, in addition to a plethora of conversations in Swahili, we hiked back up to the house. In other places of Rwanda, people were picking up trash, shoveling clay and trimming bushes.
From about 8am until 11am on Umuganda, all buses cease running in addition to any form of transportion. If you are caught on the road without a valid reason, such as catching a flight, you will be stopped and fined. The city was mysteriously quiet as people either wandered down the road in search of work to do, or hid in their houses and performed the Umuganda for themselves and their families.
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| Lizzy, Kerrlene and I next to a mural that we didn't actually paint. Our colorful, albeit basic, additions are further down the wall. |
