KIGALI, RWANDA -- Known as the “country of a thousand hills,” Rwanda is a place known for parks and forests; volcanoes and gorillas; genocide and poverty.
Amidst the rolling green hills of Rwanda, tiny, rickety, grass-thatched round structures are home to families large and small.
Charles Habimana, 41, owns a 2.5 acre banana plantation and a flock of goats. Still, he lives in a traditional, small, grass-thatched house, called Nyakatsi, with his wife and six children.
Habimana says he dreams of building a bigger, better house for his family, but cannot afford construction materials like cement, sand, windows, doors and iron sheets.
These unstable, flammable, drafty structures house a majority of Rwandans in rural areas and even just outside the capital city, Kigali. In the Bugesera District, which lies just south of Kigali, nearly 12,000 families live in Nyakatsi huts under banana trees or in shacks made out of cob covered in straw – the highest number of any district across the country. In the whole of the Eastern and Southern provinces, a new survey by the Ministry of Local Government revealed that more than 27,000 people still live in these makeshift houses.
The minister of local government, James Musoni says a new survey is underway that intends to confirm the extent of people living in Nyakatsi, as the number in other districts may be equally as high. But with more than 35 percent of the population living on less than $1 USD per day, Nyakatsi remains the only housing option for thousands of families here. While disease remains a recurring issue for Nyakatsi residents, new statistics reveal that fire claims nearly half of all Nyakatsi annually. As a result, one local organization has embarked on a major project that will transform and modernize many Nyakatsi villages in Rwanda.
One Organization Attempts to Build the Model Village
Bugesera has the highest number of families living in Nyakatsi in the country, which makes it the starting point for groundbreaking new project that seeks to eliminate the traditional Nyakatsi in favor of more advanced village infrastructure.
The Rwanda Diaspora Global Network, RDGN, an international nonprofit organization, launched the Bye Bye Nyakatsi project last month in an attempt to eliminate grass-thatched houses in Rwanda. The pilot project, set begin in the Bugesera district, will eliminate all Nyakatsi in favor of a modern village complete with running water, electricity, markets, hospitals, schools and accessible roads. The project was adopted during the Diaspora Global Convention in Kigali last December when members of the Diaspora met more than 500 families who live in Nyakatsi. The project is now formally recognized as a development initiative here. The first model village is expected to be complete in 2012.
”The ones that we live in are not really houses, even if we called them so,” says Mukeshimana Berthe, who lives in a Nyakatsi with her five children.
The new villages will be built in partnership with Lodestar, an American company that specializes in panel system building, which is the required construction standard of model villages in Rwanda. In sample houses developed by Lodestar, each house, placed on a plot of 600 square meters, will be equipped with at least 3 bedrooms, a kitchen, and bathroom with a toilet. All houses will be connected to biogas systems, water and electricity. The villages will include basic infrastructure and public utilities such as gardens, a health center, schools and commercial areas. Each house is estimated to cost 2 million Rwandan francs, or $3,400 USD. At the project launch, the Rwandan government declared they hope Nyakatsi are no longer in existence by 2020.
Nyakatsi have long caused a laundry list of problems for inhabitants. Disease and hygiene are concerns, but fire is the most dangerous, and the most common, issue plaguing Nyakatsi residents. According to statistics from the NISR released in 2009, an average of four out of every 10 Nyakatsi burn down each year as people use open flames to cook in the highly flammable structures.
Disease and hygiene are also constant concerns among families who live in Nyakatsi. “In two years, my kids will no longer suffer from pneumonia. [And] when it is raining, we will be clean,” says Bernard Nkundimana, one of the Bugesera residents who will receive a new house, built by the Bye Bye Nyakatsi Project.
Cholera outbreaks are common here too, as Nyakatsi do not have toilets and families rely on shallow holes dug nearby. When it rains, the ground often becomes contaminated and people fall ill. Rwanda has one of the highest cholera outbreak rates in all of Africa.
So, hygiene too remains a recurring issue for families who live in Nyakatsi. Kitchen spaces are often in areas shared by animals, like goats, causing food contamination. Jean Pierre Dusabe, a local district leader Bugesera, says people here have long been struggling for means to build better, safer houses. “We welcome this initiative with great happiness. It will empower the people from Bugesera. [They] will have better homes to live in and also better health conditions,” says Dusabe.
The Bye Bye Nyakatsi project has far-reaching support in the development sector here. The government has provided land, project advocacy resources and will supply labor from local prisoners to help complete project construction. Many Rwandan Embassies and High Commissions have also pledged their support in fundraising and sensitization for local residents. Ismael Buchanan, secretary general of the Rwanda Diaspora Global Network, confirmed that more than 60 million Rwandan francs, or $102,000 USD, have already been raised.
“We are happy that we managed to do this,” says Robert Masozera, Bye Bye Nyakatsi project director. “This is our country and our people that we love.”
