They dawdle around housing-estate streets unobtrusively, mumbling their hardly audible intent at intervals. If you are the irritable type that cannot suffer idlers kindly, you’ll shoo them off. Alms-seekers or night robbers scouting for targets, you’ll curse under your breath. However, if you happen to summon some patience and lend them your ears, you’ll realise your surmise couldn’t have been further from the truth. If you are in a Nairobi housing estate, in Kenya, like I was in the 1980s and early 1990s, you’ll hear: “Wanganzenti! Wandembe!” The announcement will come every after a few house-compounds, as the announcer makes the rounds of the estate. If you are in Accra, Ghana, like I once was on a visit, you’ll hear a metallic ding sound, metal piece hit against another. As foreigner you may not catch the words that follow but you can be sure patient Ghanaians and long-time residents will and understand their requests. I had forgotten all about these path-finder talking-dawdlers, having tucked the memory of them away in the back of my mind as a preserve of foreign countries. And, arrogantly maybe, assuming they only survive where disorder reigns. Only to be jolted out of my arrogance the other day when I realised these dealers-in-everything-saleable were country ‘ubiquities’ – they apparently belong to all countries! How so, you may ask. In these sedentary times of keeping to your crib’s confines at all costs, I was buried in the pages of a newspaper that’d just returned with the resumption of airlines flights when I heard the drone of a low-key announcement, as it drew nearer. I pricked up my ears and the words came out audibly: “Iiiiibyuma n’Iiiiibinyamakuru bishaje!” In all cases, the first syllables start at a higher pitch and descend with the words that come after, all gliding downwards to a low note. Why they choose this style, search me! So, what’s this talk about these ‘estate-criers’ in service of? What do they do, anyway? In Nairobi, the dealers actually mean “Gazeti”, Kiswahili for “newspaper” and “debe” for “tin container”. You didn’t recognise the words even as a ‘Kiswahilophone’ because they are pronounced with the distorting influence of one of the Kenyan tribal languages. “Wa” is suffixed to both words perhaps purely for poetic-sonority effect. In Kigali they may ask for old metals and newspapers as in Nairobi they may, old newspapers and cans and in other cities, the same or different old items. But what they all have in common is that they will take any used stuff that’s offered at a small cost, for resale at a small profit. Now, none of us took their time to look at this page because we were dying to be entertained on “Wanganzenti!” or “Iiiiibyuma bishaje!” No, we were looking for whatever makes sense. Which sense, for your info, these second-hand material dealers do make. Contrary to your conviction, they are not idlers. Come to think of it, do you remember the world’s most feared (still?) superpower wanting to adopt these estate-criers’ methods inversely on us, forcing hand-me-down drapery down our collective throat as Rwandans? We may’ve dared to dismiss it as idler but tell me who else did, at least in our region. Think of it, isn’t it in the name of that estate-crier that the superpower is twisting our arms, sovereign states who deserve respect even if we be? But I digress… Our “Wanganzeti!” and “Iiiiibyuma bishaje!” dealers. I don’t know about other countries, but in Rwanda they can come in handy. Rendering an important service of enforcing these new government stricter measures taken to halt the current COVID-19 spike. We can encourage their increase in number and urge for their gender balance; so far, the trade seems to be a male dominance. Why encourage them, again you may ask. You see, they are young, energetic folk who are eager and enthusiastic about what they do. And they know the nooks and crannies of housing estates or wherever else they ply their trade, be they affluent or down-trodden, the way they know the insides of their near-empty pockets. Give them some little pecuniary inducement to boost those pockets and they’ll expose every contravention of the COVID-19 guidelines in every backroom, in every market place. These young energetic people will boost the number and energy of the local law-and-order enforcers, who’ve begun to betray fatigue, to bust all the contravention-rings in our villages, shopping-centres, towns and cities. No more negligence of masks, repeated hand-washing, social-distancing, curfew hours, et al. No more illegal gatherings in improvised bars and improvised other places, no more wrongs. In a wink, these fellas together with the police can help put an end to this viral menace. Let’s call them “Guidelines-Contravention Busters” and let them loose on law-breakers and they’ll unearth them all for us and help government protect all citizens from this silent killer. Of course, the formal law-and-order enforcers must not let down their guard on these “busters” lest they engage in excesses and become tormentors of us, citizens, instead! But no worry there, the legendary discipline of this nation will always prevail.
