How Bill Clinton inspires ordinary Rwandans

There is something more inspiring and uplifting about Bill Clinton’s visits to Rwanda than just thinking about nearly $300 million that his Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has injected in several projects to improve the country’s health sector. That is the time he spends chatting with ordinary Rwandans. Seeing the former US President spend hours of inquisitive chatting with farmers, school teachers, and school children or observing his unhurried movements, pauses, and moments of deep thinking and observations while on trip in Rwanda might leave his interlocutors here wondering how differently they can live their lives. In an otherwise ironical scene on Monday when him and his daughter and only child, Chelsea Clinton, visited a demonstration of a Procter and Gamble Clinton Global Initiative water cleaning project in Rwanda, Clinton encouraged some of the most vulnerable Rwandans to prepare and drink clean water. Yes, an ironical scene indeed, because the Clinton’s spent several minutes distributing cups of water to Rwandan children in a country where the only thing that was traditionally ceremonial and celebrated about feeding children was giving them milk. But, it turns out, the Rwandan children need to learn how to regularly drink clean water if they are to maintain a healthy body and regular growth. While they might happily sip some milk at their parents’ homes, perhaps the only drink that most parents in the countryside are accustomed to ensuring that children drink daily, the children end up drinking some water in the households and schools which often makes them sick. Source of inspiration The Clinton-boosted campaign to show the children how to safely drink their water after cleaning it with Procter and Gamble (P&G) purification packets might prove inspiring for the young children who saw him drinking and distributing water fetched from their own local water streams and dams. “The most important thing is that it’s user-friendly,” Clinton said on Monday after witnessing and assisting in the water cleaning demonstration in Kigali and describing the technology as “amazing”. The Procter and Gamble Clinton Global Initiative water cleaning project will be implemented by World Vision International to deliver water cleaning technology to households in rural areas in Bugesera and Gatsibo districts, Eastern Province. While UNICEF estimates that nearly 2,000 children die every day from diarrhoea, more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, Clinton will probably save a few Rwandan children from drinking dirty water by spending some time with them. And for the time he spent visiting a Clinton Hunter Development Initiative (CHDI) coffee roasting factory construction site in Gikondo in Kigali, he felt free to eat muffins and drink coffee that were locally made, a sign that can’t be more encouraging for local farmers. “We would like to sell roasted coffee so we can make more money,” said 45-year-old coffee grower Odette Murekatete when she was handed a microphone to talk to Clinton. Murekatete, a widow raising three children, saw firsthand just how much important people like a former US president can enjoy the coffee she grows. She may not be aware that the new coffee roasting factory in which the CHDI is investing 51 per cent of the costs will be built at a tune of $2.8 million, but Clinton’s taste of her coffee is a vote of confidence that some two tons of coffee cherries she harvests every year will continue to bring money to her home. The factory will help Rwanda increase the value of its top-notch coffee from the current price of around $3 per kilo to about $25. When he announced a new initiative to help reduce child malnutrition in the country by supporting local companies to produce fortified food for under-five children and pregnant and lactating women, Clinton said that he had “never seen” Rwandans fail at anything, essentially reassuring Rwandans that they can indeed halt the current rate of stunting among children under the age of five in the country. President Clinton visited Rwanda again this week, just a year after he was also in the country in July last year. While his meetings with high level officials and technocrats might be important, unavoidable, and indeed eat into a lot of his time on the ground, the time he spends talking to ordinary Rwandans and visiting what they do for a living might be clearly inspiring for their economic development and well being.