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On the last Saturday of every month, it is compulsory for all able-bodied citizens of Rwanda between the ages of 18-65 to spend 3 hours in a community clean-up exercise called "Umuganda" npr.org/sections/goats…
One way of framing this is through the lens of western ideas of personal liberty and find it paternalistic and problematic to coerce citizens into doing what some will argue should done by paid professionals.
The other way is to take the "the east/emerging world works differently and it needs powerful benevolent authoritarian leadership & large scale culture hacking to accelerate economic growth and take the fast lane to the developed world" view
Needless to say, it's all more complicated than that. NPR's own framing has all the trademark paternalistic western gaze we've come to expect from how the rest of the world is reported in western media while it's always good to be skeptical of benevolent autocrats in general.
And to make things worse, one can now digitally choose to create filter bubbles that can confirm or deny any pre-conceived notions one already has about the politics of Rwanda (or any other place really).
Social media powered echo chambers seem to be the crack cocaine of the news & information world and I'm less and less certain with every passing day of our collective ability to check ourselves into rehab.
All this aside, Kigali does seem like a lovely place to visit.
