Is Rwanda mobilising ?

New Times ( Rwanda ) reports

A roach that tricketh and one that enricheth

By Ingina y’Igihanga

                                                                                 Rwandan Armed Forces

This week I’ve caught the mende bug (no pun intend....but how I hate those overused and over-abused expressions)! Anyway, I think you can’t escape such a bug when you think of Mr. Lambert Mende. Mr Mende, in case you don’t recall, is the communications minister and government spokesman of DR Congo. His full name is Lambert Mende Omalanga but he prefers to go by the simple epithet of Mende.

“Mende” is Kiswahili for “cockroach”, which is what makes it interesting when he chooses to associate himself with that illusive insect.

It is actually his name, I myself have two christian names and use a different one for Facebook to the one I use in this blog so I would have to say Ingina y’Igihanga's  first point about  Lambert Mende Omalanga preferring to use the name for a cockroach is  a load of bollocks. I have no idea what Mende's tribal language is but we can be fairly sure that mende is not cockroach in that language.  

But, when you come to think of it, isn’t his way of explaining off things “illusive”, in itself? You remember how one time a fuel truck exploded and killed 230 people. Did anyone catch the meaning of his explanation that the truck was trying to overtake a bus?  Or later when 80 people died and he explained that they died when a boat they were travelling in overturned.

It’d mean that in his DRC, when one truck explodes, it kills hundreds; a small boat sinks with almost a hundred!

That has got to be the most fucking stupid statement I have read this year and trust me Rwanda has provided me with rich pickings in the fucking stupid statements department. What the fuck was he meant to say. He told what happened and the number of casualties. Was he supposed to follow the Rwandan example and lie ?  Deny everything and try and blame it on someone else ? 

But wrap your mind around this one. With his explaining gimmicks, he has pulled off the coup of convincing the world that Rwanda supports one of his country’s rebel groups, M23. So, when bombs rain from the skies over Goma, he explains they are from Rwanda. And how did he explain it when two bombs dropped on the Rwandan soil? The diplomatic gymnast Mende explained, with a straight face, that they were a love package sent by M23!

Ah.... and now we have the Rwandan lie Jason Stearns at Congo Siasa blogs.

Since August 22, a series of artillery shells have fallen in Goma and Rwanda, killing civilians on either side of the border.  The UN has now told the press that at least some of the mortars that fell in Rwanda came from M23 positions. According to one UN official in Goma I spoke to, their troops could observe the trajectory of the mortars.

Given that some of the fighting at Kibati took place within one kilometer of the Rwandan border, it is possible that other mortars were Congolese army mistakes. For the mortars that fell in Rubavu town in Rwanda, however, that would be unlikely, as these landed behind FARDC positions. Here, it was either a case of FARDC firing into Rwanda on purpose or they came from M23 positions.

The UN and for that matter the international consensus seems to be it was M23 who bombed Rwanda what we don't know is whether it was on Kigali's instructions as a potential justification for an invasion ? Again from Congo Siasa. 

This means that Rwanda's recent threats to invade the Congo (tanks and troops were deployed on Friday to the border) due to the cross-border shelling is not likely to receive much sympathy from their donor allies. Whether these donors, however, will act on their beliefs, however, is another matter. Given that the M23 has now withdrawn to the north and fighting has at least temporarily ceased, that escalation is unlikely to take place.

Rwanda certainly seems to be leaving that option open. I think those looking to "tricketh " are on the Rwandan side of this event.

But don’t get me wrong. Mr. Mende is not the mende bug that I’ve caught. I’ve caught the mende bug of business.

Now in a cultural sense I am not sure whether to attach any deeper significance to the cockroach insult. Most in the west who know anything of Rwanda will recognise it as a term of abuse used on public radio broadcasts during the Genocide. I have left the remainder of his article which if he had left out the beginning would have been possibly one of the more sensible thing New Times has published this year. 

I know, of course, that in your case when you hear of a cockroach, you immediately think of insecticide. It’s a thought you share with many. But have you ever considered that it could be that thought that has consigned you to the club of the impoverished? If you don’t believe me, you should ask one Chinese farmer called Wang Pengsheng. If it hadn’t been for a malicious neighbour, Wang’d be sitting at the same table as Bill Gates, as we speak.

But it’s not every time that a man falls that he breaks his “eggs”: there is still light at the end of the tunnel for Wang. So, those roaches that Habyarimana feared like the plague may yet haul him out of beggarliness.

While in our neck of the woods we dread these roaches, in China they believe that they provide invaluable medicine. Extracts from them are believed to treat ailments like cancer that’s laying our population to waste. Those extracts are also said to reduce inflammation and to improve immunity. I love the ingenuity of the Chinese; they find use for everything and harness nature in ways that are mysterious to us.

It’s no wonder these wonder beings, the Chinese, are said to eat everything with four legs except tables; everything that flies except aeroplanes; and the list goes on!

Anyway, Wang Pengsheng. Feeling that farming other things was not lifting his family out of poverty fast enough, Wang sat down and for six months developed a business plan. Then with a capital of 100,000 Yuan ($16,000), he bought himself 102 kg of these roach eggs. And the scientific name of those roaches? Periplaneta Americana – yes, they had to be American! American or not, however, he was to make $160 profit on every kg of “Americana” sold.

When we are talking about over 1.5 million roaches that hatched from those 102 kg of eggs, beat that for entrepreneurial dexterity. Question is, was Wang left alone to harvest his millionaire luck? Not a chance, courtesy of a neighbour burning green with envy.

See, the millions of roaches that were going to translate themselves into millions of dollars were bred in a plastic greenhouse. And they weren’t eating your usual kitchen trash as they’d do in your house either, no sir. They were feeding like millionaire roaches, on fruits and biscuits. Yes, those little darlings that, in your place, you’d be hunting down as insufferable pests were feeding on buffet royal. And they should. After all, were they no going to mint millions?

Alas, a wicked neighbour has put paid to that prospect. The busybody dag a hole in the greenhouse and the little imps did the disappearing act. Now our poor Wang has to start all over again. But who said poking holes in plastic greenhouses was like poking them in entrepreneurial skills? Come rain or shine, Wang will win in the end. So, go win Wang, go!

He should have stopped here but didn't.

If in Rwanda and Mende-land, DRC, we let our collective land lie fallow and breed these roaches, instead of trading insults, how many zillions of Yuans shall we get in export earnings?

" Mende-land , DRC,... . " Ever get the feeling that Rwanda is sending a message to Rwandans ? I think we are seeing Kigali starting to move to a war footing. The dehumanising of the the Congolese people is eerily reminiscent of 1994 and I think deliberately so. That the current Tutsi regime in Rwanda is continuing to imitate the preceding Hutu regime should give us all pause for thought and Rwanda should have the consequences of this adventurism spelled out. That should be charges of crimes against humanity for all the political, military and bureaucratic ( civil service ) leadership.