Liberating Grammar!

A student wrote: “You don’t have to punish a kid without showing him/her his/her mistake.” It was quite admirable, I have to say, that a student at Agahozo-Shalom successfully went through the grammatical circus hoops necessary to include women in her sentences. However, I remember, a few years back, to my great joy, some official body in the US – that decides grammar rules – told us that we could now use the singular possessive adjective and pronoun (is that what it is?) for people, useful for when you don’t want to be sexist or awkward-sounding: This student can technically now write: “You don’t have to punish a kid without showing them their mistake.” She could have done this with her other sentences as well. She continued her writing with, “First of all talk to him/her, discuss, and negotiate. Then, when the kid will understand his/her mistake, you agree about what to do, but punishment is not the first solution.” I didn’t correct this student, partly because it is still technically alright to do it the old-fashioned way, but also because I am not sure that this particular change has caught on in Rwanda and Uganda, where their teachers were trained, or in the Rwandan Ministry of Education, which will decide what grade they will get in national matriculation exams. But these sentences the student wrote were more annoying to read than her sentences with actual grammar mistakes – I had to do a double take not to correct them, realized they were ok, then remembered that the girl has other options – lots of “they”s and “them”s that can now be utilized in the United States and, hopefully, can be utilized in the rest of the world.

Elections, Fashion, and Affirmative Action

I like elections. Last week, elections were held in Uganda, and at least one member of the staff who is Ugandan took the five hour bus ride to Kampala to vote, and then the five hour bus ride back. I could not join him for the election experience because I had to work that day, and part of me, admittedly, did not want to take a five hour bus ride and then take another five hour bus ride back.

Today were the district-wide elections in Rwanda. While most of the country has school, the school at Agahozo-shalom was closed, because many students are over 18 and can vote. In my family, the over-18-year-olds do not have ID cards with them, and they can’t vote without them. When I was first told this, I sort of absent-mindedly nodded, but now I think to ask if there is a way for them to obtain them – are they lost, for example? Had they not been given them, yet? Can they get them before the next elections? Because everyone should vote in elections. Two weeks ago three candidates came to speak in the cafeteria, so that students could have an idea of who to vote for. The general absence of newspapers in Rubona means that these speeches were more or less what the students were relying on to vote. Luckily, new computers have been installed in the village, so more students can have computer time to read the news - and, of course, check Facebook which, if their friends read the news, can mean reading the news.

There are a number of levels of local elections in Rwanda, perhaps as part of the effort to encourage local governance. Sector-wide elections, which occurred around a month ago, are the most local they get. Rubona is a sector, for example. And Rubona is very local. The “center of town” looks a lot like the set an old Western movie. Except smaller. “Western” as in, “I keep thinking Clint Eastwood will come walking out of the butter milk shop.” The sector-wide elections are a vacation day for many schools, not just for Agahozo-Shalom.

I walked around, during both elections, hoping everything would feel all electiony outside. The last time I was in an election I could not vote in was Thailand in 2007. And what an election – protests, everyone voting, little voting booths planted on grassy islands in the middle of busy highways. The works.

Today, as in the last local Rwandan elections from last month, there are a few massive banners around town, telling people to vote, and how important voting is. The banners are held up by carefully crafted wooden arches around three meters high, the wood still in branch-form, entwined with separate detached foliage. The arch covers the width of the road, so you walk under it, on the way to the market. It is quite aesthetic and grabs one’s attention, but is not complimented by any campaign posters. I did find one tiny set of signs with a drawing of a woman and ballots which I think were instructions on voting.

From what I see, most campaigning is done in speeches. And public speaking is deeply embedded in the culture. Despite the mediocre arguments given in debates of beginning debaters I have helped coach, no student has a problem speaking in front of judges, and they don’t read from their paper – the students actually give a speech, freely expressing what they are thinking in English. In Israel, beginners usually nervously have their eyes glued – absolutely glued – to their notes, which seem to be glued to their hands, as they read word-for-word what they or their debate partners have written during preparation time.

In one workshop in Kigali, one student, every time, always starts his speeches reading from the paper and I honest-to-God have absolutely no idea what he is saying when he reads from the paper. Nor does the other team. It’s an issue. Then, suddenly, after 60 seconds, when he is done with what I think is the “introductory stage” of his speech, he looks up. He folds the paper. And then he just speaks. And he is clear, fantastic, and quite clever even. And he does this every time. “Don’t read from the paper!” we all tell him, debaters and coaches alike.

I gave the students the motion “This House Would discontinue quotas for women in the Rwandan parliament.” They looked at me, confused. “So, there will be no women in parliament?” some asked. “No,” I told them. “There just will not be seats reserved for them. They can still win in elections. There can even be a parliament only of women!” (In my dreams.) My fellow debate teacher, who is Rwandan, went on to explain to the students, in Kinyarwanda, what the quota system was. There was a lot of back-and-forth and more confused faces. “So how can there be 100% women in parliament if there are no quotas?” they asked. How, indeed. Ok, so maybe my 100% women in parliament was not the best example. It dawned on me, then, that these kids were no more than nine or ten years old when quotas for women were introduced with the first election after the genocide, and have never known any election without quotas. Suggesting that there be no quotas for women would be like suggesting to American teenagers that there be no plurality elections and that elections be proportional – I know plenty of American teenagers who would really have no idea what I was talking about. Or, alternatively, telling Israeli teenagers to debate the merits of switching to a presidential system, where the president could veto any bills passed by parliament – I remember fellow university student being confused by this. And when some of my fellow Polisci classmates at Hebrew University learned about a completely Westminster model, they were absolutely confused for a few minutes. For these young Rwandans, female quotas were as ingrained and obvious – part of conventional wisdom – as proportional election systems are for Israelis or the presidential system and majoritarian system is for Americans.

I am not sure what I think of this. Is this good? I mean, I would love there to be quotas for women everywhere – I think it is absolutely necessary, I am not sure discrimination against women will ever go away, so I think quotas should just be a permanent part of all democracies. But, somehow, not being able to envision a parliament with a majority of women without quotas – as perhaps impossible as this may be (and I have a hunch that it’s impossible) – is somehow sad. I think Rwandans above the age of, say, 17, see quotas the same way I do - as a solution to a problem, not as the conventional wisdom, not as the starting point they grew up with. Me and my fellow Rwandan coach were equally confused by the confusion among the younger students.

This particular debate proposed to cancel all forms of affirmative actions, including both quotas in parliament and affirmative action in educational institutions. Today, girls need slightly lower marks than boys to get accepted into secondary schools. This does a fairly good job of encouraging more women to study in high school, and I personally think is a great policy. The arguments presented were an interesting mix of outdated 19^th-century “feminism” – mostly arguments about how women need to raise children and so should be educated – and incredibly progressive insights into women’s role in business – namely, that they are really good at business in Rwanda. And they pointed something out that I am ashamed to say I have not pointed out in my blog, or really noticed: women are almost always the ones marketing and selling stuff. And I should know. Because I like buying stuff. It is not only that women are selling second-hand clothes, it is almost everything – veggies, milk, cooked food, shoes, candy, tea, beer, passion fruit and pineapple wine, chocolate-flavored yogurt lollypops, everything.

Aside – chocolate-flavored yogurt lollypops are an absolute lifesaver in rural areas with no chocolate. I think the fact that the vast majority of lollypops are chocolate flavored in Rubona is an indication that chocolate cravings are universal. Coffee, apparently, isn’t, because it’s impossible to find in the rural areas, except in its bean form, attached to the ground or in a truck on its way for export.

Anyway, women are not just the pretty faces selling, like a woman at a Clinique mall counter, they also are the ones purchasing the goods, running the shop, deciding the prices, etc.

And the butter milk cafes seem to be good at branching out, and selling other things that the type of people who like butter milk might also like. For example, one little shop not only offers milk, but also shoes and perfume. It’s kind of funny: milk, amandazies (donuts), chapatti, chocolate-flavored yogurt lollypops, shoes, and perfume lined up. Life’s pleasures, all on one shelf. I think that particular butter milk shop is more popular among the ladies. There are usually more women there then the other places.

One day, I walked into this shop as they were looking through the latest second-hand-clothing shipment, placed in front of the refrigerator with the milk. The owner picked up a pair of jeans. Jeans are very, very slow to catch on in the rural areas. Well, I’ve only been here two months. So maybe not so slow to catch on. I’m just impatient. I see some younger women wearing them, probably who are visiting from the city. Anyway, the owner picked up the jeans and showed them to another woman in the shop – both were women looked to be in their 40s, at least. The second woman held it up to her waist, to see if it would fit. They were having a very long, intense conversation about these jeans. I don’t know what they were saying, but not, “Do these make my bit look fat?” because there was no mirror to actually try the jeans on.

The lack of mirrors may, just may, explain why women don’t wear pants in rural areas – it can’t just be modesty, because they have started wearing tank tops. I mean, without a mirror, pants are a tough garment to be sure of, size-wise and does-my-butt-look-fat wise. Regardless of the reasons, I have never, ever seen a woman in her 40s in the Rubona area wear jeans, and younger women rarely do – outside of Agahozo-Shalom, anyway. In Agahozo-Shalom the girls have rockin’ styling sense, so jeans are a must. Jeans are not much more expensive than skirts, so it is an issue of modesty and/or trend and/or no mirrors, not money.

Speaking of women who own businesses: Interestingly, there are very few university scholarships for business and economics – the vast majority are given in physics and engineering, with women, who tend to get lower marks, getting into these degree programs through affirmative action. One girl I worked with is one of seven students in the entire country to get a scholarship for economics and education. She said there were thousands who are given scholarships in the sciences. It would seem to make more sense to just give more scholarships in the types of fields women in Rwanda tend to do better in, rather than disproportionately give more scholarships in fields women do not do as well in, and using affirmative action to make sure access to scholarships is equal. Regardless, this has become increasingly irrelevant, as funds in the scholarship budget are averted to primary school education, where funds are sorely needed, based on what I have seen in Rubona and the surrounding sectors.

Valentine's Day Special

On the way back to Rubona from Kigali, I ran into one of the teachers from the school. She had on a bright, shiny, tortoise skirt suit, with the skirt going down to the ground, covering beige shoes, relatively practical compared to the black or gold stilettos I usually see her in. I visited her home for a spontaneous meeting of the family, who were not far from the bus station, and met her brother and mother. “Would you like anything to drink?” she asked me as I sat down. “Oh, um, just water” I answered – the standard response I give when I am not sure if declining the offer of a drink is rude. Her mother saw that my very heavy laptop, powdered-milk, oatmeal, coffee-filled backpack was on the floor, burdened by a quick shopping spree of western necessities I was bringing back to the village. She picked it up and put in on her very nicely-upholstered recliners in an otherwise modest living room. I felt guilty. The bottom that bag was probably caked with mud.

I sat across from her brother, who was studying agriculture in university. His English was perfect, and many words he said had no accent at all. “We learned that Israel has excellent agricultural studies and research,” he told me. “My dream is to go to Israel and do an MA or Phd there.” He had on a slightly shiny maroon shirt, dress pants, and smart polished black dress shoes. It was a Sunday, and they were very religious so, in addition to all being all dolled up, the family – or, rather, the mother – wanted to give me a blessing. “She is very religious” her children told me, almost apologetically. So we sat down, looked downwards and the others pressed their palms together, the way Christians pray. My Jewish education instinctively told me to awkwardly yet politely clutch my cell phone and umbrella, rather than put palms together, and she blessed me in Kinyarwanda.

A second later, another family member came through the door with a brown grocery back with bottled water, gone out and purchased specifically for me after my saying, “um, just water.” I was already on my way out, so I insisted that they keep the bottle of water and remembered never to ask for water again if asked what I wanted to drink, and also convinced that Rwanda was not a culture where you needed to accept something to drink. Or maybe you always needed to say, “tea” which is a staple. Right before I left, the youngest daughter – youngest of eleven children, and youngest of nine children who were still alive – said hello to me. She was around nine or ten.

“I am ready to pay to get married,” the teacher told me as she accompanied me to the bus station. She talked about the process of choosing a husband. She was not so young, perhaps in her late 20s or early 30s. She had put off marriage to help out her parents, who used to live in a very modest house compared to the neighbors, though they lived in a pretty nice part of town. Now she felt she had paid her “social debt” to her parents, who now lived in a nicer house – she lived with them –and she was ready to get married and move out, though choosing who to marry was a challenge. It was not so different from what Arab friends have described to me in Israel, but with a Christian twist of “I pray to God for a husband with specific criteria.” One time, she met someone who was tall and thin, just what she wanted. Almost. “He hadn’t studied, so I had to say no,” she said wistfully. She had a friend who once prayed for a husband who was good looking, with a job, a house, educated, the works. Her friend got what she wanted, but the husband was very jealous and demanded she be home every day right after work, controlling all her spending, including the money she made. “She had gotten what she prayed for, but forgot certain attributes when praying.” So now, the teacher told me, “Every time I pray to God I add to the list of things I want in my future husband.”

It was all very romantic. I was a bit romanced out from the debate I judged at the workshop in Kigali. The kids had thought of the motion “This House Would make Valentine’s Day a Public holiday.” My fave’ argument: “If Valentine’s Day is established, people will go out to drink and have sex, and then they will become pregnant and then they will get an abortion and die in the abortion.” There seems to be conventional wisdom here that people who get abortions die.

Anyway, when me and the teacher got to the bus station, I went to buy a ticket to Rwamagana, saw I needed to wait an hour before the next bus left, and walked around by myself as the teacher made her way home in Kigali. In a moment of weakness I bought two pricey imported oranges (around 60 cents each) and went to sit down on the curb, waiting for the bus. I pondered whether the mother’s blessing would have some impact on me – if I thought it did, some placebo function is pound to kick in. There didn’t seem to be any mention of Jesus, so maybe it was non-denominational. Maybe.

As the bus pulled its way up to Ntunga, the closest stop to Rubona, it was raining hard, and me and another volunteer who was on the bus went to ask the moto (motorcycle taxis) how much a ride to Rubona would be. They said a price that was twice the normal rate, citing the rain as a reason for the price hike. Stubborn, we said, “no” and went to buy butter milk – it was a perfect excuse to buy butter milk – and waited for the rain to subsist. Then, behold, we saw another staff member outside, who negotiated with one moto-driver to take us both, on one moto, with both of our incredibly large, heavy backpacks, for the double price – basically, sacrificing safety for around $1.50 each. There was only one helmet, so I went without one, a rare opportunity to see the outside view clearly because most of the helmets are too big on me and cover my eyes. Which also looks ridiculous. We weaved along the road, I was absolutely, horribly, incredibly cold, sleet got into my eyes because I had no helmet on but finally we got home. Safely. And the television shows I had uploaded in streaming video in a Kigali cafe were still on my computer. So I got into bed, made some American oatmeal and powdered-milk deliciousness, wrapped myself in my covers, watched episodes of “Community,” “Weeds” and “How I Met Your Mother” and felt truly blessed.

Wikipedia, Elephant Tusk Bracelets, and More

Last week, one of the volunteers went to the hospital and, when asking about a particular medicine, the doctor looked up the medicine on Wikipedia. Other volunteers thought this was funny, but I couldn't help but think this was somewhat smart. Assuming that drug companies have some influence on what is written in official medical databases – is there such a database? – surely the collective wisdom of Wikipedia could provide a somewhat holistic view of the benefits, risks, and general attributes of a given medicine. Information written in that one database that doctor’s are supposed use is probably included in the Wikipedia entry, plus any up-to-date studies. In developed countries I remember reading that some sort of newsletter is sent out with updates, and perhaps this exists in Rwanda as well, but there is no way to do a quick search of a particular medicine among the hundreds of newsletters doctors receive.

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Elephant Tusk Bracelets

If you want to have the “I’m so wealthy I can dress shabby” look in Rwanda, which is slowly becoming popular in Kigali, then a popular accessory is elephant tusk bracelets. Apparently, they are really popular in a lot of Africa, and very illegal to make them these days. They are clearly a status symbol, sort of like those Tiffany’s heart bracelet that won't go away – popular among the upper-middle-class masses, so not really a sign of elite status, but still pretty pricey, so saying something. I see them among the sorts of girls who can afford really fancy, complicated hairstyles, often paired with sweatpants which may cost more than the expensive-looking suits that everyone else wears. Ah, to live in a country where suits are the standard wear – I love this, love it love it. Everyone looks better in suits.

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Orphans and driving young

Today, when coaching debating, I gave the motion, “The House would cancel the minimum age for obtaining a driving license.” A major argument presented was that there are many orphans who were heads of families and who need a job to sustain their families and themselves, often before their 16^th birthday; becoming a driver could be a means of support. It was an interesting twist to a relatively classic argument used in the US for lowering the driver’s license age - in agricultural regions in the US the age for getting a drivers license is lower because kids have to drive tractors for their family farms. Orphans are a major problem in Rwanda, often serving as heads of households long before their 16^th birthday, and drivers are in pretty high demand, so the argument was quite relevant. The refutation to the “orphans can become drivers” point was that they would not be able to pay for the test fee to begin with. The response to this refutation: many kids are paid about 500 francs to carry around five liters of water, I was told (or is one liter?), so if they did eight or so water lugging trips they could afford the 4,000 franc fee, pass the test, become a driver, and better support themselves and their families. It was all a very Rwandan debate.

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Intuitivism

Yesterday, I asked a girl to send me a document. She had been at Agahozo-Shalom for two years, her writing was pretty good, her speaking was pretty good, she had an e-mail account, so I just assumed she knew how to (a) send a new e-mail and (b) attach a document. I discovered just how much intuitiveness is required in the process of sending a new e-mail and attaching a document; it required a lot of patience on my part to teach it – there are tiny little clicks you make with your mouse that you don’t even realize you are making until you have to teach someone else how to do these tiny little clicks to make e-mails open, documents attach, and e-mails sent.

And teaching what a sentence is. Apparently, you really can’t, unless you and the student are both university linguistic majors. I vaguely knew this fact from the two months I attempted at “Linguistic Research 101” in the Cognitive Science department at Hebrew University, before I decided that working really, really hard for a mediocre grade wasn’t worth it.

Almost all the students who I meet with and all the adults I have sit with in Rubona still read, quietly, out-loud, their fingers on each syllable as they are pronounced, the way you may have remembered doing when you were five or six or seven. When you read of the “literacy rate” in African countries, keep in mind that “know how to read” often means reading like you read when you were seven due to lack of practice; and this level of reading may not be so helpful for economic progress or quality of life.

On the other hand, one of the girls in my family is reading The Iliad. The one that said she “liked romance novels.” I don’t want to read The Iliad, so maybe we will have nothing to chat about. Maybe I will have to read The Iliad.

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Fashion

But enough about reading, it’s getting boring.

Back to fashion.

I need to get a dress made for my sister’s wedding.

In Rubona the sewing ladies – who line up outside in their nice Singer Sewing Machines every market day – only seem to know how to make dresses with very puffy sleeves. I may have to take my chances and get a dress made there, though, because it is mouth-wateringly cheap. Probably two or three dollars to sew a dress, seven tops. Maybe I can jazz it up with some nice stilettos and it will be a fashion statement. But I can’t make a fashion statement at a nice, Jewish wedding in Long Island. We shall see.

Airtime

We were having a family discussion on the importance of “seeing far” to reach your dreams and a girl asked something along the lines of, “What if you see far and reach far by doing something illegal? Like, steal money. Yknow, go to MTN [the cell phone provider] and manipulate the codes to steal airtime?” I wanted to give the girl a great big hug because rather than say “rob a bank” which is close to irrelevant here, where banks are few and far apart, the first example she could come up with was “robbing cell phone airtime.” Cell phone air time is a major means, in parts of the developing world with few banks, of storing, saving and transferring money. It is also how I pay for internet in Kigali.

One of the girls was looking at my phone, and checked what my airtime was. It was at 5,000 francs, as I had just added air time. That’s less than $10. “5,000 francs?” the girls exclaimed, all peering over my phone. “You are rich!” Outside of the wealthy center of Kigali, most people don’t add more than a few hundred francs at a time. Around Rubona, the only option I have found so far is to add 300 francs (50 cents or around 2 NIS) at a time – people just don’t have more than 300 francs to add to their cell phones.

In Kigali, there are MTN airtime sellers on the street – sellers who run around trying to get you to buy airtime. Recently, they started trying to sell me 10,000 (less than $20) worth of airtime – as far as I know, 5,000 francs was the most I could get before. The card looks absurd – 10,000 francs? That’s a crazy amount of airtime to add all at once in one place, I think to myself. And it’s funny, because for me it’s not too much. There are many days that I have 10,000 francs in my wallet, which is a lot to carry around outside of Kigali, and most places inside Kigali. But to have 10,000 francs of airtime in my phone? That just seems like a socially exorbitant amount of money to appear on my Rwandatel cell phone screen.

Because airtime is pricey, it is very popular here (and, as far as I know, most of Africa) for people to call and hang up, expecting you to call back. In Rwanda, people I have met in the rural areas call me 10 to 20 times, as if the only reason I am not calling them back is because I have not yet realized they want to reach me.

Kids having cell phones has not yet caught on here. They carry radios, which are not much more than the cheapest of cheap cell phones, so I don’t think it’s only an issue of expenses, though that is surely a factor. Even the wealthier kids in Kigali do not have cell phones. Just a matter of time, I suppose.

Debate in Rwandan Schools

Last week, the English teacher set up the classroom a bit like a debate and asked the kids to choose what they thought was better: modern culture or traditional culture. “Human rights exist in modern society” was an argument presented.

“For example,” the girl argued, “in traditional culture, a girl who became pregnant outside of wedlock would be sent to the woods and maybe eaten by lions and tigers.”

A few laughed at the part about lions and tigers, but everyone on the Modern Culture side nodded.

The Traditional Culture side responded with, “but today women kill the child.”

The English teacher asked, “what is that called?” Nobody knew. “An abortion” the teacher said. I desperately wanted to mention the word “infanticide”, which was more common before abortions were possible. But I held my tongue.

“But,” responded the Modern Culture side, “if you ban a girl to the forest and she dies, then you are killing both the girl and the child.”

“Yes,” a Traditional Culture participant answered, “But it was a punishment for going against their values.”

This particular exchange is not indicative of what anyone thought – it was a debate where positions were intentionally the opposite of what people thought. I genuinely think that these girls did not in any way believe that the types of actions once taken against unwed pregnant girls were right. But it is always interesting to hear what types of arguments people feel they should use when defending a position that is not their own.

There were mostly girls in this debate – around 20 girls and two boys. This was a group who were studying English, Kinyarwanda and French for their matriculation exams. It was the equivalent of your average English Lit. class at university, but even more biased for girls, because it is easier to get into than physics and math and, statistically speaking, girls at the age of 18 tend to be less interested in Math and Science, for whatever reason, so may not score as well on the Math and Science exams. Maybe. Tell me if I'm wrong.

The teacher framed the debate in a way that may have lead the class to think that defending “traditional culture” meant opposing women’s right: “When I say ‘traditional culture’ I mean the kind of culture where you do not decide who you marry and where women did not study.”

I spent Saturday and Sunday coaching debate to a group of students from various high schools in Kigali. At Agahozo-Shalom, in Rwamagana, the students come from vulnerable backgrounds, often impoverished backgrounds, and step into a school with good resources. At this debate workshop in Kigali, the students were a mix of relatively privileged kids who studied at the top private schools; and students with less privileged backgrounds who studied in more mediocre schools. It was the first time I had met students with flawless English, with that tiny drop of British accent, and perfectly pressed uniforms, debating with students who did not go to the stop schools. One girl was a prefect. In my mind, if you go to a school with prefects, you are either privileged or Harry potter. But they were very helpful in bringing up the level of the kids from the mediocre schools.

At the end of the weekend the last debate was “This House Would re-institute the death penalty.”

At one point “Human Rights” were personified:

“We cannot let the human rights just come into our country and decide what to do. We, Rwandans, must decide, not all the human rights who want to decide for us.”

I think, maybe, he thought the “human” in “human rights” was used to describe the “rights” as being actual humans – as in “we are all human beings” or, if you go to Madam Tussauds, you have the “mannequin Tom Cruise” versus the “human Tom Cruise.”

It was interesting seeing such the concept personified. I do not think this particular debater did not like human rights or, if you asked him, think of "human rights" as something from the outside, as people coming in. I think he just thought that, if one were to support re-instituting the death penalty, this is the type of arguments one were to present.

Dung

Every week in Agahozo-Shalom there is “farm time” on Saturday morning. I like cows, so I decided to go the area of the cows. And there are two cute baby calves there. They look like chubby Bambies.

But cow work, at that time and location, consisted entirely of picking up cow dung. Because cows are a big part of Rwandan culture, and because cleanliness is also a big part of Rwandan culture, and because gloves and shovels are not available or necessary for this particular task, picking up cow dung is an art here. An art.

You don’t just pick it up and put it in a barrel. You whisk up some surrounding dusty sand onto a small clump of dung, then role the clump on the ground so that it picks up more sand, so that when you pick it up, the sand not only separates the dung from your hands, it also cleanses your hand of any dung that happened to stick to our skin. I know that sand cleans from the scene in Gladiator where Russell Crow, who I would trust with my life, is enslaved and injures himself, and cleans his wound with sand.

There was one girl who was an expert. I started helping out right away, and quickly noticed that her hands were relatively clean compared to mine, and I was very impressed. She looked at my hands, caked with the dark matter, and asked me if this was the first time I had done this, and I told her it was. “Did you do this before Agahozo Shalom?” I asked, and she told she had. “Long before Agahozo Shalom?” and she replied she had done this her whole life. I felt better about the state of my hands. Most of the girls were not involved with the actual picking up of the dung, but helped out in transporting it in barrels to the farm, sweeping up smaller pieces, etc. I don’t know how many girls had experience with this – cows are expensive and sign of status so I imagine most orphans do not have cows, though many children who are orphaned labored for families who did have cows. Some kids are from urban centers.

There was one bit of advice I did give the students, despite my lack of any qualifications. There were bits of scrap metal among the dirt and dung. I asked if I should put everything in the barrel, even the metal I picked up, as everything in the barrel would go to the farm for manure. They said, “yes, yes.” “Even this piece of plastic?” I asked, holding up a meter-long white stick. "Yes," I was told again. I responded, a bit hesitantly, because I don’t know much about farming, “I think we should put the plastic and metal scraps aside, and not mix them into the soil.” I hope this is right – for all I know, plastic and metal just hang around, and don’t necessarily destroy the soil. But it can’t be good.

I don’t know how efficient the little system was of picking up cow dung. I feel like ten hands picking up the stuff and another ten sweeping is not as quick as one person and a large shovel. But it certainly created a sense of working together, and I got to tell the kids the time and location of the debate meeting, chat about the need for a writing club, ask them how school was, and suggest that we don’t bury plastic and metal into farm soil. So I suppose it wasn’t only about collecting manure.

Plus, during the breaks, I got to look at the two calves, with their big teary eyes and curious expressions and lovely soft, shiny fur, standing there after inadvertently providing us the material to grow more and stronger crops.