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 19th-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.
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