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.