Gender Balance Values (GBV)

The students in the English class put on a play. In the skit, a man beat his wife who he thought was cheating on him. The woman calls the police, the police show up in two seconds – suspension of disbelief, I know – and the man was taken to the police headquarters for questioning. And what was the questioning about? If the woman had really cheated on him. That was the truth deemed relevant for the investigation in the skit. It turns out that the woman was not cheating on anyone, that the “other man” was, in fact, her brother….or not really her brother but also not her lover…or something. It was hard to follow and there were a lot of plot twists I did not entirely understand. But the one thing I did get was that the man was guilty of abuse only because, as it turned out, the woman had not been cheating. The thing with skits that are meant to show “social messages” is that they are, at times, formulaic, which can mean that one part of the formula is missing.

I was disturbed, but something inside me did not have the energy or patience to explain that, in Rwandan law, you cannot beat your wife even if she is cheating on you. I will need to bring it up with the teacher, I think. Or the teacher who teaches General Paper, the Rwandan equivalent of Civics. I was at once impressed that they put on a skit about women’s rights and also upset that idea of “rights” was not entirely understood as independent of how we might judge the moral actions of a woman in her personal life.

There was a female police officer who came to speak at the assembly for International Women’s Day. After lots of back-and-forth translation fumbling, her official title came out as “Assistant Inspector of Police District Chief of Gender and Balance Values” (GBV). I think. I might be off about that. I have never seen a female police woman or officer in this particular sector of district. It is always unnerving when, within an organization, the representative meant to assure equal opportunity for an oppressed group is also the only representative from that oppressed group. She mostly discussed everything that Kagami had done and about the benefits of the laws to protect women.

Her presence and speech were excellent and much needed, if only as a role model to women that they can go into law enforcement and security.

The original Women’s Day was created as a day to protest injustices, not only to celebrate successes. One student at Family Time said that it was silly to have a Women’s Day – “Are the other days all for men?” And, indeed, if the day is only to celebrate how great women are, it is a bit silly. If, however, it is a day that everyone is meant to discuss the shortcomings in providing equal rights, it makes more sense: every other day is not to discuss the shortcomings in the rights of the male population, because that isn’t really such a pressing issue. Every other day, perhaps, can be to celebrate the rights we have obtained, when we go to work, walk around freely unaccompanied, and are, as a general day-to-day typical experience, physically secure. While celebrating Women’s Day may genuinely be a sign that women in a given country are obtaining more rights, only celebrating the rights already obtained, and not mentioning the shortcomings, may hinder a continuation of progress.

On the other hand, shop owners all seem to be women. I really need to find out how many shops in Rubona are owned by women. There seems to be a complete acceptance that women should make lots of money by themselves. Women running the shops have their babies plopped down next to them. They occasionally breastfeed when necessary, then go back to selling things to customers. And, quite frankly, the babies may help bring customers. I mean, they must. There is one shop that may have slightly more acidic milk – it sometimes gets just to bubbly for my taste. But the shop owner has a little tiny baby girl – not her own, I don’t think, I have never seen her pregnant. The baby just sits there, has just learned to smile and has dimples. Her name is Nadia. And of course you choose Nadia’s Shop.

Men take care of their kids – this is something that really stands out. Not as much as the women, who tie the babies to their backs. But I do sometimes see boys tying babies to their backs and men carrying their babies alone.

More women are working and taking managerial roles in masonry. While it is a bit frustrating to meet girls who are going into vocational training in construction because they cannot afford upper secondary school, it is nice to see that they are progressing in their respective vocational professions.

All in all, progression in women’s rights in Rwanda has been absolutely phenomenal. The police offer who came to speak at the assembly was not exaggerating. I would not have caught the sad misunderstanding of what women’s rights are if students did not learn about new laws to protect abused women. It is not that the students had a particular opinion of the woman’s rights if the woman had, in fact, been cheating. They just wanted to focus on the completely innocent woman who had done nothing wrong at all and how her rights were violated in a way that, today, was inexcusable. Inconsistencies are a sign that some areas are improving much quicker than others, which is a sign that there are major areas of improvements in women’s rights. Hopefully, as literacy and education improves, the inconsistencies will diminish and these improvements will be across the board.

Vocational Training

One of the volunteers lost his English-French-Kinyarwanda dictionary. He was looking all over for it. It was nowhere. This particular dictionary, as far as I know, is not available in Rwanda. I have checked two different bookstores in Kigali in a country where bookstores are few and far between. So this dictionary is a rare, valuable item.

As I was walking to get some milk, a boy stopped me on the road to Rubona and asked if I could help him pronounce some words on his English-French-Kinyarwanda dictionary. The volunteer who had lost his dictionary mentioned that, as long as someone was using the dictionary to learn something, he was less concerned about its whereabouts. “I just don’t want it to be collecting dust in some closed cabinet somewhere,” he said. So, as I made my way into the living room of this boy, and saw a dictionary that was the exact same title, publisher, and date published as the dictionary this volunteer had lost, I decided to only ask, off-handedly, “Um, where did you get this dictionary? Out of curiosity.” He answered, “From my sister” and showed the name of his sister's name written on the side. “Where did she buy it?” He did not seem to understand the question. “From Kigali?” I suggested. “Ah, yes, um, from Kigali” he said. Then we sat down and he read words out loud and I corrected him.

I imagine the dictionary was passed from hand to hand until nobody really knew who owned it. It could be from his sister who bought it in Kigali. Which means I can buy it somewhere. But his English isn't good enough to explain to me where.

This boy is a very fast learner, and if there is someone who will utilize the dictionary, it is him.

His house is in the center of down-“town” Rubona. It is a very nice-looking house, with just the right combination of bricks, mud, and stone to give it this eclectic yet French-country-side cottage-house vibe. The inside of their house is painted in this turquoise color that is the only alternative to white and brown paint and seems to be an indication of, at the very least, moderate relative prosperity. Inside, the coffee tables and small television are covered with embroidered blue cloth. I say, “coffee-tables” but in a country with close to no drinking coffee, perhaps “tea tables” is more appropriate. The center pieces on the coffee tables are My Little Pony figurines carefully placed in the center of the embroidery, the way you might put a crystal vase. The wall decorations include a David Beckham poster and a poster of babies dressed up as a professional judge, police, and academic. The boy lives with his sisters and “adults who take care us”, as they are orphans. The one book they own is displayed on the table with the television.

They are, for Rubona standards, pretty well-off. The boy is currently in Senior 2. After Senior 3 he will either work, go onto upper secondary school at a boarding school as there are no local upper secondary schools, or go onto vocational training.

His house is not far from the Vocational Training Center (VTC). The girl I met who is studying masonry at VTC is progressing. She showed me her sketches which demonstrate “elevation.” I met two boys who are studying catering, one of whom had very good English – perhaps the best English I have heard so far from someone who was not an English teacher, and better than many of the English teachers in Rubona. He told me that his class had just finished learning about salads, and next term was all about sauces. The teacher lives “on the black road” which means the paved road that includes Ntunga, the town that the buses pass through from when I want to go to Kigali, around 9 kilometers from Agahozo-Shalom. She has an assistant, to, who took over when she was “three months at home for getting married.” There are exactly 88 kids in their class and they hope to find work in Gisenyi, which is more or less a resort town.

“What is your favorite food?” I asked them. “Meat,” they said. I asked, “Any particular meat?” “No,” they said, “Just all kinds of meat.”

Most meat is goat meat, sold in brochettes. Occasionally you hear a “baaaaaaaak!” from a chicken being hacked and then you see boys with dead chickens tied to the handle bars of their bikes which they push home. I was told there was a pork industry, but I was also told that pigs are not walked, so I rarely see them. I saw one pig being walked, once. The pig was very, very angry and everyone was staring at the pig walker like, “why are you walking a pig?”

The teacher-student ratio for primary school and vocational training, whether it be catering or masonry, seems to be around 40-50 students per teacher, which is really not bad for this part of the world, and not so far off from the 40 kids that exist in some Israeli classrooms. Though, when the teacher was off for her marriage, it became a ratio of one to 88 students. This is not entirely different than when my history teacher in grade 9 took maternity leave and no one replaced her, only that three months off for a marriage seems a bit long.

It seems that nearly everyone in Rubona goes into vocational training, or working, rather than secondary school. According to UNESCO, as of 2006 Rwanda had a Percentage of Vocational/Technical Enrollment (PVTE) of 36%, which was the highest in the world as of that year. At the time, the Rwandan government had a goal of reaching 50% PVTE enrollment by 2015, which perhaps can explain the cuts in university scholarships and greater investment in primary education, which is necessary to go into technical or vocational training.

It is not clear of the 50% goal of the government will come at the expense of those studying in secondary school. The percentage enrolled in secondary school - which is at least lower secondary school - was around 22% between 2005-2009, so presumably not.

Agahozo-Shalom offers "professional training" once a week. The only area I can help out in is perhaps the least practical of the professional training: art. Art is not particularly popular, with only three students choosing this option, with one seriously wanting to become an artist. The one who seriously wants to become an artist, though, is very serious: he comes into the art room every day, it seems, and practices all the time. He is improving tremendously. In Kigali there are the painted advertisements widespread in the cities of the developing world. However, in the rural areas, store-owners display their goods by creating a tiny little tent-like stick framework which little samples of their products are hung from. Though in down "town" Rubona I noticed one store owner paint cell phones to indicate that phones were repaired in his shop. I met an animator in Kigali, once. In a country where advertising is becoming more wide-spread, the very serious student, who really wants to become an artist, may make it in a field that is tough to break into in any country.

Talking on Cell Phones

In a recent New York Times article titled, “Don’t Call me, I Won’t Call You” Pamela Paul discusses the change in attitudes, in the United States, towards chatting on the phone for the sake of chatting. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html Verbal communication on the phone is being replaced with text-messages. People don’t feel the need to answer their phones if they don’t want to.

This is not true in Rwanda.

When seeing Rwandans answering the phone at, what seems to me, to be the most inappropriate times – in the middle of meetings and even at funerals – it does not seem so strange if you think about the cell phone the way we used to think about land-line phones ringing. In that context, not answering the phone would be very rude. Almost like someone knocking on your door and you deciding not to answer – in fact, perhaps in the United States landlines were looked at almost like knocking on the door until recently.

During the training at Agahozo-Shalom, there is a session on the different levels of listening, and turning off the cell phone when meeting with students – or at meetings in general – was discussed. When one councilor turned his cell phone off in front of a student before they began speaking in a meeting, the student was shocked that the phone was turned off just for him. And again – if you compare the cell phone to the land line, that is kind of shocking. Imagine, when we only had landlines, turning off the phone – as in, unplugging it – before a meeting? In my Orthodox Jewish family, nobody ever thought to turn off our land-line before Shabbat (the Sabbath), when electricity is forbidden. Today, many religious Jews do turn off their cell phones. I don't think it's because they are becoming more religious.

It’s easy to say, “Ah, but cell phones can be easily turned off and, at the very least, put on silent. And we have devices for text messaging on cell phones. That explains the decrease in talking on the phone.” But how hard would it have been to create a landline with text messaging? And we did have beepers, but no one really used those like people text today. And would it have really been so difficult to create a landline where you only had to press a button to put it on silent? In fact, there may have been such a button, but no one ever used it. More likely, cell phones were designed because people got used to not talking on the phone as much. I don’t think it’s because of e-mailing, either. I remember when caller ID was invented – in other words, it was at least fifty years after the landline became widespread and for public use. Fifty years of no one thinking to create a way to screen calls. I honestly think that cell phones in Africa are at the place landlines were in the United States for fifty years. And I think landlines were treated the way a knock on the door was treated before landlines – something that could not be ignored.

People are starting to check their e-mail on cell phones in Rwanda, but that just may be because people are less likely to have computers. And, to be honest, only relatively wealthy professionals tend to use their phones for internet. Bluetooth is sort of popular, probably because it is the easiest way to get data in the absence of wide-spread computer ownership. But, to be honest again, it’s mostly just wealthy professionals and techies that know about bluetooth. The technology that is most popular, among all who are at least middle-class, is the ability to put two SIM cards in a phone so that calling to other countries is easier, which is on the rise as people move to other countries for jobs. Most active duel SIM phones seem to come from China, where active dual SIM phones are becoming popular.

Organic, natural conveyor belts

In every opening segment on Rwanda TV – y’know, those bits in between shows where they play music and show some animation to remind you what channel you are watching – there is a bunch of clips showing things that Rwanda produces. The fermented milk in closed cartons that I buy in Kigali comes up on the screen, and then more cartons, one after another, on a conveyer belt. I couldn’t help but think, “Who actually buys that carton of milk other than a very narrow segment in Kigali and other cities?” The carton, which is around 500 ml., costs around 500 francs. I pay around 150-200 francs for the same amount of milk in Rubona, which comes from someone’s cow in the backyard. The milk in rural areas is left in a plastic jug until it turns into creamy deliciousness after a few days. Maybe the milk comes from a co-op, which are very common today. But, all in all, it is nothing at all like the conveyer-belt large-scale production I see on the television news station available.

Yesterday, I met an American who is working on a project for large-scale dairy production. The milk – even the fermented kind – will need to be pasteurized, undergo quality control, be efficiently distributed, be fortified, and have a central company name that would be accountable to anyone who gets sick from the milk. He told me that the government’s goal was to eventually make it so that milk needed to be pasteurized, put in cartons, and, if possible, distributed to school-aged kids to assure that they received the proteins and vitamins necessary without the adverse effects of potentially bad bacteria. This official government policy fit with the conveyer-belt milk I saw on television. As of now, there was only one large dairy farm which was not large enough – only sixty cows.

I asked the American if fermented milk was not already safe because the fermentation, I vaguely thought, significantly adds to the shelf-life of milk. Maybe pasteurized non-fermented refrigerated milk is better than fermented refrigerated milk, but if there is any glitch in the system and non-fermented milk is left around for too long, surely the consequences can be worse? There are, apparently, some problematic bacteria even in fermented milk, I was told.

I have heard mixed opinions about the co-ops that are becoming more common in Rwanda. Some Rwandan technicians, for example, pool a part of their income every month, and the funds are given to whoever is not working in any given month. It’s not centralized on a national level, but it’s still cooperation to improve efficiency. I suppose time will tell if centralized dairy production is more efficient than co-ops.

Part of my hesitation may come from the fact that, in developing countries, we are not particularly attracted to conveyer belts. In advertisements on Rwanda television, I noticed that foods are advertised as proudly coming from warehouses with thousands of the same packaged good, one after another, on high shelves you can’t reach on your own, being placed on factory floor vehicles that bring them to trucks that take the goods somewhere for you to buy. In fact, the part with the friendly little corner store selling the good is not even in the advertisement – only the bit about the good coming from a factory is. Remember, these seem to be private advertisements, not government promotion of goods, so it may be a genuine reflection of what people want to buy, as opposed to an official policy of modernization and efficiency . In Israel, I am used to cheeses and pastrami and even fizzy soft drinks being shown as coming from anywhere other than a conveyer belt. They usually appear to come from some grassy green pasture of perfection – sort of like the rural areas in Rwanda, actually. Greenery, some cluster of trees and wild flowers here and there.

Walking to the dining hall with an Israeli, an American and a Rwandan, the Israelis and Americans (including myself) lamented about the plans to remove the wild flowers and greenery on the side of the road that looked a bit like a mini-forest. It reminds me of little forest pathways that appeared in books my father and grandmother would read to me as a child. I almost expect a little fairy to come out of the hedge. The Rwandan staff member rolled her eyes, very justifiably: “You like this because you are tourists,” she said. “For us it is a home for snakes. It is the bush.”

I guess the conveyer belt and mechanical centralized production is a lot more attractive in the types of places where you feel like you are always walking around in a developed-country organic fruit juice advertisement.

Miss Rwanda

I learned that the traditional, ideal body type for women in Rwandan culture is:

1) Big hips

2) small waist

3) small breasts

4) big eyes

5) gap between teeth

6) white teeth

7) black gums

8) “tall but not too tall.”

9) Dimples

10) Awesome personality

Ok, I made the last one up. But I think that should be universal.

I asked a staff member if the ideal body and beauty was changing and she said, “Yes, because of the Miss Rwandan pageant.” Apparently, the winner of Miss Rwanda, who went onto win Miss East Africa, was criticized as not being truly beautiful by many Rwandans – she did not have the big eyes, or the big hips, and was very tall. She was beautiful by today’s East African Standards, which perhaps are not so different than super-model standards, but not by many Rwandan standards. She didn’t even have the gap in the teeth which Madonna and one model on America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) both have. In ANTM, the model’s gap was actually made larger in the “Makeover Episode!” The price you pay to be on reality television….

Oddly, the Miss Rwanda beauty pageant seems to be organized by the government. Hooters was one of the sponsors in the 2009 pageant and the Hooters Vice President, Kat Cole, was one of the judges, who judged alongside Christine Tuyisenge of Rwanda Women Empowerment. You know, for balance. I wouldn’t feel bad about the pageant if there was a male equivalent. I wonder if Hooters would sponsor that.

But I digress.

The traditional dress matches these traditional beauty standards. The skirt is very frumpy and tied above the waist which both elongates the legs and makes the hips look big. The top is a toga-like thingy, made out of the same material, and is very loosely warn over breasts, while the left arm is exposed. The not-quite traditional weekday dress – tailored shirts and skirts that look very African but not quite uniquely Rwandan – have tops that are tailored tightly around the waist and then stick out just below the waist to make hips and butt look larger. The top of the shirt is almost always V-necked which, according to my old copies of Cosmopolitan and Teen People, makes breasts look smaller.

I asked if there was traditional male dress, and was told that there was not – that men are not, traditionally, meant to care about what they wear, but to be just strong and manly. There does, however, appear to be traditional dress for drumming, and Agahozo-Shalom students created a toga-like material for the boys, who appeared in the fashion show on Talent Night at ASYV. I saw a movie with this toga on a man getting married. It was worn over a colored shirt. The material just does not look as together as when the women wear it , perhaps because the modern male equivalent of traditional dress is wearing it over a Western colored shirt or t-shirt and it looks a bit…off. On major holidays, I only see the women in traditional dresses, while the men just wear Western dress shirts and nice trousers. Sometimes on weekdays I do see men in locally bright colorful fabric, shirts not to different from what the women wear. Except not V-necked. I can’t tell if these locally-made shirts are worn because they are cheaper or if they are, in fact, more expensive and more in demand. Remember – almost everything in Rwanda that is not traditional dress is second-hand clothing. I still don’t know if second-hand clothing imports are more in demand or just more cheap to produce. Or both.

I tried on a traditional dress and felt stunning – I love them. They are just so drapy and silky and look good on everyone. They can be adjusted so that there are straps on both shoulders and if you add a belt it becomes a dress that can almost be worn to the Oscars.

If I have time and find a good price, I will get one for my sister’s wedding.

Prices. Ah, Prices. They are weird. Powdered milk, the Nestlé-brand, cost me 3,500 francs in Rubona which I was told by Rwandan staff members is, indeed, the standard price for everyone. In Kigali there is another lesser-known brand that is 2,800. This brand is not to be found outside of Kigali, from the best of my knowledge. I suppose time and cost of transport raises the price. Or the monopoly of Nestle as a distributor. Which my family used to boycott because they would (and perhaps still?) tell mothers to use baby formula in areas where water is contaminated.

My butter milk costs twice as much as Rwandans pay, I think – I bought a cup once and paid 200 francs and another customer said, “what? But it is 100!” But I never ever pay more than twice as much, and twice as much is still around 33 cents for 500 ml. Chocolate lollypops are 50 francs (1/12^th of a dollar, so less than 10 cents) for everyone, Rwandan or not. They are the exact same price everywhere I have been to and every shop has the exact same brand. There is literally an established, universal price for a niche market good as useless and narrow as a chocolate-flavored lollypop which I honestly have never seen anyone buy before other than myself. I hope the calories go straight to my hips.

Amusement

Here are a list of ways kids amuse themselves:

1) The classic bicycle and stick – the ones you see in depression-era photographs in the west, where kids push the tire with the stick and try to keep the tire rolling for as long as possible.

2) Marbles, especially in one neighborhood more than any other one. The kids were so engrossed in the marbles that they only screamed “Mazungu! Mazungu! Morning! Morning!” one time, and then continued with their game. I can’t figure out if this one group of houses are the only ones who can afford marbles, have obtained marbles, or like marbles.

3) Making mud pie, or the Rwandan equivalent. Little tiny toddlers, after the rain, were thoroughly mixing just the right amount of water, mud and sand into empty sardine cans – the only canned goods other than tomato paste for kilometers around. They take sticks and mix and mush and then poor them onto the ground and then into another sardine can, to be ready by lunchtime. Or before they get bored.

4) Pulling a string attached to anything plastic, such as a tiny plastic wheel that fell off of a broken toy truck, or a broken toy truck with a missing wheel.

5) The universal and fantastic bubble wrap. I have no idea how that got to Rubona. Perhaps from some shipment to Agahozo-Shalom? But one small child was showing the others how to pop the bubble wrap and everyone was very excited. Including me.

6) These big massive ten-meter steels beams that are making their way into rural areas and stabilizing buildings are popular to peer through. I saw one one-year-old squat down, the adorable way that one-year-olds do, and cup his hands, looking through the steel beam to the other side. He seemed absolutely engrossed..

When kids don’t have a toy at hand, or when they are too old for toys but not quite old enough to hide their boredom, kids gather around anything that is slightly entertaining. The fact that some kids are crowding around makes more kids crowd around, until the existence of a crowd itself seems to be half the entertainment. Sometimes this is a white person (including me). But it is not that white people are incredibly more entertaining than anything else– it is just yet another focal point to crowd around (the crowd can reach over a hundred) until the next best thing comes alone. I was walking to the market when a very young toddler, eager to keep up with the other kids following me, was almost run over by a bike. The child fell and started crying. The child seemed fine and did not have any scrape, but the throng of children quickly crowded around the man and his bike and the child who had fallen, and this scene was now the place to be.

There are a few residents in the area with mental illnesses. One boy, who sort of walks staggeringly back and forth in a zig-zag, kind of chasing children, was chasing children who were chasing me. I am not sure if he had a mental illness or was drunk or both. The fifty or so kids, in their blue school uniforms (girls) and beige uniforms (boys) all gave loud, fearful laughs and gasps whenever he staggered near them, and then ran as a group to the other side of the road and then, to keep things interesting, started chasing him. They were laughing and mocking him and afraid all at the same time. Adults looked on, curious, but there was nothing quite to do, and I don’t know if they could do anything to help this boy. The older residents with mental illnesses are not mocked as much, from what I have seen – the older men and women are given a certain respect, regardless of their mental state. At times a child or young adult will let me know that a particular older man or woman is not to stable, so that I know that. They will perhaps laugh a bit while explaining this, but it never seems cruel the way I saw these children laugh at the boy, and is never directly mocking the older person.

Balance, Boy Bands, the BBC and Ben

There does not seem to be a word for “affirmative action” in Kinyarwanda. The word “gender balance” is used to describe everything from the quota systems in government to the policy of accepting girls into secondary school with lower marks. I have heard “Gender Balance Values” referred to as GBV. Despite the efforts at “gender balance” on the part of the government and many educators, many of the family representatives in the weekly debate made the following points: It is not good to empower women because they need to take care of their home and children; It is not good to empower women because they need to wash the baby and if they are empowered they will work all day; women should not be empowered because when they move to the city they do not have the same capacity as the men have to do work; there is no point in empowering women because they can get into secondary school with lower marks anyway; and, finally, women should not be empowered through the ability to get into secondary school with lower marks because it is not fair. These remarks were all made by different students, both male and female. One girl said that the affirmative action for acceptance in to secondary school was not necessary – girls were capable of getting in without extra help, and the fact that they could get in with lower marks only made women seem less capable than they were. This was a fine argument, at least compared to the other ones. The girl immediately after her responded that, if girls could not get in with lower marks, many girls may not bother studying in primary school.

The councilor, eager to persuade the students to accept that women are equally as capable as men, pointed out that the president of Liberia was a woman and so was Condoleezza Rice. The former had lots of children, the councilor pointed out.

Speaking of children: I have heard many Rwandans and Ugandans complain that “we never really have disposable income” because the moment they get a stable salary that more than covers their basic living expenses, they must support siblings, nieces and nephews and other relatives – pay for their school fees, paper and pencils and books for school, and even basic living expenses.

The other day, I was speaking with some staff members. One told me why he decided to have only one child: “After calculating our total expenses and the expenses that we would invest in our future children, we found out that, in order to have two children, we would need to be making twice our current income just to survive and pay for basic school fees. This is without having a cell phone.” He raised his cell phone up.

A girl I met on the road gave me her cell phone number – which she insisted I dial immediately so she could have mine and, as is standard, call me and hang-up dozens of times until I call her. Anyway, when I did try calling, the number was disconnected. Apparently, the cell phone is shared by the family, and different family members have their own SIM card. I asked a boy on one of my walks if his family had a cell phone. “No” he answered, “we don’t have a phone, we have a radio.” Families often choose between a cell phone and a radio, because they cannot afford both. Just like young men walk around with radios blaring, many who have radios on their cell phones will put the cell-phone radio on out-loud. But – and excuse me for my cultural imperialism – I am so happy that the norm of listening to music on headphones is becoming more popular as people buy more and more cell phones which, thank the Lord, come with ear-buds. Because, though Rwandan music is very good, not all Rwandan music is very good, and not all radios are static-free. Though, sometimes, the loud radio idea is cute – one family, seeing that I was passing, switched to the English BBC channel as they were laughing and waving to me, sitting around their out-door smooth sandy patio, listening to the radio as a family. There are two girls, both very polite and adorable, who, on their way home from school, come skipping up to me in their bright-blue uniforms every time I pass a particular house. They point to my headphones and ask to listen. So I crouch down and put the headphones on each girl, they listen, give me a thumbs up, and then continue on their way.

I am still waiting for mp3’s to catch on – they will, they must. You can transfer songs from one cell phone to the next, so surely everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone (who knows someone?) with enough internet access to download some songs. I know, most cell phones can’t play mp3’s, but mp3 players can be as cheap at a few dollars so surely more cell phones will provide mp3 players.

There is something exciting, though, about the radios as a collective little theater that everyone can experience together. I just learned – after way to long – that one of my roommates plays the character on a Kinyarwanda radio drama on the BBC. She is somewhat of a celebrity which, considering how together and smart she looks all the time, does not surprise me.

A lot of music sounds way to much like N’sync, which also means everyone, regardless of your knowledge of Kinyarwanda and regardless of how much you like boy bands, finds themselves annoyingly humming the songs in the shower. One singer, Tom Close, chose his name because it sounded like Tom Cruise – “r” and “l” are often interchangeable and confused in Kinyarwanda, so someone that says Tom Close might, indeed, be confused for Tom Cruise. At least I think that's why he chose the name. Maybe his critics told me that as a joke. Of course, those who see themselves as more mature and sophisticated don’t listen to the lovey-dovey high-pitched, techno fun. They listen to, among others, Ben Rutabana, who sings about politics and, unlike Tom Close, needs to live in Belgium. “He has a lot of problems with politicians” I was told by one fan. At least, I was told he lives in Belgium.…or somewhere. I can’t find any information on him on the internet from after 2000, only his music and music videos on youtube.

About youtube and other sites where non-computer people can do lots of things: I am teaching one student how to upload videos and build a website. He is in the computer combination and knows all about programming, but has never learned how to upload a video on youtube or built a simple website. This does not particularly surprise me – computer sciences these days seem to be very theoretical. He hopes to be an artist someday, so maybe putting some works up online can be a start.

Conversations, quarries, capacities, and cute

As I wrote in earlier posts, English teachers often come running after me to practice their English. One teacher ran after me as I was passing the quarry and explained to me the difference between stone, concrete and mud. And no, I did not really know the difference before this conversation. He said that there were more houses being built out of stone, though of course mud was still what most people used. It is quite amazing that these mud houses stay up for so long – the framework is made out of twigs and the bricks are very muddy-looking. I really am impressed that they seem to stay up.

This particular quarry, located on the plain between the mountains next to Ntunga, which is about 9 kilometers from Agahozo-Shalom, is the source for a lot, if not all of, the stone that Agahozo-Shalom uses to build its houses. Builders get paid around 1,500 RWF a day (around $2.85) while masons get paid around 2,000 (or perhaps 2,500 FRW or around $3.25) a day. Florentine, a girl I met on a walk who used to work at Agahozo-Shalom – the girl who could not afford secondary school fees – is learning how to be a mason so she can make the higher salary. I looked at her notebooks with careful drawings of blocks stacked on top of each other. The notebook she received is the nice kind - hard-backed, thicker paper and much larger sheets. Clearly, these are notes meant to be kept forever, considering the quality of the notebook compared to any I see in the secondary schools. While the drawings are nice, and the notebook sturdy, it is a shame that she cannot just attend secondary school during this time, as her English is pretty good. She is a concrete (no pun intended) example of how professional training in masonry may not be as cost-effective as a secondary or even university education that can improve her English even more and allow her to teach English in primary and secondary schools.

In the debate today, some students argued that women's empowerment was not particularly affective because when women moved to cities they did not have "the capacity" for many jobs, particularly jobs involving physical strength. Perhaps more female masons can't hurt for changing the view of women's "capacities." There are around two women for every eight men working in building at Agahozo-Shalom, and I don't know how many of them are masons.

The same teacher who ran after me and explained to me about the quarry also asked if I could pay for his university fees. I said I did not have any money to spare at that point, but that surely he could save up? I hoped he would mention his salary so I could get an idea of how viable this was. Or perhaps taking out a loan was possible? I also hope to find out what, exactly, the process is for the private loans which seem to be the only options at this point.

Another teacher who ran after me – well, she just told me “wait for me!” – told me that Rubona was planning on having a secondary school where students did not have to pay fees, but then she said that this would be the case because all secondary schools in Rwanda would eventually be free. So it did not seem like there were any immediate plans for the near future. This particular teacher taught English – English obtained from a few months of intensive English course, as is the case for many English teachers. She used to teach French, but when the national language changed, she needed to learn English. I walked with her until we reached her house, which seemed like a pretty respectable house with a big terrace, though many houses have terraces in front of them. By “terrace” I mean a sort of very large mud lot before the house that is constantly swept to get rid of the rocks and dust to make it the smoothest, cleanest bit of mud I have ever seen. In a debate about women’s rights, one of the girls said it was good that girls could go to school and were not forced to stay home and “cook, clean and sweep.” Because sweeping does seem to be a basic, central task. I have to say – I love it when a terrace overlaps with the road and I can walk on the smooth swept bit, and not the rocky bit with painful stones that can dig into your foot if you have thin soles.

English teachers in the area don’t speak English so well. The biggest problem is not having people to practice English with. The recent government policy to discontinue scholarships and loans for higher education was to invest more in primary education. I truly hope that the new funds will be used to provide books and language teachers to classrooms. I hope it does not mean that very good English students will not be able to afford university fees. I still don’t quite understand where the funds for secondary school will come from, if secondary school is to be free, eventually.

The secondary school in Rubona – I am not sure it goes past the equivalent of middle school – did not have enough English teachers to start the school year because a new regulation would require that English teachers have a university education. At least, that is what we were told. The combination of regulations that require university degrees for teachers of secondary school combined with reallocating money from university fee loans into the primary school and eventually secondary school systems seems like a slight tension between policies – unless it is possible to get a high enough salary as a primary school teacher to eventually save up, study in university, and then teach secondary school.

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I was sketching a potential dress for my sister’s wedding at my favorite milk shop a few weeks ago. This particular milk shop now seems to no longer have a refrigerator, which is sad. They still sell mandazis (donuts) so that’s good. I don’t quite know if they are going to attempt to stay open without the refrigerator and just get by selling chapattis, amandazis and the occasional egg. Anyway, three children, including one very yappy outgoing little eight-year-old girl, sat down next to me to watch. The girl was pointing out the different parts of the dress and telling me the words in Kinyarwanda. She was also pointing to my own clothes when the dress I was drawing did not have some part of clothing. After saying the words in Kinyarwanda, I would say the words in English, and she and the other two children copied, verbally, what I told them. So we all learned how to say “sleeve” and “shirt” and “belt” in our respective non-native languages. Then, in a daring feet for an eight year old, she pointed to my red bra strap, which was showing, and then burst out in uncontrollable giggles, along with the other two children. I said, “bra” with as strait a face as I could muster. I asked how to say it in Kinyarwanda, and they told me something with an “s” I think – I can’t remember.

A bit about modesty: Before I came to Rwanda I read somewhere that women in Rwanda dress very modestly because they are very religious. But, at the end of the day, with the absurdly boiling heat painfully glaring from directly above this country very close to the equator, and with outdoor manual labor a major source of income – whether it be in building or agriculture – people do wear tank-tops (“gasp!”).

The Rwandan equivalent of a bathrobe – and this might be the case in other countries – is taking a magnificent, brightly colored piece of cloth and wrapping it around the way you would wrap a towel around yourself, except the cloth goes down to the ground. It looks like a beautiful evening gown to me, and people laugh when I tell them this. Women would never wear this walking down the road, but they do wear it on their patios or while standing in the doorways, leaning against the door frame as if they are posing for Vogue. I suppose this is like women wearing their bathrobes on the porch. When doing manual labor, they usually wear a tank-top or t-shirt with a skirt.

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On an unrelated note, and to make sure the last C-starting word in the title is relevant: There are many newly-born baby goats everywhere, chomping away at the grass, and they are so cute. They become less cute as they get older – their eyes sort of drift apart into opposite directions to make them look sort of dumb. But as babies they look fiercely smart, together, and adorable.

The Ladies' Milk Shop Becomes More Lady-Like

The milk shop that caters to women, which I noted earlier has branched out to selling shoes, jeans, and perfume, has also – I could not help but notice – started selling feminine toiletries. Ah, and now they carry those very thin cigarettes that only women will be caught smoking. Though no one ever smokes anywhere, from what I have seen – occasionally, very rarely, I will see an older slightly crazy-looking man smoking in public, but this is, in general, taboo. I think the skinny cigarettes are just there for show. Y’know, to show that this is a boutique milk shop. Ah and how, oh how, could I forget: the ladies milk shop is also the only place for miles around – and I have searched miles – that sells chocolate. Real chocolate, not only the lollypops. I’m a little afraid to taste it, because chocolate has a shorter shelf life than chocolate-flavored lollypops. It is the weekend now, so maybe I will give it a try.

One of the better restaurants that sold mostly rice, beans and potatoes – the standard Rwandan dish – has closed down and been replaced by yet another milk shop. There must be at least six across one mile, and four within the tiny little Rubona center. Stores are doing everything they can to get an edge in the milk-shop sector, and it should be interesting to see how they market themselves to stay in business. Because they are so similar to each other, differences are easier to catch.

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In “debate club” last night – which is more like a discussion group – students discussed the policy in Rwanda of government institutions striving to have an equal number of men and women and, what was most relevant for them, the policy of affirmative action where women can be accepted into university with lower marks. The student who was translating for me was a very shy, quiet boy. He did not say anything almost the whole time. Then, the councilor was responding to students who complained that the policy was unfair by explaining, “It is a government policy for equality” trying to persuade the other students that the policy was a good one. “The government wants to create balance!” she said, raising her hands up like a balance. After she said this a second time, the small, quiet boy next to me loudly erupted in anger with, “_________________!!!!!!!!!” Well , I don’t know precisely what he said, but it was clearly a very angry, loud, impassioned outburst disagreeing with her comments and this policy. He finished talking, scowled, and then the scowl returned to his calm, quiet, relaxed, polite face. He started translating the next comments being made, not his, as if nothing had happened. So I quickly asked him what he said and he told me it was “unfair that girls can get lower marks to get into university. They are less qualified to start university and this is unfair.” He seemed to emphasize the fact that it was unfair, not that girls may be less qualified when they start university, thus hindering their own success. (I don’t agree with this argument, but it’s at least an objective argument that takes into account the women’s needs.)

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The students are working on deciding what famous people in history their houses will be named after. They each received a list of sixteen names, and each family must decide what their first choice is. Then, if there are multiple families that want the same names, they will compete in a class-wide quiz.

Somehow, Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama got on the list – two men who arguably committed major human rights violations upon discovering new lands. Thank goodness for Wikipedia, a pretty accurate source for finding information on these particular explorers. None of the girls wanted the house to be named after either one after reading about some of the terrible things the explorers did. In the end, it was good they made the list, because it pushed the students to learn something they did not know, and be critical of the names they were given. They wanted Rousseau at one point, and asked me to help research for them. I brought a bunch of quotes from Rousseau to family time. I explained that many great people also did some not-great things, and to take that into account. I read somewhere that Rousseau said, “Women, in general, are not attracted to art at all, nor knowledge, and not at all to genius.” I can’t find the original source this was written/said in, but when I read it out-loud it was unanimously agreed not to choose Rousseau. I hope this is a real quote. It would be nice to find the original source. I hope it’s not an inaccurate meme that has just sort of spread.

Right now Julius Nyerere is the top choice they will be competing for - a better option, from the very limited information I have about him.