Babies

A few months ago the students had a discussion in their families where they answered the question, loosely paraphrased, “Should you get married when you are younger or older?” Some of the points and arguments presented by the students:

1) If you get married when you are older you may not see your children get married. (In a country where the life expectancy is around 60 or less, this is a real possibility.)

2) The point of marriages is to have children, something difficult when you are older. The councilor pointed out that marriage is also about enjoying the company and life with your spouse.

3) If you cannot have children because you are older, then you should adopt orphans.

4) Not everyone likes babies, in general. For example, one of the students said, some of the volunteers from last year are reported to have no liked babies.

5) I told them I also did not really like babies. So the statement was later modified to “Some of the volunteers this year do not like babies.”

Speaking of babies: A little baby, barely walking, saw me in the sort of fancy-shmancy milk shop (upscale by rural Rwandan standards). He quickly hid behind his very tall mother so that he could not see me and I could not see him. His mother was slightly annoyed at this, so pushed him in front of her, forcing him, to his complete horror, to be exposed to my presence. He started screaming and crying. The shop keeper and his mother tried to comfort him, saying that I was “only a mazungu” and he had nothing to be afraid of. They offered him a mandazi (a donut) and some sweet tea to calm him, which he happily grabbed. He then looked at me, cried again, was offered another donut, which he happily munched on. He looked at me again and started crying again, then sort of looked at the donuts, hoping to score another sweet treat in between his bursts of tears. “The mazungu will eat you!” the shop keeper told the little toddler, warning him to stop crying and abusing the donut system.

I talked with one student who said that she did not want to get married. I asked some other students, in a separate conversation, if they wanted to get married, and they told that of course they wanted to get married – that everyone wanted to get married. The student who preferred to avoid marriage also did not want to have children but to take care of orphans and focus on her career. “Why do you not want to get married?” I asked. She said that men cheat on their wives, and potentially beat them, so she did not want to take a chance.

“Even if you found a man who is good?” I asked.

“I don’t want to take the chance,” she repeated.

I can’t remember if I wrote about this conversation already, but decided to post it, just in case I had not.