June 27


The strangest thing just happened: I was on my way home from the office with Megan, we take the same taxi, and we had just gotten off at the taxi park in Remera. We were walking to get taxi motos to go home, and were in the middle of a deep conversation, when she said to be careful about what is going on around us, not get too wrapped up in our conversation. I didn’t really know why she said that, but it’s good advice in general, so I said okay and kept walking. We were talking about the way that we are treated here, and the difficult situation we’re in, being white and being women.

If we are submissive, we submit because we are women, which is the norm here. [Note: I know that my understanding of Rwandan society is not comprehensive, and that gender inequality is a problem all over the world. So when I say that it is patriarchal, I don’t mean that as a condemnation, rather as an observation and a challenge for me to deal with. There definitely is a lot of inequality here, but every society has its own problems and concerns to deal with, and the Rwandese in particular have priorities like preventing another genocide, so it is not unreasonable that women’s rights are on the back-burner for the moment. I can’t be politically correct about everything!] But if we assert ourselves and demand equality or respect, it is because we are white, and it’s normal for white people to demand respect. (But not necessarily for women to do the same.) So, it’s tricky to know what to do sometimes. For example, twice this week I’ve seen convoys of army trucks with hundreds of soldiers drive by. I don’t want to stand by the road with my head down, looking meek so hopefully they won’t notice me. But, if I stand up straight and look at them like everyone else does, they stare and whistle and make lewd gestures and say things that I’m probably glad I don’t understand. So what do you do? I have been going with the head-down approach, but I hate it.

So we were having this conversation in the taxi, and just when we were getting out, the man sitting next to me grabbed my thigh as he was standing up. In these taxis, people touch. There is no way to avoid it when you’re that crammed in, and I’ve never felt that it was sexually-charged before. But this was definitely unnecessary and sustained one second too long. So, when we were off the taxi, I told her what had happened, and that tied into our discussion of the white/woman thing. Did he do that because I was a woman, as he would have done to a Rwandese woman as well? Or did he do it because I was white, because I so obviously don’t belong, because white people have taken power and respect from Africans for so long that (subconsciously of course) this was a way of reclaiming some? I am not suggesting that he had that in mind, but rather that in some way, it’s not as much of a transgression to do it to me, because it’s not demeaning a part of his own culture, but rather a part of a culture that has demeaned his for so long. Like in the movie Crash when Ludacris was more than happy to rob white people, but defended himself by saying that he would never steal from another black person.

Then the conversation morphed into the ambiguity of moments like that, where while it is happening, you’re not even sure of what it is, and then one second after it’s too late to slap his hand away, you realize that it was icky. (This happens on the metro in Montreal as well…) Just at that moment, we had to go through a dense crowd of people between two buses. Megan was behind me, and she was holding on to my backpack, and for a moment I felt someone get between us. I thought I felt my bag unzip, but I that would be impossible with her right there, holding onto it, right? But when we were out of the crowd, she asked if I had my wallet in the small pocket of my bag, which is where I usually keep it. (But no more, now it will get buried under a water bottle and a book.) And sure enough, the zipper was open and my wallet was gone. She said that she saw the guy take it, she saw it in his hand, but by the time she registered what had happened, it was too late to grab it, he was gone. Just like the thigh-grabbing. Really bizarre.

Luckily, things are so cheap here, that I usually don’t have more that the equivalent of $4 on me at any time, and today’s total loss was about 60 cents and one wallet that I didn’t even buy. So, as Megan said, I could have learned that lesson in a much more expensive way. But I still feel weird about it, and I’m not really sure why. I mean, it was definitely not as traumatic (or as much of a financial loss) as the time I got mugged in Brooklyn, but at the same time this was more sneaky and insidious. The guy didn’t have a gun or anything, he didn’t need it, he even took it while Megan was right there watching him.

June 26

And the week has begun. Yesterday we went to Bugasera, a village about an hour away from Kigali. It was very rural, more so than the village we saw on Friday. And on the way back, we took a “shortcut” on a dirt road, which was an experience, for sure. I have whiplash, but it was fun. We all laughed because it was the first time we had been in an SUV when it actually needed to go into 4-wheel drive. We hit our heads on the ceiling a lot, and almost tipped over once, but it was really fun. And cool to take the small road, because we passed animals and some kids who were carrying HUGE bundles of wood. We didn’t really get much of a chance to speak with the women about their loans, which was too bad, but we did get to see a village phone. It was really cool. It’s the only phone for a really long way, and people from surrounding villages come to use it. The rates are about half of what they charge in town, so that it will be more accessible to everyone.

I will write something soon about what exactly I am doing here, but at the moment I am not 100% sure… I know that at some point I’ll be doing field research, and on my own I am going to find women in Kigali to speak with about microfinance. I have also been translating things into French, and I am going to set up some English classes for the bank staff as well. I am really interested in how the loans are changing the social structure here (if they are at all). Because so many men were killed in the genocide, many families are headed by women and girls. And the loans target women, giving them economic power (suddenly) after centuries of disenfranchisement. The weird thing about it is that although this is happening, and everyone is encouraging it, Rwandan society remains extremely patriarchal.

A brief example, and then I have to go: The women basically do everything at home (which is in no way limited to Rwandan society, obviously…) and last week, we had some guests over. It is customary to offer them something to drink, so we served tea. When everyone was done, I took the mugs and spoons into the kitchen, not because it’s my “job” but because I was headed that way anyway, and just wanted to help out. One of the men who was visiting laughed and said “Oh, she knows what women’s work is.” Which might not have been so bad if not for the face that none of the men had even offered to do so much as stir in their own sugar, and the women who served them were me and and extremely pregnant Neema. More about this to come, because (naturally) I have a lot to say. I know that there are still some problems in the U.S. (glass ceiling, Congress, blah blah) and we should be no means stop working toward eradicating those inequalities, but this does make me realize how fortunate I was to grow up somewhere where it is okay not to have kids by the time you’re 25.