http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEXVAlP2vtk
Lulu Rouge - Bodycodes
I DARE YOU TO CONSIDER THE LYRICS!
A little while ago I went to a performance / graduation
ceremony at a primary school (which is like elementary but see below for
exceptions) run by the so called Meg Foundation. First, I have to mention that EVERY single
time I didn’t ask about the trip to some thing or place, it always involved
multiple buses, lots of waiting, lots of walking, and ALWAYS what turns out to
be a HIKE up some hoary hill threatening to roll me down every moment because I
never wear the right shoes. This time,
it was all in the extreme heat of a clear equatorial midday. You know, because I dressed for a graduation performance
at a school and not a day of hiking! I didn’t
even bring my bag with my water. Thus,
the water that was brought by the Germans and that they allowed me to drink out
of sharing with them utterly saved my life.
I feel particularly sentimental about this moment with the
Germans today, because today I said goodbye to them for what I hope will NOT be
forever.
Anyway, Meg is an English woman who came here years ago to
start to help people. She was formerly
like a headmaster at a school or something.
There are also many other people working there from all over including
an Austrian/German friend you will remember.
When we arrived we were shown to the patio under the porch
of the main building. This was strange
and uncomfortable. The porch isn’t big
enough to hold tons of people. So, it
only held teachers and officials and ministers and….muzungu. They showed me to sit there JUST BECAUSE I am
muzungu. (I just typed “they showed me
to sit…” this is Muzungu-RwEnglish or
something. See my post script for an
explanation of this weird pseudo language).
It was really strange to be treated with this kind of respect and honor
for no reason. In the center there was a
wide space where all the performances and other ceremony took place. On the other side, and important for later,
under the trees, sat all of the students and family on small benches and chairs
designed primarily for those who are 5 years old or younger. They were really crowded in there. As the whole thing began it was impossible
NOT to feel like I was the one on the “stage” as the audience sat watching us. I mostly hated this seating arrangement
because the bulk of the performances, though not the speeches, were facing US
and not the actual AUDIENCE. How dumb. We are not that important. Parents are more important for showing
students off.
The Meg Foundation is basically a network connecting donors
and those too poor to afford primary school fees. There is some exception to the recently
adopted 9 year and previously I think 5 year, school plan that is meant to make
school free for a certain number of years.
Just another reason why so many love Kagame. But just like my scholarship, free isn’t
really free. There are books and fees
etc. and who knows about the quality of the education. Additionally, most schools public schools are
boarding schools and some families cannot afford to send their children away
for school as their work in the fields or wherever is part of the family
income. So they must supplement. Meg and others connect those in need with
aptitude to those with money and a passion for childhood education. They learn most of the things that we
normally learn in school plus English and the basics of muzungu culture. Sharing and personal possession are a big
part of this.
For instance, as a side note, when I came here I started
getting texts of photos from a good friend of mine of the main characters of
all the African movies that Americans know about. The funniest one was from the film The Gods
Must be Crazy (and The Gods Must be Crazy II – if you haven’t seen either of
these get them…RIGHT NOW!!!!). I thought
they were sort of funny and also inappropriate, you know, thinking that all
Africans are like pygmies living in tribes in the Serengeti or something. But, I have come to learn something on this
topic myself: a muzungu teacher recently
told me that Rwandese children are really like that tribe in the Gods Must be
Crazy (if you haven’t seen this, stop, right now, see it and its sequel RIGHT
AWAY!!!!!! I’m not kidding!): they just
take things from each other. Like, as
the student is writing on their assignment, the student next to them will just
take the pencil out of their hand to use it.
This doesn’t really seem to bother each student, but it really bothers
the teachers. Hehe. Ok, so more about the school and the
performance:
The graduation part was for three sections of the school:
1.
Students who have completed their education and
are on their way to secondary school.
2.
Women who have come back to begin to learn how
to read and all the basics having missed primary education for whatever reason
based on earlier policies and poverty and access (most of those now living in
the “suburbs” though more appropriately called “villages” surrounding the core
of Kigali only came here within one generation).
3.
Very young students who used to be a part of the
school who are now no longer allowed.
This is a complicated thing.
There is a man who is in charge of when children of a certain age can be
in school. By this I mean the actual
hours per day they are allowed to be in school.
Part of watching the performance that day was also watching an extended
and performative argument between Meg and the teachers and students and parents
and a representative from the Ministry of Education. This minister attends all such “graduation”
ceremonies. It kind of reminds me of the
mafia, like you have to invite your “godfather” to the wedding of your
daughter. Or, whenever I would go with
my aunt when I was younger to a rally of the Gypsy Motorcycle Club and, in
Texas, local chapters of the Gypsies always have to invite the Banditos
motorcycle club/gang to their rallies as a sign of respect because Banditos
“own” Texas (compared with the Hell’s Angels who “own” like California and…I
don’t know, Sweden (but really, Sweden, it’s true – didn’t you see the Girl
With the Dragon Tattoo?)). So, the thing
is that this guy said that this kids of a certain age can no longer attend
school in the afternoon, which for some other reason, is the only time they can
attend. So they can't attend AT ALL. His reason?
I am not kidding when I repeat what I was told: he says, everyone KNOWS, children can't learn
in the afternoon. Really? Really?!
I wish someone had told my parents that growing up. (Just kidding, ADORED school. Learning is the foreplay to experience, to
life.)
Anyway, the performance.
First there was traditional Rwandan dancing by the younger and older
students. Everyone was so proud. First, it is traditional, and second, they
can make money doing this later. It is
considered a real skill, which was obvious to me watching it, I cannot imagine how
much they practice, and also because they are universally adored. Troops like this are hired all over the
country for events ranging from a US Embassy party to other school graduations.
After the performances the students put on different skits. They are designed as little moral fables plus
a way for them to practices common English words, phrases, and
pronunciation. One had a girl with a
basket on her head carrying paper fruits to take for sale at the market. She keeps sitting under a “tree” and saying
she is hot and tired. Other children
keep coming out with masks of different animals on their faces and stealing the
fruits from her basket. This happens
over and over. The girl with the basket
is easily the most popular person in all the skits because she has a cute face
and LOUD voice and she keeps saying “no problem”, a phrase ubiquitous in Kinyarwandan
as, I before mentioned “na cyabazo”! where it was not meant to be placed in the
script. It cracks everyone up.
Another skit has students going to school and then a group
of “bad” kids with cigarettes (pencils) and beers (Fantas) and stealing food
from someone with a basket of amanzis (I think, they are like fried bread lumps
that are less sweat than doughnuts but the same basic concept). They steal that breads from the person and
then forget that they still have to do their lines with all the food and Fantas
and cigarettes. They easily stole the
whole show! The moral was that you
should not shirk your studies to go and “make money” before you are old enough
with the bad kids.
There were more skits that I remember well, but, frankly
they won’t translate well in this written format.
After this came some speeches. Mostly this was teachers and stuff saying
really wonderful things about all the students.
Then came the “graduations”.
Adult women, then children who are no longer able to go (see above), and
then the older children who have completed their grade and are going on to a
higher school. Meg gives them all
gifts. She gives them a dictionary each
and lots of the school supplies and even books they will need in the next grade
to save for them the fees.
After this there were more speeches. The most important one was from a guy from
the Ministry of Education. He talked
FOREVER. Right as the sun was shining on
all of us in the audience. It was
uncomfortable. Meg leaned over to me and
told me that this was usual. She said, “you
give the man a microphone!” This is
really customary in Rwandese culture as I have found in my time here. If you give an official the chance to make a
speech, they will talk FOREVER and they will repeat themselves many, many
times. I could talk about this for a
long time but will save that for something in the future I think.
About halfway through the speech, some officials there begin
to pass out Fantas and candies to the muzungus, which was extremely polite
because it kept us from becoming faint all sitting in the sun listening to this
guy forever.
After this the audience got up to give a fair number of
speeches about education in general and about Meg in particular. Many, many families and women gave gifts to
her. Many people were crying. One women who had no legs below the knees got
up and gave a long speech that was extremely religious. She was arguing that god was working through
Meg and a number of other things. I can
tell this because my “education” in Kinyarwandan is largely useless in that it
came from a missionary. So I know many
religious words. For instance, Imana
iruvuga (god is speaking).
Last, they turned up the music and brought back out the men
playing drums and the women with the high pitched traditional singing and all
the little dancers came back out and it was much less a formal choreographed
thing and considerably more audience friendly.
Individuals “battled” in their dances or danced with partners or shone
in their own spotlight. The audience was
COMPLETELY ramped by the end of this, partly from the sheer nervous energy of
waiting through all those speeches and partly from the extreme joviality and
skillfulness and charisma of those little dancers!
Then, oh joy of joys, just as your feet are bounding the
ground and your hands are beating out the rhythm on your thighs because the
music pumped you up so much, the little dancers dispersed and ran and grabbed
all the muzungus and ministers in the “place of honor” in which we sat and
dragged us all out to dance with them!!!
Yes, there are photos, even a video, of me dancing with these kids. May these never come to light.
After a while they let us go and then the music switched
from traditional to a stereo, in fact there was a popular local deejay sitting
in the honored place with us wearing REALLY cool clothes, who then turned the
music up and the ENTIRE PLACE rushed the “stage” area and began dancing. My favorite was a very old Rwandese woman who
I think maybe should have been a dancer as a profession instead of whatever it
was she normally did. Anyway, the whole
scene devolved into a crazy family dance party.
The party went on for a while and was really, really
pleasant. We shook hands with a million
children and women and grandmothers and fathers and some teachers and ministers
who thought we were also important because we were sitting in the “place of
honor” with them and are white.
A child comes and asks Martin if I am his mother. REALLY?!
I think I am 2 years older than him.
But, as I have found in my time here, Rwandese can tell about muzungu
age just about as well as I can tell about their – almost not at all. You know, I know if they are 2 or 10 years
old. And sure, I can tell if you are 30
or 50, with a general error of about 15 YEARS!
Then we were given, even while the party continued, a short
tour of the facilities which include many classrooms, a courtyard, a nursery,
and a fully functional kitchen and bathroom.
During this tour, a rather pudgy young girl grabbed my arm and looked at
me sincerely in the face and said, “You are really big.” I had no idea what to say to this because
everything about the context and her presentation of this exclamation confused
me. So I said, kindly, in response, “Yes,
and you are very small.”
Then we began the SLOW TRUDGE down the everlastingly high
hill this place was at to go back to the bus stop. Like most reality, there really is a natural
climax and a denouement to most experiences.
And like most reality, there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Meaning: reality is decidedly and always
GRAY. There is nowhere else I have
experienced this so vividly than in Rwanda, as I have often pointed out in my
posts. There is always something morbid.
On the way down the hill, even as I considered what that
girl had said to me and its meaning, a man who seemed to be celebrating the
children was EXTREMELY drunk. He didn’t come
near the Germans, I suppose because it seemed that Heike is obviously with
Martin. But he came right at me. He began to push me with the hand that was
holding his beer, with a straw sticking out of it. He pushed on my shoulder and looked blearily into
my eyes and said many things that I didn’t understand. Most of what I understood were two words:
muzungu and umugore (woman). He wouldn’t
get off me as I walked haphazardly across rocks and gouges in the road from the
rain which clearly had sewage in them. I
kept saying “oya…OYA” (no…No!!). Finally, I gently pushed him back because
anything more than a gentle push would have knocked him down the hill. People on the sidelines were laughing. He kept calling after me as we continued down
the hill.
Just as we came to a particularly hairy part of the journey
downward where I had to be really careful, because when I am not warned of a
veritable up country hike somewhere in Rwanda I tend to wear inappropriate
shoes, some kids called out to me. They said,
“Hey, BIIIIIGGG mama!”. I was very
irritated by this point and so I turned and pointed at them with my finger,
rude in this culture, and said, “I HEAR YOU” with the most intense eyes I can
conjure.
And this is important, because I do not know what it means
when children call me big, though I do know of adults (and for adults it is a
good thing) but more importantly Rwandese do NOT know what it means when
muzungus get angry. Rwanda has a very
emotionally repressed culture. In general,
I do not observe them smiling or laughing, except in close company, and they do
not express feelings, though they give compliments easily. They also do not get angry. I have, a few times, in the course of my work
seen a muzungu from England, in particular, get VERY angry at having to wait
for Rwandese bureaucracy. When they
yell, Rwandese cower. I have yelled
exactly once here in front of a Rwandese and it was not AT anyone but TO
another muzungu about something frustrating me.
My Rwandese friend, who I have NOT told you about, was very, very
concerned for me and what I might do.
When I get home I am in a foul mood and do not know how to
comprehend all these comments on my weight or the drunk guy. Eventually, over a week later, I asked my
friend here. She told me that usually
being fat is good and it means that either you have a successful husband who
loves you and feeds you a lot or that you yourself are successful and feed
yourself a lot, or both. It is a compliment. Every time the Peacecorp worker I know goes
back out to the villages, her lady friends there tell her “You are getting
fatter!” with great ebullience! But,
from children to a muzungu, maybe is teasing.
But based on how I explained all of their facial expressions and the way
they said it, my friend tells me that she thinks the children were just exclaiming,
narrating what they see, instead of making a judgment on me.
So, now, after all this gray, I will leave you with two
things. First, PHOTOS! All of the photos are big but that doesn't mean you can see them well like this. I think if you click on them you can see them in higher definition.
Oh my god I want that woman's collar! I know its so small and she is in the background, way background, the women with the yellow collar and head thing, and you cant really see it here, EVEN if you click on it. But when I come back in April, I am going to buy that style of shirt. The fashions here are OUT OF THIS WORLD! The drummer is the big guy in the light blue. The girls are dancing here.
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This might be my favorite photo, though certainly not my best memory because it is so very rarely that you can capture what you love on film at the right moment and even less often, in Rwanda, that you can show that videos of your favorite moments to your friends back home. Some of the kids trying to "rehearse" like their slightly older dancing compatriots. I cannot describe to you enough what watching, in particular, the boys was like. Just like the Wodaabe of another African country whose males are the ones with makeup and who strut and dance for days to get the women. To see a little of what I mean and the charisma and BEAUTY of males in other cultures (muzungu culture beware because I think they are gorgeous! (Though, husband, have no fear because you will always be the most beautiful to me...) also I use this video in my courses to discuss gender and culture and beauty (why can't men be beautiful and women strong!!! Freaking Greeks and their artistic and cultures heritage (and by that I mean our interpretation of them, you know those statues were painted! The Greeks were NOT WHITE!!))): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnO1QDqpaQ
And adorable little lady!!!!
More girls dancing.
A gorgeous little couple dancing.
The most popular boys dancing! Oh how I wish I could have captured this well.
Smart kids "posing" for the picture.
The young dancers with their trainer from the all important cultural dances in Kigali. But, where the trainer comes from, though important, is another story.
A semi decent shot of the loud and super charismatic "na cyabazo" girl from above.
Second, a quote. During
one of the speeches by Meg, she asked the crowd with included younger and older
students and their families a question: why are our families’ heroes?! The studied response by the ENTIRE crowd was
completely amazing: “Because they didn’t abuse our right to study!!!” one of the major issues here is that younger
children and women and all those in need of an education work. I don’t so much mean that they work outside
the home making money in a business. That,
like the USA, is mostly illegal. But they
also help their families with the housework, with the gardening and farming,
with childrearing, and with selling things that the household grows or makes on
the street. It literally costs the
family to have a child in school even though the school may or may not be
free. The result is this increasing understanding
running through different veins but coming also directly from the Ministry of
Education: that education is the RIGHT of the young. And that by keeping them from school you are
not letting them achieve full citizenship.
I loved the romanticism of this. That
the parents and families of successful students are also to be congratulated
because they didn’t “abuse the right to study”.
As a person who loves studying and learning more than anything than my
husband, this makes me swoon.
P.S. If you thing my turns of phrase are getting a little
strange, you should hear it when I actually speak. Living among even so many English or French speaking
Rwandese REALLY affects how you speak if you wish to be understood.
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