Historically Marginalised People

YWCA has begun a street theatre project aimed at changing attitudes towards historically marginalised people in Rwanda.  This is a sensitive subject as any issues relating to ethnicity are sensitive ones because of the 1994 genocide.  I am not involved with the street theatre project but, since reading Colin Turnbull’s book The Forest People in my teens, I’ve been interested in the lives and culture of the Batwa, or Pygmies as they have sometimes been called.  So on Saturday I asked if I might accompany two colleagues who were visiting some families of historically marginalised people – I think it is best if I use this term in writing here.

We first visited a young woman, young man and old man living together in two single-roomed buildings of home-made brick and kiln-fired tiled roofs.  The young man was very unwell with malaria and they could not afford much medicine for him.  There was a small pile of clay on the ground and, seeing also a shard of decorated pottery, I showed my interest and they showed me how they knead sand into the clay by foot, then mould a lump of clay into a ball, and then into the beginnings of a pot.  They add coils of clay to build up the sides of the pot.  When the shape is complete, they scrape the surface smooth before decorating it by running a piece of something like stiff cord round the pot to make a pattern.  They build a fire between the two houses to fire the pots.  This is pottery at its most basic.  These people have been the potters of Rwanda since leaving the forest a century ago.  They used to dig the clay for free but now the government imposes a tax, reducing still further what they can earn from pottery.  The tax is intended to control digging and protect the environment and is of course easier to pay for bigger businesses making clay tiles and bricks in factories than it is for small-scale producers.  The family showed me their land, which was clearly not enough to grow sufficient food to feed themselves. 

We next went to Gifumba where we met a very old man who told us that, in his youth, he had been an inhore dancer (traditional dancer) to the king.  After leaving the forest, one of the things the Batwa did was to become entertainers – it was one of the occupations open to people without land, as is pottery.  He had trained at Rucuncu, at the queen’s palace (since demolished – boys were playing football there with a ball of tied up banana leaves when I passed by yesterday).  Twice a week they had gone to the king’s palace at Nyansa to perform for him.  When the king was away on trips to Europe, they would wait to welcome him home with a dancing display.  That was the king before last – the last one lives in America as Rwanda has been a republic since about 1960.  It was amazing to meet someone who linked what I’d seen in old black and white photos at the king’s palace with the present day.  He told us that when the king was particularly pleased with someone, he would give that person a cow.

After that we drove to Byimbva and met up with Alice, who is going to be one of the actors in the street theatre.  She has no previous acting experience but she will play one of the historically marginalised characters in the drama.  She introduced us to a group of women who explained the difficulty they had sending their children to school because of a lack of shoes.  Schooling is free but you do have to buy a uniform, shoes and exercise books.  They said that the flip-flops and such-like, which are very common here and cheap, are not acceptable in their local school.  I played with some of their children, who had about ten per cent of a pack of playing cards:  we did some counting together.  The children were friendly and pleasant, like almost all Rwandan children.  Before we left, the women showed us some of the fine cooking pots they are capable of making, and which I do still see in use in some kitchens here, but the demand is less now that you can buy aluminium pots in the markets.

Finally Alice took us to her family’s home.  She was keen that we see the poverty in which her family lives.  The door opened into a narrow sitting room, smaller than many hallways.  Along one side was a low bench.  There was nothing else in the room except a couple of toothbrushes stuck into chinks in the roof for safe-keeping.  There were many places where I could see light coming through the roof tiles.  Off this room to one side was her parents’ bedroom and to the other was the bedroom she shares with her three sisters and her brother.  It doubles as a kitchen in rainy weather.  She showed me her bedroom.  There was a bed of double bed size made from Eucalyptus poles lashed together.  On this base was one thin single mattress.  The rest of the poles were covered with a few blankets.  Alice said that as she is the oldest she sleeps on the side with the mattress and her three sisters sleep beside her.  Between the bed and the wall was a space about a metre wide where her brother sleeps on the dirt floor, again with just two or three blankets.  At the foot of the bed were the cooking pots, with just enough room between the bed and the wall to squat and cook.

I was impressed by Alice’s openness and straightforwardness – like all the people I met that day.  I was impressed too that, despite sharing a bed with her younger sisters and having nowhere to study, she has completed secondary school and has a place to start nurse training in January.  I told her father he must be very proud of her getting a place to study nursing.  He replied that he was already proud of her for finishing secondary school.  Somehow the family is managing to find the school fees payable at secondary level to keep all the children in school.  That’s remarkable.  Many Rwandan families only manage to send some and not all of their children to school, or they send them one year and then miss a year until they have money to send them again.

I was heartened yesterday at my friend Juliet's response when I told her about what I’d seen.  She says she has one child in her class who is from a historically marginalised community.  This girl has just one uniform and no soap to wash it.  Juliet’s class, without any suggestion from Juliet, decided to raise money to help the girl.  These are kids who live in hand-made houses with no electric or water, remember, who have to help in the fields when not in school and carry water and firewood.  They’ve raised almost enough already for a second uniform for her and donations of three bars of soap. 

You might like to see a photo of Juliet’s class which my sister Gillie took:

 

Weekend at Rachel’s by Lake Burera

Rachel is a volunteer who lives in the North of Rwanda, near Lake Burera and in sight of volcanoes – yes, the same volcanoes in which the gorillas live.  Rachel and I keep cancelling arrangements for me to come up to her place for the weekend, usually because it’s pouring with rain up there and a walk would be out of the question and the moto (motorbike taxi) ride is too daunting in the wet.  But finally last weekend I made it. 

The moto ride was pretty daunting even in perfect weather for a novice like me who’s never travelled on dirt roads by motorbike before.  When I looked round though the views were stunning.  Tea plantations a vivid green covered the valley bottoms.  A patchwork of tiny fields and terraces reached right to the summits of the steep hillsides.  Mud brick houses with their tiled roofs were dotted here and there, even far up the high hillsides.  We passed through occasional groves of Eucalyptus; passed children with loads of firewood on their heads; men pushing bicycles to which were strapped improbably large loads; women wearing brightly patterned wraps walking home from their fields with their hoe across their shoulder or a wicker basket of sweet potatoes on their head, and a baby tied to their back.  I smelt fragrant Eucalyptus wood smoke from cooking fires.

Rachel’s house is in the district capital, which must consist of all of a hundred houses, a few shops that don’t sell a great deal, the district office, an army barracks and a genocide prison.  From her porch you look out across the valley on which is a football pitch.  Rachel cooked me a delicious dhal and we ate chocolate I’d brought from Kigali.  It was so peaceful listening to the evening sounds.

Next day we walked to the lake, unintentionally picking up at least twenty children en route.  It was a bit like the Pied Piper; each time we walked through a hamlet, more children joined us.  After two hours we arrived at a spit of land jutting out into the lake.  The views were magnificent, across the lake with its deep inlets, the lakesides hill after green hill. 

We sat down, long having given up any hope of solitude, and the children, plus a few teenagers, sat down all round us. We asked them to sing a song and one of the teenage girls led a song in Kinyarwanda. Then we sang one in English. Then it was their turn. Some of the songs were familiar to us all including Kumbayah and, bizarrely, London’s Burning. When we finally decided to turn for home, the children dropped off in threes and fours as we passed near their homes. The teenage girls shook hands with us and wished us Urugero Rwiza – a good journey – and we marvelled at how teenagers without even shoes on their feet were so polite and such good company.

Back home for guacamole, more chocolate, a couple of beers and The Young Victoria on Rachel’s laptop.

Luxury in Rwanda

I’ve worked out what I need to do occasionally for a bit of R&R.  It’s to take a swim in the Mille Collines hotel pool whenever I go to Kigali.  It’s the hotel of Hotel Rwanda fame (though they changed the name of the hotel in the film and actually filmed it at a different hotel).  As I swim, I recall how those taking refuge here during the genocide ended up drinking the pool water, and I feel relieved to be part of the sanity and normality which has returned after that madness.

 I’m usually the only person in the pool, which is maybe 20 metres long.  It’s cold enough to keep me moving but not unpleasantly cold.  I have always loved swimming on my back looking at the sky and feeling the sun on my face.  The pool attendant knows me now and insists on teaching me a bit of Kinyarwanda each time I go.  This time it’s ‘Ngiye coga’ – I’m going for a swim.  He leaves a towel on top of my rucksack and I relish a touch of the ex-pat lifestyle after the relative discomfort of Gitarama.  Then a cappuccino and fish lunch by the pool.

Sunday visit to Hyacinth

Felicien is our night guard, and Hyacinth’s son.  I wrote about their family some months back.  Hyacinth and her husband Ezekier invited me over to their house again.  Felicien and I walked there together this morning.  It’s a beautiful walk along paths and tracks of red earth, past tiny fields of maize, through copses of Eucalyptus where herders watch over a cow or two, past mud brick houses surrounded by banana trees. 

Hyacinth is in the kitchen, cooking ibigori (maize) in an earthenware pot on a wood stove.  Smoke finds its way out through chinks in the tiled roof.  Ezekier returns with a load of leafy maize stalks and throws them into the cows’ room, which is next to the kitchen.  He leaves the door open a while so I can tell him they are ‘inka neza’ – beautiful cows.  They are seven months old now and in time will produce maybe half a dozen calves before being killed for meat.  One is fudge coloured with little horns, the other brindle and hornless.  In French we try to discuss the differences between beef and dairy cows and fail.

Ezekier says he’s thirsty and I take the hint and despatch Felicien with money to buy banana beer and Fanta.  He returns with an old cooking oil bottle filled with beer, plus a Fanta for me and a Coke for himself.  We eat corn on the cob and the beer is passed between Ezekier, Hyacinth and a neighbour who drops in.

It’s more relaxed than last time I was here.  I guess we know each other a bit better now.  We don’t have a great deal to say to each other, but enough that the silences feel peaceful.  Hyacinth has cut me two cabbages to take home and soon Hyacinth and Ezekier are accompanying me and Felicien to the track where we say our goodbyes.  Felicien carries my cabbage-heavy bag and accompanies me home to Gitarama.