Historically Marginalised People
on Geri Skeen (Rwanda), 11/Jul/2011 08:59, 34 days ago
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:[You might like to but internet too slow; I'll try later]