Mazungu na Bebe

Friends will know that as much as I’ve enjoyed coming back to Rwanda again and again, I’ve found the people much more reserved than in other parts of Africa and being here long term can be a bit lonely.

Travelling with a baby has completely changed that.

From the moment we stepped off the plane – when someone from immigration saw me crushed under the weight of bub and luggage, asked me to sit down, took our passports to be stamped (in front of the massive queue), came back and carried all my suitcases through the exit – people have gone out of their way to help us. Frankly, I’m not sure I would have managed, especially that first week on my own, without all the kindness we’ve received from strangers.

At ten months the bub learned to crawl and became much more difficult to “manage.” Unfortunately this coincided with the beginning of the trip and brought on a new desire to do everything by herself. On the plane, she insisted on practicing this new crawling trick up and down the aisles for at least half of the 16 or so hours we spent travelling. Virtually everywhere we go here she adamantly demands to be let down to explore. Instead of tutting at her filth, people here laugh and wave and talk to her constantly.

She’s now feeding herself proper adult food, but oh boy is it messy. As we have no highchair, generally I scoop some of what we’re eating into the pocket of her bib and she picks out what interests her and eats it. She pops it in her mouth. She spits it out again. She holds it up to examine it. Then she might pop it back in or she might throw it on the floor. The Cripple and I have wondered (very gratefully) at the extraordinary amount of patience and indulgence she is met with everywhere we go. It is impossible to imagine going into restaurants in the “developed” world and being met with the same genuine happiness and good will we do here. Even on repeat visits! At the guesthouse in Byumba we’ve stayed in for a couple of weeks (that’s a couple of weeks of at least two meals a day throwing grub on the floor) the waiters know her by name and call to her gleefully when we arrive, often picking her up (grubby mitts and all) for cuddles.

We’ve received invitations into people’s homes, we’ve been given lifts and dinner; we’ve had people offer help, and extend friendship, almost constantly. I’ve noticed a big difference in the way that I’ve been perceived and the way people have responded to me both professionally and personally. Being here as a mother rather than an eccentric single traveller seems to have increased my standing and trustworthiness. Each time I go into the camp women ask after the little one and many of them give me their own babies to hold. They’ve dubbed me “mazungu na bebe.”

Msichana

The reason I had my heart set on going back to Mwanza this year was to see Sabina, an incredibly bright and vivacious little girl I taught last year at Hisani. She was one of the community children that came every day for lessons, though I'm sure she taught me far more than I managed to impart to her. During one of the weeks I was teaching, I switched from doing mornings to afternoons so I could fit in some interviews for my research project and Sabina stopped coming to school because I wasn't there. I can assure you I didn't miss teaching any morning classes after that!

I went back this year to see how she was doing and find a way to pay for her school fees once she got to secondary school. Only primary school is free in Tanzania, though uniforms and supplies are compulsory and must be supplied by the students. Many can't afford to buy them and therefore can't attend school. Only about 10% of the population completes primary school and go on to secondary school. Sabina was really smart and a quick learner, I wanted to help her achieve as much as possible.


Sabina and me, June 2005

It was too late. Though I tried to find her in the small village the family had moved away. I heard from former neighbours Sabina had stopped going to school to stay home and help the family.

At both of the orphanages I've been to, boys far out number girls. It's much harder for girls to leave a bad home; no matter how bad the home life, the situation on the streets can be much tougher. Joseph told me that when a girl is on the streets she may be a "good girl" for a night or two, but eventually she will have to turn to prostitution to support herself.

The few girls I've come across are much shyer, much more timid. I talked to a friend of mine yesterday who's just come back from a couple of months in Mexico. We agreed that we found it really frustrating how difficult it was to interact with women and girls in the places we've been travelling to. My friend commented that it's so easy to forget how effective conditioning is: when you grow up thinking you are worth less you start to believe it.

All over the developing world, girls drop out of school to stay home and help the family at higher rates than boys. Their chances of working their way out of poverty, of gaining independence, are over before they begin. With education comes empowerment, knowledge and choices. The more educated a girl is, the less likely she is to contract HIV.

...a recent Post article quotes Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, as coming out strongly against the descrimination of women at the Global AIDS conference in Toronto last week:

Lewis...said another undeniable fact in the battle against AIDS is the inequality of women and how that puts them at high risk of becoming infected.

Women account for nearly half of all HIV-infected adults worldwide and for 59 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It is the one area of HIV and AIDS which leads me feeling most helpless and most enraged," he said. "It's a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet."

The last few days

I'm back safe and sound in England.

So now that's three trips to Africa, no cases of malaria, no other strange tropical diseases or infections (except for the itchy bumps that look like mozzie bites), no muggings, no physical injuries that weren't self inflicted (accidently), no upset stomach, no other 'bad' things... the 'dark continent' is not nearly as dark as people fear.

There are a million thoughts and feelings swirling round my head about everything I've just learned and experienced, but writing about it is proving difficult. Here is a bit of my last days, I will try and coherently express more of what I'm feeling in the coming weeks...

My last week in Africa went really well. I managed to get quite a few interviews at the UN tribunal on my last two days in Arusha through befriending a really nice Nigerian lady - she helped me get my foot in the door more places than I would have on my own! Hearing different departments have completely different responses to my questions made me again question the effectiveness of UN operations, though I think the UN is a good idea, it just needs more legitimacy and (always) more money. For witness support, the UN gives the tribunal a mere $70 per witness per year for medical expenses. In the aftermath of the genocide, giving anti-retrovirals to witnesses is a moral (and logistical) necessity which costs the tribunal $240 per person per month. The massive shortfall is made up through additional fundraising efforts by the already over stretched staff.

Arusha is the launching point for the safari circuit and Mt Kili climbs, not a city you would go to for it's charm. Most travellers spend as little time in the place as possible, so when I returned the hotel staff were really happy to see me. One evening I went out to dinner with Max, a guy that works in the hotel. He had wanted to be a farmer but didn't have the capital, or the land, or the resources to do it and so has worked very hard doing whatever he can. For the past few years he has been working 24 hour shifts at the hotel, earning about $70 a month and spending about half of that on rent.

It seems most of the Tanzanian economy is supported through tourist $$$, yet time and time again I've seen that the more tourists hit an area the more prices are inflated. In Arusha the prices on just about everything are double that of Mwanza, a much larger town with (seemingly) more opportunities for employment but very few tourists. Although I recognise the need for tourism, I can't understand how people who live here manage to survive. The dinner I had that night cost roughly half of my companion's monthly disposable income.

Last Thursday I had a relatively easy bus ride from Arusha to Nairobi and spent the rest of the day becoming increasingly more paranoid as it seemed every shop I went into had an additional locked door and armed guard than the last one. After dark I stayed in the hotel, but feeling rather hungry and not wanting to venture out alone I gave a couple of Congolese men I'd met earlier a call and we went out for dinner. They'd told me some rather impressive stories about their families, which I thought had been rather exaggerated, but when they picked me up in a Jag I had to reconsider.

Nairobi was really cold and a tad frightening. Definitely much nicer than it's made out to be ('the most dangerous city in Africa') but at the same time, it's a bit spooky to be frisked before being able to enter the building where you are changing your flight ticket and walk through two (or more) bolted doors with armed guards to enter shops. I'm not really sure all the security is necessary, but perhaps all the money being spent on security would be better off spent on trying to alleviate poverty so you don't need all that security. The enduring impression I have of the city is that there is quite a lot of wealth (in many respects it seemed a lot like any Western city) and overwhelming poverty just outside. Nairobi has some of the largest slums in the world, instead of trying to help the slum-dwellers, it seems the government's policy is to push the slums back from the city centre and ignore them.

My last night in East Africa was spent with very little sleep. After returning from dinner I overheard the man next door refusing to pay the woman he'd just slept with. She was asking for 500KSh (about $7) for putting her life at risk. The hotel cost about $50 a night, so there's no way he couldn't afford it. My stomach churned as I heard her pleading for her kids and he shoved her out into the hallway. I spent the night thinking about the huge inequalities here: between rich and poor, between tourists and residents, between those that have and those that don't. It's no wonder HIV continues to spread amongst the vulnerable.