You Know You're in Rwanda When....
The Third Goal of Peace Corps is educating Americans about other cultures. So I thought I'd give you all a little insight into a few little (and big) things that make Rwandan culture different from American culture.
Note that many of these things are particular to life in
rural villages in Rwanda. Rwandans in Kigali (Rwanda’s capital) for example, generally don’t call me muzungu and dress codes are more relaxed (although still
conservative by American standards).
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In Rwanda it’s perfectly okay to pick your nose
in public. Anywhere, anytime, anybody. There is literally zero cultural stigma.
If you watch Rwandan TV, you will see about half the audience picking their
noses. Even my colleagues at the health center—nurses!----will be talking to me
and the next thing I know, one or two fingers will be up their nose digging for
gold. At the very least, I lose my train of thought. Or I just burst out
laughing at how crazy the situation is, to my colleagues’ great confusion.
The
worst is when you’ve seen someone picking their nose, and then they try to
shake your hand. It’s a mental battle for me every time: Insult the person by
trying to dodge their handshake? Or risk getting boogers/snot spread on my
hands? Thus the reason I always carry a bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket
at work…
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People think it’s perfectly normal to ask you
how much money you make (and they tell you how much money they make) and how much
you weigh (and identify people as “the fat woman” or “the fat man”, and no one
is offended).
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It’s really, really hard to describe America to
people in my village, many of whom have never even been to the capital city,
Kigali (a very modern city, and the only place there are really foreigners). It’s like trying to describe the taste of a tree tomato to all of
you.
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Staring: Like picking your nose, there’s no taboo
about staring at people (or at least staring at an umuzungu (white
person/foreigner) like me. This has been one of the hardest things for me to
get used to. I’ve been here in Rusizi for 4 months, and I also replaced a Peace
Corps Volunteer who had been here for 2 years before me. But sometimes it
really does feel like I’m in a fishbowl. At church, people in the rows in front
of me will turn around and stare. Not for a few minutes. More like half an
hour. At the Health Center, sometimes people will press their faces against the
glass and just watch me work.
While working on a vaccination campaign
Groups of children still run after me yelling,
“UMUZUNGU!!!!!” or shouting all the English they’ve memorized in school,
which is usually something like, “HELLOHOWAREYOUIAMFINETHANKYOUTEACHER!” or “GOODMORNINGMOTHER!”
no matter what time of day it is. The nuns asked me if I did that when I was
little when I saw a black person in America. Umm…no. Even though I tried to
explain that America is a melting pot of cultures and that not all Americans
are white, it’s still hard for them to understand, even when I pointed out that
President Obama’s mother was white and his father black.
- Women aren’t supposed to whistle. Something about summoning snakes? I don’t get it. But I save all my whistling for when I’m alone in my room.
-
Only men are supposed to milk the cows here…I’m
thinking there’s no “8 maids a milking” in their version of the “12 Days of
Christmas.”
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One of the biggest challenges for me here has
been the cultural difference in the perception of time and timeliness. In
America, people wear watches and there are clocks everywhere and we have
everything planned and scheduled seemingly every minute, sometimes a year in
advance. If you’re going to be more than 5 minutes late to something, you have
to call otherwise it’s considered rude. Here in my village, time is a very
fluid concept. Meetings are over before they even start. “Soon” can mean a few
hours or a few years. Every morning we have a meeting that is supposed to start
at 7 am…it never ever starts before 7:45 am. I’ve arranged to have meetings
with some of my colleagues at 2 pm, and they’ve shown up at 4. Ironically, I
never ever wore a watch in the U.S., but I always wear one here.
Stay tuned for part 2!
Very.
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