20 October 2005

Is it possible for an entire nation to be mildly autistic? I doubt it. And before you think that I’m going into some neo-colonial Rwandans are this and that kind of rant, here me out.

Every once in a while, Rebecca wonders out loud whether Rwandans suffer collectively from Asperger syndrome, a mild form of autism where people function almost normally but fixate on one particular thing. We met a kid who had an obsession with cheese. He knew what every cheese went with, and how it was made. Others become fascinated with trains or fire trucks. Anyway, aside from the fixation, Asperger sufferers are unable to think outside of themselves, to see the world from another perspective.

Every time Rebecca says this, I helpfully say, “So you think Rwandans are all functionally retarded.” (I know they are very different things, and recognize my unfortunate habit of using a word that describes a very specific and serious medical condition recklessly. I should stop.) She either rolls her eyes or explains what she means.

Now, neither of us really believes that Rwandans have Asperger, which is not spelled Assburgers. Wouldn’t that be so much more fun? But there is an argument to be made that many Rwandans are unable to see, or choose not to see, how their actions affect people around them.

You see it on the road, where people find lane markers to be advisories at best. Or the jeeps that drive with their brights on at all times. Or while they are slaloming around potholes without slowing down and look at people walking as far away from the road as is humanly possible as if they’re insane. That’s usually the UN drivers. People answer their phones in my French class and have conversations at full voice without leaving the room. Or everyone just talks at once so that no one is heard.

How’s this for an example. The other night, Rebecca and I went out to dinner after French class, and there were two guys leaning on the car. They were having a conversation, not menacing in any way. We walked up to the car, and they didn’t move. We opened the doors, and they didn’t move. I said, in French, “We’re going to drive now.” They moved just enough so that we wouldn’t run them over, but not enough that we didn’t think that we would.

Here’s my favorite. One night, a couple of weeks ago, we were dropping off a friend of ours. She lives on what she says is a fairly impassable road with no lights, but within walking distance of a gas station on the main road. So we left her off there. Laura had already begun walking away, and I was sitting in the car. A taxi driver sidles up to the window, as Bec has started to pull away, and says, “Taxi.” He stood there for a few seconds and I guess thought I was going to get out of the moving car. He kept looking. I finally couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m in a car,” I said.

So those are small examples. There are larger ones as well. The majority of the population farm on small hillside plots. Outside organizations had to explain that terracing the land would make fields more productive. That would require people to work together in creating the terraced land, and then farming together.

And that may be where we get to the heart of why people are unable to think outside of themselves. Even before the genocide, Rwandans didn’t trust each other. They farmed their little plots, and often figured that their neighbors were working their family plots, and their nefarious ones. There wasn’t much of a village culture, the way other African societies are famous for. People just worked their own land.

That’s the society from where the genocide grew. And the genocide has, for obvious reasons, only heightened the mistrust. There are constant refugee flows between Rwanda and Burundi. Usually Tutsis come into Rwanda, and the Hutus in Butare province get it in their heads that the government is bringing those Tutsis back for revenge attacks and a reverse genocide. It’s been 11 years, and if the government wanted to do a mass retaliation within Rwanda’s borders it would have already. (There are arguments that it did carry out a mass extermination of Hutu refugees in Congo in the 1990s. There were genocidaires mixed in with the refugees, but there were many, many refugees killed during the fighting. There is some evidence they were targeted.)

Anyway, back to the current refugee flows. The Rwandan Hutus who flee to Burundi are unable to see that the Tutsis are coming across the border either out of fear for their own lives or to get extra supplies and materials they’re not entitled to from the ever-efficient UN.

It’s not a mental disorder, just a lack of trust endemic to Rwanda. It is different than anywhere I have ever seen or heard of. The Cambodians don’t have it. The Burundians don’t have it to the same extent. It may be particularly Rwandan in that it didn’t necessarily come out of government policies, but was always there.

Now – and you knew this was coming – this is just a generalization. Our Rwandan friends don’t tend to suffer from this mistrust. They are trying to build it. Joy, who runs the basket weaving company, told her weavers that she didn’t want to hear Hutus are this, Tutsis are that, the women all had to work together. Eric does the same thing with the folks he works with. My friend Igor in Butare is the same way. Jean-Claude, the painter, doesn’t care about the ethnicity of the painters and kids he works with.

They all have one common denominator. They are all returnees. They left Rwanda, or were born outside of the country. They had different experiences. Let’s hope that their efforts are successful.