5/6 February 2006

I saw a Rwandan wearing a Vassar T-shirt on Friday evening while I was walking to a movie at the American Club. I ran up to him, screamed “Go Brewers!” (Vassar’s mascot) and walked off calmly. It scared the bejesus out of the poor guy.

That was apropos of nothing; there’s no story that pops out of that. Just thought I’d share with my loyal readers my chance to say something random and annoying to a stranger on the street. It was cathartic, like I was exorcising all of those stupid “muzungus” I hear. It felt good to have the shoe on the other hand there for a second.

And now for something completely different. The first edition of Focus is out on the street, although the streets are shut down because today is Election Day for local officials. There are literally no people out on the streets, and the Internet café we borrow access from is shut down, so we can’t get on. Anybody know who won the Super Bowl?

But we return now to the business of newspapers. There were some problems with the printing, so it’s not as colorful or well designed as when it left our office. But people who read the paper seem to like what they see. I’ve heard reports that the directors of the New Times are saying that they’ve got a real fight on their hands. That makes me feel good. Imagine what we can do when we are fully staffed.

The reporters were excited about the paper. One of them, Teta, who had never seen her name in a newspaper before, called all her friends and family. And then she said she needed to scream. So she did, and jumped up and down waving her hands.

That was Thursday. On Friday we were back out on stories again. The news watch never stops, as they say. I had to go take photos at a meeting of the Batwa council. For a little background, the Batwa are Rwanda’s third ethnic group and are better known in the West as Pygmies. Although the Tutsi ethnic group lost the largest number of people during the Genocide, the Twa lost the largest percentage of their population. It’s sort of the silent Genocide. Historically, the Twa have been the most discriminated-against of Rwanda’s ethnic groups, hunted almost for sport in this country and the surrounding countries that also have Twa populations (Congo, Burundi and Uganda).

In the regional languages of Central Africa, Ba signifies a group of people. So an individual is a Tutsi or a Hutu or a Twa, but the ethnic group is the Batutsi, Bahutu and the Batwa. Only in Rwanda, however, are the two letters Ba a security concern. The Rwandan government, on their anti-ethnicity campaign (no Hutu, no Tutsi, just Rwandans) is now threatening to cut off all the aid, from governments and NGOs, to this population of around 33,000 people unless they change their name. The government wants the Ba taken away from the Twa. So this group, perpetually put-upon, is trying to figure out what to do. Bahumbug.

The money goes to pay for school fees and other essentials, because the Twa are barely educated and essentially have no income. Most of them live in the forest, hunting and gathering. Fortunately, since this is Rwanda, the Ministry of Local Government (no, that is not a typo. In Rwanda, even local government has a central ministry in Kigali) does not know that the Ministry of Justice is forcing the name change. So Local Government recently sent a letter asking how much money the Batwa need for school fees. That letter came soon after the Justice letter saying that all funding would be cut off unless the Ba was cut off. So the Batwa representatives are all understandably confused.

This is where our story comes in. Helen has been reporting on the funding threats. We were joking around in the newsroom about how our Twa story was really standing up for the little people. I’m sure when I said that the Batwa were better known as Pygmies, a certain picture came to mind.

When I went to take pictures with Helen, I was expecting to see Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas, or at least no one over four- or five-feet-tall. Boy, was I wrong. They were pretty much all taller than me. It must be understood that one of my favorite parts about working in Cambodia was that I was a giant among men. Literally. My stature had nothing to do with my job as a reporter or role as a white person in Cambodia (most of the Khmer could care less what color I was). My stature had everything to do with being taller than almost all the natives. So having the “little people” of Rwanda looking down on me was deflating.

Anyway, I’ll get over this. I think. Or I’ll just ask Rebecca to get a job in Cambodia. It’s good to be tall.

The streets of central Kigali, where the businesses are, are absolutely dead. When the government decides to shut down the country, the country is shut down. What a stupid thing. They want to turn Rwanda into a customer-service call center. Do they think they’ll be able to just shut down the country whenever they want and still be able to do this? Do they really think that someone trying to get their credit card fraud taken care of in the U.S., Europe or South Africa will sit back and say, “Oh, I guess that thug will have an extra couple of days to play with my card because the call center staff has to do umuganda”? Or they have to vote? Or they have to plant trees?

Of course, shutting the country down for Election Day is not all that weird. It might even increase voter numbers in the U.S. if elections were held on Saturdays or Sundays. We might even get a leader that more than half the country wants to elect.

There are two disturbing factors to local elections in Rwanda. The first is that there was no campaigning. Sure, this is pretty much a one-party state, or, as Shyaka wrote in the first edition of Focus, a progressive dictatorship like Singapore. But there were no campaign posters, no rallies, nothing. Everyone just knows who to vote for.

The second disturbing part is that only certain people know where to vote, or who to vote for. Apparently, although there is universal suffrage at age 18 in Rwanda, unless one goes to umuganda or Gacaca (the traditional courts that hear Genocide cases), one does not know where the polling station is or who is running for office. So there are essentially two categories of Rwandans: full citizens who do everything the government tells them, and everyone else. Considering that an estimated 80 percent of people don’t do umuganda or Gacaca, only 20 percent of Rwandans are full citizens.

What an odd little country.