Boys and Their Forks by Liz S.

Liz S.
Karongi District, Western Province

First of all, I want to begin by introducing myself. My name is Liz, and I have been working as an education volunteer in Karongi District in the West. I am one of the three newest members to the GAD committee from Education 4.

I am still learning more every day about how gender is constructed in Rwandan society and how that manifests itself in Rwandans’ lives. I was particularly struck by Saara’s description of what it means to be a woman in Rwanda – that expectations for women’s success are low which therefore leads to an inferior sense of self-worth. I have found this to be true among many of my female colleagues and friends. But it also poses the question for me of what it means to be a man in Rwanda, which so far I have associated with a sense of entitlement. My male colleagues expect to be served first, to have first choice of seating, to be given a chair when there is limited seating, etc.

Dynamics between men are comically illustrated for me every night at dinner with the fork. I live in a compound with the (male) director Frodouard, the (male) bursor and 2^nd in command Jack, another (male) teacher Muhire, and our (female) librarian Jolie. I share dinner with some combination of them and other teachers who drop by on occasion. We have 5 or 6 forks of varying quality. 4 are the same super cheap forks but with varying degrees of being bent out of shape. Then there’s the fork of slightly higher quality and remains unbent but still relatively cheap and crappy. Finally, there’s the cream of all fork crops. It’s sturdy, durable, too heavy to be bent and clearly of finer quality than the other forks. The boys always want the good fork, but the power dynamics at any given dinner determine who gets it.

At a normal lunch, it’s me with Muhire and Jolie. Muhire always takes the good fork without question. When Jack is in town, it changes Muhire’s behavior. At the beginning of the year, Muhire would hold off to see if Jack took the fork first, allowing Jack, the superior in age, marital status, and job position, to take it if he wanted but leaving the option open for Muhire to still have the fork. After a couple weeks, Jack realized Muhire really wanted the fork, and Jack being confident in his masculinity (or not caring which fork he eats with because….it’s a fork) graciously cedes the fork to Muhire, taking the 2nd or 3rd quality fork for himself. When Erneste, the animateur, comes over, he not only doesn’t live in the compound, his younger age and lower position within the school means he usually shares a fork and plate with whoever finishes earliest, and that person never has the good fork. In other words, the lowest of fork lows. The first time the director came, though, he didn’t even flinch before grabbing the good fork before Muhire or Jack could even think about it, therefore securing his place as the school’s top dog. Jolie, who happens to be a woman and the youngest staff member at the school, almost always takes the worst fork, severely bent out of shape, along with the cracked plate as well.

For me, as funny as it is to witness this play out every night, it shows in a simple but clear way the power dynamics and expectations between men of varying statuses and women’s interactions with this system. Men use a variety of characteristics – be it age, occupation, marital status, etc. to size each other up and decide who comes out on top – who gets the good fork. Women don’t seem to be a part of this power grab, but nor do they see the benefits as attainable or applicable to them. Even when Jolie and I are alone and I offer her the good fork, she doesn’t take it. She still takes the sad, bent fork for herself and on one occasion even said, “The broken fork for the broken person.”

I see gender development as two-fold. We must empower women to expect more of themselves and their abilities – empower women to go for the good fork and to feel that they deserve it. But we must always engage men in the conversation. How do Rwandan conceptions of masculinity also constrain and construct men’s lives? How can we facilitate partnerships and cooperation among the genders to create a more equal and beneficial system for all involved? In other words, can we change the game so that men don’t have to constantly jockey for the only good fork, and women have the chance to actually grasp it? Can we help create a world where everyone has a good fork?

I hope so, and I look forward to working with this committee to make a dent (no pun intended).

A Perfect Smile by Sarah E.

Sarah E.
Eastern Province, Kirehe District

Every Peace Corps Volunteer has their reasons for wanting to live 27 months away from home. One of mine was to get away from fast-paced technology, to slow down a little bit. While the internet offers all the information in the world, a way to know exactly what you want to know when, I was interested in what life would be like without the constant communication. I didn’t know then what I know now: that fate always has something in store for you, and that connections can exist before they’re even made.

When I applied for Peace Corps in August 2010, I requested sub-Saharan Africa as my future home, and that, even, wasn’t guaranteed by Peace Corps. Peace Corps puts an applicant where they’re best seen fit, where their qualifications match the needs of a country. I waited and waited some more, and in July 2011, I learned that I would call Rwanda my home. 

After three months in training, I moved to my village in the Eastern Province, and on my first day of teaching, I noticed a girl who sat in the front row. I had about 50 students in each class I taught, and it took me months to learn all their names, but I learned her name within the first week: Francine. She’s a small girl with quiet confidence. When I said a joke to the class, she’d giggle to herself as opposed to out loud. Because she sat in the front row, I often borrowed her notebooks and pens to demonstrate new vocabulary, dropping them on the floor or tearing a piece of paper out. I borrowed her things so often, that when I approached her desk, she’d have something ready for me to grab, handing it to me. Her personality reminded me of myself, 12 years earlier: quiet, polite, and a little nervous. Francine has a cleft lip. Err…had a cleft lip.

Operation Smile came to Rwanda a year ago, but at the time, I had internet problems, so I couldn’t connect with them. Another PCV informed me that Operation Smile was coming again this year, so she gave me information about the dates and location. I connected with a member of the Operation Smile team through Peace Corps Rwanda and was able to get more information about who is selected to get the surgeries. I then met with my school headmaster and Francine, to discuss the possibility of her going to Kigali. She said she was interested, so we kept up communication with her father. During these conversations, her father became more and more excited – to the point that he said I could call Francine my child. I shook his hand a few dozen times – his happiness infectious.  While in Kigali, their food and lodging would be provided by Operation Smile. I knew their family was poor – both of Francine’s parents are farmers – so I gave them the money needed for Francine and one parent to travel to Kigali and return to our village: the equivalent of $25. The best $25 I’ve ever spent.

Francine being chosen for surgery was likely because she had an unrepaired cleft lip, Operation Smile’s first priority. After Francine left for Kigali, I felt like I was playing the waiting game, hoping that her and her father weren’t going to be disappointed. Five days passed, during which time I told my landlady about what was happening. She confirmed the name with me, and told me that just a year and a half before, Francine’s father was one of the constructors of my house! This house, which was being built around the time I received my invitation to serve in Rwanda. I knew in that moment: when my recruiter and placement officer placed me in Rwanda, and when Peace Corps selected me to serve in this village, it was all meant to happen. It may be easy to find mutual friends on Facebook and discover how small a world it is online, but when you’re put in the middle of nowhere and “the real world” can seem so far away, those bonds that form through no force of will on your own but through the actions of fate are meant to be.

I continued to wait for news, and then one of my fellow PCVs, volunteering for Operation Smile for the week, called me to give me the good news: Francine was chosen!

I’d like to give a shout out to the people of Operation Smile for doing what they do. In this global world of ours, it is nice to get away from it all, but it’s also nice to use connections to give people what they deserve: a perfect smile.

Since her surgery and returning to school, I’ve visited with Francine and her family. Here are a few photographs:

Francine is in the middle, wearing her school uniform. She is surrounded by her family.

Francine's father with one of their cows.

Me with Francine and her parents.

Francine's father with their other cow.

International Women’s Day

Whitney Goldman

Health 3 - Nyaruguru District

On March 8th, Rwanda joined the ranks of many other countries is supporting International Women’s Day.  Throughout the country, District, Sector, and Cell offices held special events and speeches in celebration. 

Scouring the internet for some good old fashioned news and articles, I came across a few  things I found interesting and want to share:

- The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day at http://www.internationalwomensday.com... The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum.

- The World Economic Forum’s best places for women using their rank in gender gap (according to health and survival, access to education, political empowerment, and economic participation) in order from 1-10: Iceland, Finland,  Norway, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark,  Philippines/Nicaragua, Switzerland.

 - An excerpt from remarks from Michelle Bachelet, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women at the International Women’s Day Commemorative Event 

            “If we act with courage, conviction and commitment, we can change violence against            women from being the most pervasive violation of human rights to being a rare occurrence that is considered unacceptable and no longer tolerated. Each one of us has responsibility and duty to act.”

While she goes on to talk about the role of the Member States of the United Nations, I think it’s nice to end the point here.  Period. 

Read the full transcript here 

- The UN’s official “One Woman” song.  Did you miss it?  If so, you can listen to the song here

- Current Peace Corps volunteers by gender: 62% female, 38% male.  Find more fun facts about Peace Corps here 

 - An interesting point from  Zillah Eisenstein in her article International Women’s Day: New challenges ahead
             “On this Day, let us reject the idea of "unity" as "oneness" and rather understand that women's power lies in her diverse unity. Feminists of all sorts have written of "diverse commonality" and "common differences" for years. And it may also be the case that women are now more diverse than they have ever been given newly formed economic disparities across the globe.”

The full article can be found here

I hope you all had a wonderful March 8th, no matter where you were or how you chose to celebrate.

Celebrating Gender Differences by Sara A.

Sara Aubrey Allen

District: Ngoma, Eastern Province

My intermediate English class always ends with a debate. The debate topic was chosen by my smart and empowered female colleague. She wanted to argue against our open-minded and sweet, male counterpart “Women are stronger than men.” She stressed that women work extremely hard to sustain and protect the health of the family, and men are selfish in nature and tend to spend the majority of the money and time in the bars. He argued that women are physically weaker, and thus in need of men to assist in the necessary tasks of life. She said that the only time men are stronger physically, is when women are pregnant. He agreed, and admitted that he viewed this as a flaw in women, making men stronger. As passionate and opinionated as I am about this topic, I waited until they both felt finished debating before I voiced my opinion. I argued for neither side, and instead of chose to focus on the value of their differences and the benefit of working together. I stressed that I believed that the world could be a healthier and more productive place if we recognized the importance of equality between the sexes. We discussed how entrenched the Rwandan culture is in defining what the roles are for men and women. Men in this culture never cook or clean. The tend livestock. It seems that cultivating is a shared task. Women in this culture always seem to have a baby strapped to their back throughout all of their work. I told them that in many parts of America, families are redefining the roles in the family. In extreme cases, men stay at home and take care of domestic chores, and women have jobs. In less extreme cases, men might enjoy cooking or doing laundry. While this was a bit shocking for my male co-worker to comprehend, my female co-worker lit up with the possibility of having a stay at home husband. While many Rwandans strongly believe in a sedimentary nature of their culture, many young Rwandans are inspired by the evolving nature of many developed countries.

The phrase, “It's just our culture,” is used often here in Rwanda by diverse people and in response to a diversity of topics. Being an America whose culture is so incredibly diverse and constantly changing, I don't think I will ever able to truly understand this. I have a constant battle inside with this because I can't help but initially see it simply as a cop-out to justify reluctance to change. Empathy and respect to their culture is always something I strive for, but it is difficult to do when I notice oppression. Many women here, as in America, are content to be domesticated, but what I am fighting for is for their ability to choose. Women everywhere deserve the access to an education and family planning. They should be able to decide their futures just as men are. 

  While discussing with newly acquainted  male Peace Corps volunteers I admitted that  I was in GAD and a feminist. I could immediately see them tense up a bit, which tends to the usual reaction. I followed by saying that I don't want them to be scared, that I love men, and I appreciate a good debate, and that I promise to not get angry. Still, a couple guys seemed a little unconvinced. I was pleased that one seemed to light up, and said actually he would love to discuss. He told me that he admitted to another volunteer who is a feminist that he loves to date Rwandan women because, “they take great care in preparing a home.” He told me that he thinks it is beautiful that when she wakes-up the first thing she does is clean his shoes. He said that he never asks her to, but that he showers her in appreciation afterward. There was something really loving in his voice and his eyes as he described this. The feminist that he once admitted this two said that he was being “chauvinistic.” My impression was quite different than hers. I felt his sincerity and love he had towards her. He appreciated what his girlfriend does, and how she makes him feel supported. I told him that I think that what she does is lovely. Rwandan women are incredibly motherly to everyone. I told him that I think being a mother is one of the most important, exhausting mentally and physically, job anyone can have the pleasure or curse of having. I told him that there is no way that I would ever be a housewife, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect women who do. I will admit it, I tend to poke fun at them a lot, but despite my jokes, I do think that it is a beautiful thing to wish to support one's family so fully.

With love, compassion, and respect of both sexes with their important strengths and differences, I believe we can together work towards gender equality and development around the world. A teenage Rwandan boy turned to me and asked me how I thought Rwanda could develop as a nation. I said to put it simply, “Read every chance you can, and treat women as your equal.” After I said it I realized that I believe it is true for everyone everywhere.

Sustainability in Gender and Development

Caitie Gibbons

Health 4 - Kigali City

Recently I had a site change. A site change is when a volunteer is moved from the site they were initially placed in and put in another due to a variety of reasons. In the past two weeks I’ve said goodbye to my community, stopped all current projects, packed up my house, relocated, and started again. I left clubs and classes in the middle of planned curriculums. Experiencing this made me rethink and question sustainability. What it is and how we can provide it once we (volunteers) have left our communities.

In Saara K’s last post (the post directly after this one) she wrote about setting a precedent for women to imitate: “If we want women to be strong, we as fellow community members must set the precedent for how to conduct ourselves in a way that is an encouragement for other women as well.” While this is key in gender and developement, we must also provide sustainability in conjunction with setting the precedent. Therefore women and girls can continue to grow and flourish long after we've left.

 Joining Peace Corps I’ve learned that sustainability is a difficult thing. We have so little control over everything here. But change is still possible, and sustainability within change is possible as well. In my ten months of service, this is what I’ve learned about sustainability in gender and developement thus far:  

Cling to the positive. I’ve often found, while teaching, that in a class of thirty plus girls I will only have one or two girls who are actually listening and/or understanding. This can be discouraging, but as volunteers we must cling to the positive. Use these students, or people in the community who listen and understand, to initiate change. Find those one or two people who are interested, and hold onto them. Whether it’s a student, a Mama, a community member, or neighbor. They are the stimulus of change, the key to continuing gender and developement, and finding solutions to gender based problems in the community.

Conduct TOTs (Training of Trainers). Provide these individuals with skills to continue growth. TOTs can be as simple as talking over tea in your house, or as fancy as attending a seminar or conference. Find any means to empower, support, and provide resources from them. Many people in the villages do not have access to the Internet, books, and other resources. Find these resources, and share them. Knowledge is power. And while educating, maintain the precedent for yourself and for women in your community. Encourage, and educate them to be examples of strong women in their villages, and to continue to educate others as well.  

Promote and encourage peer education. People tend to learn better when their teacher is someone they can relate too. Students, likewise, learn more from each other (peer to peer education) than from the student-teacher dynamic. When the information comes from a community member or student leader the ideas become more attainable and tangible, rather than an outsider saying “this is possible!” Of course it is, from outside the community, it is within the community that the problems lie. What they don’t realize it is that it is also possible from within. Using peer to peer education shows that they have strong girls and women in their community, and therefore this helps the precedent for women to grow.

Educate your students, and communities, about gender and development. Set the precedent for yourself and for women in Rwanda. Empower them with resources and knowledge. Encourage them to set the precedent, and continue to be the example of a strong woman. Then sit back, let your students, community members and Mamas run the show, let them be the leaders to educate and empower each other.    

New member, new post by Saara K.

Saara Kamal
Karongi District, Western Province

Hello all! Before you read what I have to say about Gender and Development I thought I would quickly introduce myself. My name is Saara Kamal. I am a teacher at TTC Rubengera in Karongi District in the Western Province. I teach fantastic upper secondary students. Unlike other Education Volunteers, I don’t teach English. I teach something called CPPE (Creative Performance and Physical Education). I have about 9 months left in my service and here are some ponderings for you to peruse…

What is it Simone de Beauvoir says, ‘One is not born, but becomes a woman.” That’s great for existential philosophers. But, I feel as if her perspective like so many others is skewed to the paradigm of what it means to be a “Western woman.” After being in Rwanda for about a year and a half, the term woman has a very different meaning, as a woman living here in Rwanda. Here, the inequality between the expected rights of women as Simone would believe, are so far from the reality. In Rwanda, it the responsibility of women to bear and raise children similar to the rest of the world. However, the difference that I see every day in Rwanda in terms of what it means to be a woman is the level of sacrifice that is expected.

Women in Rwanda aren’t expected to go to school and let alone succeed like their male colleagues. Women aren’t expected to become self-sufficient entrepreneurs of their own businesses without judgment from their fellow community members.  Women aren’t expected to refuse the sexual advances of a man without the assumption of some kind of consequence; be it societal or physical. These lowered expectations of women have now created such deep traces of a lowered sense of self-worth that the sacrifices of education and independence aren’t seen as a great loss, but as the norm. Very generally, being a woman in Rwanda includes maybe finishing a level of education (primary, secondary or university) and very soon afterward getting married. The scope of vision for women does not extend very far past their cultural expectations.

The reason why I became interested in GAD (Gender and Development) is based on this definition of what it means to be a woman in Rwanda. My goal for the foreseeable future is use the platform of GAD to expand and give more depth to the meaning of “woman” in Rwanda. I feel that the presence of GAD through Peace Corps Volunteers in our communities has the capacity to effect change in how women perceive themselves. The best way to way to learn something is to practice imitation. If we want women of Rwanda to be strong, we as fellow community members must set the precedent for how to conduct ourselves in a way that is an encouragement for other women to do as well. In addition to imitation and setting an example there must also be open dialogue about questions like, “What is gender?”, “What is development?” and “What does Gender Development look like in this context? In Rwanda?” Right now, I don’t have perfect answers to these questions. But hopefully soon, myself and other supporters of GAD will be on the right course to have tangible solutions the problem of how to promote gender development.

I am very excited by the things that have already been done in relation to Gender in Development in Rwanda (GLOW and BE camps in particular!) in the past three years and am even more excited about can happen in the future. Let’s be the change!     

BE Camp and The Male Perception

Caitie Gibbons

Health 4

Nyagatare District

Muraho! I’d like to begin with a quick hello, and short introduction. My name is Caitie Gibbons, I’m one of GAD’s three new members elected in October from Health 4. Our training group arrived in Rwanda May 2012; we are the fourth group of health volunteers, and the seventh training group total in country. I’m thrilled to be part of the PC Rwanda GAD committee, and am greatly looking forward to working together in the upcoming year.

Last week I participated in my first camp. It was a BE camp (Boys Excelling), a PC Rwandan youth development club focused for boys. When I first heard about BE back in September I was hesitant to jump on board. My background seriously lacks any boys’ education, or boys’ development work. I’ve also worked with girls so much in the past that breaching to the other side gave me a fear-of-the-unknown type feeling.

Mulling the opportunity over, the importance of working with boys became clear to me. While the answer may be obvious to some, it took me some time to realize this: boys’ development is as essential as girls. After all, how can we achieve gender equality in Rwanda (and elsewhere) if we only educate the girls? Both sides need to understand the importance of empowering their own gender and each other; both sides need to be equal. Without the boys understanding what gender equality is, and why it is important, how can we achieve it?  

With my new mindset I jumped on board with Camp BE, ready and willing to empower and educate. BE camp was an amazing experience for me for several different reasons, but it also opened my eyes to the Rwandan male perception.

At camp I taught a class on Relationship Building and Partnering in Gender Equality. During the class there was a list of scenarios asking boys what they would do in certain situations. The goal of these scenarios was to open different discussions with each other on gender equality. Scenarios included: your wife gets sick and is unable to cook, clean, take care of children, what do you do? Or, you want to have sex with your girlfriend but she does not, what do you do? Etc. I encouraged boys to think that there was no right or wrong answer. I wasn’t looking for a popcorn fluffy response on what teacher wanted to hear. The scenario that got the most attention and appall was: your wife wants to be president someday. She is a leader in her community, and loves to lead. It is her goal and her dream in life. How do you respond to her goal?  

The most common responses were (verbatim):

-       According to culture, it is not good. The husband has responsibility of taking care of family (financially).

-       No you cannot support her. If she becomes president she will have a lot of money and no respect for you (her husband).

-       You can converse about culture and ask her if she respects the culture, if she respects culture then she will understand no woman should be higher in the relationship then the husband.

They came from boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. And yes, it broke my heart when one of my favorite students, who I brought to camp, stood up in class and said no he would not support her, or would want his wife to be a leader.

This is the current male perception of woman and their role in the culture. For women to be successful, and make more money than their husbands is more often than not seen as having bad culture.

I tried to stay as neutral as I could during the class discussion. But lets be real, I went to an all girls high school that started pumping feminism into me at age fourteen. My final plea to my students was for them to communicate with their partners about their goals and dreams before marriage, and to reevaluate the relationship according to what each other wanted from life. To have an open mind, and understanding of what their partners want from life. A woman is not a machine, a relationship should be equal, and respected by both parties.

These discussions (and eye openers for myself) are why I am passionate about gender development and support BE and GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camps and clubs. So I encourage you, in whatever area you work in, and wherever you are to create and continue the discussion.