Caitlyn Griffith
Education 2 -- Kayonza District, Eastern Province
Women are great.
I mean come on, its just true.
When I look into the shockingly beautiful faces of the women
here I just know in my core that it’s true. When I see a thin woman carrying a
50 L Jerrycan of water on her head with a baby on her back and a sack of
potatoes at her side I know that strength comes from a different place than
muscles. When I listen to my friend talk about how, after being impregnated by
her teacher in her first year of high school, she never wants to marry but
rather to continue raise her child herself and get a job in business, all the
while smiling and laughing, I know that joy can come from a place other than
your circumstances. Women are the embodiment of paradoxes, of strength and joy
and sadness and passion and exhaustion all mingling together in an encasement
of beauty.
Rwandan women are amazing. In the village, they literally do
everything. They cook, clean, farm, bear, birth and raise children, they run
informal businesses, and see their children through school. They are amazing.
Rwanda, like many developing countries (and developed ones
too) has a long history of unequal gender roles. Girls education, women’s
involvement in politics, in formal business and as leaders with a voice are all
still fairly new ideas. These ideas take time to reach out to the village where
old habits, customs and cultures die hard and men are reluctant to relinquish
their power.
This can be hard to watch at times. Especially because
oftentimes Rwandans don’t see it. The government talks about gender equality a
lot and so many people just assume that now they have it. They see girls in
school (though fewer than boys with lower scores on average) and women on TV or
the radio and assume there is equality. But even though there is great progress
being made there are still some frustratingly entrenched ideas persisting here.
For example a girl is not a woman until she is married while there is a special
word for young man and also a boy can become a man by virtue of age while a
girl’s womanhood is directly connected to her husband. People here call my
fiancé Joe my boss, which is completely normal. Many of my friends call their
husbands “Boss.” Also, women are often called upon to be the servants at people’s
parties so that the men never have to get up but can have a woman continually
refill their beer. And in the home women are distinctly below their husbands’
rule.
Needless to say, things need to change. And things are
changing, just very very slowly. The tricky thing about change is that you
can’t just run out in front of a man sitting and drinking beer while his wife
cleans, cooks, cares for kids and refills his cup and wave your arms to say “STOP
STOP! ARE YOU CRAZY!? Things have to CHANGE!” No. You have to be patient, ask
pointed questions, plant seeds, draw people’s attention to the inconsistencies
and injustices, and ENCOURAGE people to greatness. You can’t tell people they
are wrong with aggression. You have to help them see that and come to their own
conclusions. You have to encourage them to be better, to think larger, to act
consciously. If you make people angry
and defensive the change will not be positive.
I love to do this exercise with my students. I ask them to
draw a table with two parts: one for gender equality and one for inequality.
Then I ask them to consider some places in their communities that they can
identify equality and where they can identify inequality. Often, even with all
the rhetoric regarding gender balance that you hear here, no one has ever
thought about their communities critically. That is a perfect place to start.
And not just in Rwanda. Change will not happen naturally. All of us need to be
constantly looking at our lives and our communities identifying areas of injustice.
I never, however, leave the exercise at that. I ask the students to make a list
of practical things THEY CAN DO to address the inequalities on their table.
Then we make and action plan. Because change can’t happen without actions-thousand
small actions slowly chipping away at a structure of oppression until equality,
freedom and unity is birthed forth in its place. This may sound overly
optimistic but I live it out every day. And so to dozens of women and men in my
community.
So optimistic yes, but overly….never.
In the name of change,
In the name of women everywhere,
cg
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