It Takes a Village

You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child? Well, here in Rwanda, it also takes a village to raise a...well, I guess I'll go ahead and say it...a muzungu. Actually, it takes several, which is due to the fact that a village is approximately 10 households around here so my community as a whole is easily made up of four villages outside of my own. And man, do my villages have some collective parenting skills! They know when I'm sick; they know when I'm tired; they know when I'm cold and when I'm hungry....of course, they always think I'm hungry and frequently remark and the sad fact that I have not, in fact, gained any weight since arriving in Rwanda, which is really something I ought to remedy as soon as possible. From my basic physical needs to my education as a proper umunyarwanda (Rwandan citizen) my villages have all the bases covered.

I realized this for the first time two days ago as I was about to enter the school grounds to teach. I was stopped by Sister Patricia, who wanted to fix my hair and to try to wipe something that turned out to be a bit of dead skin off on my face. This is fairly common practice for the nuns, but here, in front of my place of work, I realized for the first time how much I was being mothered. However, it's not just the nuns that seem to think I need looking after. It is the personal responsibility of every mama in town to make sure I am doing well. If I don't wear a sweater, I'm told to go home and get one; if I wear a sweater, I'm told to put my hood up; and, if my hands are cold, I must be sick and there is a good chance someone will come by my house later with tea and bread...not that I mind. Even my all-male staff refuses to allow me to walk in the rain, a doting tendency that borders on the absurd when it's sprinkling and I need to make my way from the teachers' lounge to the classroom. Last week my headmaster spent so long running around the grounds to find me an umbrella that it had virtually stopped raining by the time he handed it to me so I could go home.

In addition for monitoring my physical well-being, my villages are heavily invested in my education and each person I talk to during the course of the day is a teacher. On some days, my glowing parents are thrilled that I seem to have learned a new word (although it's often an old one that I simply haven't had the occasion to use yet) and even happier to try to teach me something new. Beyond my ongoing language education, the mamas that run the co-op with which I work are raising me to be the perfect Rwandan bride and constantly comment on the good fortune of my future husband when I do something as mundane as pulling a weed or sticking my hand in a puddle of cow manure to plant a sweet potato. And these skills actually do equate into my appeal for marriage. I was recently informed that several men have, in fact, been by to visit the priests (my surrogate fathers for the next couple of years?) to ask for my hand in marriage. Thankfully, the fathers had the sense to tell them to ask me, knowing full well that none of them would muster the courage.

A few months ago, I would have found all of this undeserved attention rather undesirable. I would have assumed that people treated me with so much deference due to some sort of horrible socially-constructed racial divide, the precise barrier that I am trying to break down in being here. However, it seems that the doting is more of a result of my villages getting to know me than it is that they see me as a foreigner. They certainly wouldn't have been so comfortable commenting on my choices in fashion (earrings are a big deal around here) or grabbing my hair to fix it in the middle of the marketplace if they still saw me as a complete outsider. Buhoro buhoro (slowly by slowy, as they say here), I am working my way into this overgrown family of mine.