i just came across, while walking to catch my bus to Kigali, a scene that is common in the streets of rwanda. grinding poverty is the norm for at least 80% of the population. many are flushed out of the hills in an effort to meet their basic human needs. The street poor are people of all shapes and sizes – young, old; able-bodied, not; men, women, boys, girls. what ties them together is biting poverty.
so it is common to have someone in extreme need approach and ask “cent francs manger” (one hundred francs to eat). 100 francs is about .35¢ Canadian and would buy less than a handful of rice; or a few tablespoons of cooking oil. rice sells for 550/francs rwandais (frw) for a ½ kilo, while a litre of cooking oil goes for between 6 and 800frw.
as i walked towards the bus stop, i was followed by the usual coterie of street poor. i don’t want to call them beggars, as many others – both rwandan and mzungu – do. the word ‘beggar’ seems to me to be an imposition of liberal (western?) concept onto an ordinary rwandan. a beggar is someone who won’t work, and liberal thought suggests that since s/he won’t work, s/he must be lazy and hence, labelled a beggar. in rwanda, to be a ‘beggar’ is a luxury – the individuals that i see on the streets are there for lack of any other opportunity to survive. not all rwandans have land that they are able to cultivate; these people work as labourers on the land of others for a few hundred frw. a day. for those who might be fortunate enough to hold title deed, their land is not always arable, or their holding is in dispute because of outstanding, sometimes long-standing, grievances against the plot. the street poor i see in butare are the poorest of the poor because of their limited options and even more limited means of surviving and coping. this is particularly true amongst survivors of the genocide, particularly those who have lost their family structure. the family is the core unit of support, and care in Rwanda (in fact, the government of rwanda considers the family the base administrative unit!). without a family tie, help of any type – financial, physical or emotional, is not immediately forthcoming.
one of these street poor, a young teenage girl, was ‘begging’ for money and/or bits of food at the window of the bus that carries some 25 passengers to kigali. these buses run every 30 minutes, and there is always a lot of commotion at the stop. the presence of the street poor – there are many, on average 12 or 15 people crowd the bus at any one time – is a source of insecurity for the passengers. in response, the bus company has hired guards, code name ‘guide’ – to keep hawkers as well as the street poor well away from the open windows of the idling bus before its departure. the idling buses are cordoned and the blue-coated ‘guides’ monitor the contact between paid passenger and street poor.
the teenager, a girl of no more than 15, had reached for a packet of biscuits that a seated passenger had proffered through the window. between the moment of offering, and her reach over the cordon, the ‘guide’ decided that a theft had taken place. she was grabbed from behind by two men, at the base of her neck, and flung down towards the ground. the biscuits were recovered, and handed back to the passenger who offered them in the first place. he refused. i then saw the ‘guide’ — whose cries initiated this string of events — put the packet in his pocket. meanwhile, the girl is prone on the dusty shoulder of the road, while a crowed gathers to await her fate. much ululating from the teenager. tears run down her dusty face. tremors of fear, fear of what will happen next. the crowd is silent as are the clientele of the hotel restaurant adjacent to the bus stop. no one moves, no one says anything. finally, after a minute or two, the ‘guide’ releases his grip on the girl, and she is lead to a room behind the bus stop. what happened behind closed doors, i don’t know.
i got up to see if i could assist the girl, painfully aware of my status as a white woman. intervention in such a scene is none of my business. i was stopped, bobby stick across my hips, by one of the security handlers at my restaurant. he instructed me to sit down and not to worry. i wasn’t worried until he suggested that i not worry…. i also realised that i was totally powerless in this moment. what could i do, how could i help without causing more of ruckus. i couldn’t, i didn’t.
just as revealing about the divisions and divides of rwandan society was the ambulating presence of a white aid worker, pushing his baby daughter in a pram, across the same space that had just been a space of fear and intimidation.
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