The Twa are 1% of the population in Rwanda, they are marginalized and extremely poor. I have heard they are also referred to as Pygmies in the Congo. A friend of mine went to a Twa village and carried a bottle of water with her. (note: do not carry water in rural poverty stricken areas unless you want to break your own heart) And, of course, children surrounded her asking for the water, as it is very scarce in their area.
She was about to hand it to a child when she thought better to ask the general practitioner there what he thought. He replied, "Please don't give out your water unless you have 150 bottles to give all the children."
This situation just hints at the politics involved with coming from a more powerful economy and the power dynamics which ensue.
No one wants to walk by a child telling you he is hungry in the only English words he knows, but after awhile a feeling washes over you of helplessness and the numbers overwhelm you. Sustainable development in the 'global south' battles with these scenarios all of the time. How to you instill self-suficient means and dignity to previously impovershed numbers of human beings?
I experienced an accute situation along these lines in the central province of Kenya recently. I was in Nyeri, Kenya (where one day I wore shorts and I thought people were going to keel over staring at my white legs-they had never seen them before) and I walked by a group of obviously homeless children sniffing glue out in the open with men in business suits passing by.
I had read about this veracious phenomenon before, as it is present in many countries-even the U.S., but I had never seen it. Glue supresses hunger, gives the user a high, and damages the brain after habitual use (it is highly addictive) beyond recovery.
These children were not hiding. They were accepted in society as a facet of it. Many times I heard locals implying blame onto the children for the predicament they were in. They are lazy or they have options but don't want to follow the rules. The same mindset that many Americans have about welfare or homelessness. I wish it were that easy, unfortunately life's situations and the people who live them are much messier and more complicated than that.
And do lazy people deserve to go hugry, exist in flithy conditions, and encounter massive amounts of indifference to their condition all around them? Harsh penalties, birthed from the 'pull-yourself-up-from-the-boot-straps mentality. Something is eskqew here.
So, upon seeing me, the surrounded me and started walking with me telling me they were hungry. After three months of being called 'white-person' (muzungu in Swahili) from every corner of the street and being approached by street people (children,women with babies, ect.) every day you become de-sensitized. Not that I feel it less but I don't respond as often. I can't. It is not humanly possible.
But I did not ignore these kids. You can smell the glue on them even when they don't have any. I started telling them their brains will not recover from the damage of the glue. And then I decided, for the price of $2.50 to buy them a bag of things they could eat easily and on the street. Bread, butter, biscuits, orange juice, popcorn. When I came out of the store older homeless kids were around (adolescence). This prented a danger to the 7,8, and 9 year olds I wanted to give the food to. The older ones would rob and possibly hurt them. I had to split it between the two groups and the most striking thing was how the older kids grabbed my hand out to them. They went from conversing with me to desperate quick grabbing frenzied movements when bread was in front of them.
It is enough to stop your heart from the reality of their existence.
I don't know how it turned out, I did confinscate one bottle of glue, but that doesn't even make a dent.
During this scene, locals were staring on kind of mocking and there was me, representing the white aid hand out giver. How do you sort these things out? How do I when I spend more money putting minutes onto my cellular phone here than I fed those children with?
If you know how to absorb these realities let me know.
Best,
Chelsea
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The glue thing happens here a lot. I felt Deja Vu as I was reading. Here they can get really violent actually. If you don´t give them change, they can hurt you.
ReplyDeleteThere´s no solution, it´s a vicious circle. You get used to walking around them. We humans are able to adapt to any situation, fortunatly and unfortunatly.
What an environment where you have to desensitize to hungry children all around you. I cannot fathom it, Chelsea.
ReplyDeleteHey Chelsea,
ReplyDeleteIt's Val- I wrote towards the end of the program in Rwanda that "being here doesn't get any easier," and it's so true. I hope you're doing ok and finding some uplifting experiences among the difficult ones.
i had a similar crisis, trying to understand how to relate to homeless folk in the us.
ReplyDeletethe only solution i could figure, realizing that i could not give to everybody, was that i had to acknowledge them as fellow humans - not giving casually, but not ignoring (i've also had women friends explain to me that this approach was impossible and that they felt no choice but to ignore homeless men on the street... i understand that too).
later, when i became serious about traveling, i came up with something of a motto:
when traveling into or through a place,
it's a good idea to give,
to someone who asks -
to someone who asks for nothing...
not a maximum amount;
or you wont have enough for yourself...
not a minimum amount;
you'll ask for more than this later.
give a reasonable amount;
for what you'll ask for is reasonable:
safe passage, and good relations with the people you meet
enough food and a dry place to sleep...
this became almost a superstition- i considered this as a kind of cosmic reset to put me on the right track... when i would arrive in a new town, i would give money, food or even just a kind word and a moment of my time to the first person who needed it. whether they asked or not. you can't give to everybody... but if you make a policy of giving nothing, of becoming blind to pain, something in you dies and sometimes you might miss an opportunity to get a little 411 from some of the wisest and most alternatively informed people on earth.
but again, i have never been to a place like Rwanda - though i swear there are parts of South Chicago that sound similar but with no business suits in sight...
see you soon old friend!
from Flatbush,
Greg