Community


In Britain where mindless rivalry still exists between Germany and England to the point where ‘the war’ gives justification for fistfights, bottle launching and joyful defecation on their flag after a mere football game (and you know how importantly I take football too!), it’s any wonder how Rwandans, just 12 years on, are living side by side with their family’s killers and rapists. But maybe it’s a question of necessity. There is no other alternative, but every single person who talks about the situation reinforces this national need by reiterating that they must live together, they must work together and that one day Rwanda will be as peaceful as it is often vaunted as being prior to colonisation, and the Belgian decision to create ID cards in the 1950s which divided and separate on often phoney ethnic terms.

It’s for this reason that the people I come into contact with almost most often in my area are the prisoners. I live next to the prison in Gikongoro and every day pass them as they work in the fields. The prison uniform is a delightful pink, so you can’t miss them. Just imagine a bunch of guys in a field, toiling with hoes and spades wearing pink pyjamas and that’s just about the situation outside my house. I don’t know whether this was an intentional effort to emotionally emasculate them or whether pink is not seen as a feminine colour here... after all why should it be? Surely red and white are both powerful strong bold colours... And why do we wear black to funerals in Britain?? Here the colour of mourning is purple.

So the prisoners work outside the prion, and I’m often shaking hands with them and trying to respond to their Kinyarwanda questions. You see them in town every so often on their way to a job – with a military man with a huge gun. They are responsible for building most of the public buildings in Rwanda and the prison is not completely closed off. After all, a good proportion of husbands, brothers and fathers wouldn’t see their families if they couldn’t come and exchange a few words in the fields.

This community feeling is also evident in the monthly ‘Umuganda’ sessions. I was sent a text message last Friday night demanding that i do not forget to get out there first thing in the morning to lend a hand with building fences, cleaning the town, preparing food for the toiling men... basically community service without robbing an old woman and having to wear a tabard like in the States, or Britain as John Reid would probably have.