Children

It seems appropriate at this time of year to focus on the children of Rwanda, after all that is the reason I am here. To me, Rwanda is all about a country of children and the aspirations for their future, children are every where you turn and even if you don’t see them you can hear their voices from behind the bamboo fences greeting you and shouting out “How are you?” On my way to work the children have learned my name and will greet me with “Hello Karen” instead of “muzungo” and many will run up and give me a hug, not always easy when you see how dirty some of them are, so I am trying to introduce more of a “Hi 5” kind of greeting. There are a series of stock phrases I am asked like “What is your name?’ “How old are you and what is your father’s name?” you can tell what they are being taught at school. Unfortunately our conversation, in a combination of English and Kinyarwanda doesn’t yet extend beyond that.

It’s hard to believe we are now in the run up to Christmas, other than a very tacky Christmas tree I saw above a shop in Kigali, there is no evidence of it at all, particularly as I sit here in a tee shirt and think about the wild storms you are having back home. Staff at the district offices will get Christmas day off but I’m told it’s a very low key event here, everything will be closed in the morning to allow people to got to church and then by the afternoon it will be business as usual, shops will be open and life will go on the same as every other day, fetching water, digging the land and sweeping their homes. The children will neither expect or receive any presents, for most children in these rural villages the priority will be having enough food in their stomachs and clean clothes on their backs. I am glad I won’t be here over the Christmas period as I have a constant feeling of guilt when I think how much we have back home and how little the people have here.

A health carer I met at a parent teacher conference has the role of going round the families in her village and explaining basic hygiene to them on how to keep their homes, clothes and bodies clean to try and prevent diseases like malaria. There is still a high infant death rate here due to basic infection and the distance to reach any qualified health care.

The average family size seems to be in the region of 6 children, although 10 is not uncommon. There are incentives from the government to try and encourage families to have fewer children including rewards for men who have a vasectomy but to date the uptake has been small – this is still a male dominated country and there are still men who have more than one wife, although this is on the decrease.

From the moment they can walk, having previously been strapped to their mother’s backs, children must help around the home. Small children, some who can barely toddle are given water bottles and asked to go and fetch water, they are to be seen sweeping round their homes and assisting with the weeding and digging of the land and harvesting the crops.

They appear to have little time for leisure but when they do they are content to play with some marbles, an old bike tyre and stick or drawing pictures in the ground. On my way home, some of the children had gathered together to organize races so I stopped and became their starter which seemed a better option than taking part in the races!

The school roles are huge and increasing but there is also a huge problem with children as they get older, of dropping out of school, even though the 9 year basic education policy is compulsory, parents see the priority for their children and especially the girls, is to stay at home and help with the household duties and harvesting of the crops, maybe tending to the cows or goats if they have them and selling produce at the market. One of my roles here has been to record the Primary 6 mock exam results for the district which the children sit prior to sitting the national exams and it has been distressing to see that approximately 95% of pupils at this stage score less than 50% in the 5 different subjects they sit with about 10% scoring 0 marks at all– little wonder then that so many pupils opt not to go on to secondary education. It is something of a relief to see that with the O Level exams, the results are much better – I still have the A level results to go!

Walking to work one day I heard some alarming yells coming from the inside of one of the houses, followed by a loud thwacking sound, obviously a child getting caned. I stopped to see if I could identify where the sound was coming from but another district staff member stopped and could see I was looking distressed. He was surprised to hear that we don’t allow corporal punishment of any kind in our country and wanted to know how instead we disciplined our children – a heavy discussion for first thing in the morning.

The photo of the child with the model vehicle was taken in Giterama, to the west of Kigali, where things are generally more developed and where a small group of Highland teachers visited two years ago.

Margaret and I entertained the children of the chief administrator at my house one evening, I had asked Margaret to bring some of the rice sack games that were made for her teacher training college, the children aged from 6-16 spent 3 hours playing snakes and ladders and matching pairs and would probably be here still if we hadn’t sent them home, there is very little concept of parents playing with their children here, so plenty of development work lies ahead!!