Sunday was not an especially exciting day. I went to town in the afternoon, and was struck by how few people were there. Luckily, I found a foreign exchange bureau that was open—the main reason I had gone in—but most businesses were closed and shuttered. I am used to seeing the Quartier Commerciale bustling with people, but in the late afternoon on a Sunday it was almost empty.
Part of the reason for this is that “Town” is a place where no one actually lives. I have looked around, and there are almost no places that look like they might be residential. Most buildings are only one story, and even those that aren’t have businesses and office-space on the upper levels. So everyone comes there to do something, usually doing business—there also are not any parks or public facilities where people might come to pass the time—which adds up to a lot of open space at certain times of week.
I am a little behind in writing these posts, and I could end here and move onto Monday. I kind of want to talk about America, though. Here goes:
The United States
People in Rwanda seem to have only good impressions of America. It is a beautiful country, they say, and they want to go there. It is a little bit strange, actually: there are a lot of places in the world where one would find a lot of negative impressions about the United States’ actions in the world—not least within our own borders. Here, though, people’s concern seems to be primarily with the services and opportunities it can provide to its citizens. To an extent it makes me happy. I am proud to be an American, and I like hearing people say good things about it; it bothers me when people take an overly negative perspective and ignore all that is really great about America.
I think the opposite extreme is problematic, too, though. People tell me about how all Americans are rich; regardless of whether that is true, we do have a lot of inequality and more than our fair share of racial discrimination. People talk about how Las Vegas and the Bellagio Hotel (it’s a hotel, right?) are so beautiful, from the pictures they have seen; well, yes, but they are also icons of excess and their very existence is draining the Colorado River and creating problems for our future generations’ access to running water.
I do not expect people to know these things. I know them because I am American and I think it’s good to be critical every now and then, and it is knowledge that is not available to the average Rwandan. Still, the idea that these other places are magically perfect and problemless, to which many Rwandans seem to subscribe, can be harmful. It can lead to a lack of appreciation for the things that Rwanda has accomplished—indeed, I have heard Rwanda compared very often to Europe and the U.S., but almost never to the countries around it—and, related, a desire to leave. Also, it just encourages a lack of nuance in worldview. I should not draw too many parallels, but the most devastating acts in this country’s history were committed by people who oversimplified their views of social order and felt like they were subordinated because of it.
Americans
There are a lot of them. I heard someone say there are 5,000 American expatriates living in Kigali; in a city of about a million, this is a substantial number. I will not dwell on this too much, as I have talked about it before, but the not-totally-inaccurate expectation of an American here is that he will be white, English-speaking, rich and vaguely culturally aloof. This means that we are frequently asked for money, not just by homeless people (fine) but by children who are not homeless but who are conditioned to think we are wealthy (not O.K.). It also means that when we try to do business with someone, we are likely to be instinctively overcharged. And that people will speak English or French by default when we approach them. (This last bit is especially annoying for someone trying to learn Kinyarwanda.)
And if you happen to be a young child, Americans are the best people ever, except not much more than anyone else who happens to be white. (Teenagers sometimes get excited too, just they express it differently.)
American Culture
I have been surprised to find, here, people who are more up on American culture than I am. Granted, I am pretty out of it. Still, I live there. Rwandans, or at least those with some means, get a lot of their entertainment from the American film and music industries. I hear American hip-hop playing in minibuses; I see dubbed American movies on sale at shops; I have talked to people who ask me—as an American who must know these things—whether they’re making a new season of 24.
I wonder what impactions this has for people’s impressions of America: Americans, as portrayed in our film, are usually pretty well-off, which could contribute to the impressions above. Then again, if you are watching a lot of 24, you might not come away thinking the streets are paved with gold!
American English
Ikínyáameríkâ, as some call it, is apparently very difficult to understand, even for those who are quite proficient in English. Keep in mind that, when Rwandans learn English, they do not generally learn from Americans or even from Britons, but from other Rwandans (or, at least, East Africans). When English was first taught in this area, it was taught by the British in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The English that those students spoke, then, mixed the sounds of their British teachers with those of their native languages. Since, East African English has acquired substantial populations of native or near-native speakers in the above-listed countries, and it is their pronunciation—as natural as that of any other English-speaker—that is most often heard by Rwandans.
There are two major differences that come to mind between this kind of English and the kind I speak: First, we Americans tap our t’s between vowels—so the t in “writer” is different from the one in “time,” a distinction that does not exist in East African English. Second, we pronounce our r’s wherever we write them, a feature lost by standard British English long ago and therefore not passed on to very many Africans. My friends here think it is very funny to hear me say words like “word,” “world” and “part.”
This is convenient, because if I ever need people to not know what I am saying, I can just say it in English at a normal speed and be confident no one will understand it!
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