Village life

The other day I toured this old lady’s home. It was a perfectly round house made out of adobe and cow dung and it had a straw roof. In other words, it was a hut and it was awesome. Inside this tiny hut (the size of my room in the U.S.), it was separated into even tinier rooms. In the center of the hut was the fireplace, a.k.a. the kitchen. Go three feet that way and there’s the storage room. Go three feet the opposite direction and there’s a sleeping room. Head straight past the kitchen and turn a curtain aside and tada! there’s the old lady’s bedroom. And you know what’s even better about this hut…the old lady built it herself.

Now, let me give you some context or history about all this. Rwandans traditionally lived in grass and mud huts but that was a long time age. Now, most people live in square houses made out of either mud mixed with cement or bricks. The houses have clay tiling or metal sheets, if you can afford it. This is all village housing. In the capital, there’s the whole spectrum of housing from the little clay houses in the poor neighborhoods to large mansions and apartments in the rich part of Kigali where all the NGO workers live and pay New York-style rents. Anyway, the little grass huts are for the very poor of Rwandan society. In my sector (comprised of 27 villages), there are about 500+ grass huts. We know this because the government is trying to come in and rebuild these houses into modern homes. During the genocide, many of the homes and possessions were destroyed. There were many widows after the war and not enough men so women took on traditional male roles (such as building houses). This broke many stereotypes and helped advance the status of women in Rwanda. So, now Rwanda is one of the more equitable countries in regards to women’s rights, jobs, etc. There are more women in parliament than in any other country and women can work all types of jobs from the military to construction work wielding a pack axe cracking gravel (I saw this with my own eyes the other day.) In my sector alone, women are the executive secretaries of two cells (commanding five villages each) and there are many female executive secretaries of villages.
Sooo, to make a long story short, this old lady is a war widow and she built her hut after the war because her first house was destroyed. The government is going to build her a new house soon so she’s looking forward to that. I’ve seen other huts all over the place since I started my nutrition rehab project. This project of mine has me walking to villages all over the place and I get a chance to meet many people and know the geography very well. So, I have noticed all the traditional huts in my area and have seen how poor the people really are. I have also had the chance to learn about the people’s lifestyles and work routine which I find really fascinating. One thing which I had never considered before but I learned the other day was how villagers paint their homes. They obviously can’t buy paint at the nearest paint store. They actually find white stone from the hillside (chalk), grind it up and mix it with water. So, they paint their houses white. They can also add cassava powder to the mix so that the dry paint on the walls does not come off on their clothes, etc. Cassava powder is really sticky so it helps bind the paint to the walls. If they want black paint, they make a mix of cow dung and water.
Another thing I learned from one group of women is that they have to make a two-hour trip to get water. That made me sad. I only have to walk ten minutes to my water source and even then, I have a girl fetch water for me every day. I wonder how much water these villagers use. Imagine six people in a house and the amount of water they go through. I bet they probably only use one or two jericans (20 liters or 5.3 gallons) a day and that’s not enough to bathe everyone, cook food and wash dishes. I usually only use 10 liters of water a day which is 2.6 gallons of water. If I do laundry, I will use over 5 gallons of water or a whole jerican. If I have to wash sheets that day, all is lost. Sooo, I guess my point is, we stress hygiene so much in our public health messages to villagers but if you had to walk two hours to get water, would you bathe every day?