Turning Down the Heat

Patricia addressing an anxious crowd. (photo: Elise Webb)

By Elise Webb   Shouts wafted uphill to where my Rwandan SFCG colleagues and I were chatting with a group of women waiting outside the office of the Sector Executive Secretary to be paid for their labor on a section of road. A rumor was running through the group like an electrical surge. The sector was going to forgo payment with the excuse that these women’s work was part of muganda, the national unpaid community works program. We descended from the hilltop to see if the commotion below was for the same reason.

People– young and old– were scrambling by a shed overflowing with beans. Elderly men in tattered blazers wrenched 8 kilo bags of the foodstuff out the narrow door into the sunlight for personal inspection. The sector had agreed to pay this group of people for their work. However, the horde claimed, the officials were only going to pay them in beans. Almost immediately a woman shouted, “They’re bad! These beans are all bad!”  Suddenly, upon noticing my camera, the women began thrusting their dusty bean-filled hands at me, demanding I photograph the wreckage.  What had been a simmer in the bean pot had come to a boil:  “My husband will kill me if I bring these beans home!” lamented a housewife.

“Find Patricia! Where’s Patricia?” The crowd rumbled, searching for someone to elucidate this  tenuous situation.

Patricia was an average woman dressed in a vivid blue t-shirt and yellow skirt. To me, she was just another face in the chaotic crowd but to them she was a liberator. She was a woman to be trusted, a leader from their own ranks. She stepped forward to calm the throng.

First, she asked me to film what she had to say. She spoke deliberately; wanting to make sure this was on record.  She apologized to the crowd: when she had organized the people to do the road work the leaders had told her they would be paid. “Otherwise,” she added “I’d never have called you from your families.”

The women sift through the spoiled beans that were meant to be their payment. (photo: Elise Webb)

She explained that most of these people were HIV positive and had been looking for any opportunity to earn a little extra. She had trusted the local government to keep to their end of the bargain. Finally, she resolved with the crowd, “If you are only going to get ½ a kilo of usable beans from an 8 kilo bag, none of us should take them. We will talk to the district about this!” With that, the situation I had thought would turn into a riot was peacefully defused by one tenacious woman’s promise to seek quiet justice.

Patricia is one of many female leaders here in Rwanda. They appear in all levels of society, from grassroots to heads of ministries to 45 of the 80 parliamentarians. These women, along with their fellow citizens of Rwanda are working within a system of new democracy, trying to find the best way to work together to move the country forward. SFCG is doing its part to help people use government to their advantage. Through participatory theatre SFCG is attempting to inspire mutually beneficial collaboration between local leaders and citizens. Clearly, there’s still a ways to go.  Still, it’s exciting to see regular people standing up for what’s due to them.

There’s hope that the more that people work together with the government the fewer of these agitations over beans will be seen.  If they do crop up, I hope there always is a dynamic leader like Patricia to take a non-violent stand for their rights.

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Elise Webb is an international intern based with our Rwanda office during the summer. Be sure to see what else she writes about and find out what else we’re working on in Rwanda.

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