Marion Warnica, 2008
As the blazing sun rises higher in the sky, thirteen-year-old Naomie Bisengimana keeps the same steady pace. She chooses her steps carefully, head tilted slightly downwards, to navigate the fissures and gutters that crack the surface of the sunburnt clay. She’s wearing a long skirt and white sandals; though she will later tell me she prefers to wear jeans when she’s relaxing at home. “Est-ce que tu aimes les mini-jupes?” Do you like mini-skirts? she asks when we pass a group of girls dressed in revealing clothes. “They’re comfortable when it’s hot,” I answer. “I think I own just one. Do you like them?” Her face crinkles up at the question. “No. People don’t think well of a girl who dresses like that here. I wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression.”
Our formal interview, with a fluent French translator, finished earlier that morning when Naomie mentioned it was her last day of school. Trying to take advantage of the little time we had, I asked to accompany her on the way. “Pas de problem” was her answer, one she would offer many times throughout the day that we ended up spending together — walking and talking (using the simple words and grammar that I remember from high school French classes) about her life.
Naomie is the daughter of Honorata, the cook at the Rwanda Initiative house in Kigali. She’s the youngest of three children and the only girl. With her mother at work most of the day, Naomie says it’s her responsibility to prepare the food for her family. Her favourite thing to make? “Coffee,” she says. “It’s what I like to have for breakfast in the mornings. Porridge is just for babies.” And what do you like to bring to school for your lunch? I ask. “I only eat dinner,” she answers. “But I drink lots of water during the day.” Naomie gets up at 6:00 am every morning for a shower before her 30-minute bus ride to school - classes start at 8:30 and finish at 4:30 - but sometimes finding a bus is a problem. On those days, she walks. “I like to walk though,” she says.
With her quiet confidence and mature insights, it’s easy to think that Naomie is older than her thirteen years. She’s had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age. Her father, Alfonse, died four years ago of heart problems, when Naomie was nine years old. Tears shine in her dark brown eyes as she remembers.“I loved my father so so much,” she said. “Now there is no one to play with me anymore, no one to sing with me anymore.” She said her favourite thing to do with her father when he was alive was to play a card game called Amaturufu. They would often sing together too.
Naomie says she is too shy to sing for other people these days, but she’s kept up a love for music. She’s learning to play guitar and has written many songs over the last year. The friend who teaches her is actually a well-known musician in Rwanda, named Rafiki. He’s famous for creating his own unique style, called “Choga” – which Naomie described as being similar to Cronk (the popular American hip hop style). She smiles wide when she explains how she met him. “My brothers have lots and lots of friends over at the house. Very many. Rafiki came over to see these other friends, and because I like him a lot, I asked ‘It’s you who sings?’ and he said yes and that’s how it started.” Her words are punctuated by an excited clap of her hands, a habit she has when she’s telling a good story. “I told him I wanted to learn how to play like him and he said it’s not hard. That he would teach me if I came over to his house.”
Now she goes to Rafiki’s house twice a week for lessons. It’s an ambitious schedule. But after a year of practice, she’s created a lot. “I write about young people and reality, what’s happening,” she says. Like “Faite Attention,” the song she submitted to be published on this blog. A moving entreaty to other young women to be strong and take care of themselves, “Faite Attention” is posted in its original Kinyarwanda version, a French translation Anomie also wrote, and an English translation written using Naomie’s French version. Naomie loves listening to music too. She says she has over 100 songs on her iPod, and that sitting in her room listening to her favourite artists like Justin Timberlake, Shakira, Rafiki, Fat Jo and Mario is her second favourite thing, after dancing. “When I dance, my whole being dances. It’s like a drug. Sometimes, there are so many things in my head. But when I hear music, I dance, and that’s it.”
But music is not the only passion in Naomie’s life. Her biggest dream is to become a doctor. She’s well suited for the profession, considering her favourite subjects in school are physics, chemistry, biology and math. “These subjects aren’t hard for me, because I like them. And I want to do them. I’m determined to do them.” She is already saving some money for university although she said that medical school in Rwanda isn’t very expensive. What she had to say about her progress in these subjects probably says a lot about whether or not her dream will become reality. “I’m really good at them. I really know my math.”
There was no report card waiting for Naomie on that last day of school though. She said she couldn’t write her exams this semester because of illness. “I had bad headaches,” she says. “But I took medicine and I’m better now. It was nothing too serious.” Her marks are good enough though, she explains, that the school will let her make up the tests she missed when the students return after this three week vacation.
With no marks to pick up, and most of her friends too shy to talk with the strange journalist around, Naomie offers to take me to another school to meet some of her other friends. Our walk to the neighbouring district takes hours.
“Is this what it’s like in Canada?” she asks. I look around at Naomie’s neighbourhood and wonder if it could pass for a typical Canadian one. I think it would require a lot of imagination. Imagine the street in your neighbourhood isn’t paved. Few if any cars pass, raising clouds of red dust. Imagine that only a few people in your neighbourhood owned a laundry machine. Picture what it would be like if only a few people on your street owned a TV or computer or books to keep them busy during the long evenings, and even fewer people had jobs. Shrink the houses to a quarter of their size, built with whatever’s available, packed close together, and rip up the shrubs, trees, and grass. Suppose the people in your neighbourhood had to walk a long way to get drinking water; imagine a limping seven-year old carrying two large, full water jugs up a steep hill. Dissolve the sidewalks and level the street lamps. That’s when Naomie’s neighbourhood would look more similar to yours.
The conversation moves once more to hobbies. Naomie says she likes to travel, and she does sports too. Her favourite sport is swimming. “I love to swim in lakes out in the country,” she says. It’s one of many moments throughout the day when I wish my tongue wasn’t so fettered by my inadequate French. I want to ask her more – do you love the slippery weightlessness of cool fresh water against your skin? Do you feel connected to your country’s landscape, as I do, when I watch tall pines slide past through the soft focus of a watery prism? Do you look up at the sky with your ears below the water and float in silence? Part of the land. Part of the country. Instead, all I can do is agree – “Oui, c’est tres bon de nager dans un lac.” Yes it’s very nice to swim in a lake.
The afternoon is waning. Noon’s hot dry blaze has softened and is blurring the edges of the hills sloping in the distance. I ask Naomie about her future. What does she think it will look like? “I hope that I will be a doctor, and have a family. I would not like to have lots of children – maybe two, because if you have lots of children here it can be a problem. It’s better in this country to have 3 or less.”
And what does she like best about living in Rwanda? “There is a lot of respect for girls and women. It’s better here for women here than in other countries,” she answers. A beat of silence passes while she chooses her next words. “And there’s no gangsters, no danger – it’s safe here. Because there is peace. I love it in Rwanda.”
(Special thanks to Morgan Faulkner who helped with some translation, and Susan Krashinsky, who acted as translator during the sit-down interview)
