The White Card

There’s no uncertainty that being born white has inherent benefits. It’s a fact of life that I was aware of yet also blissfully ignorant of in New England because of the general lack of diversity, especially in Maine. After having lived in rural Rwanda for over a year it’s something that I’ve had to come to terms with. It’s not good that just because the color of my skin is lighter that I should be afforded more benefits than others who are genealogically different. Whenever people in Rwanda call me muzungu I tell them in Kinyarwanda that referring to me by that word shows that “ntabwo turi bamwe” (we are not the same) and it helps, at least superficially (pun intended), to demonstrate to them that although we come from different parts of the world that we are inherently the same. It doesn’t help though that the word muzungu can also refer to a rich person, thus making the word for white person and rich person synonymous, and making it more difficult to explain how we are the same when almost all villagers call themselves poor and all whites rich.

Even though I try hard to avoid signs of wealth and be equals with everyone here sometimes it’s not an option and it’s difficult to avoid, especially if it’s other people who treat me differently and afford me more benefits simply because I am white. Occasionally it’s something small like someone being nice and pushing through a crowd to get me the best seat on a bus. Rwandans are generous hosts and have great hospitality so it could just be a sign of them being nice to a visitor in their country. It’s a very communal culture and people look out for each other so in cases like this I don’t read too much into it and I am super grateful when it does happens because sitting in a squeeze bus packed 5 or 6 in a row that was built for 3 and it’s 80 degrees outside and the windows are closed because Rwandans don’t like having the windows open (dust getting in and whatnot), I’ll take whatever I can get. Other situations though make me feel like people genuinely think that because I am white that I am inherently better than they are.

Yesterday I went to see Paul Kagame speak at the hot springs near my site. My site-mate was going with her titulaire and the head nun so I did what seemed right to me, I invited myself and just rode on my site-mate’s coattails. This wasn’t about pulling the white card but just using my connections to get me to see the President because I don’t know when the next opportunity will be or if there will be another opportunity like this. I’ve at least met the nuns and they are really nice and said that they could bring me, and I asked my headmaster for permission to skip my one class that day so I could go and he said yes, so it’s not like I pulled any favors or asked for anything special. I was anticipating being sat a quarter mile away from the podium, squinting hard to see the small blur of a person that would be the President. Instead, I sat in a private tent 15 feet away from the President of Rwanda while my headmaster sat in the blazing sun farther away from him (though not as far as it would have been if I hadn’t been there, which I will explain).

Riding the coattails of my site-mate I got in the car with her and the nuns and we drove to the hot springs. When we got there, military men told us that we had to leave our phones in the car for security reasons. A bit strange, but whatever, anything to see Kagame. We made our way to the enormous line and I thought we’d be waiting for at least an hour if not more to get in through. Two minutes later we were at the front of the line because the nuns pushed their way through to the front and my site-mate and I followed them like lost puppies. From here I spotted my headmaster in another line ahead of us, where they were doing pat downs, but just letting some people ahead at a time to avoid crowding. However, because I was with the nuns I went through the VIP security checkpoint—a metal detector. Until this point I’ve just been following my site-mate and the nuns but from here on it became a combination of the head nun and her connections and my being white. My headmaster and some other people walked up behind us and were instantly questioned by security. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”—that kind of questioning. My headmaster actually had to explain that I was a volunteer and that he was a headmaster. We all went through security no problem though and got escorted to the mid-range VIP section, second row from the front, about 50ish feet from the podium where Kagame would speak. For the next hour and half we just sat under intense morning sun, crowding underneath an umbrella to shield us from the blaze of the sun, listening to some guy sound check the microphone for most of the time we sat there, saying “One…two…oonee…twoooooo” in a British accent. My site-mate and I played some rock-paper-scissors and thumb war. I made some joke about cunnilingus and was quickly informed that the nuns know Latin pretty well. K

After the cunnilingus debacle, a fellow PCV from the village the speech was hosted came by and explained that he was waiting in line to get in with his students when he was pulled aside and escorted through security and seated where we were. He said that he was actually excited to sit with his students but when security in Rwanda tells you to do something and go somewhere, you do it, no questions asked. At this point my site-mate, our fellow PCV, the head nun and I all got moved from where we were sitting to the private tent we had all been staring at and declaring what we’d do to get in there away from the sun. Apparently being white or the head nun was a sufficient prerequisite. The other nun and my headmaster however were left behind to bake underneath the noon sun. We were still sitting in the same plastic lawn chairs but this time it was underneath a giant tent/pavilion and we were given bottles of water. And sitting 15 feet away from where Kagame sat.

While I don’t know definitively that we would have been moved to inside the tent were we not with the nun (there was a Swedish woman who was moved from where she sat to inside the tent though…), I couldn’t help but feel that I was afforded a lot of special privileges on the basis of the color of my skin. It’s going to be a shock to my ego when I return to the whitest state in America and people don’t treat me differently because of how I look but it’s also going to be refreshing to be treated equally again.