How would you like to be offended today FAT WHITE WOMAN?

First thing this morning I went to see one of the senior management about being a wage check from Sept and Oct 2006. This has been an ongoing issue since February of this year and frankly I’m getting hacked off with asking.

While I’m waiting to see him, I see an old colleague…both in the sense that he’s much older than me and that he has left the institution for another job elsewhere. I remember once having a conversation with him about how Rwanda wasn’t the friendliest place sometimes and how I was trying to introduce a recently arrived Russian academic around town to help out. I can’t really remember how that conversation went but he figured out that I can speak some of the local language and addresses me as Mzungukazi, literally meaning White Woman. We haven’t seen each other since he left for the new job and when he greets me with it, I let it go even though it is an objectification of me, and depending on the tone can carry the same offensive potential as NIGGER. I don’t think he meant in that way, perhaps he just forgot my name.

Later, after I have started to read the book I brought (yes, it can take long enough to see senior mgt that its worth bringing reading material) and he has had a few other conversations with people floating through the secretary’s office/waiting room, he turns to me again.

“Well Mzungukazi,” and this time there is a trace of put-down in the appellation, “Bite?”

(a normal greeting in Kinyarwanda, like ‘how are you’)

“I’m fine”, I reply in English sourly, so that he knows he’s missteped

“So, how much Kinyarwanda do you know? What have you learned?”

Fuck that, I think, I’m not willing to be your little performing bear today, not after you’ve offended me. Many times I get the impression that people, especially those who are bilingual, don’t really want to converse with me in Kinyarwanda so much as see me doing my little party trick of trotting out some phrases. Sometimes I play, sometime I don’t. This is stark contrast to many people, esp. in rural areas who don’t speak English or French and are genuinely delighted to be able to communicate with a Foreigner. Even then, most people will keep going with more and more complicated Kinyarwanda until you finally admit you don’t understand them. They seem unable to feel satisfied unless they get to you a point where you are lost.

That guy gets the message I think and leaves me to my book. A little later the accountant from my former workplace comes into the office. I haven’t seem him in almost a year and we exchange pleasantries, which end in the very typical Rwanda statement “And you have gotten very fat!”. I think to myself ‘And you still look like a Somali refugee kid on Slimfast’, but I don’t reply to the comment.

You might be forgiven for thinking me uncharitable and that in Rwanda as in many cultures, telling people they look fat is a compliment. But they know very well is not in Europe, as the following conversation I had with a colleague in my first job in Rwanda shows:

“Oh, my you have gotten so fat” (This was true by anyone standards, I put on 10kg in my first year here)

“When you go back to Europe they will reject you, because they don’t like fat women there!”

Thanks friend!

On reflection, I'm not even that sure Rwanda is fat friendly. There have been a couple of instances in my time here which made me wonder. Like the only time I tried to date a Rwandan guy, who told me I was too heavy and he would pay for my gym subscription. Or the time I went to have a tennis lesson with a friend of mine who is a member at the Nyaruturama tennis club. Some Rwandan's were looking on at the lesson, having their beers and waiting for the court presumably. After they told my friend that he should put his "girlfriend" in aerobics first.

Fuckers! Its pretty obvious to me that for the great and good of Kigali society, fat is no longer a culturally appropriate compliment.