Today, while I was waiting to set up an appointment with the Executive Secretary of NURC, the woman helping me asked if I was a girl or a woman. In the United States, I would have surely said woman, or at least young woman. But in Rwanda, I am considered a girl.
Youth, in Rwanda, ranges from 14 up through 35. One is not considered a man or a woman until they complete or attain certain things. I have been told a boy does not become a man until he has a job, a house, and a wife and a girl does not become a woman until she marries and has a child. As I was sitting in an office in Rwanda, I answered that I was a girl because I neither had children or a husband. The woman smiled back and said I was very smart.
But this made me think back to an interesting conversation I had while doing research for my curriculum. A study, not yet published, found a profound despair among rural youth in Rwanda today. The researcher interviewed rural youth who, for whatever reason, were not able to complete secondary school. Given Rwanda's economic situation, and land scarcity, transitioning to manhood for this socio-economic group is becoming less and less feasible. Without secondary education, along with job and land scarcity, boys are unable to build the financial capital necessary for constructing a house. Boys cannot marry until they build a house. And, if boys can't marry, then girls don't really have anyone to marry. Hence, the despair.
