My Prospects

After my visit last year to Guatemala – where every man, married or single, broke every conversation by “how old are you?” and “are you married?” -, I was expecting a surge of intimate questions in Africa as well. To my surprise, men in Rwanda tend to be somewhat more reserve, while the ones in Congo don’t need to ask anything. They just go straight for the grabs. (Ironically enough, I had to ‘complain” about the Congolese’ “sexual harassment” last week to my boss in Kigali, who is, actually…. Guatemalan. He has put all my Congo travel on hold until we ‘re-evaluate the situation’.)

Anyhow, yesterday I was out in the field, to an area called Bisate, just next to the Volcanoes National Park. We were visiting a school in order to inaugurate a new classroom block (which replaces the old mud structure that collapsed last year). While I was on tour with my camera, this teacher approaches me and asks about my age and marital status. I deducted two years, in order to not shock the guy two much, and I did say I was not married. The stunned look on his face was priceless. Probably not as much though as the one on my face, when he asked, in broken English, “And your prospects?!”

Aha, “my prospects”… In an instant I flew back to my apartment building in Cluj, where some five years ago a concerned neighbor was asking me “dar perspective ai?” I guess I could fool that guy, but this teacher had me hooked. So there I was, the white woman (I am reminded EVERY day of how different my skin color is), supposedly in control of the situation, totally humbled by the lack of prospects…

It is funny, indeed, how we (the whites) are viewed here. (If you are into political correctness, stop reading!) Everywhere you go, people in the streets will call you “mzungu” and start pointing at you. According to Wikipedia, the word in Swahili actually means “person of European descent who roams around aimlessly”. It came to signify “white”. So I can imagine that many locals would think that we are actually here without any prospects (personal ones, in the first place). Sort of, those guys who just couldn’t get a life in the white world and came down here to feel good about themselves. They all assume, however, that we are loaded (which is a funny concept, considering that many whites just volunteer here).

So yes, I predict a busy weekend coming up, since I will have to define some sort of prospects for myself, to be able to live up to the tough questions next time :-)