What not to wear!!!
Whilst we in the west follow fashion and try to look our best to suit the occasion those in poorer countries, like Rwanda, wear what they can afford – and often this means second-hand clothes.
So it’s amazing to see people wearing what we may think of as ‘innapropriate’ clothing. One day I saw a virile young man striding about the town wearing a pale pink t-shirt saying ‘Campus Girl’. Then there was the young unmarried mother in the rural hilltop village of Shyira, shunned by her family, sporting a top that said ‘Alley Cat’. I expect she was attracted by the cartoon character on the t-shirt, not realising the irony of the logo,
We were discussing all this with a young VSO teacher, Sarah Wragg, on a long bus journey from Butare to the capital Kigali one day. She said that she was around town one day and saw a young child dressed head to foot in a Munchkin outfit. We reckoned her parents had either been given it or she had bought it from the market and felt she looked ‘cute’. And another child, about nine-years-old, Sarah saw in the poor village where she was working, was wearing a t-shirt that said, ‘I have the p****y, I have the power’. She had tried to explain to the girl’s parents that it was totally inappopriate, but, as she said, they just didn’t get it.
Sarah also saw a man in the street and thought he was the police. But on closer inspection she saw he was dressed head to foot in a scout leader’s uniform, badges and all. It was the badges that had fooled her. “I guess he felt he looked smart and authoritative,” she said.
All over Rwanda we experienced men wearing what we would consider ‘women’s’ tops, and women wearing ‘men’s’ tops, but often family members just swap clothes and wear what is available. Then there are clothes that children wear that are just too big for them. We see children with lovely dresses with the waistline down round their thighs and the hems just about dragging on the floor, dresses with zips coming apart from the cloth, and little boys in church, in smart suits, where the sleeves have been rolled up and the baggy trousers turned up at the hem. One just has to admire these people who try their best to look smart, even though they have minimal resources.
Backpackers from the west, by necessity, often look scruffy, as living out of a bag means you cannot always be smart. Rwandans feel that we should make more of an effort, as they do, not realising that the constraints of living on a minimal and practical wardrobe means sacrificing some finesse in our dress sense.
The business suits we had taken out for the family had small Sefton Borough Council logos on them, which featured the ‘Molyneux’ cross - a cross that had been ‘borrowed’ from an ancient landed family in Sefton, under which was placed two wavy lines to depict the sea, Sefton being a coastal borough. Bright, the eldest son, 22, and Gloria, 18, had decided, out of the six siblings, that the apparel was to be for them, and they both looked extremely smart. We were worried that they would be put off by the presence of the logos. But conversely they were thrilled with them. Said Faith, 16, “We love the badges.” To them, being a very devout family, as many Rwandans are, the badges looked liked religious crosses, and very appropriate for them to wear. Bright wore his suit to church on Easter Sunday and when Gloria went back to school she wore her suit to show all her friends. Said Venny, the mother, “this is the first suit she has ever owned and she is thrilled with it.” And last year Bright had had to borrow a suit from a friend when he did his final presentation at the end of his two-year technology course and was happy now to have one of his own, ready for his graduation in July.
Even those with just a few swathes of cloth to wrap round their bodies, with matching headgear, look smart and appropriate for their culture. Being poor does not always mean looking poor. And Rwandans pride themselves on always looking smart whatever their means.
As Venny, our host said, Rwandan’s always say they must dress to ‘die like a soldier’ meaning that if they were suddenly to die they should look smart – like a soldier. I expect it’s our version of always wearing clean underwear in case we are run over and taken to hospital.
So, even if they do have to buy, or are given, second-hand clothing from the west, they always make an effort to look the part – even if sometimes, through our western eyes, they get it ‘wrong’.
I WAS AWAKE FOR MY OPERATION!
(Sun 04/03)
Me and Sir Jimmy Savile
(Thu 03/11)
What not to wear!!!
(Wed 15/06)
Rwandan adventure Our sponsored child
(Mon 06/06)
Rwandan Adventure - Lunch Was Alive!
(Mon 23/05)
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