In the minority

The sidewalk of a non-litigious society.

I stand out in Rwanda, though not as much as I'd thought. There is a lot of development happening over here, and it's mainly being funded by Chinese companies. New beautifully paved roads are popping up overnight, and the miles of sidewalks accompanying them are built of meticulously laid, patterned bricks. It's not a surprise then that much of the new construction reminds me of what you find in parts of Guangzhou. The similarities extend all the way down to the widespread use of papaya trees and purple-leaved succulents in the landscaping.

Unlike in other parts of the world, the terms of the foreign development contracts keep the majority of the profits in Rwanda, while requiring a high reliance on local labor. These are concessions American and European companies were not willing to make, and so China is really getting a strong foothold. So far, the relationship appears to be going well, as I am greeted very warmly by everyone. No one really gets that I'm an American.

Still, there are far fewer Asian people than traditional muzungu here on the streets. While I am interesting enough to gawk at, I am apparently still not as captivating as people of European descent. A white colleague told the story of being packed next to a woman and her friend on one of the crowded, public minibuses. The woman rather boldly stroked my colleague's hand a few times before telling her friend, "I wanted to touch one before I died." "What does it feel like?" the friend asked. "Like a ripe banana," the woman said.

And now, to Rwanda

I am going to Rwanda. This upcoming trip came about through my work with an organization everyone ought to know about--Women's Equity in Access to Care & Treatment, or WE-ACTx for short.

It's an unwieldy name for an organization that manages to run an unwieldy number of incredible projects that aim to improve the lives of women and children in Rwanda. There are income generation collectives employing women who are disabled, physically and mentally, and are otherwise unemployable. Clinics staffed with physicians who provide critically needed health care. Yogis that run programs for the patients. And attorneys who counsel, advocate, and educate on the behalf of otherwise voiceless souls. This is where I come in.

We've been writing a book on children's legal rights that's now in its final phases. Rather than creating a theoretical book for academics and policy wonks destined to die as a doorstop, we tried to take a different tack and write the book for children. So, it starts with the story of a little frog who loses her mother and learns about her rights under the law to her father's support. More substantive sections on topics such as inheritance rights, filing for assistance for school fees, and reporting abuse follow.

The question is, how do you make something like a book useful in circumstances like these? In Rwanda, children without a mother and father make up nearly 9 percent of the total population. That's nearly 900,000 children cooking for themselves, working, learning how to pay for health care, fighting neighbors for the right to live in the house their parents left for them, and telling stories about their mother to siblings before turning out the light. Child-headed households in rural areas face bleaker prospects still. How do you explain all the things that their parents were supposed to have been able to teach? How do you urge them to recognize rights that exist only on paper? How much is fair to ask of a nation that was only just reborn? I keep reminding myself, if this book offers comfort to someone who picks it up, that would be something. It would be something where there had been nothing.