Who Would Have Known

This past Saturday was the last Saturday of the month. On every last Saturday of the month herein Rwanda they have what is called Umuganda. This is essentially a national community service day, and it is serious, everyone does it.
In Kigali the city is divided into sections or divisions and then each of those is divided into smaller cells. This makes it easy to know what you have to do. Each 'cell' has community leaders and they decide what people should do, so it is normally not everyman for themselves. Now since I live at a boarding school I have missed out on the action. Well I am lucky enough to have great friends who are willing to let me stay at their house and so I can then do community service the next morning..haha..
On Friday night we went to bed semi-early because we had been told to be ready at 7 am and we weren't sure what kind of work we would have to do. Last month I was told they picked up garbage around the neighborhood.
Well 7 am came 'round and no knock on the door...around 9.30 that knock happened. The neighbor asked us if we had a machete like tool(I had never seen such a tool in the U.S., it is like a machete, but it is longer and at the bottom it is slightly bent...and it is not a sickel).. Of course my friends said that no they did not, and the neighbor said thats okay we will find one for you to borrow. Hearing this I immediately decided a camera was needed.. Oh I forgot to mention that the tool is used to cut grass.
Then we set off. Walked about 20 minutes and ended up real close to Lyce di Kigali(where my friends teach). It ends up we missed the work, but we had made it in time for the monthly meeting(the work for that month was to cut grass around the roads and areas not in use). Being the three white people at this meeting made it easy for fellow teachers of my friends to find us and they offered to translate so we would know what the meeting was about.
At first the meeting was discussing how at the end of the meeting they would be holding local elections(well over 100 people were in attendence). Then they went on to discuss local community issues. High ranking people in the community got to go to the 'front' and talk. One of those people was the headmaster of Lyce di Kigali(note that Lyce di Kigali is the number one public school in the country and has just over 1000 students total[which is alot]). This man is highly respected and when he spoke, people listened. He discussed the drug use at the school, and how the one poorer area of their community(the slums) was selling drugs to the children and how we as a community can not tolerate that. He also said that students try to 'escape' from school and they are hidden in the slums, which also cannot be tolerated. He then shared a story about how one of their most promising students, he had scored the highest on the O-level exam(after 3 yrs of secondary school), but then he fell into drugs and now has fallen in rank.
After the headmaster spoke a few other people got up and spoke.[note we were all just standing in a horseshoe with the speaker in the middle/front]

This is when the story becomes hard.
A woman steps to the front. She speaks shortly and then a murmur goes through the crowd. A man is then called to the front. My friends and I are then told in almost a whisper that the woman is accusing the man of sexually violating her. My friends and I just looked at each other.
The woman begind to speak. Even though I could not understand a word she said, I could hear the emotion in her voice. The woman even began to cry. but she did not stop speaking, she kept on going.
We were told that she was saying that after it had happened she had reported the act to her local leader and nothing was done about it, hence why she was now here infront of all this prominent community members to tell her story. Throughout her story the crowd reacted to what she was saying, but I have no idea which 'side' they were on. I also want to mention that the entire time she was speaking, the man was standing maybe 3 feet away from her.
After she was done, the man had a chance to speak. He denied that it happened.
Then came the local leader that had been told initially. He said that it had been investigated but their was no physical evidence, so it was decided that it did not happen.
After he finished speaking, another man started to speak.

At this point my friend got a little light-headed because of the heat and the fact that we were packed together and didn't really get fresh air. Her husband suggested we leave, and I was okay with that. We walked a little bit away so my friend could sit and catch her breathe. That is when we started to discuss what had just happened.
It was like we could not believe that had just happened. They told me at last month's meeting they had just discussed what future projects they would work on for the community service days...
This was obviously a special case, but still.
My friend pointed out that he had been in awe that all these people had been holding the machete-like tools during this 'discussion.'

A few questions came to my mind, and I will ask them of you.
I have always heard that in the United States it is hard to get women to speak about their assualts, let alone accuse the person who is standing near by, so how much courage did that woman have??
I have also heard that many women feel shame about what happened to them,so they do no want their neighbors/friends to know, well this woman stood up and told the most prominent members of her community what had happened to her, so how much courage did that woman have to overcome the shame?? (because surely by nightfall everyone not at the meetings would know about it)
Also knowing that she had already reported it and nothing had happened, she spoke out again, how much courage did that take??


I know there is a chance that the woman was lieing, but either way I will never forget the emotion that poured from her voice as she spoke; she was either a great actress or a woman deeply wounded.

And to think we had started the day out expecting to do some work, and instead we end up hearing a woman accusing a man of sexually violating her, who would have known.