Checheka!

Checheka is the command form of guchecheka, which in Kinyarwanda means to be quiet. Checheka is what mothers say to their children when they cry. Checheka is what the battered woman told her beat up twelve year old daughter when they came into the health center at 3AM after a domestic dispute. Checheka is what my local leaders told an old man during Genocide Memorial Week when he began to name names during a community meeting. Checheka is what a coworker and friend told me after I finally lost it following a staff meeting during which, once again, personal interests and gripes of a few were put before poor, sick patients, most of them children.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, it is very much not my job to be a whistle blower. In fact, when I have brought up corruption issues to my supervisors at Peace Corps they have specifically told me to stay away and essentially, checheka. This is of course, for my own safety and the safety of others in my community.

Lake Kivu

Those of you who know me (at all) know that it is not at all in my nature to checheka. My senior year of high school, I walked into the superintendent’s office to demand administrators give fewer, shorter speeches during graduation to allow for more student speakers. The request was denied, but brought up during said administrator’s long speech. After a Trustee dinner at Cornell, I walked up to University President and asked him why his table included only male students. The observation was noted, although I was not invited to the next dinner so I can’t tell you if it made any difference. I regret neither bold, unfruitful move. I am not shy about voicing my opinion. I have a blog after all, don’t I?

Rwandans, on the other hand, are extremely private and reserved. Keeping quiet about everything is very much part of the culture. “Rwandans, if they have something against you, they will take it to their grave!” a Burundi-raised Rwandan told a friend of mine. Besides being potentially dangerous, the probability of my foreign opinions making a difference on most larger issues here is very slim.

Still, I find myself extremely conflicted. Not only because checheka-ing goes completely against my very opinionated and vocal nature, but precisely because the culture of checheka-ing has caused literal devastation in Rwanda already.

Throughout April I am reminded how my countrymen sat by eighteen years ago and checheka-ed as almost one million people were slaughtered here.  There is no denying the horrendous role the United States and other European countries played (or didn’t play) during the 1994 Genocide. Yet, I also –quietly-- wonder how productive it is to be so critical about the silence of foreigners millions of miles away eighteen years ago, when right here in Rwanda, today, the culture remains one of silence and, at least outward, complacence.