I am from RWANDA! A beautiful country in the East African Region.
Disclaimer: I love my country, but I can’t stand the following.
Aerial view of Kacyiru, my neighborhood in Kigali, Rwanda.9
- Expensive weddings and related traditions.
I won’t go through all the traditions surrounding the Rwandan wedding. But just know that it is way too many to bear. We have a traditional wedding, civil wedding, a church wedding and a few other traditions before and after the whole wedding saga.
The whole thing is crazy-time consuming and money demanding. Usually, people have so much time on their hands for such affairs, but usually the money is the problem. How do people afford these expenses?
- By harassing their friends, acquantances, and other family members for donations.
- In Rwanda, you get invited from a friend of a friend’s weddings. It is crazy! When you get invited, they want to come to a series of weddings meetings, which is nothing more than solliciting money from every single soul who has a job. For those unemployed or too young to work, they are expected to help out with logistics and all that!
- Many do take out bank loans for wedding’s expenses. This is sometime to shine and show off to your friends and family. So, people start off their honeymoon in loads of amount of debts. As a financial counselor, my advising ain’t shit here!
- Reducing emotional and financial stress is not negotiable. People really go big on these weddings. I don’t understand how and why this lady needs 9–10 bridesmaids ( see picture above)!
Our GDP per capita ( PPP) is about $ 1,800.00 ( 2016 census). But, people’s wedding budgets go from $ 20,000.00 to about $50,000.00, depending on the level of education and the show off that people want to express.
By no means, I am NOT talking to the rich people who can afford to spend big on their weddings. At the end of the day, a wedding is a big part of the Rwandan culture. It is a good institution and I support what it stands for and all that. What surprise me is the extent to which people are willing to go when they don’t have what society expects them to have in terms of resources.
Those who have businesses centered around weddings are the real winners in this deal. They must be making a “ killing” with these weddings. Professional Photography and video, matching clothes ( dresses and suits), wedding planners, professional traditional dancers and many other traditions we have to do at each ceremony. Some of my lady friends seem to have a wedding to attend every saturday. Nothing can be planned on saturday with them. Just weddings, only!
Lots of couples start to plan their weddings with only 10–30% of the expected budget. The rest 70-90% comes from donations and loans.
As a “money-smart” person, I have lost faith in humanity on this one. I don’t even bother telling people no more. It is not even May yet, but I have already donated to about 5-people already. Only, I was close to two of the five ( a friend and an acquaintance). I have two more coming up in May and June.
Since I don’t have time to go to their meetings or participate in their “ Whatsapp” wedding chats, I just donate to get them off my back, literally! By the end of this year, I plan to see how much I will spend on wedding donations.
I am averaging one $ 50-$60 donation each month so far. My estimates will probably be around $ 600 to $ 700 this year. This is our nominal GDP ( 2016 census). I am going to use my “calculations” for educational purposes hopefully. Haha..
2. Very conservative culture and the peer-pressure of conformity.
The culture expects you to follow some unnecessary and yet acceptable norms. If you are different, you will be criticized.
No idea of privacy. They will talk about you and get into your personal business like it’s theirs. Make a mistake and do not give a lavish wedding to them, you will be the story of the month. They will comment on everything! In the end, many have no choice but to conform.
I.e. You are supposed to believe in a god ( by default). If you don't, at least pretend. If you go public about your atheism, they will take it personal. People cannot mind their business here.
The rest of this list is related to a poor ( university) education system and a mediocre career advising system. They still work as if we are in the 1970’s. The sector has not evolved at all.
It is like learning to use a typewriter ( today) with all the computers around.
The whole system can be summarized by the following.
- Lack of entrepreneurial drive ( thanks to a terrible education system).
Go to university, graduate, and wait to get a government job. Meanwhile, the public sector can only employ 7 to 10 % of the graduates available on the marketplace. Young graduates cannot find employment and have no idea of how to start small and grow from there. Most of them sit down and hope that they will jump to the top without climbing any stairs. I don’t understand!
3. Looking down on some career professions: Blue collar jobs versus white collar jobs.
University graduates want office jobs in high-rise buildings. They want to wear a suit and a tie for males and cute pant suits or dress for females. Few wants hands on jobs where they get their hands dirty. Terrible to see a civil engineer who want to sit in office all day, working on their computer!
Getting your hands dirty is looked down upon. Even if you make a good living. Nobody want to be a plumber, electrician, construction worker, and other rewarding careers in the blue-collar sector. I myself started from the bottom. I was a street vendor in Kigali selling sugar canes, peanuts, and all sorts of stuff. This was before graduating from high school.
My high school classmates used to make so much fun of me. No girl would have dated a street vendor like me! Coming from a low-income family, I was determined to do whatever it takes to put “food on the table” and get out of poverty. I did not like asking for money for anything. Upon graduating from high school, I got a tutoring job at a local high school, which upgraded me to $ 100.00 a month. This was a lot of money for me back in April, 2008.
From there, I kept climbing the economic ladder, one step at a time. From High school, to college, to grad school, working and hustling. Today, I am “balling” and I make no apologies enjoying the fruits of my labor.
All the hard work I put in more than a decade ago, started paying off BIG TIME. But my fellow Rwandan millenials do not get this process. I want to tell them that there is nothing shameful about work if it pays you, but they will never understand it.
4. Mediocre education System ( in University).
Training job seekers ( employees) for non-existing jobs instead of job creators ( employers). Old school mentality from the 1970's! Our education is modeled upon colonial style of memorizing theories and facts, but not on critical thinking and analysis. It is at the heart of all the problems we have in higher education.
Funny, yet sad example:
A graduate with a degree is Accounting spends two to three years looking for a job with the government. Meanwhile, every quarter, businesses fail to file their taxes on-time because they are not enough experts in the field to support them with tax laws and other regulations.
This accounting graduate should be taking advantage of this opportunity. But, they would rather be look for a “safe job”! Whatever that means. What is a “ safe job” if you don’t own sh*t. I want to tell them: “ If you don’t own it, it ain’t safe. It is not yours. You can get laid off or get fired any day”. But they will never listen.
5. Intellectuals and their obsession with foreign languages.
Those who went to went to university want to show it off. They want to be the next “ Molière” in French or “Shakespeare” in English. You would think that some of them work for the “ Academie Française” or some institute of Arts and Linguistics. We speak the native language, Kinyarwanda, and these two ( French and English) are learned in school.
You make a small grammatical mistake on TV or somewhere public, they laugh at you and make fun of you big time.
I want to tell them that foreign colonial languages don't create jobs. They don’t pay bills or put food on the table. I want to tell them that Chinese people are doing better with their Chinese. And that the Germans did just fine with their German. Sh*t, even the Ethiopians have been doing really well with their local languages ( Amharic and Oromo) only. They will never get it.
Meanwhile they cannot speak their mother tongue well. They mix it with all sorts of languages, French and English, mostly. They can barely finish a complete sentence in the local language ( Kinyarwanda). They speak their language badly, but surprisingly, they don't seem to mind as much as they do for French and English.
I wish some of these can change, but I would be lying to myself. They won’t be changing anytime soon, certainly my number 1 on the list ( lavish weddings and unnecessary traditions). This might be an African thing, perhaps! I don’t know!
Respect!
Didier Champion