It’s a small world
Musanze, Rwanda
I AM PHOTOGRAPHING three little boys sitting on a concrete wall outside my hotel in Musanze, Rwanda. They are neatly dressed alike in what I assume are school uniforms, white button-down shirts, dark blue pants. They have jaunty white caps perched on their heads. One is wearing a pair of little sunglasses. They look like first or second graders to me, but sometimes it’s hard to tell in Africa.
“Okay guys, give me a thumbs up,” I say happily. They comply, smiling for the camera. I show them the camera display so they can see a picture of themselves. They grin. “How old are they?” I ask a woman sitting next to them. Perhaps she is the mother of one of them, or an aunt. She answers “48, 58, 7.”
What?? I smile blankly at her and assume she didn’t understand my question. Musanze is up in the mountains, not as cosmopolitan as Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. I don’t think she speaks English.
I take one more photo of the cute little boys and get in the Land Rover driven by my guide, Mohammed, for the 2-hour ride back to Kigali. As we pull out of the hotel parking lot, Mohammed casually mentions that they are Batwa. “Pygmies,” he says, “and the hotel pays them to pose for foreign guests.”
I know about the Batwa tribe. I am mortified. Two of these little boys are actually adults, my age! Only one is a child. I treated them like kids, talking down to them, assuming they were six-year-old schoolchildren. If I had known they were adults, I would have acted a little more dignified.
I hope they don’t take it personally. I hope they dismiss me as just another stupid tourist.
