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The Peripatetics (Gypsy) of Rwanda 11/01/2009

Middle Africa’s poor country Rwanda’s local people Batwas are the new guests of Cİngeneyiz.org web site with their life conditions, the problem that they are facing, their local population and economical relations. Cingeneyiz.org will be reporting news from different geographies and introducing unfamiliar commercial nomads to its readers.

Batwas,- known as forest people in local language- are known as the poorest group of Rwanda's. Rwanda which means “Country of one thousand hills" is hosting approximately 30 thousand Batwas which is %1 of the population. Batwas who have been living as hunter and collectors for centuries were banished because of two groups' migrate to the area that they were living. Batwas who are still living in the forests are struggling against the pressure and violence of cowman origin tribes “Hutu”s and another tribe "Tutsi"s. Because of the war between those two tribes, Batwas lost 10000 people. In this war Hutus murdered 1 million Tutsis in 100 days in 1994.

Batwas, who are hunting and collecting to survive have professions on basket making, pottery, herbal medicine making. They also do jobs such as musicianship, begging, farmhands. Rwanda society’s attitude to Batwas is very familiar; Batwas are considered as barbaric, ignorants, and abominable and beyond all these they are behaved as "half-human”s. Also they are exposed to a systematic discrimination in the governmental institutions. Most of the Batwas don’t have an ID card and when they apply to the register office they face lots of bureaucratic diffuculties and so they lose their right to use health and education opportunities.