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c h A P t e r f i v e Striving for Adulthood All these guys here can’t afford to marry a woman because they can’t build a house. male and female youth are failing to get married. Male youth, age twenty-four the roof tile problem is so big. i started a house but it fell down. what can i do? Male youth, age twenty-two youth are marrying late these days because they can’t afford to buy mabati [iron roofing sheets] for their houses. if a youth builds a house with a banana leaf roof instead, he’s humiliated. Adult man, age forty-five there are no youth able to marry in my umudugudu, even when they are old enough to do so. this is due to the lack of roof tiles. this leads to boys meeting girls in the bush. the girls get pregnant, and there are children born outside of marriage. i can say this about girls here: they are not getting legally married. umudugudu-level government official Rural Rwanda is a tough place to come of age.The pressure on youth to meet social expectations is great,and the consequences of failing are harsh.The hard edge of what appears to be an inflexible part of Rwandan culture is illuminated by the following quote from an executive secretary of a rural sector:“You can’t become a man without building a house.To be a woman,you have to marry.If a woman produces children without a husband,then she’s a prostitute.And if she reaches twenty-eight years old without getting married, then she will be rejected by youth society. She will become an old lady and not a woman.”As this chapter describes,findings from the research demonstrated that a majority of unmarried male youth are striving to build houses and most female youth are waiting to get married in a socially acceptable union. The odds against most youth achieving these goals weigh heavily against C H A P T E R F I V E 116 them. For female youth, the window of opportunity for marrying (and obtaining social recognition as a woman) is exceedingly narrow. From the start, many young Rwandan women will never be able to marry,since there may be as many as 12 percent more women than men in Rwanda (Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Sports n.d.: 9), and the prohibition against polygamy (until recently a common occurrence in rural Rwanda,particularly in northern areas) is strongly enforced.In addition,Rwandan authorities are unwavering about the minimum legal marriage age of twenty-one. In addition, while the executive secretary quoted above stated that a female youth must marry by age twentyeight , many of the Rwandan men and women I informally asked about this point stated that age twenty-eight was much too high for a rural Rwandan female. As one man explained, “Even a twenty-five-year-old [female youth] is too old for most young men.” In other words, a female youth may have as few as four years to marry legally. But the availability of eligible husbands is seriously limited by much more than the fact that there are fewer Rwandan men than Rwandan women. A male youth must build a house before he can prepare for a proper marriage to a female youth. Few male youth who were interviewed believed that they would be able to ever complete their houses. The challenge of male and female adulthood usually begins, and too often ends, with discussions of roofing.The fallout from this issue was remarkably significant: without finding the means to build a roof,male youth cannot build their house.If they cannot build their house,then male and female youth will find it difficult if not impossible to ever enter a formal marriage,which means marrying in a way that society would approve (that is, in a large sanctioned wedding). If youth cannot marry in such a way, frustration, humiliation, and perhaps ruin ensue. To youth and adults in rural areas, the lack of roofing connected, ultimately, to informal, live-in marriages, illegitimate children, urban migration, education, crime, prostitution, aids, and to a particularly perilous fate: becoming an inzererezi (wanderer), which is, essentially, to be homeless and thus a social outcast.The downward spiral that youth face, and their difficult quest for adulthood, was detailed by an umudugudu leader we interviewed in a rural area: The situation of the...

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