The Orgasm that Created a Lake

From 2017-18, my partner and I spent some time in Rwanda and it was a year full of cultural lessons. One of my favorite moments in Rwanda, being a sex ed teacher, unsurprisingly had to do with the topic of sex.

The scene: I’m at a yoga retreat far from the city, sitting on top of a hill surrounded by rolling tea plantations and hills that disappear into the distance. The sun is shining, we started the day with several hours of great yoga, we’re surrounded by beautiful nature—we’re feeling good.

I’m shelling peas with a group of fellow yogis, retreat staff, and yoga instructors—a good mix of foreigners and Rwandans, men and women. We have a huge pile of bean vines in front of us, ripped directly from the center’s garden plot, and the locals have taught the foreigners how to shell the peas that we’ll be eating for dinner. Relaxed by the simple, repetitive act, we begin the most candid conversation about sex I’ve had in Rwanda. It began with this story about Lake Kivu, the huge lake guarding Rwanda’s western border with Congo:

“Does anyone know the story of how Lake Kivu was formed? No? Well, long ago, the king and queen ruled this land. They were happy enough but the queen was never quite satisfied with their sex life. One day the king went off to war, leaving the queen alone. The queen gave into her curiosity and slept with one of her servants she’d had her eye on for awhile. To her surprise, the servant gave her the biggest orgasm she’d had in her entire life, so big that it created Lake Kivu.”

This was confusing to us westerners (how does an orgasm create enough liquid for a lake, even in a legend?) until we found out that female ejaculation—known as kunyara in the local language—is common and expected throughout Rwanda, at least according to this crew.

We found this quite interesting since Rwandan culture also has well-known proverbs stating that men have complete power over their wives and can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Yet somehow, this culture also has a prioritization for female orgasms. In fact, we were told that there’s a word in the local language, Kinyarwanda—gifubwa—that is used to describe the action of a woman finding another man to “finish” her if the first man has a consistent problem with pre-ejaculating. The exact translation of gifubwa is when you’re cooking and the electricity goes out yet the food still needs to be finished.

We also found out that it’s much easier to use English or French when talking about sex than Kinyarwanda. There aren’t as many direct translations in Kinyarwanda for anatomy (like the word for a woman’s private parts is agapipi—sound it out to hear “pee pee”. Aga is added to make a word pejorative, like little or small. So the word in Kinyarwanda for a woman’s vulva is literally “that little place where pee comes out”). Also, Kinyarwanda is meant to be a more reserved, polite, traditional language—not to be used describing sexual acts—making it a difficult language to use when wanting to teach sex ed.

While teaching youth in Rwanda about their reproductive health, I also learned about a practice called gukuna when I was asked by a student “Why do women pull their lips?” My translator had to help me culturally interpret that one, and I found out that vaginal lip pulling is a common practice for Rwandan girls going through puberty. Gukuna imishino or guca imyeyo literally means ‘to cut brooms’ – girls used to go out in the bushes in a group, and when asked where they were going they would reply that they were going out in the bush to look for grass, which they would turn into brooms. This was because men were not supposed to know what they were actually doing.

An example of the broom, not an example of a girl who necessarily practices labia elongation.

The actual process involves a girl gently pulling her inner labia outwards so that after awhile, the general shape remains unchanged but they protrude down, away from the body. This practice is done to create more pleasure for the woman during sexual intercourse; larger labia are easier to find/touch and can cover more of the penis to experience increased sexual pleasure for both partners.

Turns out I wasn’t the only person interested in these cultural practices: a movie has been produced highlighting the practice as well as discussing the emphasis on female orgasm and ejaculation. Little did I know that traveling to Rwanda would introduce me to more sexually progressive practices than found in most of America!