Genocide Memorial

April 7^th- April 13^th was a week of mourning in Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. This year’s theme was “Remember the Genocide Committed against the Tutsi: Support the Truth and Restore our Dignity.” The mourning will last for 100 days to mirror the hundred days of mass killings that happened in 1994. During the genocide memorial week, everyone in my village attended memorials everyday. We meet in the afternoon for several hours to hold discussions, about the history of Rwanda and also the recovery process and how Rwandan is moving forward. In the evening we all met and had a bonfire and heard testimonials from survivors, listened to songs, prayed and remember the lives lost in the genocide. The first day of the memorial on April 7^th  we walked around the village and stopped at various locations that atrocities happened we ended the memorial at a river which was used to dispose of bodies of those killed in the genocide. The last day of the memorial genocide survivors whose family members were lost in Mamba Village ( the village I live in) were invited to come back to there hometown and pay respect to there lost family members. There was a church service at the memorial in Mamba, genocide survivors gave testimonials and a re-burials were conducted of bodies found in mass grave sites. During the genocide in 1994 the international community stood back and watched but did nothing to help prevent or stop the mass executions. The United Nations has now designated April 7^th as an international day of reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda. To remember the victims of the genocide reflect on the crime of genocide and other related crimes against humanity and resolve to “Never Again” allow genocide to occur.

(  For those who do not know the history of the 1994 genocide I suggest the following books The Graves Are Not Yet Full by: Berkley Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld.  My Father, Maker of the Trees( How I survived the Rwandan Genocide) by: Eric Iruzumugable or movies  “Sometimes in April,” 2005 HBO, “Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda,” 2004 Frontline,  “100 Days,” 2001 Broadcast Feature Facilities Ltd. )

Women's Day

March 8^th was International Women’s Day.  It was celebrated in my community by the school children putting on a parade, singing songs, and different neighborhoods dancing for the community. It talked about the importance of education for women and the role of development for women. Skits were put on showing the importance of gender equality. It encouraged families to enroll both girls and boys in school, because in the past it was common for girls to stay at home to cook, fetch water and care for younger siblings (which their are a lot off). At the close of the speeches and dancing the celebration was ended with the community playing a soccer game and volleyball game. The school teachers competed against the hospital employees.  (The school, the market and the hospital are the three main establishments in my village.)

Celebrity Status

My students along with many of the people in my village treat me as a celebrity.  Many of them have not seen a white person before and so I am constantly being followed around and stared at. “Muzungu” is the Kinyarwanda word for white person and almost always when I leave my house someone sees me and screams “muzungu” which is followed by the little pitter patter of small feet and I soon have a small parade of children following me. The majority of the children just stare at me in amazement but some are afraid. Parents always want to show their children the “muzungu” that lives in their village so many children are brought to look at me, and although most seem to enjoy looking at me  their have been a few that have burst into tears at the site of this strange white person.  Because of my new infamous status I am constantly having visitors or being invited to peoples homes. The invitation normally consists of a glass of milk or tea and a few minutes of my broken Kinyarwanda followed by staring and sitting in silence.  When I run in the mornings I slowly gain more and more children and by the time I finish and arrive at my home I normally have to turn around and wave bye to about 25 children that I collected along the way.  

The first trimester of teaching

I have just finished teaching my first trimester of “school”, although it technically started January 10th it seems as if things started off at a slower pace then expected.  Around six weeks into the first term was the time that things began to get serious.  On my first day at 7:00 am the time that school starts, I showed up to find the school grounds empty, a few minuets later a few students trickle in and the headmaster came. By 7:30 a few more teachers had arrived and some more students but it did not look like any class was going to take place. I found out that the first three days are for the second sitting of exams, all the students who failed their final exams get to take them a second time. Also the students who are just entering into Senior One (the equivalent of High School) must pass a national exam taken at the end of Primary Six. Although January 10th was the official first day of school as announced by the Ministry of Education, that same Ministry of Education had not given the results to the Senior One students so no students who would be entering Senior One could attend school yet. The first week I taught a few classes of students from mixed grades/classes and we also worked on the class schedule. By the end of the second week the students in Senior Two had a class schedule and where organized into different classes.  It wasn’t until about the 5th week of school that I got to meet my Senior One students. Once the Senior One students arrived at school the school decided to finish building their classrooms so it took about another two weeks before I was able to teach them any lessons. Once things seemed to be following a schedule and both students and teachers were showing up on a regular basis, the surprise days off began. School would be canceled for many different reasons, the students put on a play, their was a soccer game, a holiday, or the grass was getting too long so they pulled the students out of class and gave them machetes to cut the grass and called it agriculture. The school had no set calendar of days off or days when class was canceled for a school activity, at least to me it always came as a surprise. 
 Although teaching is very challenging and the students do not speak English at the level that they should, they try and seem happy to be at school. The children’s attitude toward school seems to reflect that going to school is more of a privilege than something that they have to do, such as the attitude of many students in the United States.  The children would love for the opportunity to learn more and many students stay after school and study and also organize clubs to study. I teach two Senior One classes, and two Senior Two classes so I have a total of a little over 150 students, they are all required to wear uniforms to school and also both boys and girls must have shaved heads, so I have been attempting to learn names but it is very difficult, it is even hard for me to tell the difference between a boy and a girl because everyone has the same white blouse, khaki pants/skirts and no one has hair.  The school has very limited resources; because the village that I live in does not have power the school doesn’t have power either there are no photo copiers or computers. The students all have notebooks and pens and as a teacher I have chalk and the chalk board. There are a few textbooks in the teacher’s office that I can use but the students do not have their own text book, therefore they treat their notebooks as text books they write everything down that is written on the board and study their notebooks as if it was a text books. Any assignments, tests, quizzes, texts that I want the students to do must be written on the caulk board. The school is composed of rooms, desks, chalk and a chalk board. 

President Paul Kagame Speech

I have completed Peace Corps Training and the real work is about to begin. The past three months have been a blur, time has been moving at its own pace. When I moved to Africa three months ago I felt like a child again. I had to learn how to speak again, I had to learn how to cook, and even showering became a challenge. After many hours of studying language and lots of help from the language and cross cultural facilitators I am ready to use the language on my own. Also after many cold mornings, I believe I have mastered the art of taking a bucket bath.  This weekend we will head to the big city of Kigali and the US Ambassador has graciously opened up the embassy to hold our swearing in ceremony. We then are immediately taken to our villages where we will no longer have the presence of other volunteers or language facilitators. Our hands will no longer be held and we will begin to take our first real step to Peace Corps service. The school year begins January 10^th so immediately upon arrival to Mamba, my village I will begin teaching. 

          Even after living in Rwanda for only three months I have felt the tremendous aid of the Rwandan people in helping me integrate and learn about their language and culture.  I hope that as I begin teaching I can continue to learn about this vibrant country as well as share my own culture. Upon the reentry of Peace Corps into Rwanda, the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame wrote this;

A Different Discussion about Aid

 The United States of America has just sent a small number of its sons and daughters as Peace Corps volunteers to serve as teachers and advisors in Rwanda. They have arrived to assist, and we appreciate that. We are aware that this comes against the backdrop of increasingly scarce resources, of budget discussions and campaign promises, and of tradeoffs between defense and domestic priorities like health care and infrastructure investments. All that said, I believe we need to have a different discussion concerning the potential for bilateral aid.

The Peace Corps have returned to our country after 15 years. They were evacuated in 1994 just a short time before Rwanda collapsed into a genocide that killed over one million people in three months. Things have improved a lot in recent years. There is peace and stability throughout the nation. We have a progressive constitution that is consensus-driven, provides for power sharing, embraces diversity, and promotes the participation of women, who now represent the majority in our parliament. Our economy grew by more than 11% last year, even as the world entered a recession. We have chosen high-end segments of the coffee and tea markets in which to compete, and attract the most demanding world travelers to our tourism experiences. This has enabled us to increase wages by over 20% each year over the last eight years -- sustained by, among other things, investment in education, health and ICT.

We view the return of the Peace Corps as a significant event in Rwanda's recovery. These young men and women represent what is good about America; I have met former volunteers who have run major aid programs here, invested in our businesses, and I even count them among my friends and close advisors.

Peace Corps volunteers are well educated, optimistic, and keen to assist us as we continue to rebuild, but one must also recognize that we have much to offer them as well.

We will, for instance, show them our system of community justice, called Gacaca, where we integrated our need for nationwide reconciliation with our ancient tradition of clemency, and where violators are allowed to reassume their lives by proclaiming their crimes to their neighbors, and asking for forgiveness. We will present to them Rwanda's unique form of absolution, where the individuals who once exacted such harm on their neighbors and ran across national borders to hide from justice are being invited back to resume their farms and homes to live peacefully with those same families.

We will show your sons and daughters our civic tradition of Umuganda, where one day a month, citizens, including myself, congregate in the fields to weed, clean our streets, and build homes for the needy.

We will teach your children to prepare and enjoy our foods and speak our language. We will invite them to our weddings and funerals, and out into the communities to observe our traditions. We will teach them that in Africa, family is a broad and all-encompassing concept, and that an entire generation treats the next as its own children.

And we will have discussions in the restaurants, and debates in our staff rooms and classrooms where we will learn from one another: What is the nature of prosperity? Is it subsoil assets, location and sunshine, or is it based on human initiative, the productivity of our firms, the foresight of our entrepreneurs? What is a cohesive society, and how can we strengthen it? How can we improve tolerance and build a common vision between people who perceive differences in one another, increase civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and self-esteem? How does a nation recognize and develop the leaders of future generations? What is the relationship between humans and the earth? And how are we to meet our needs while revering the earth as the womb of humankind? These are the questions of our time.
While some consider development mostly in terms of infusion of capital, budgets and head counts, we in Rwanda place equal importance to relationships between peoples who have a passion to learn from one another, preparing the next generation of teachers, administrators and CEOs to see the exchange of values and ideas as the way to build the competencies of our people, and to create a prosperous nation.

We will do this because we see that the only investment with the possibility of infinite returns is in our children, and because after a couple of years in Rwanda, working and learning with our people, these Peace Corps volunteers will be our sons and daughters, too.

Color Outside the Lines