Rwanda: A Sense of Hope for the Future
by Anne Kleffner, University of Calgary
This summer I traveled to Rwanda with seven others from Calgary, Canada, as part of an INSPIRE!africa volunteer trip. INSPIRE!africa was started by a friend of mine who, after traveling to Rwanda in 2006, was inspired to do something to help survivors of the genocide. We volunteered teaching English, and also visited development projects. It was an intense two weeks and despite Rwanda’s recent history, and the pain and loss that is still evident, what I experienced was a great sense of hope for the future.
Flying into Kigali, Rwanda’s capital and largest city, I noticed the green hills with red roads running randomly and crookedly through the countryside: a green patchwork quilt – many different shades of green, many different sizes of quilt squares, all joined together. Rwanda is known as the Land of 1,000 Hills, and after only a few days of driving around it is clear why.
Driving up and down these huge hills, it was amazing to see thousands of pedestrians walking along the shoulder, carrying everything from potatoes to water to backpacks to containers of every shape and size – all on their heads, while babies were tied into bundles on their mothers’ backs. The boys and young men struggled to push their bicycles loaded with gallons of water or huge sacks of potatoes or who knows what else up these massive hills.
As we drove down a long, bumpy dirt road to a village to visit orphan-headed households, young children waved at us with huge smiles on their faces, yelling “mzungu!” (which basically means white person). We never went unnoticed, and it was surprising how, any time we stopped somewhere, we were immediately surrounded by a crowd.
Our home in Kigali was at Solace Ministries, founded by Reverend Jean Gakwandi in 1996. Seeing how traumatized and hurt genocidal survivors were – many widows and orphans – it was apparent that they needed much more than material assistance. Inspired by the passage in the Scripture, Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort, oh comfort my people says your God,” Jean realized that one of the greatest needs people had was for counseling. Meeting survivors’ needs would require a holistic approach that addressed both material as well as spiritual needs.
Solace Ministries now has 56 communities around Rwanda, touching the lives of 25,000 people. It provides counseling, English education at their Learning Center in Kigali, vocational training, support for child-headed households, and care for those living with HIV/AIDS. Staying at Solace gave us the opportunity to see first hand what a difference it has made in people’s lives.
One of the most powerful experiences I had was witnessing the healing power of community. I saw and felt the strength that came from people who were hurting coming together to draw strength from each other. I saw the power of hope that was expressed in so many ways – students believing in the value of education, widows working together on a community farm to help sustain each other, prostitutes learning to read and write and make goods to sell in order to be able to live a better life, and street kids learning traditional dance as a way to reconnect to their history, and earn money to eat and to attend school.
Each of these communities was founded by the vision of individuals who were drawn to care for the many people suffering the consequences of the genocide. Many are survivors of the genocide in the truest sense of the word – individuals who were hunted or left for dead, or hid for months. Others are survivors of a country, now the 9th poorest in the world, which was devastated by this horrific event. As I visited each of these communities, one thing was clear: each provided a lifeline for those who came together. It was a place of security, a place for comfort, a place that helped them to envision a better future.
What was very apparent at all of the projects we visited was that they were making a tangible difference in people’s lives. All of these grassroots projects, started by people in Rwanda, make the difference between eating versus going hungry, hope versus despair. And in so many cases, it was people who, in the course of their daily life, responded to a need that they saw.
For example, after seeing children beg for money on the streets, one man was moved to help them by forming a dance troupe that would allow them to earn an income. Not only did he teach them a skill – performing traditional dance at festivals and other venues – but he gave them a renewed sense of hope. Another person, an extraordinary woman, responded in a very selfless way by teaching prostitutes and other illiterate women to read and write.
One of the greatest parts of the trip for me was having the opportunity to help at the Learning Center teaching English. The English teacher at the Learning Center is a man named Moses, who spends his time when he is not teaching working towards his university degree. Moses has a nearly impossible task: teaching English to a classroom full of students, from beginner to advanced level.
The students who attend the learning center are so keen to learn English that some of them walk 2-3 hours (one-way!) just to get there. And many of them will spend the entire day at Solace, without lunch, attending a 3-hour English class in the morning and a 3-hour computer class in the afternoon. Their enthusiasm for learning and interest in learning everything they could from us “mzungus” was so inspiring. If only my University students were so keen to learn!
What none of us were prepared for was the students’ ability not only to speak English, but to carry on conversations about politics, current events, sustainable aid, and the keys to Rwanda’s development! For a tiny country in Africa that faces tremendous challenges associated with poverty, HIV/AIDS, and illiteracy, it was encouraging to meet such thoughtful, intelligent students who are the future of Rwanda.
In talking to them about the future, they saw a few issues as key: education for everyone, including girls; the importance of moving beyond a genocide ideology, which, unfortunately, is still present; and the necessity of developing closer relationships with the East African community and the rest of the world.
There was no sense that as a nation Rwanda needed to be “given” anything. Rather, there was a recognition that this country’s greatest resource was its people, and through education, tourism, foreign investment, and reconciliation, Rwanda’s development would become a reality. If you would like to find out more, please e-mail me at kleffner@ucalgary.ca.
