June 21, 2009, Aiding Scholarship Students
Posted on 7/6/2009
Reporting from Rwanda
Dispatch #9
June 21, 2009
By Samuel Totten
Having spent three weeks on reconstituting the master's degree in genocide studies so that it once again would provide students with a global versus a parochial view of genocide studies and prevention, Rafiki Ubaldo and I have finally begun our effort to secure external funding for the master's degree program. The latter was something we had planned on doing from the outset of our arrival in Rwanda but due to the fact that the curriculum had been radically changed (and not for the better) either prior to or during the validation process at the National University of Rwanda, we had no choice but to focus all of our attention and time on a radical revision of the curriculum.
While Rafiki approached SIDA (the Swedish counterpart to USAID), I went to the U.S. Embassy in order to speak with USAID personnel about potential funding for the new master's degree in genocide studies and prevention. No one from USAID was available but I did speak with the new director of education, who said that as far as she knew there was no funding for such projects, at least in education, as the current focus was on elementary and secondary education. That said, she gave me the names of other individuals, departments and organizations and suggested that I contact them about potential funding.
Later that afternoon, Rafiki, who is not only working as a consultant to the National University of Rwanda on the master's degree program, but was my co-founder of a nonprofit organization named The Post Genocide Education Fund (PGEF)*, received a call from one of the young genocide survivors who is a recipient of a PGEF scholarship that allows her to attend the university of her choice in Rwanda. She informed him that she had run out of money and was hard-pressed to pay her rent and was having to go without eating days at a time. This, obviously, greatly concerned both Rafiki and me, as we were under the impression that all of the students on PGEF scholarship were not only making solid progress in school but were leading, if not comfortable lives, at least satisfactory lives. The original agreement spelled out the fact that while PGEF would cover the cost of registration and tuition for four years of schooling, one's parents or surrogate parents were obliged to provide the funds for the students' living expenses. Obviously, in at least one case, this was not happening. Rafiki asked the student to meet him at our hotel that evening so that he and I could plan a way to ameliorate the situation in which the young lady found herself. The last thing that we, the co-founders of PGEF, wanted to do was cause the young recipients of PGEF scholarships any more hardships. Indeed, they had already suffered greatly and deserved, if anyone did, to live a life free of anxiety and hardship.
Before the meeting took place, we received a message from another PGEF recipient -- who attended the same university as the aforementioned young lady -- that he, too, was having trouble paying rent and was going without meals.
When we inquired as to why the students had not contacted us earlier about their situations, they more or less implied they had not wanted to bother us. The situation had progressed to the point where they feared they might not be able to continue their studies if their room and board situation was not resolved one way or another.
Most, if not all, students in the U.S. would have no doubt broached such an issue immediately, and rightly so. Who wouldn't? However, what needs to be remembered is that the PGEF recipients in Rwanda, all of whom are survivors of the genocide, have experienced the worst of the worse, both during and following the genocide. They had to scratch and fight to survive, and it is a simple but profound fact that being without adequate shelter and/or food was often secondary to their fight for survival. A case in point: When we first met one of the students we, PGEF, are sponsoring, we found her residing in an abode made of straw located on a dried-out patch of dirt. She and her family cooked outside, washed their clothes in a pot, and relieved themselves in a field in back of their straw house. Rafiki was so shocked to see the straw abode that he couldn't stop saying, over and over, again, "I tell you, these people are poor. Very, very poor. Nobody has houses like this anymore. No one!" What he meant is that most people, even the poorest of the poor, at least lived in homes made from handmade bricks covered with a tin roof or something equally as solid. So, the point is, for the students, housing, and even food, often takes a backseat to other concerns.
Even a short overview of what some of the students were subjected to during the 1994 genocide provides one with a solid sense of what these young folks experienced and continue to deal with in their memories and nightmares. For example, in applying for a PGEF scholarship one student, Jean Bosco (his full name must be withheld due both to reasons of privacy and safety), wrote the following:
My name is Jean Bosco, I am 25 years old. At the time of the genocide I was 11 years old. At my home village we realised that Tutsi were systematically being slaughtered on April 18, 1994. [The genocide had begun on April 7th, but the killing was carried out at different points in time in different regions of Rwanda.] We lived in the commune of [withheld due to matters of privacy and safety] in Gitarama. On that day, the interahamwe [the militia of Hutu extremist, largely comprised of young Hutu males] from Bwakira in Kibuye attacked our village. We tried to defend ourselves but in vain. They outnumbered us, they had guns and grenades. They started to loot houses, eat cows, burn houses.
I [should note that that I] remember that persecution started even before that day because my mom was taken to the commune prison and the reason was that apparently our coffee plantation was not well kept and the authorities thought or pretended that it was a sign of subversion of the inyenzi [a word that means, literally, cockroach, and which was used by the Hutu as a slur to describe the Tutsis] inside the country. Also, my father was constantly harassed because they suspected he was a rebel [a member of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front].
During the attack of April 18, 1994, we ran in different directions and we separated from our parents. I remained with my two young brothers and sisters. We decided to just go [flee], without knowing where. People on the way insulted us, beat us. Finally we reached Nyanza and we saw an orphanage called Saint Antoine Orphanage.
I will not forget that on the way to nowhere, the interahamwe dumped me in a latrine [which was a common act, and was done with the plan that those thrown into the latrines would drown in the feces and urine] and I do not know how I managed to get out of it. When I was struggling to get out of the latrine, while my two sisters waited for me, they later told me, they saw interahamwe chasing a poor man who was crying because they were after him to kill him. My sisters were not really worried because the story had gone around that they were to be killed at the end, after all the other killing had been done. At that moment no one was doing harm to the very young ones like my young sisters.
So we ended up in an orphanage of Italians in Nyanza and we lived there the rest of the time [throughout the period of the genocide] until one of our oldest brothers came searching and he found us and took us with him. This was in October 1994.
Ten years later he died and I felt I was an orphan for the second time in a row. When my brother was still alive he told us how our parents were killed. Here is the story: It is hard but to recount the story makes me feel relieved. On April 25, 1994, around 9.00 a.m., my father was found and he ran from his hiding place. The killers run after him, throwing stones at him. He got exhausted and was wounded and fell down. They undressed him, cut his manhood and did many other things I am not proud to say and then they took the body and walked to river Nyabarongo and threw it in the river.
As for my mother, she was also killed the same day and I am not able to say how she was tortured because it is humiliating but she was tortured in the most inhuman ways possible. Her body was thrown in Mwogo River. These are stories we were heard from different sources.
I do not want to go back where I grew up. I stay in Kigali and take care of my young relatives, I am their parent. I am very sad, I have not been able to give a decent burial to my parents because they were thrown in a river. I have heard that a very wealthy Indian man in Uganda bought land to give a decent burial to those who were thrown in Nyabarongo, I would like to meet him and thank him because I feel connected to him because he has helped me to feel that my parents ended up in that decent cemetery.
For me, personally, I find that it is important to revisit the stories of the students who are recipients of PGEF scholarships. I say that for it is far too easy to begin to treat our PGEF recipients as "typical students" and thus assume that all is more or less well in their world.
After listening to the two students' concerns and hardships, Rafiki and I decided then and there to provide the students with $600 each to cover their housing and food. The students assured us that such an amount would be sufficient to cover their needs. They were also jubilant over receiving such monetary assistance in addition to the fees for their school registration and tuition.
Concerned that other PGEF recipients might be struggling, Rafiki contacted them, and once we began probing we discovered more unnerving information. One of the students, Benjamin, an orphan of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, informed Rafiki that his family is so destitute that they cannot even afford to, as he put it, "find me toilet paper." He was not, I assure you, being crude; indeed, he is a sweet young man. Rather, he was simply reporting an actual fact and problem that he had recently faced.
Another one of our PGEF students, whose family was so impoverished that he sat in his village for three years tending the family's cows and banana plot but was so intent on keeping his mind sharp that he wrote two novels in Kinyarwanda about the genocide, informed me that, while he had enough money to purchase breakfast and dinner at the canteen at the National University of Rwanda, the food served at breakfast was so bad that it caused him severe stomach pains. Again, there was a message there that we, PGEF, needed to make sure that our students were at least getting enough – as well as decent – food so that they could focus on their studies and avoid worrying about such basics.
The rest of my time in Rwanda I felt remiss that we hadn't kept better track of our scholarship recipients. Indeed, it made me sad that they continued to face harshness in life, something that we, the PGEF-co-founders, were intent, in part, in trying to ameliorate.
The next day Rafiki had to leave for Sweden, as his classes at the University of Stockholm were about to begin, and he also needed to get home in order to take care of his two children, as his wife's short summer vacation was coming to an end and she needed to return to work.
One of the last things we did before his departure was make a list of the tasks we needed to focus on and complete for the master's degree program in genocide studies and prevention once we each returned to our respective homes. It ended up being three pages long. Added to that was our determination to seek additional support for PGEF so that we could ensure that our current recipients could lead relatively normal lives as college students. We also agreed that we wanted to expand our gift of a university education to those young survivors residing in such places as Cambodia, Guatemala, East Timor, the former Yugoslavia, and Darfur.
* For more information about the Post Genocide Education Fund, either Google: Post Genocide Education Fund or go to http://www.postgen.org/.
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