?By Heather Donald

The old scout’s adage tells us to “always be prepared.” Well, I say that it’s better to simply have an open mind and let the rest take care of itself. Stay with me for a moment.

Feel the rush of cool, dusty air howl past you on both sides as you hold on to the back of Kigali’s many motorcycle taxis; you feel alive. You greet complete strangers as you walk around the city centre and receive reciprocated smiles, and you feel welcomed. Learning and seeing the changes that have occurred in the past fifteen years since the 1994 Genocide; you feel enthused for the future of the country.

I came to the capital city of Kigali through the Rwanda Initiative – a media-strengthening partnership run out of Carleton University, in conjunction with the National University of Rwanda. Originally created to assist in rebuilding media capacity in the country after the Genocide, the student internship component now places journalism and public policy students and graduates in various media and communications positions.

With previous internships at the Rwandan Parliament cancelled a few months prior to my arrival, I arrived with little idea of what kind of work experience lay ahead for me. After a short time spent exploring the hilly city, I was told that I would be working for the next two months at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre.

When studying ‘development’ or how people live, work and improve their livelihoods, you have to be willing to begin understanding the way other cultures are different than our own here in Canada. And you also have to be willing to accept that there are many right ways of doing things and of thinking about family, community, and life in general.

And in Rwanda, this begins with understanding that what happened in 1994, does not have to dictate the future of the country.

Officially at the Genocide Memorial Centre, I was working on implementing the foundation for a sustainable membership scheme to attract and inform more visitors to donate funds to the Centre, which does not charge an entrance fee for visiting its exhibits. However, the most important aspect was building relationships with co-workers. Working at a place of remembrance where most staff are genocide survivors themselves means that the educational work and social support really has a special place in their hearts.

Most people think I’m crazy for wanting to work at such a place – a place that is seen as “depressing” and “haunting” since it provides a permanent commemoration to the events surrounding the 1994 Genocide. But the way I see it, the Memorial Centre is at the heart of recognizing the historical divisions that created conflict, working to build a national identity while reconciling past problems, and educating the youth to remember and prevent future tensions from building. Opened in 2004, the Centre now helps support over 140 widows and orphans of the Genocide, educates youth on tolerance, national unity and kinship, and compiles testimonies so that others around the world may be inspired to prevent similar conflict from occurring.

While working at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre offered a unique perspective and meaningful relationships, daily life presented just as many learning experiences.

 

For example, in Rwanda, as in many other non-American countries, affection between males is not limited to back-patting and high fives. Indeed, gentle touching, hand holding, and whole-hearted embraces are also common gestures of friendship.

A Rwandese friend once told me that Kigali is like one giant village, where everyone knows each other. The city itself, of about 2 million people, is sprawled over many hills, but it surprisingly well connected and very clean. While we struggle to remember to use re-usable shopping bags for groceries, the government of Rwanda banned plastic bags in the country a few years ago and strictly enforces the law. Also contributing to the cleanliness is the fact that snack or eating in public is not part of the Rwandese culture.

People are often interested in what I eat when I travel to places like Rwanda, but I can assure you that this is another important area to remain open to new experiences. While Kigali sports a array of international restaurants, the local cuisine revolves around the staples of rice, beans, meat stews, potatoes and ugali – a cassava or maize-based stiff porridge that is eaten by breaking off a piece with your right hand and using it to scoop up some saucy meat or veggies.

Rwandese people all have stories from their past – Genocide survivors and orphans, immigrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, former prisoners in their home countries – but they keep moving on. I became friends with Ivan, a university student putting himself through engineering school by baking and delivering bagels around Kigali. Another friend, Tony, has his own radio show broadcasting amusing insights and assorted musical fancies to the entire country. This is a country rich in stories and full of people trying to better their lives.

While I was always eager to practice my French or try the few Kinyarwanda words I had learned with strangers, most Rwandese were also interested in my thoughts on their country and about how Rwanda was different from Canada.

Speaking to Canadians about Rwanda, many still believe that the country remains a polarized society plagued by violence and ethnic clashes. While their history of civil war and a genocide that killed almost 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus will always exist, my time living in Rwanda has shown me that people are always working towards reconciliation and hope for the future. You can see this in the success of Memorial Centre’s growing Educational program, centred on student workshops entitled “Learning from the Past, Building the Future.” The workshops have reached over 4,500 students from all over the country since its launch in June 2008.

Living and travelling in East Africa has taught me I can adapt to just about any new circumstance. Carly, a Rwandan friend of mine, told me before I left that my best quality was that I “know how to live with people.”

The biggest thing that I would like people to understand is that to continue learning, experiencing and growing as a person, you must always keep an open mind. And we could certainly learn a thing or two from Rwandans about the importance of community and family.

 

Heather Donald is a graduate of St. Mark Catholic High School and a resident of Manotick. She graduated this year from Carleton University with a Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management, specializing in Development Studies. She has just returned from Kigali, Rwanda where she worked for several months at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre and she is going to India mid-January to participate in a community development course. Anyone interested in reading blog posts of former student interns in Rwanda, check out: www.rwandainitiative.ca/blog