US students came to Rwanda to study genocide. They left with important life lessons

In May, I traveled to Rwanda with a small group of University of Georgia students. Our aim was to study how this nation has progressed since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The course, “Rwanda: Reconstruction and Reconciliation After Genocide,” was a heavy topic for sure, especially considering that many American college students seek fun and frolic on their study abroad trips. Think summer in London or Prague or Florence. ALSO READ: Ubumuntu: The word that followed me home Last year, I had attempted to launch a social justice journalism course in Cape Town, South Africa. It fell shy of its mandatory 20-student roster and months of hard work and imagination vanished with the arrival of the registration deadline. I was pleasantly surprised when student interest in Rwanda piqued and the university gave the course the green light. ALSO READ: A preventable genocide, a denied responsibility: What ‘Corridors of Power’ reveals about Rwanda I along with my colleagues, History Professor Montgomery Wolf and Hilda Mata, who oversees UGA’s programs in Latin America and Africa, partnered with the Global Engagement Institute, a private organization with a mission to “create positive change in the world.” We planned for many months, discussing the places the students would visit and the activities they would engage in. ALSO READ: Why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires The Rwanda program required students to enroll in two classes: history and journalism. Professor Wolf intended to teach the students about the events that led up to the genocide, starting with the German and Belgian colonization of the country. She planned to have the students engage in a simulation exercise that required them to take on the role of major global players in 1994. They would study the genocide from the outside looking in. ALSO READ: Genocide against the Tutsi: A moral test everyone failed My class was the opposite. The students would engage as journalists on the ground for a very hands-on experience; they were expected to produce publishable stories. Of the 17 students who ended up making the trip, only a handful were journalism majors. Others were studying international relations, history, economics, computer science and public policy. My challenge was to figure out how to make the course rigorous enough for the journalism majors while lowering the bar for those who had never interviewed anyone in their lives. But that was hardly my biggest worry. I knew some of the students had never traveled outside of the United States. Their first adventure overseas would not to be in a familiar country like the UK or France but in Rwanda, a nation that few Americans knew anything about, a nation sadly defined by a genocide that the world ignored when it was happening and barely remembers now. I worried the cultural shock would prove too much to bear for the students. They would be immersed in a world with an unfamiliar language and customs and food — one student told me he had never eaten a plantain before. They would come across poverty unlike what they had come across in America. Would they see it as spectacle? They would have to delve into uncomfortable discussions about the past and how it has shaped the present. How do genocide survivors and perpetrators live side by side? How do you forgive people for unspeakably heinous acts and yet, never forget? Would they be able to interview people with the sensitivity and care the subject matter demanded? The students would also have to recognize their own privilege and be aware of their expectations. From small things like accepting soft drinks to be served without glassfuls of ice to big things like understanding what it feels like to live on a few dollars of income a day. They would have to understand that for most of the world, including Rwanda, the ordinary things many Americans take for granted are a luxury beyond reach. In the two classes we held before leaving Georgia, we discussed the idea of the “Ugly American.” How Americans abroad have been known to behave arrogantly or dismissively toward other cultures. How I had seen that in U.S. journalists who reported their stories with an air of superiority as though they were better than their subjects. It was important, I thought, for the students to have these issues in their consciousness before they stepped foot in Kigali. Only one of the students identified as being non-white. Many of the white students would experience what it was like to be a racial minority for the first time in their lives. And they, perhaps, would be a novelty in some of the places we were set to visit that were far from cosmopolitan Kigali. I thought about a time when children in an Indian village swarmed toward my Irish-American ex-husband, mesmerized by his pale skin. Ultimately, I worried less about whether the students would be moved by Rwanda’s history and the gravity of the course than whether they would allow Rwanda to unsettle what they thought they knew. Even though I had assigned them readings — including journalist Philip Gourevitch’s 1998 book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda — I was fairly certain they would arrive with assumptions. After all, we all harbor stereotypes of people and places that are different than us, especially those we know little about. There is so little news about African nations in the U.S. media. Our schools teach nothing about African geography or history. That’s why last year, when I was attempting to launch a course in Cape Town, parents and students alike voiced grave concerns about M-pox and street violence. They envisioned South Africa to be a disease-ridden nation of thieves and murderers. Perhaps I am exaggerating but I would venture to guess that I am not that far off. It was with those hopes and trepidations that on Day 1, I joined the students aboard a Toyota Coaster commandeered by an expert driver named Mohammed. From the moment we rolled out of the gates of Hotel Chez Lando and onto the leafy streets of Kigali, I knew this trip would be one that both teachers and students alike would never forget. This would not be just another study abroad experience but one that had the potential to be life changing. During our stay in Rwanda, we visited a women’s cooperative in the heart of Kigali and another in the village of Karama. We were welcomed by survivors and perpetrators of the genocide who live together at Unity Village. We fought back tears at genocide memorials including Kigali Genocide Memorial, where each of us placed flowers at the mass graves of victims. We ate meals of plantains, sweet potatoes, rice and meat at buffet style lunches. We met with students from University of Rwanda and the African Leadership University. We attended a show of music and dance at Hotel Mille Colline. Every evening, the students went out in groups, trying out Kigali coffee shops, restaurants and nightclubs. Some even managed to make their way into Amahoro Stadium to watch Rwanda play in a BAL game. On the last day of class, the students turned in short reflections of their time in Rwanda. They wrote about streets without litter, neighborhoods that felt orderly and remarkably safe, strangers who extended effortless hospitality, youth committed to innovation and progress, and people whose resilience refused to fit the story they thought they already knew. A 17-day study abroad course cannot possibly reveal every dimension of a country. But it can expose the inadequacy of assumptions. My students arrived expecting one Rwanda and left having encountered another; their impressions were vastly different than what they had initially envisioned Rwanda to be. We spoke with so many Rwandans who told us they wanted their country to not be solely defined by the genocide that occurred more than three decades ago. I believe the UGA students understand that now. They returned home with experiences that complicated the narratives they had harbored in their heads. They will never again think of Rwanda through the lens of a single tragic event. What struck me most is what some of the students told me at the end of our time together in Kigali: they were returning to the United States with a little more awareness of their place in the world, with a little more humility. That might just be the most important lesson of all. The writer is an award-winning journalist and professor. She directs the MFA program in Narrative Nonfiction and is the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia. Previously, she was a reporter at CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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US students came to Rwanda to study genocide. They left with important life lessons