On Sunday, Nov. 1, the day after Halloween — a day when you might wake up still wearing your costume — Tufts students, faculty and community members will gather at Tufts' Ellis Oval/Dussault track to run the Race4Rwanda 5K, which benefits Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV). They will run, walk, jog and show off their outfits in the costume contest. The first 200 people who register will walk away with some sweet, free T-shirts. And all participants will be invited to attend an after party to learn more about Rwanda.
I was going to start this article with an explanation of why you should be one of those people, why you should get up on your Sunday morning to support the cause of 18 students (including me) who traveled to Rwanda this summer, made friends with young Rwandans close to our own age and feel a responsibility to bring their stories back home. But I don't need my cause to become your cause or my Rwandan friends on Facebook.com to become yours. You go to Tufts. You are surrounded by causes and probably have your own. Instead, I'm just going to try to paint a picture of where the $10 registration fee is going. You can decide whether it's worth your money. I think and hope that you will at least agree that all young people deserve what ASYV aims to provide.
In December, 125 young people between the ages of 15 and 20 from every region of Rwanda descended upon the not-quite-completed ASYV. They had been selected, not based on test scores, but on potential. They moved into houses of 16 people, each with a housemother and a counselor. They began attending high school. Now they eat together in the dining hall and spend their afternoons at the learning center doing homework, at the arts center playing guitar or outside playing basketball, soccer or volleyball. On Saturdays, they work the farm, which is increasing its capacity to provide food for the village. On Sundays, they attend church, clean or do their laundry. And every night from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. is family time — when each house gathers with their mothers and counselors to talk about the day, homework and whatever else is going on.
The students come from all over Rwanda, from extended families and from the streets. They come from Kigali, the sprawling capital, and from rural villages. But they have one tragic aspect of their past in common: They are all orphans who lost parents in the Rwandan genocide.
In 1994, radicals from Rwanda's majority Hutu ethnic group, a designation largely created by colonial authorities, took power. They instilled fear in their Hutu brothers and sisters, driving them to murder friends, neighbors and relatives from the minority Tutsi group. Only Rwanda's Muslims refused to partake in the violence, and many of them sheltered displaced Tutsis. In 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed in a country of just 9 million. The United Nations provided troops to help evacuate diplomats and other foreigners and then left all but a skeleton crew. France's Operation Turquoise secured southern Rwanda but, in effect, allowed perpetrators of the genocide to flee.
When the violence ended and a Tutsi opposition group took power, the country was left devastated. We heard descriptions of streets clogged with bodies and running with blood. But the problems that loomed beneath the surface, while less gruesome and jarring, were perhaps worse. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and nearly 1.2 million children were orphaned, left in the hands of families already burdened with their own children, poverty and the massive trauma of genocide.
Today, Rwanda is in much better shape. The first post-genocide presidential elections were held in 2003; development and progress are occurring. Rwanda's Gacaca court system is seen as a global model for post-conflict reconciliation. But what I realized while there was how much I couldn't see or understand from statistics, features stories or my short visit. While driving through the streets of Kigali, I was overwhelmed trying to comprehend that almost everyone I saw had been a witness to, perpetrator of or victim of the genocide and lives with that trauma every day. When I came back to the States and explained that I had visited a youth village for orphans, peoples' reactions demonstrated the ease with which we lose sight of the long-term effects of tragedies and the complex difficulty of dealing with those effects: They pictured babies.
Everyone was surprised or confused when I explained that the genocide happened 15 years ago, that teenagers can be orphans, too, and that they need and deserve a leg up if their generation is expected to move on from the past that created their current situation. The village we visited was full of orphans who deserve a supportive family environment as much as any of us do. Though Tufts students come from diverse backgrounds, I imagine that most of us have a support system that has helped us with the educational and personal achievements that I am constantly impressed by. I can only imagine what the ASYV students will achieve now that they have that kind of support, too.
The youth of ASYV were infants in 1994. They were the most innocent victims, left to deal with the devastating consequences of a short and horrifying chapter in their country's history, both on individual and national levels. They deserve the beautiful vista from the "see far spot" in front of their school building that overlooks Rwanda's famed Thousand Hills, the clean drinking water, the cots, the health care, the education, the food from the farm and all of the things that the registration fees from our race will help to pay for. They deserve the environment that has allowed deeply traumatized kids, who barely spoke when they arrived, to feel comfortable sharing their stories eloquently with volunteers, counselors and visitors. They deserve the kind of educational environment in which some of them became almost fluent in English in only five months (one girl was even teaching herself Spanish online).
Each year, another class of students will arrive until the high school consistently has four classes of 125 students. They all deserve the stability that Agahozo Shalom aims to provide for them. As the orphans of the genocide grow up, the village will continue to provide a home for Rwanda's other orphans, most of whose parents died of HIV/AIDS. Five hundred is a lot of young people, and at the same time, it is only a tiny fraction of the youth all over the world who could use a place like ASYV. It is by no means a complete solution. But I saw it. I was there. I met the kids, and I can give you my word that it is the beginning of a solution and that it is definitely a solution for the students who are lucky enough to be there.
We, the 18 Tufts students who traveled to Rwanda, were so moved by the hope and potential of the students we met and so unsatisfied with the small contribution we were able to make while there, that we pledged to dedicate our time and energy to raising money and awareness for ASYV when we returned. Tufts is a place where many of us have been able to grow in precisely the kinds of ways that ASYV hopes to help its students grow. I would love for some of you to take some time on Nov. 1 to appreciate that and get in shape for Naked Quad Run by running in the race with us.
