Rwandans Who Inspire Me

I want to take this blog post to highlight some of the people from my village who have been inspiring to me personally and to me represent the best of Rwanda.

Emerthe

Emerthe is in her mid-twenties and owns the house I live in. She is a genocide orphan yet somehow she still managed to become an infinitely warm hearted person whose patience and kindness I so heavily depended on when I first arrived at my site. Emerthe was born and raised here in Rwabicuma and is known and loved by everyone. She invited me to do everything with her and our other roommate, Clotilde. Through Emerthe I became a part of the community.

I love Emerthe’s enthusiasm for life. Young women in Rwanda are traditionally supposed to be quiet and demure but Emerthe loves to jump in at community meetings and sing loudly at church. She was the Executive Secretary of the cell office (our local village government office) for my first year here, although she has since been transferred to another cell. Last year Emerthe represented our community at our GLOW (Girl’s Leading Our World) Camp and she was so enthusiastic about the camp and excited for the campers from our town.  Her loving enthusiasm and quite confidence make her a natural leader. I wish there were more people like her in government all over the world.

The thing I will remember the most about Emerthe is how she loves to laugh and people love to laugh with her. One of my greatest regrets leaving Rwanda is that I will miss Emerthe’s wedding which will take place in the end of December but I hope to visit her and meet her children-to-be in some  not too distant future.

                                           Emerthe at a Memorial Ceremony in Traditional Dress

                                          The Three Housemates!  Clotilde, me, and Emerthe.

Vincent

Vincent is also an English teacher at G.S. Rwabicuma. In addition to teaching Vincent is a full time university student at the National University in Butare where he studies journalism. Despite exhausting and expensive travel between our school and his school, Vincent is consistently cheerful, engaged, and professional. Vincent has a true knack for languages and loves speaking English and asking me about life in America. One of my favorite cross-cultural discussions with Vincent happened the other week as we were walking back from a ceremony. He was asking me about tire shoes. Throughout east Africa you can find these quite practical and often surprisingly expressive and attractive sandals with soles made from used tires. I thought we were talking about these tire-soled shoes. He asked if I knew what these ‘tire shoes’ were and I told him I did. He asked me if they were difficult to use, how can you go so fast? I looked at him, puzzled, and said I guess you can go fast in them but it’s probably okay. He asked how you stop when you are going so fast in your tire shoes, again puzzled, I told him you just stop.  After a few more questions I realized he was talking about roller skates!  Shoes with actual tires! 

In addition to Vincent’s responsibilities as a student and a teacher he volunteers his time once a week to lead our school’s anti-AIDS club.  I plan the lessons, we discuss them, and then Vincent teaches the lessons to the club in Kinyarwanda.  This week we are hosting the first ever Nyanza region BE (Boys Excelling) Camp and Vincent will be one of our adult facilitators.  Vincent’s commitment to his students, his own future, and new ideas is inspiring.

Vincent Helping Students at Anti-AIDS Club

Mama Gitoko

Mama Gitoko is perhaps the jolliest person I have ever met. We got along immediately. One of my first days in the village I was wondering around aimlessly as the population unabashedly gaped at my foreignness. I remember so clearly walking past her house and greeting her as I was greeting everyone, bracing myself for whatever awkward or bizarre response might follow, but she just laughed. Not a jeering laugh but a sweet laugh of pure delight at my fumbling effort at Kinyarwanda. When everyone else found my foreignness bizarre and rather frightening, Mama Gitoko thought it was hilarious and I loved being around her. She loved when I would come to visit her, even when my Kinyarwanda was awful and we had to resort to hand gestures and sometimes even shadow puppets to communicate. As my Kinyarwanda improved she continued to speak slowly and use simple vocabulary that she knows I can understand. We can talk for over an hour even though she only speaks Kinyarwanda because she really tries to meet me at my level. She is the only one in the world who knows exactly how much Kinyarwanda I know. Over the last two years she has truly taken on a motherly role, always giving me a snack of warm milk or porridge when I come to visit and fussing over my hair, how rough and dark my skin has become, forcing me to eat because I’m getting much too thin, and always chastising me for not visiting enough. Mama Gitoko expects all of my guests to come to her house and meet her.

Mama Gitoko’s joie de vivre makes it sometimes hard to believe she has been through as much as she has.  Mama Gitoko was part of a huge sprawling family that owned most of land in the area before the genocide. During my first Genocide Memorial Week she took me to her house and pulled out a photo album and showed me family pictures from the seventies and eighties. Every single person in the photos, including both her parents, all of her siblings, and her daughter’s father, was killed during the genocide. Not only did Mama Gitoko survive the genocide, she went on to serve as a judge at the local gacaca courts and had the strength to pardon those killers who were willing to repent and promise the live a better life.  Mama Gitoko’s one international trip was when she was brought to Kenya to teach people from other East African countries about the gacaca courts.

Mama Gitoko tells people she has two daughters, her natural born daughter, Gitoko, and her American daughter, Mackenzie. Mama Gitoko is a farmer and works as a gardener at the local government office.  She has diligently saved her meager salary to be able to send her daughter Gitoko to boarding school for upper secondary school, which she started this year.  Every term Mama Gitoko asks me to look at her report card, which is written in English, to tell her how Gitoko did.  Gitoko is doing wonderfully at school and her English has improved dramatically.  While at school, Gitoko borrows someone’s phone every couple of weeks to call me and say hello. I can’t imagine my life in Rwanda without these two women.  In my eyes, Mama Gitoko and Gitoko embody the best in Rwanda.  They have survived Rwanda’s darkest chapter, deeply scarred but resilient.  They have worked to bring the country back together and Mama Gitoko is committed to building brighter future for her daughter and her country.

Mama Gitoko and I Greeting

                                                          Gitoko, me, and Mama Gitoko