2025 Rwanda Delegation— Cameron Vitagliano
English Literature and Creative Writing ‘27
The first time I heard about Rwanda was in my 10th grade History Class, when my teacher showed us the film Hotel Rwanda in a unit about genocides. The film stuck out to me not because of the depictions of genocide, but because of what came before that. Unlike other media representations of Africa I had seen at that point, Rwanda was shown as a modern country. Paul Rusesabagina had a suburban house, kids who played hoola-hoop in the front yard, hosted dinner parties with his brother-in-law and his family, and a job at a nice hotel that he commuted to every day. The display of modernity, the familiarity of the setting despite it being in Africa made the events depicted in the film feel much closer than any other genocide related films. I ended up reading the book, An Ordinary Man by Rusesabagina years later, at around the time the controversy with the author was heating up. The first half of the book described his experiences growing up in Rwanda, gave general information about the culture, and made me think that I would very much like to see Rwanda for myself one day. At Buff State's orientation, I took a picture of the AFP slide that told me how I could.
Hearing more stories, learning more about the culture, puts into sharp relief that my understanding of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and Rwanda itself, is all coming from the lens of one person. I would like to expand that lens, see Rwanda for myself and come back with a more complete understanding of the culture and the story, which I see has many, many parallels with the political environment of today. I want to keep a mostly written blog, as detailed as I can manage with the schedule. This is my first time leaving North America. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Twendsday (6/3/2025 - 6/4/2025)
A year ago I might've gotten chills at the idea that I'm flying over the Atlantic Ocean, then Spain, then the Mediterranean. For two hours Greece was on my left, Egypt on my right, then underneath me, then I was in Ethiopia, Africa. Airports kind of look the same everywhere. My first impression of Rwanda, stepping out of the airport in Kigali, was that it kind of looked like Florida, maybe with Newark's hills, but much cleaner than either of them. The real difference between places seems to be the little -- and I do mean little -- details.
CANADA - We crossed the border into Canada at about 5:30 AM, EST. This was the part I was actually most worried about because I had imagined TSA would give us trouble or go through our bags. They didn't. They just asked us a few sardonic questions. I only got one. "Do you have any firearms?" "No." "Ok. You're good." The differences I noticed while the bus took us through Ontario, was that the telephone poles were placed on the street, and often doubled as supports for street lamps. In the US, telephone poles are set back, usually between the backyards of houses. Every once in a while someone from National Grid or whatever will walk unannounced into your back yard and insist that they have to chop your tree down. In Canada, they probably don't have to do that as often.
The other difference, globes. I saw a few businesses using globes in their logo. World Gym, I think, was one. It was still oriented around North America, like how it usually is in the United States, but unlike the US, this globe had a slight tilt to it, maybe to emphasize Canada, but not in a way that was overbearing. Canada might've occupied a little under a third of the space, the rest of North America filled the other third, then Europe snuck its way into the last third, while North Africa and South America squeezed in slightly for an honorable mention.
We arrived at Toronto (Pearson?) at around 8 AM. A much shorter drive than I had anticipated. There was one downtown area along the way that from a distance looked impressive, with a lot of high rises that resembled Jenga or toothpick towers, but ultimately took about the same amount of time to drive through as Buffalo, but then, just there, you see CN Tower (?). There! That's Toronto! We didn't go through it though. Pearson is situated a bit south. There's a tangle of about a dozen skyways in front of it which had a really interesting look.
There were two hours to kill in Toronto. A few other students (Alex, Riva, and Isabella) and I looked around for a place to get some breakfast and coffee. They had three or four virtually identical diner/bars, one Southeast Asian restuarant, a Tim Hortons and a Starbucks. I forgot I had packed a canteen and bought a bottle of water from Starbucks, then we sat at one of the bars. Isabella took one look at the menu and left, which was the smart choice. I ended up getting a mimosa and a BLT (with egg), while Alex and Riva got something similar. None of us got coffee. It was $38 but it seemed like a fun idea at the time.
Back at the gate everyone was just chatting. There was another group of students at our gate (this was the first flight, which was bound for Ethiopia), and many of them resembled characters in our group. "Oh look, that one's Cameron," someone pointed out. Oh-- oh no, I didn't want that person to be me at all. Do I give that guy vibes?
Boarding Call!
Maybe I shouldn't have had that mimosa just now?
Group A to start boarding!
Ok, actually it's no big deal.
THE FLIGHT - Was fine, given that it was 14 hours. Most of my luggage was actually in preparation for this. I brought five books with me: My Struggle Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, Writers at Work Around the World by The Paris Review, The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino, and Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis. And I'm mostly listing these because I want to sound like a sophisticated person. A grownup that doesn't need the internet, or in-flight movies to keep myself occupied.
I watched The Dirty Dozen. It was good.
I did also read though, mostly the Varoufakis book which is surprisingly entertaining for an "academic" novel. I was really feeling like non-fiction and was disappointed that the in-flight movies didn't have any documentaries, but they did have Mufasa, which Rena and I half-watched in the last leg of the flight.
ETHIOPIA - This is where I was starting to get irritated, or at least, physically uncomfortable. Some kids in some seats adjacent to me somehow managed to scream for the entire flight, the meals had made me feel, well, gross, and we were in a rush because our flight had arrived slightly late and was already boarding when we arrived. I put my backpack with all of my great, entertaining books up in the overhead bin-- Excuse this interjection, but there's a cat roaming around St. Paul's meowing very loudly outside my door. For some reason some of the other students named it Megatron, even though it's a female and obviously in heat--Oh, look! That's Drew, he's sitting in the aisle next to me. Maybe I can talk to him. "Hey." Wait, what do I talk about? "Uh, um... how long is this flight?" Drew, the professor in charge of our group, founder of the Anne Frank Project answered-- "About two and a half hours." Uh-oh, maybe I do need that book... eh. Really, I should have. The first flight in any trip is always the best, despite any inconveniences, but the next one, especially after a long flight like the one we'd had. This flight, two and a half hours, was uncomfortable and felt as though it would last forever. I shut my eyes, if I nap, I'll wake up when we land. Yes. I'm really tired. I had gotten up at 3 AM, Buffalo time on Tuesday. I didn't sleep much the night before, and it was now 10, maybe 11, Ethiopian time on Wednesday. It felt good, having my eyes closed -- Whoops! I almost lost consciousness, and felt myself slipping towards the person next to me. Isabella was asleep in the seat next to me. I could never nap on flights. With or without the travel pillow I always feel like I'll inadvertently slip onto the person next to me and make them uncomfortable. Had to keep myself awake for the rest of the flight. I could sleep in Rwanda. I'm writing this at 10:49 PM, and I am not, in fact, asleep in Rwanda.
I've been writing a lot here about the trip to Rwanda, using as much as I think is appropriate for a blog, then maybe a bit more, then dialing back. Jonise has to review all of these, and post these, and I don't think it's appropriate for me to bloat the AFP website, but also, this is my blog. I don't feel I have much to say about Rwanda itself yet that I haven't already said. My first impression, coming off the plane and walking down that final corridor on my way out of the Kigali airport, I could see the outside world cropped through the rectangular glass windows, the glass doors. The corridor itself was mostly dark, the floors, I remember were black. The walls and ceiling as well. It looked almost like a theater, which is interesting, since it was a movie I watched that got me into all this. But that first image I got of Rwanda, overcast skys, palms and bushes, slightly wet ground. Everything was richly saturated, as though it had just rained, or it was about to. If I didn't walk out the door, if we didn't take the bus and drive through Kigali, the only glimpse of Rwanda I had was that image, and the experience of traveling through Canada and Ethiopia, where the security check was more or less the same, with the same level of scrutiny-- my takeaway might've been that I had traveled for about 20 hours, and arrived in Florida.
Elephants
I feel I have to self censor this in a way that I wouldn't in a journal, which is difficult because that's how I'm looking at this. A public journal. In truth, my strongest feelings relate to my cohort. Not Rwanda. And I don't feel it's appropriate to air what I'm thinking about everyone. From very early in the trip, the sense of novelty of being in Africa was kind of lost on me (see Entry 1), but I felt an obligation to write about Rwanda. I wanted to paint some sort of picture (this entry is forthcoming). But when it comes to what I'm feeling... I'm a little stuck here.
Rwanda is a beautiful country. Undeniably. The food is good. My body isn't working quite the way it would in Buffalo. I'm experiencing a problem that might have something to do with my medications or the diet, but it isn't that big a deal. I'm not uncomfortable so I'll deal with it until I'm home. I don't know if I would say I'm "home sick", but I do miss a few of my creature comforts. There's a movie I picked up shortly before my trip that I want to rewatch. The wifi at the hotels has been kind of spotty so I haven't been able to check in with some of my friends and family as much as I would like, because some of what I'm feeling would be better bounced off of them than with my cohort, and since what I'm feeling relates to them I can't bounce everything I'd like to say off of them, and I can't put it in a public travel blog. What I can share is how I'm feeling about the trip. And I'm feeling matter-of-fact. The highs of the trip are in conversations I might have at breakfast, at dinner, after dinner, or the comedy-of-errors that was me at Urukundo, the primary school we visited over the weekend. This is what I would like to write about, but I need to get over a hump. Address the elephant in the room before I can write about what I want to write about.
I didn't feel anything at the genocide memorials.
It feels gross to say. It's uncomfortable to think about. I felt that I was intruding on a very sacred space. Like my being there was somehow voyeuristic. Didn't I come to Africa because I was touched by some movie I saw 10 years ago?
We visited two memorial sites. One in Kigali, the 1994 Genocide Museum, and one out in the rural areas, a church called Nyamata, the preserved site of an infamous massacre.
We went to the museum in Kigali first. There was a loosely guided tour, where we followed a map they handed us at reception, along with a pocket stereo and headset which would read out blurbs about each point on the map. We walked through the history of Rwanda, framed around the build-up to the genocide, then we walked through the history of the genocide, and finally... Three Rooms.
The Three Rooms exhibit is a hub at the center of the main building connecting the entry hall and each three room exhibit, separated by dividing walls. The history tour led in a circle around the Three Rooms area, then led into it. This is where the physical evidence of the genocide was kept. Skulls, femurs, clothes, weapons.
I would like to emphasize, this was a somber environment. There was no idle chatting at the memorial. Everyone was mesmerized in some way by what was in front of them. A few people--well, most people--were moved to tears. If not by the history walk--where a looped video collage showed images of victims of the genocide, a bloated, bloodied body in a river, children with huge gashes across their faces, left by the machetes--then definitely by the Three Rooms.
I, personally, just felt flat. Not indifferent. Not ambivalent, but flat. I'd studied this before. I've read about it, seen documentaries, and felt things from those activities, but here, confronted with it in the flesh, among young Rwandan students no less... this was their history right? Their families? None of them are untouched. My cohorts weren't untouched. I felt like I was somehow disrespectful for feeling... whelmed.
Now, I wasn't completely alone in this. A couple of my cohorts say they felt similarly. When we talked about it, they said maybe it was because we're desensitized to violence in the US, or maybe it wasn't personal enough? Or maybe we were just emotionally prepared for it. Maybe. That's probably the closest for me. The bones in the displays didn't have to belong to a loved one or friend to get my attention. If that was the case, I wouldn't have been moved by anything else, right? I probably wouldn't have gone on the trip to begin with. If the trip were to some other country in Africa, it probably wouldn't have caught my attention enough for me to actually follow through and go, so I did care, but I just wasn't overwhelmed there. I wasn't really sure what I was feeling. Jet lagged? Tired? Confused because the numbers on the map stopped corresponding to the exhibits once the tour moved outside? Fraudulent when we stood in line to put roses on the mass graves?
When we got back from the memorial, I knew I couldn't write about that. So I held off.
There is a vase at the end of the outside garden tour of the memorial. On it, the image of an elephant, an animal which never forgets, holding a cell phone so it can spread the message of reconciliation across the world.
The following day we went to the church, Nyamata, where 31 years ago a pastor brought his congregation into the building, promising them shelter from the genocide, only to lock them in and turn them over to the Interhamwe. Everyone who took shelter in that church was murdered.
Nyamata is in part a preservation site. Nothing has been altered about the building except to preserve the evidence of the massacre and to clear the bodies... only the bodies are still at Nyamata. In coffins on the floor. Coffins in mass graves outside. Some are accessible. You can walk down and see the piles of coffins resting in storage underground. Thirty bodies to a coffin. Some coffins are open, and you can see mess of skulls and femurs. In the church, where they have run out of room for coffins, they have set a row of blue buckets. No lids. Each one containing a pile of bones. The one closest to the entrance of the church, was less a bucket of bones and more a bucket of dust. If I wanted, I could have reached in and scooped it up with my hands. It's all that close to you, and still, I'm not feeling it. I could've been looking at sand there, but I knew I wasn't. In each bucket, each coffin, was thirty people. Each one a world unto themselves, but here they were just objects.
There were notes, written in Kinyrwanda by the families of the victims and stuck to some of the coffins. "I love you, forever!" Drawn hearts. Lots of drawn hearts. As we were leaving, we saw a funeral procession coming in 31 years late to bury their loved one, and a truck with more coffins in it. They're still finding bodies.
There's a building regulation now. If you want a building permit in Rwanda, you have to take necessary precautions to unearth any bodies that might be buried in the land, in a way that is respectful to the deceased.
Still, I felt surprisingly little. Even tempered. Like I was in my own little bubble of calm. Drifting through. Maybe there is a little detachment? Is this a defense mechanism or incidental? Neither answer leaves me totally satisfied. I feel like I should feel because I do care.
It really does feel like a thousand years ago that we were at Nyamata, but it was actually four days. We visited on the 6th. Today it's the 10th.
We drove to the Reconciliation Village a little while afterwards. Where survivors of the genocide live together with the perpetrators. Peacefully. Some with close friendships. This was the part of the itinerary I was initially most worried about, because I didn't know how I would feel about being around the killers. After my detachment at the two memorials, I actually felt more nervous about meeting the survivors. How phoney or gross I would feel by riding along in my nice bus into their village so that they could tell me about the worst experience of their lives and for me to not have anything to say.
As we approached the village, my heart sank because I realized there was another factor I hadn't considered. Much more terrifying and confrontational than any adult I might encounter during my controlled stay in Rwanda.
"Mzungo!" A little voice cried out as our bus approached the village.
Urukundo
Isabella said something very early in the trip, the first night maybe, about wanting to have children. She said she liked the idea of loving something so much, so unconditionally, that it makes the world make sense.
It gives life meaning, parenthood, for a lot of people. Without something to focus on, believe in or love, life is stripped to the act of existing. Falling into old age and then nothing at all. Thinking about it makes me crazy. It could lock me in my room and reduce everything I do to stupid habit or bare necessity. Eat the sandwich. Go to the bathroom. Go to bed. Wake up. You can’t sleep forever… yet. People need an anchor, a center of gravity to make it feel like they aren’t just falling. In Rwanda, in 1994, a lot of people found it in the form of petty, evil ethnic tribalism. That became their anchor. Love’s a great alternative.
I would like to have children someday too, mostly because I feel like I should. A million generations of microbes, animals and eventually people led up to me, so it almost seems like I’d be dropping the ball to not have kids, but that’s not the only reason. It’s like, my responsibility to the biosphere. In theory, I like kids. I like their energy, creativity, curiosity, unfetteredness and carelessness. In practice, they make me wildly uncomfortable for exactly those reasons. I try to ignore them as much as possible because I’m not really sure how to react to them and generally there isn’t a reason to interact with them anyway. When there is a reason, like if they approach me at work (I work in retail), I get the terrified sense that they’re judging something about me, and since they’re just a stupid kid they’ll shout it out, and it’ll definitely bother me and I won’t be able to do anything about it. Or maybe they’ll start making a mess in the aisle I’m cleaning up, or throw something at me or something, I don’t know, annoying. You obviously can’t physically stop them from doing anything, and you can’t really tell them to stop doing something either since they know you can’t physically do anything, and it’s culturally inappropriate to tell-off other people’s kids anyway. Then you’d have to deal with the parents too, and God help me I just want to be left alone.
Drew warned us in our first class that there would be curious, love filled children at Urukundo that would want to “hug us, sit in our laps, look at our phones, jump around and talk to us and ask us for money” and oh, oh God the horror! The horror! This isn’t the trip for me. I was at least hoping that our interactions would be controlled, and isolated to Urukundo, but no. They obviously had to live somewhere, and the Reconciliation Village was one of those places, and yes–– The thought of interacting with them put a much larger knot in my stomach than meeting a genocide perpetrator. The perpetrators were just old, spent human beings. The memorials were just museums and graveyards. Children are chaos incarnate and must be avoided at all cost.
“Mzungo! Mzungo!” (White person and/or foreigner. Non-Rwandan. Non-African.)
Crowds of them, CROWDS OF CHILDREN swarmed the bus as we drove through the village, with little smiles on their red dirt covered faces. The kids were dressed largely in western clothes, like t-shirts and shorts or pants or jeans. They looked second hand but I don’t think I should assume that they were. This is in contrast to the adults of the village, who dressed up in their best suits or traditional (or traditional looking, since I really don’t know what I’m talking about) tunics or dresses. When we made it to the village center, to hear the testimonies of the perpetrators and the victims, the children were kept out. Occasionally, they poked their heads in to take a look at us. I don’t believe this delegation has ever been to this village before. A horde of them had amassed outside by the time we were ready to leave, and they pounced on us the moment we walked out. One of them took me by the hand.
“What is your name?”
AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
“Cameron.”
“What?”
“Cameron.”
“OK.”
AAAAAAHHHHH!!!!
“Um… What’s your name?” I felt obligated to ask.
“Robert.” I made this name up now because I don’t remember what he said. I’m sorry.
“Oh. Well, nice to meet you.”
“Yes.” Short pause. “Give me money.”
“I–– I actually can’t do that.”
He let go of my hand and ran off to someone else. For a number of reasons, I was relieved. That was an interaction I could wrap my head around.
*****
The main reason of our trip, our work in Urukundo, had less to do with working with kids and more with teachers. The goal of the AFP Delegation was to bring Story-Based Learning to Rwanda, since it happened to coincide beautifully with the government’s Competency Based Curricular program. It’s an exchange. They get SBL training, we get to go to Africa. We were the 13th delegation, so at this point the teachers at Urukundo were already experts and we were there more to aid and observe as they trained teachers from other schools in Muhanga, a city in the Southern Province of Rwanda. For more information about Story Based Learning, purchase Story Building by Drew Kahn on Amazon using referral code: IPLUGGEDYOURBOOKINMYBLOGPLEASEGIVEMEEXTRACREDIT.
SBL, as I understand it, is mostly about getting the students to be present. Meeting them where they’re at and getting them to engage physically as a group to build trust, report, and connectivity amongst the group. Usually through group exercises that feel a bit silly at first but do, genuinely, work. They’re kind of like games, or theater exercises. We stand in a circle, breathe in, breathe out, hold hands, clap, jump and mimic each other. It gels pretty well with the village dances and practices that are already present in Africa, which before I kind of thought were antiquated stereotypes but are in fact, still very real, and probably informed SBL to begin with. There are a few prescribed activities, like Whoosh! That previous groups must’ve taught the Rwandans, but in the time since they’ve invented their own, like my personal favorite, Popiscop, which I’ll get to later. We would spend three days at Urukundo. Two with the teachers, and one touring the school, watching it operate on a normal school day… with children.
Day 1
We arrived at Urukundo, a large complex dominating the bulk of the hill. In Rwanda, a hill is essentially a neighborhood. The main entrance of the complex is near the hilltop, along with the pre-school classrooms. The higher the grade, the lower the classroom was on the hill. We entered a general assembly building, and spread out to try and sit amongst the teachers, who were mostly from other schools in the area. The headmaster welcomed us all, and opened with an SBL inspired presentation. A story, told physically, which I interpreted as the story of Rwanda. A group of people living peacefully, suddenly overcome by violence from within the group. Two of the actors attacked the other two, then a third group came in, stopped the violence, lifted up the victims, but invited the offenders back into the group. In the end, they held hands together. United once more as a single unit. The teachers were split into several groups, each one led by two Urukundo teachers familiar with SBL, and two students from our delegation. I was fortunately paired with Rusi, who speaks Kinyrwanda. (I should note that the official language of Rwanda is actually English, and the language of instruction at Urukundo is English and/or French. There’s a sign outside which reads: SPEAK ENGLISH OR FRENCH IN SCHOOL.)
Our goal for the day was to introduce the new teachers to SBL’s opening exercises, and create a three part story of our own with a central theme that the other groups would have to identify. Despite the language of instruction being English, most of the conversation was happening in Kinyrwanda, I would’ve been lost in the more abstract bits if it weren’t for Rusi, but I was familiar enough with most of the actual exercises to keep up. Until…
“Now, repeat after me…” the instructor began. “My hands are high!” He raised his hands. “My hands are low…” his hands were lowered. “And that is how…”
“And that is how…” we repeated.
“We popisco.”
“We popi–” what?
“Ohhh po-pi-sco! Ohhh po-pi-sco!” And the whole group marched around in a circle, chanting something which sounded vaguely English but also not.
I turned to Rusi. “What are they saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they trying to say ‘pop a squat?’”
“No,” she smiled. “Just roll with it.”
“Ohhh po-pi-sco! Ohhh po-pi-sco!”
Pop a Scot? Like, hit a Scottish person?
(…)Lunch time. “Did you guys do that thing they made up? Popisco? Pop-a-squat? Do you have any idea what they’re saying?”
Most of my cohorts shrugged.
“I think it’s just nothing word. Like whoosh. Someone asked me what whoosh meant, and I just told them. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Oh, OK. I see.”
(…)Back in the classroom.
“Alright. We only have one hour…” Imagine him speaking in a Rwandan accent. I felt it’d be strange to try and write it as it sounds. “The story we were talking about before lunch, it needs something more. We’re going to add it.”
We had made a bare-bones story, about hard work and determination leading to success, but it was just a collage of ideas. What we were missing was a conflict, an inciting incident for the story and a reason for working hard. The group deliberated.
“What if we have an injury? Like a debilitating injury, and we have to work through it? Take little steps, then stumble, almost give up, but try again, with help from someone? Like a doctor or a physical therapist––”
“You’re talking too fast.”
“Oh, do I need to repeat?”
“No, they understand you, but you have to slow down.”
“OK.” I repeated, slower, per Rusi’s instructions. For her part, she also translated for me. “Then in the end, we’re able to walk again, and that’s success.”
The group deliberated. My idea was rejected. The conversation shifted fully to Kinyrwanda, and suddenly we were moving around.
“What are we doing?”
“Something about a bus crash. I don’t really like her idea, but it’s aight.”
Here they had completely abandoned English. I had to follow Rusi’s lead.
At the end of the hour, the Headmaster announced that it was time for all the groups to assemble outside, in a deceptively small dirt yard near the gate of Urukundo. Each group would present their story, then the others would guess that story’s central ideas. We resolved to go first. We went second.
I fell in with the group to create three lines. Two on the outside longer than the one in the middle, which had an additional man in front, who held his arms out in front of him and “vroooom”’ed. We vroomed along with him, and followed him in circles around the yard. We were a bus. The outside lines the vehicle itself, the inside its passengers. We drove round and round as buses do, but then a crash! All players fell to the ground. Those on the inside whined and screamed, lively victims of a horrible accident, while those of us on the outside laid still in the silence of objects. We were the bus itself. A mangled, ruined hull. Then the rest of our group, those on the periphery, moved in. They collected the wounded victims, carried them out of the imaginary wreckage, then started to pick us up–the walls and windows of the bus–and reassembled us. The bus was running again. We broke formation, and made another, much larger circle, and the Rwandans sang: “God is good all the time! God is good always!” (It took me by surprise just how deeply religious Rwandans are. I’ve always been an atheist, but for the sake of participated, I sang along through the discomfort. After visiting the memorials, and being in a group of people, some well over 30 who certainly remember the Genocide, it seemed weird that they’d really believe that God is good all the time.) We turned around, and faced the crowd. Our main Urukundo instructor addressed them.
“So! What do you think our story was about?”
“That God is good!” Someone shouted. Big laughs.
“Good guess!”
“Don’t drink and drive!” More big laughs.
Yes, Rusi. It was a bad example.
Day 2
If Day 1 at Urukundo was all about what SBL is, Day 2 was about how to implement it in the class room. SBL, as I said before, excels at meeting kids, especially younger kids, where they’re at and getting them engaged in the moment. Capturing their attention. Getting their bodies in motion and making them feel like they’re part of the group. I didn’t feel it’d be right to interject and tell professional teachers how to use SBL. In some subjects I wasn’t sure how it’d even be possible. SBL is pretty intuitive for a subject like History, but we were a bit stuck when it came to subjects detached from what you’d normally think of as storytelling. Something abstract, like math.
Besides Drew, there were two other professors in our delegation. Dr. S (Anita), and Dr. S (Gehan), who move between classrooms and observe us as we interacted with the Urukundo teachers.
“Can I interject?” said Gehan, the Mr. Dr. Senthinathan, whom I had noticed standing in the doorway for about a minute or two.
“Yes, of course.” Our Urukundo teacher stepped aside, and joined us in listening to Gehan.
“Now, I know that this can all get a bit weird with abstract subjects, like math, but it––”
“You’re going to have to speak slower.”
“Should I repeat?”
“No, they understand you, you’ve just got to speak slower.”
“Oh, OK. So… I know this can be weird with a subject like math…” And again, Rusi began to translate for him. Here, I am paraphrasing. “But it doesn’t have to be…” He writes out a number on the board… it’s pi! “Take pi,” He’d written 20 digits on the board. I only know up to the second 5. 3.14159265(…) “When I was learning this, I used to associate these numbers with basketball jerseys.” Big laughs. “See here? Lebron. And here? Kobe. And there’s a sing-song quality to it. You can ask a student, ‘what do you like?’ If it’s basketball, there you go! Or maybe it’s football? That works too.”
I learned those digits of pi from Night at the Museum 2, where the Einstein bobbleheads sing the numbers out. I’ll tell you, right there in that moment, Gehan was making a lot of sense. I think I have an example. I remembered a lesson I was taught in theater class, way back in the before times of 2019. The story of Dithyramb and associations with seasons. I turned to Rusi, who was sitting next to me.
“I think I’d like to present.”
“You should. What’re you going to do?”
“I––” I thought about it for a moment, and realized it would be culturally insensitive to use Greek mythology as an example to Protestant Africans with a colonial history. “Something about seasons maybe.”
“That’s good. It doesn’t have to be crazy. Last year we just did the… you know that thing with the water, and rain and evaporation?”
“The water cycle?”
“Yeah. We did the water cycle. You can just do that. Or seasons. Seasons is good.”
Well after Gehan was done, and had left the room, we were preparing to present our ideas to each other. We would role play as teachers, and everyone else would be students. Rusi grabbed the attention of the main Urukundo instructor.
“Cam says he wants to present.”
“Well, um… Yes. But I’d like to go second, just to see how the role playing works.”
“Alright, you will go second.”
We sat back down.
“Yeah, seasons. I think I’ll go with seasons.”
“Yeah. Again, it doesn’t have to be crazy.”
I don’t know. Something about seasons didn’t sit right. Gehan really made math work. I really want to show them something more advanced. Something more interesting than seasons. Anyone could talk about seasons.
The first presenter came in.
“Good morning class!”
“Good morning teacher!” Everyone shouted in unison. Oh God, they really meant it.
“Take a seat!”
We all sat down. Now, to be honest, I don’t remember a thing about what this guy was saying, or even if there was a lesson. I was too busy taking in the two way performance. One of the Rwandans raised their hands, and asked “Can I used the bathroom?”
“You may!”
And he LEFT THE ROOM!
“You! Take your seat! Behave!”
They were really acting like the pre-schoolers. Copying their little tones of voice and mannerisms, playing with their hair and periodically shoving each other or standing up. It was definitely funny, but there was the aching, sinking feeling. I was next.
I don’t want to do seasons, I thought. That’s too dumb. I remembered something from math class in the Fall semester. Math class was the example I wanted to see with SBL, and Gehan made it look so easy. I felt like I had to try and do something like that, to show that I was valuable in this exchange. I’d been mostly quiet and a weak link in the chain in our group. I couldn’t participate in our discussions, because I was nervous and didn’t know the language, but this was supposed to be an exchange, right? I couldn’t just do nothing? Or do the same things they were doing. Ideas starting coming in for what I was going to do. Wow, yes! That’s great! That’ll work! That’s genius!
The first lesson ended.
“So what do we think? What do we think of the lesson?”
Somebody raised their hand.
“Yes!”
“He did not take attendance, and he did not write the date on the board!”
“He did not control the class!”
I made a mental note to somehow incorporate these things into my performance. Then the talking stopped, and everyone was looking at me. I did not hear my name mentioned. I didn’t hear anything.
“Oh? I’m up next?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
For a moment, I didn’t move. Just looked around the room. All of my resolve had vanished. My voice and knees were unsteady.
“Alright.” I said. I swallowed, stood up, and walked to the doorway. Took my deep breaths. In and out. Good old, tried and true SBL technique for getting calm. It didn’t work. Oh, well. The sooner I start––
I walked into the room hoping for a sudden burst of confidence that never came. There, all twenty something Rwandans (and Rusi), all older, more experienced and serious looking educators stared at me. Thinking in another language, with a whole other cultural background and life experiences I couldn’t fathom. Here I was about to show them how to teach. And what was I about to teach them? Me and all my wisdom?
The Fibonacci Sequence. Numbers in Nature.
“H– Hi. Good morning, class.”
“Good morning teacher!” They said in unison.
“Good morning teacher,” said a stray.
“Um… it uh… looks like everyone is here.” Good move. Gets me out of taking attendance. Saves time. I walked over to the board, and wrote the date on the board. Checked my phone to make sure it was correct. It was. I turned back to them. “Alright, let’s make a circle.”
Everyone got up, and we made a circle. They were a lot quieter and less unruly with me, being polite and listening, but it also reminded me of my status as an outsider. They wouldn’t play around with me, not at first, because I’m not part of the group. Just a nervous western intruder. If Rusi were up here they might have been more playful, she was clearly more comfortable, maybe even at home amongst them.
“No,” I said. “This isn’t a circle. Let’s make a circle.”
We rounded out our square into a slightly rounder square.
“Good enough,” I cleared my throat. What am I doing? “So um… we’re going to play a little game… repeat after me.” I held for a moment, then stomped.
They stomped. I held, then stomped twice. They stomped twice. I stomped three times. They stomped three times. Then I changed it up––– I stomped five times. They stomped five times. Next was the tricky part. I stomped eight times, making sure I was correct by silently counting them out in pairs. I stomped eight times, and they stomped six.
“No. No, but close. Count with me…” I start over. “One.” Stomp. “Two.” Stomp. “One, two, three.” Stomp, stomp, stomp. “One, two, three, four, five!” Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp! “Did anyone notice what we did? Do we know what comes next?”
Silence, stares.
“We’re making a sequence. You add the two numbers before to get the next number in the sequence. One, then––” Oh. I suddenly realized I messed up my own lesson. The sequence should go one, one again, then two, then three, then five and so on and so forth, and once we got beyond eight, it would become untenable. “Um… let’s go over to the board.”
I walked over to the board, wrote out “Fibonacci Sequence: Numbers in Nature” and asked myself why? Why in the world didn’t I just do the water cycle?
“In nature, you’ll find patterns. Similar patterns, all around. Like on an acorn.” I drew an acorn, the example my professor had used in explaining Fibonacci, an object made up of a spiral of this pattern. One, one, two, three, five, eight… “You see?”
A whisper, “He is not including us.” I ignored it. How the hell am I supposed to include the class in lecture? I just want this to be over.
“In nature, there are patterns. Patterns which can identify. See?” I pointed to the board to make sure they understood. It didn’t look like they did. “But why is this helpful? Um…” It got me my math credit. “Um… so class is dismissed a little early today. Your homework is to practice your whooshes, and um, have fun I guess. Alright. Bye.” I stood still for a moment, waiting to see whether anything else would happen, realized it wouldn’t, then quickly walked back to my seat next to Rusi. They all clapped politely but unenthusiastically.
“You did great,” Rusi said.
“Oh my God, I thought I was going to die.”
Rusi laughed.
“I should’ve just done the water cycle.”
“Yeah. Yeah. They don’t know what an acorn is.”
“Christ––”
The main instructor from Urukundo got up and addressed us. “Now, I won’t comment on the lesson. I think the trouble, is that we do not know math––” Nice. “––but one thing I did appreciate, was the warm up with the stomps. Using that to introduce the lesson. Thank you. Let us all clap for Camlin again.” The Rwandans swap their r’s with l’s. A frequent source of confusion. Again, they clapped politely.
(…) “Guys, I think I’ve figured it out,” Gianna said at lunch. “I think they’re saying ‘popsicle.’”
“You think so?” asked Anita.
“Yeah, we have that song in the States. ‘My hands are high! My hands are low, and that is how I pop-si-cal!’”
“Oh, wow, that’s interesting.”
“Yeah…” I said, picking at my food. “I think I like it better as a nonsense word. Or Pop-a-Scot.”
“Tell them about Fibonacci,” Rusi laughed.
I’m a fraud. A bad candidate for this trip. Not only did I walk through their memorials and feel nothing, I actively try to avoid them and embarrass myself trying to show off how smart I think I am. I don’t want to dance. I don’t want to sing. I want to eat their food, drink banana beer and tell people I’ve been to Africa. What else am I really accomplishing? What else am I doing here?
Day 3
“Everyone, everyone…” We were riding on the bus, back to Urukundo for the third and final time. Drew was making a little announcement. “It is very important for us to be on time today. We are being greeted at the school’s morning assembly, and we will be given a tour. We’ll be going into classrooms, and seeing the teachers that you helped trained at work. Cameron––”
“Yes?”
“There will be many, many children.”
No.
“Yes. Many happy children.”
No!
“They’ll want to be near you––”
NO!
“They’re want to high-five you––”
STOP! KEEP ME AWAY!
“A brave few of them will want to hug you, and sit in your lap and talk to you.”
I shrunk in my seat. “Yes, wow, this sounds great.”
“So be ready. Later, we’ll be having lunch with the students––”
Sweet merciful––
“––And afterwards we’ll be sitting down with Mama, and she’ll tell us about her journey starting Urukundo. It’s a fascinating story.”
One which I won’t be getting too far into. “Mama” is the nickname of Arlene Brown, an American who came to Rwanda 2004 at the age of 65 and founded what would eventually become the Urukundo Learning Center. Nice woman. Super lively. Reminds me of my great-grandmother. For more details you can read her book, Hope Made Real. All the proceeds go directly to Urukundo, not her, and USD goes a long way in Rwanda. (https://hopemadereal.org/meet-mama-arlene)
We walked back into Urukundo, moved to a lower level of the hill than we had been to before, and there, sure enough, was a crowd of small uniformed students ready to cheer for us. And they cheered. Yes, they did. Cheered and waved.
“Oh. My. God. Look at them, they’re so cute!” Someone said.
“Yes, awesome.”
“Cameron, look out. Children.”
“Yes, I see.”
The assembly was pleasant. The Headmaster introduced us, Drew said some words, and one by one we all introduced ourselves to the students. Our names and majors. There was music and dancing and laughter. Urukundo radically different from any school I’ve been to in the US. Like I described earlier, it isn’t one building, rather an entire compound, with each grade level occupying one building in descending order down the hill. The buildings are kind of like motels or strip malls. One storey, each class its own room. There aren’t any hallways, that’s all outside. The kids stay in their room, and each period the teacher would move instead of the students. There are three breaks a day, where the children are allowed to go outside of their rooms and move apparently freely around the grounds of the school. During the first break, a little girl approached me.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” I waved my hand. It looked like she wanted a high-five, so I gave her one. I was about to go say hi to another student, so many of them wanted to say hi and touch our hands, but she approached me again. She was clearly very shy.
“My– My friend said–– My friend said that you played in the movie Spider-Man.”
“… Spider-Man?”
“Yes. He said you are Spider-Man.”
Some other kids around me looked up to me in anticipation. I thought for a moment. Looked at their little uniforms. One boy’s collared shirt was torn up and dirty. “It’s true,” I said, and nodded. Their faces lit up and they started jumping around me.
“You’re him! You’re him! Spider-Man!”
“Yes. It’s true. I’m Spider-Man. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Spider-Man!”
I high-fived all of them, waved and made my way over to Alex.
“Alex… Alex!”
“What’s up?” She was distracted with a group of her own. I leaned in and whispered.
“They think I’m Spider-Man.”
“Oh my God, no way. That’s hilarious. I haven’t gotten one ‘Taylor Swift’ yet and they think you’re Spider-Man.”
“I know. I know. I’m a fraud. A menace. Damn, I should’ve told them it was a secret and I couldn’t tell anybody.”
“Too late now.”
Alex and I headed into one of the classrooms, incidentally the same room that little girl was in, the one that thought I was Spider-Man. I heard her whisper to her friend. “That’s Spider-Man.” “What? No way!” The teacher here was giving an English lesson. Alex and I observed, and were allowed to help correct their papers. They were completing sentences, but using British English rather than American, leading to variant spellings and word choices which I might’ve contested but chose not to. After the lesson ended I was a bit overwhelmed with all of the kids, so I made my up the steps to check out some of the administration buildings and the library. I told Gehan and Anita about my secret identity and got a good laugh. At lunch I noticed kids from that class looking at me and muttering to themselves.
We didn’t eat with the students per se, but on a dais in front of them in the mess hall. They didn’t serve meat at Urukundo, but I would assert that if the lunch they had was served every day they are being fed better than American public school students. Fresh sweet potatoes, rice, beans, vegetables and water. If one of my cohort took a picture, you’ll see that it’s a lot better than it sounds.
We talked about what we had seen there at the school, exchanged stories about our interactions with the kids. Haran was a magnet for them. So many of them swarmed Isabella that she fell to the ground. I told them my Spider-Man story, and how I was impressed with their English. Some of the content of their courses are surprisingly advanced. One group said that they were learning about sexual health quite early, way before puberty, unlike how or when it’s usually taught in the States. Maybe this has something to do with the CBC, Competency Based Curriculum, or maybe it’s just a cultural thing that these things are taught earlier. It seems practical. Not abstract. What they learn seems immediately relevant to the world around them. You need to know this, so we’re going to teach you now. They’re treated like kids, but being prepared for a real adulthood in a real world. I always felt that school in America was utterly removed from the realities of my own day-to-day life.
After lunch we had our visit with Mama at her home near the top of the compound, then we left Urukundo for the last time.
*****
This entry is getting pretty long now so I’m getting ready to wrap it up. I’d like to bring everything back to what Isabella said earlier, about children and love and finding purpose and all that. That’s what got me thinking about my relationship to some of these events on the trip. My flatness at the memorials, and my fear of children. I think I’ve figured it out.
At home I live a very predictable, stagnant lifestyle. I go to work, I go to school, I go home and I spend time with myself. I might watch movies, I might read, I might write, but all of this is time alone. I am a social person, but I prefer controlled sort of interactions with people that I want to talk to. It’s kind of learned, I suppose. When I was a kid, past a certain point, I stopped talking to the kids on my block because I really just didn’t like or get along with them. I turned to things that were more comfortable, like video games, movies, writing, etc. If I had a social interaction it would be through my electronics or at school, where again, I have a good amount of control over the interaction, but life doesn’t work like that. Life is chaotic and messy and not controllable. Trying to impose so much external order leads to isolation, like a social death. You’re not living, you’re just existing, living vicariously through mediums, but what are these mediums but death? Or echoes, ideas of people who lived before me? Going to the memorials for me wasn’t challenging because I was familiar with it. I knew what I was going to see and what I saw wouldn’t jump out at me, but life is what I’m actually afraid of. Living and running and leaving my comfort zone, and possibly failing. Children are like little avatars of life. They’re full of it, and they terrify me, because they’re open, unhinged and, I guess, loving. There’s such a positive atmosphere at Urukundo and in the Reconciliation Village, and even in our preparatory class for this trip that I’m really not used to. I’m not used to holding hands or hugging or dancing around. I’m used to ruminating and masking what I feel with sardonic humor, and just being on edge around my peers. Living people are way, way scarier than ghosts. I’m afraid of life. I’m kind of afraid of love too. It amazes me how a country with such a recent memory of genocide are this open with each other and Mzungo’s like me, that they’d even want to high-five or shake my hand.
An interesting thing about stories, since Story-Based Learning is the point of the trip, is how they end. Italo Calvino concludes his book, If on a winter’s night a traveler (thank you Dr. T), with an observation that all stories end either in tragedy, death, in which the story ends definitively, or happily. A happy ending, really, is life perpetuated. Not happy ever after, but happy for now that life keeps on going. You keep going and you try to keep it happy, and very often, the root of this “happiness” is love. Something you sometimes have to choose consciously to practice, not recoil from. When you’re looking for meaning in life, no matter what it is tangentially, love is generally what you’re feeling for that externality. You love the thing that keeps you going, or it wouldn’t be keeping you going. I worded this a lot better the night that we were reflecting all this, our visits to the memorials, and our work at Urukundo, as a group. But I think “love” could be the central theme of the trip–– Whatever I even mean when I say that.
Incidentally, Urukundo, in Kinyrwanda, means–––