student education workshops

The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre has been facilitating daylong workshops for Rwandan secondary school students since January of 2009. Student groups arrive at the centre in standard Rwandan school uniform, shapeless blue or beige skirts or pants and white short-sleeved shirts. Both sexes have short-cropped hair.

Their ages range between fourteen and twenty-four, although the majority is between seventeen and twenty-two. I am not sure why this delay in schooling, but imagine that post-genocide chaos and poverty, including the utter collapse of the educational infrastructure, is a critical factor.

The students might include survivors, the children of genocide prisoners, the children of those who returned to the country after the genocide. According to a UN report, 99.9% of Rwandan children had witnessed violence during the genocide, 79.6% experienced death in the family, 69.5 witnessed someone being killed or injured, 61.5% were threatened with death, and 90.6 believed that they would die. 57.7% witnessed killings or injuries with machetes, 31.3% witnessed rape or sexual assault and 87.5% saw dead bodies or parts of bodies.

Many of the students at the memorial centre are old enough to have had these experiences, although perhaps mostly too young to hold conscious memory. But all carry the genocide in some way, each carrying a unique personal and family story, although most know very little about Rwandan history.

“Learning from the past; Building the future” workshops take students on a journey that includes an exploration of genocide at a global level, information that provides a wider context for Rwanda’s experience, in the process lifting shame students might carry about what happened in their own country.

Rwandan history and the 1994 genocide are addressed through presentation, discussion and a guided visit to the mass graves and through the exhibits of the memorial centre. The students are also engaged in a series of activities designed to promote critical thinking and the ability to work together that is essential for post genocide Rwanda.

I have sat in on the workshops, one of the two professional teachers quietly translating for me in the back of the room, and I am actively engaged with the teachers in reviewing and revising the curriculum, and also in developing a wider program to train classroom teachers to engage with this material.

Sometimes I am enthusiastic about the potential for change in these daylong sessions; sometimes I am pessimistic about the impact, thinking that it does not go deep enough to create the kind of essential change that is required.

But yesterday I spent the day reading comments (more accurately, having the comments that the students wrote in Kinyarwanda on the bottom of their evaluation forms verbally translated for me by one of the teachers while I entered them into the computer in English) and I was cheered. They offered thoughtful suggestions, they wrote of what it meant to them to attend the session, and they wrote over and over that the program must reach youth who have not had the opportunity of attending secondary school.

Here are a few of their words.

“This program is very good. Keep it up because we get knowledge about the history of our country and in other countries where genocide has happened. We thank you because you really know how to receive (welcome) people.”

“You are sensitizing people to have the willingness to build the Rwandan community.”

“For me, I feel that I have changed more than I have before. It has been a big change.”

“Keep mobilizing all the schools to attend this program, and also sensitize local leaders to attend this program, and continue this program in primary schools because they are also the future of Rwanda.”

“What I can say is that this workshop should happen many times and that our school should visit many times and you should give us more lessons so that we can see more that we can teach to our fellow students.

“This program is helping me to know that remembering is not only for survivors but is for all Rwandans.”

“This program is very interesting. Keep it up. We learnt many new things and got explanations of what we don’t understand. We promise to teach others.”

“Analyze every thought you got from someone before you turn it into action, and avoid everyone who gives you bad ideas in order to deter what happened from happening again.”

“You should think about how to reach the street children so that they can know what happened because they could be used easily if someone wanted to start genocide again.”

“Continue to mobilize people to visit the museum. Continue to explain to them everything. Respect people as I have seen done in this workshop.”