Hi Everyone! My name is Mindy and I am a rising senior and Laidlaw scholar at Tufts University. Laidlaw teaches us so many valuable skills— how to be leaders, how to be global citizens, how to accept challenges, and, more importantly, how to embrace challenges. At the beginning of June, I went on a trip not for my Laidlaw Leadership-in-Action project, but through a program at Tufts called Tufts in Rwanda. We traveled to Rwanda as a cohort of 20 fellows and stayed in a youth village called Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, where we participated in a cultural exchange program. Little did I know, I would learn more on this 12-day trip about the world, politics, and culture than I have learned in my entire life.

I'm from a small majority white middle-class town in Massachusetts and my whole life I've lived in this bubble. I knew nothing about the continent of Africa, never mind Rwanda— a country about as small as Maryland. When I arrived I was greeted with nothing but smiles and open arms from every person I passed on the street. Many people even stopped and took the time to greet me saying, “how are you?” and actually waiting for a response, or a simple yet kind “Welcome to Rwanda”—  they could tell I am not from the country by the excitement I showed at every new view I saw. I also felt extremely safe and thought in my head, “My family should not have been worried. My family did not know what they were worried about.” All they knew was that their family member was going across the ocean to Africa and their first thought was, “Is Africa safe?” My first response to them before going was to ask them to think about their question. First of all, asking if Africa is safe is like asking if the United States is safe— a question they would never ask because they do not have the same assumptions and perceptions about the US as they did about Africa. I emphasized that I was going to Rwanda— a country in Africa and told them that it is, in fact, safe. After coming back I can confidently say that Rwanda is safe. In Rwanda, women are encouraged and empowered. In Rwanda, their government is over 60% women, and women are encouraged to go into STEM. The students at the village, both boys and girls, had multiple conversations while we were there about how women can be supported and they were shocked to hear that in the United States it's a bit harder for women in power. In Rwanda, people support each other. I saw a car pulled over on the side of the road, as if it had broken down, and around the car were almost 50 people. There is no way all those people fit in that car. It was the community coming out to support and help.

People seemed proud of being Rwandan. There were Rwandan flags everywhere and one thing that shocked me was that there was a painting of their president, Paul Kagame, in almost every building I went to. When I asked people what they thought of him, people said they were unified around this leader and the reason is that after the Rwandan people went through one of the hardest things they probably will ever go through, the Rwandan genocide, he helped get them out of it. There are most definitely politics I still do not know about and things happening in the country that people are probably not proud of, and I acknowledge that, but being a tourist, people only want you to see the good.

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Before going on this trip I took a class at Tufts on the Rwandan Genocide, but before then I knew nothing about it. I did not know what it was. I did not know when it happened. I did not know the people who were involved and the people who weren't. The Rwandan Genocide happened in 1994 and it was a genocide against the Tutsi— an ethnic group in the country. The genocide was not taught in my high school, nor was it taught in many other schools near me, and I didn't know about it until my junior year of college. Eight hundred thousand people were killed during the genocide, many by their neighbors, and their friends. Many people were committing these acts out of fear of the government at the time, fear of what the government would do if they refused. It is painful to think about what Rwanda was like in 1994. Beauty and unity emerged after the struggle. The people had community-organized courts where people publicly apologized for their actions during the genocide and were spared from being sent to prison. They now live side-by-side with victims and their families and there are no longer Hutus and Tutsis. Everyone is Rwandan. How a person can forgive someone for killing somebody that they love is something that I don't think I will ever understand. I can only admire their strength.

Going back to my time in Rwanda, after arriving at the airport, we hopped on the bus and drove to the village. Agahozo-Shalom is a place where youth between 14 and 17 are recruited to go if they're in a vulnerable position, meaning one or both of their parents are not in their lives and it is a struggle for them to pay for public school in Rwanda. This was all I knew about the students before traveling there. The students’ identities were defined by their struggles. As soon as I entered one of the homes in the village, where the students live in families of 18-24 brothers or sisters with a house mom, they told me about their interests, their passions, and their talents, and they asked me so many questions. Many of the questions were hard to answer, some informationally hard, but many emotionally difficult: “Why do people have guns in America if there's peace in America? Did you know any people of color before coming here? Is there anyone from Rwanda at your school? Is it hard for them to fit in? Are they judged?” They also asked me what I thought about Rwanda before getting there. I wanted to be honest, so I said I didn't know much. I didn't know what the weather was like. I didn't know what it would look like or where I would be staying or how amazing it would be. I told them that I tried to come with an open mind and that allowed me to learn so much from them. Much of my open-mindedness I learned from Laidlaw, which has taught me about ethics and how to enter a space with others that you know very little about and just learn about them as people, with no prior expectations or judgments.

Laidlaw’s goal is to educate future leaders, and in the youth at the village in Rwanda, I saw future leaders. They showed me their poetry and they showed me their art. They talked with me about needing to reform the education system in America so that people like me don't have to live their lives shielded from the world, shielded from learning about any other country other than their own. They spoke about ending racism and breaking down stereotypes— big discussions that probably will not be resolved in their lifetime but that I truly believe they will contribute big things to. Their insights and their perspective are going to stick with me— for the rest of my time in Laidlaw and for the rest of my life.