Notes From the Land of a Thousand Hills

Mary Vallis, 2008

Ever since we arrived in Rwanda way back in February, I’ve been trying to organize a live news event for our journalism students to cover.

On Friday, it all came together with a great headline act: Elam Karara, Rwanda’s national disaster management coordinator, agreed to visit the National University of Rwanda and give a press conference addressing the government’s response to the recent earthquakes in Cyangugu.

The man works in the prime minister’s office. The topic is sexy. I figured my students would be suitably impressed. It was a great opportunity for Rwanda’s next batch of journalists to make an important contact, practice their note-taking and ask real questions.

But were the students impressed?

When I announced the news conference to my fourth-year advanced print writing class, most of them stared back. I asked if they were excited. Some of them nodded politely. I caught one student on his way out of class and asked him again.

“Press conferences are boring,” he sniffed. Fair enough.

Of course, when the appointed day finally arrived, our home in Butare was devoid of fresh water, gas and electricity. My plans to dress appropriately went horribly awry. We lost the utilities when all of my clothes (yes, all of them) were halfway through a wash cycle. I pulled on the jeans and grubby cotton shirt I had worn the day before, ran a brush through my hair and hurried off to meet my esteemed visiting dignitary in the university parking lot.

Mr. Karara drove all the way from Kigali in a spotless SUV to meet our students. He brought with him a laptop loaded with pictures of the earthquake zone and an impressive four-page handout packed with statistics about the natural disaster. He stepped out of his vehicle in a pristine grey suit and shiny leather shoes. He looked me up and down. And then he smiled politely.

I extended a hand and apologized for my apppearance, then led him down to the appointed room to set up his equipment. About a half-hour later, the other instructors and I had herded enough of our students into the room for him to begin.

Despite the fact the overhead projector failed at the last moment, Mr. Karara took everything in stride. He calmly picked up a stray piece of chalk and began an hour-long presentation on the government’s response in the disaster zone. He gave dollar figures for the amount spent on earthquake recovery and the amount still needed. He gave detailed statistics on the number of Rwandans still sleeping under plastic sheeting. He gave the death toll, the number of people injured and a list of international donors. He talked about the dangerous gases in Lake Kivu and how they added to the region’s volatility. On and on he went, gracious and patient as students interrupted with well-crafted questions. The whole event seemed to go well (although I don’t really know, as it was all in French and I only speak the odd word).

When it was all over, he took questions and answered them all with grace. And after the questions were done, he stayed on for another hour, showing students crowded around his laptop the pictures he had brought. He gave several radio interviews and spoke with Eugene Kwibuka, one of our students who writes for the New Times. (You can read the story he published nationally here.)

And then it was over. Six weeks of planning, and it was over. I walked Mr. Karara back to his car, thanked him profusely and waved goodbye. News comes, news goes.

Mary Vallis, 2008

Last weekend, we reached the point in our trip when it came time to head north and visit the gorillas. For US$500, Rwanda offers the chance to spend an hour tracking some of the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas through the jungle. Despite the cost, the trip has become routine for Canadians visiting this country. Everyone insisted we must not miss our chance. They were right.

We scrabbled through the jungle for seven hours, often forging our own paths with the help of machete-wielding guide, and then finally sat in front of a mother gorilla as she nursed her young baby. The baby leaned back and stared intently at us, the oddities who had suddenly appeared in the bamboo forest, chased his mother around for an hour and then disappeared as quickly as we came.

What happened the next day was also an adventure, and a nearly free one at that.

My husband James and I decided to stay overnight in Ruhengeri, a small and prosperous town in the shadow of three volcanoes. We woke up bruised, dirty and battered, but after a leisurely breakfast we were ready to go exploring again, this time in town. We hauled on our backpacks and started walking.

It was not long before we came to a fork in the road and a sign advertising Fecar Inganzo, a federation of local artisans who have banded together to sell their work. Our guidebook raved about the federation’s wares but warned the workshop was a five-minute drive out of town. Yet according to the peeling paint sign we saw at the side of a road, the federation was just a kilometre down the road. We abandoned our original plan and turned left, in search of Rwandan handicrafts to take home for friends and family.

We passed a genocide memorial, a hostel and a few beauty “saloons” blaring hits from the eighties before the town gave way to a narrow road flanked by mud huts and bright yellow shacks selling prepaid phone cards. The farther we walked, the more children peeked their heads out of doorways to stare at us. Despite Ruhengeri’s positioning as a base for gorillas tourism, it seemed not many white travellers ventured down this particular road, if the children’s cries of “A MUZUNGU! A MUZUNGU!” were any indication. After a month and a half in Rwanda, James and I are quite used to being a novelty of sorts, and spend lots of our time politely waving at children or shaking their proffered hands. In Ruhengeri, something different was going on.

The walk certainly stretched longer than the advertised kilometre, and at every cluster of houses we passed, one or two children decided to tag along with us to find out what destination the strange white folk were seeking. A young boy in a loud green and blue set of matching African pants and tunic became our biggest fan, trotting along beside me and smiling up without saying a word. After the first kilometre, he slipped his hand into mine and kept it there as we walked, and walked, and walked.

Every time James and I stopped to confer about whether to keep going, the children closed in around us and listened to us intently, though I assume they only understood one or two of our words. The second or third time, I glanced back at our growing band of followers and counted somewhere between 12 and 16 children. Only one or two of them ever asked for money; most were content to try out their few English phrases on us time and time again (”Hello, how are you? I am fine.”)

After one final strategy session, James and I finally decided to limp as far as one last wooden sign in the distance. If it was not Fecar, we resolved to turn back, deliver our child followers back to their rightful homes and head back into town. Our persistence paid off: We had indeed reached the craft workshop. But it was closed.

The children, however, knew what to do. They pulled us around the side of the building, where we found a man grinding cow horns with a sander, a protective mask over his face. Through a combination broken French and sign language, we learned the gift shop was closed for the day, but he invited us in while he telephoned the man in charge. Alas, the man did not answer his cellphone. Undeterred, the craftsman led us to a set of dusty shelves containing finished products that had not yet been priced or placed on display.

As the children watched from the doorway (or climbed onto the sills of glassless windows for a better view), James selected a wooden box carved in the shape of three volcanoes and a gorilla and paid the price the man appeared to pick at random. The man wiped the cow horn dust off our treasure with a spare rag, placed it in a paper bag and pumped James’s hand up and down. And then we were off again, with our entourage in tow, back down the windy road towards town. The little boy who liked me best smiled and slipped his hand back into mine and off we went, both of us grinning.

Children stretched out about 15 feet behind us. Some ran ahead, pushing old tires down the road with sticks, while one of the older ones offered to carry our bags (for a fee, I’m sure). Most of the children disappeared back towards their homes as we passed by, but my little friend stayed with us - past where we had picked him up, past the hostel and almost all the way into town.

At several points, James and I stopped and firmly waved goodbye, and pointed back in the general direction of the boy’s home. He would smile and hang back, but after we took a few steps, I would find his warm hand again inside mine. I asked him in my best French, “Ou est ta mere? Ou est ta maison?” but he would just smile and keep walking. I started to feel as though we had charmed a stray puppy. What would his mother think?

We stopped one last time and I dug out the phrasebook to find the Kinyarwanda word for “goodbye.” Down the list of pleasantries I went, past “goodbye morning,” past “goodbye afternoon,” past “goodbye evening” and down to murabeho, or “goodbye forever.” I leaned forward, put my hands on my knees and looked my new friend straight in his brown eyes. He grinned. I struggled not to smile. “Murhabeho,” I said firmly. James and I turned and resumed our walk at a brisker pace. We rushed past the genocide memorial before I had the courage to turn around. Message received: our little friend had finally disappeared.

James and I concluded we were nothing more than an interesting diversion for the boy - an interesting break from his usual Saturday routine. We spent Friday tracking gorillas. He spent Saturday tracking us.

Mary Vallis, 2008

In the past week, there has been a shift in Butare. The warm equatorial weather has turned cold. The sun obscured by clouds and Jean the cook huddles up to the gas stove at home. I am waking up some days (OK, most days) a tad grumpy. On the road to school, it seems more schoolchildren are mocking me than waving hello.

Once I reach my little concrete classroom, however, everything changes. The faces in front of me are fresh, expectant, smiling. My third-year editing class has ended and I have a new crop of students eager for top marks in Advanced Print Writing.

I have spent the past week learning what they already know. In their four years at the National University of Rwanda, they have absorbed a thing or two about print journalism. They know how to write a lead sentence. When I drew an upside-down triangle on the board, they announced in chorus: “inverted pyramid!” and then rattled off the various components of the basic news story structure. And then I sent them out to write profiles of each other, that age-old journalism class assignment designed to help the teacher get to know the students, as well as assess their writing abilities. Most of the students turned up on deadline and handed in gems.

My students have graciously given me permission to share with you some of the best paragraphs from their 500-word assignments (as long as I promised to fix their spelling errors). I hope that you learn a little about each of them in the process.

Julien on Clementine: “A blue Adidas hat on her head, small headphones inside both ears, she moves as if she were dancing to music. Clementine Barada sometimes claps her hands and sings without opening her mouth. I can guess the song is Last Night I Heard the Screaming by Tracy Chapman. ‘I am her super fan,’ she revealed to me.”

Gilbert told Clementine: “Girls of these days are not easy, they like money instead of the owner of that money. Am I making money for them or for myself? All the time I’m asking it! When they said that they love you, you must discern why because there is always a reason behind.”

Mediatrice on Carine: “The appearance of a simple girl, short hair, long skirts, a Christian pace, with a peaceful and a smiling face. This is Carine Umutoni, a fourth year student in Journalism at the National University of Rwanda. At the university, she is a star, because she is been the first Rwandan lady to present a sports show on radio that was on November, 18th, 2005, when Radio Salus was launched.”

Gilbert on Julien: “He is a Kigali city born man who spends much of his time concentrating on his job, and aims higher to becoming a great video documentary producer whenever his career permits it and as much as his financial means are concerned. By names, he is Julien Mahoro Niyingabira. ‘I love the second part of my names, because that one means peace, and I feel determined to work hard just to bring my maximum contribution to the peace building process,’ he admits, happily thanking his parents to have given him such a beautiful name. In fact he was of some young age when he discovered that he was a peace lover, just by the growing feeling in him to calm misunderstandings which could arise in between his fellows, be it at school or even among his brothers at home.”

Etienne on John Paul: “….After looking after [his] sisters and brothers after their parents were dead during 1994 atrocities, he is now proud of what he did for them as they are all studying at NUR. He likes talking to people, sharing ideas, getting pieces of advice from them and advising them when possible. He likes truth and hates lies, dishonesty, deceit and unserious people.”

Mary Vallis, 2008

I would have posted earlier, except it’s Wednesday and therefore Gacaca day, and you know what that means. Or maybe you don’t.

Every Wednesday in Butare, the whole town shuts down. The restaurants do not open until 3 p.m.; the streets are silent because there are no moto drivers rustling up fares; the metal gates to the Internet cafes are shut and locked with padlocks. Even Matar, the general store, is closed. The only commerce on the main road is a man hawking a bagful of limes from his personal tree and a few mobile phone card vendors, in their ever-bright yellow smocks.

Businesses are closed so that any locals who want to attend Gacaca (pronounced ga-cha-cha) are able. Esteemed community members sit once a week and slowly mete out justice for the Genocide. The war is already 14 years past, but still, some cases are just beginning to be heard. As you drive along Rwanda’s windy highways, you will often see groups of people gathered at the side of the road, sitting on benches on the grass, listening to cases relevant to their communities. Call it roadside justice.

Gacaca was originally used to settle village disputes — so and so stole my goat, I am entitled to that farmland, that type of thing (or such is my basic understanding). But with tens of thousands of prisoners clogging Rwanda’s prisons in the years after the Genocide, the system was adapted to hear lower-level cases.

People seem to take a keen interest in the cases being heard in their midst, and are reportedly invited to participate in the weekly hearings. The building always seems to be packed. I, too, am intrigued. But as an outsider, I am not welcome at the weekly gatherings in Butare. Special permission is required, and is not easy to get. It would be impossible to slip in and take a seat on one of the back benches; as a muzungu (white person), I stand no chance of blending in.

As I walk by the brick building on Wednesdays, I often see clutches of nuns whispering just past the open doors, or people hugging, or Rwandans sittng alone staring off into space, just thinking. I can only wonder what is being said behind those sturdy brick walls.

Mary Vallis, 2008

The other day, as I was writing on the chalkboard, my 10 third-year print editing students dissolved into unstoppable giggles.

That usually means only one thing. Somewhere on the board, I goofed.

I was writing out a mock quotation so we could review how to punctuate and attribute the statement. The students had just completed a quiz, in which they had organized a number of point-form statements, quotations and facts into a comprehensive news story (and it’s worth noting here that they did a great job, having mastered basic news story structure).

The story focused on a draft law currently under consideration by Rwanda’s parliament and involved a quote from a man named Theodore Simburudari. He’s a real person, a man who represents Genocide survivors through an organization called IBUKA. I pulled most of the points for the quiz from a story in the New Times, one of Rwanda’s English newspapers.

In my haste to scrawl the example up on the board and keep the class moving, I renamed him “Mr. Simbuka.” That’s when the snickering started.

“Miss!” giggled Alexandre, one of my most outgoing and playful students. “Simbuka is a real word in Kinyarwanda!”

Oh no, I thought. Please tell me it doesn’t mean “underpants” or “ridiculous.”

I turned to face the class. “What does it mean?” I ventured.

Between fits of giggles, Alexandre finally got it out. “JUMP!” he said.

So I had nicknamed the unsuspecting man “Mr. Jump.”

My students love teaching me Kinyarwanda. I’ve adopted my colleague Rebecca’s strategy of encouraging the students to teach me a new word during every class. Usually, I repeat the word back to them and try to spell it on the board, a simple exercise in which they take great delight (so far, we’ve gone over “I love you,” “baby,” “teacher”and “mud.”). The exercise levels the playing field a little; they take pride in being able to teach me something while I’m teaching them. And the students get no end of amusement out of my awful pronounciation.

By the end of the day, the words usually disappear from my head. Simbuka, however, will stick. As the lesson went on, we added “Mrs. Simbuka”to the example, which gave way to another round of laughter. By the end of the class, the students were able to punctuate the quote correctly (which, after all, was the goal).

Every time I have seen Alexandre roaming around on campus since then, I point to him and yell “SIMBUKA!” He grins, gives me a little hop and continues on his way.

Mary Vallis, 2008

We get a lot of questions about what life is like in Rwanda, everything from what kind of fruit we eat to whether we have indoor plumbing. The short answer is that life in Rwanda is amazing and lots of fun. The long answer is, well, longer.

I’ll try to follow the same advice I give my students and “show, not tell.”

Most days, I wake up to the sound of a rooster crowing. (Contrary to popular belief, roosters crow all day. They start at daybreak at never stop. At least this one does. I’ve never seen him; he is hidden behind a hedge.) Our house in Butare (above) sits across from a cornfield, behind a metal gate that leads out onto a red dirt road in a neighbourhood called Taba.

We usually make coffee and toast with peanut butter before setting off to teach morning classes at the National University of Rwanda, a 45-minute walk up the main street in Butare. A red car driven by a man named Alphonse is available to ferry us back and forth, or we can find our own way.

The walk is punctuated by children — many, many children. They come in two varieties: the ones that hold out their hands begging for money, and the ones who are entranced by the sight of a foreigner and either say “Bonjour” or “Muzungu” (white person). Sometimes they do both. And if you bring out your camera, sometimes they will do this:

Most locals on the road are friendly and offer a “hello” in English, French or Kinyarwanda as you pass. If you learn some phrases like “Mwaramutse” (good morning), their already-wide smiles will become impossibly wider.

Rwanda is, however, not all sunshine and bananas. In the first stretch of the walk, you will usually pass a young boy in an orange hoodie sitting on the sidewalk with his back leaning against a tree. His legs stretch across the pavement so that you have to step onto the road to pass, or walk over him. Usually, his hood is up and he quietly extends a hand asking for money. On the odd occasion, however, the hood is down and you can see his disfigured skull.

As you walk up the main road, you pass a clatch of moto taxis — men on motorbikes who will take you pretty much anywhere in town for about 300 Rwandan francs (not that there are many places to go; Butare has about 5 streets altogether). Three hundred francs sounds like a lot until you convert that into Canadian: The exchange rate is about 5,000 francs to $10. Mornings are my favourite time to walk: Women balancing huge plastic tubs of vegetables on their heads are walking into town, the schoolchildren rush past singing and laughing, and men walk by with their hands full of live chickens. Once, I saw a man balancing a huge wooden desk atop his head. Every day brings new sights.

Keep walking. On your right you will see Matar, the general store. You can buy everything here from dried pasta (for $8 a package, yikes!) or a local treat called Super Gorilla gum. Outside the door are hungry mothers with babies strapped to their backs with strips of fabric, boys hawking newspapers and more young Rwandan boys in yellow smocks hawking pay-as-you-go telephone cards. Some of them also carry full-sized telephones, in case you do not own a telephone but need to make a call right then and there. I think of them as mobile telephone booths.

On your left, you will see a few Internet cafes. When the power goes out, which is often, one savvy establishment fires up a generator and keeps collecting francs. You will also see the Hotel Ibis, a local landmark that serves as both a hotel and central meeting place for ex-pats, tourists and Rwandans. Men in white coats serve Fanta sodas and omelettes made with everything (including French fries, a trend someone in Toronto should definitely jump on). If the Ibis were not always so busy, I would be convinced my colleague Marc singlehandedly it in business. He is there at least once a day, and most often twice: Once, for breakfast on his way to campus, and again at the end of the day, for a beer.

A little further up the road is the university campus, hidden away at the top of a lush hill just past a scenic valley. Look closely as you walk up the road: On the right is the campus genocide memorial, and on the left is a stand of trees in which I have seen monkeys more than once. They are usually lounging about in the mornings.

Everyone trips back to the Rwanda Initiative house for lunch, where Jean, the cook, is whipping up a feast.

Jean is a wonderful man. It’s my understanding he bicycles about 20 kilometres each way to work. He pores over cookbooks written in French and always comes up with something amazing. One day, he made killer guacamole with avacados plucked from a tree in the backyard (it’s just past the banana and lime trees). He also makes great gnocchi from scratch and usually serves cooked bananas alongside potatoes and peas.

Jean has a great sense of humour. My clumsy colleague Rebecca has a habit of breaking dishes in the kitchen (usually as she is washing them). The other day, the ceramic pepper shaker smashed on the tile floor as she was drying dishes. When she confessed to Jean the next day, he apparently told her, “You need a man.”

Despite familiar foods on the table, there are situations that emphasize just how far Butare is from home. During my first week here, I arrived at lunch one day to hear we would be having chicken for dinner. But not just any chicken. One of these two:

I nicknamed them Amos and Andy and quickly regretted it. As we broke bread, one of them died a loud, slow death under a dull-ish kitchen knife.

Most times, however, the distance is a good thing. Jean make skewers of goat meat, cooked with salt, onions and peppers. The restaurant next to our house also serves skewers of goat innards (I have not yet been so brave).

Long after Jean rides away and we return from afternoon classes, we find dinner waiting for us in the stove, heat it up and do our own dishes. This is where life in Butare gets interesting: Lately, the power has been going out about once a week, so we spend those evenings in darkness, reading books by the light of candles or headlamps. Water is another issue. It must always be boiled before drinking: Jean keeps a big canister of boiled and filtered water in the kitchen, and a few chilled bottles in the fridge. Hot water is also touch and go — with many teachers in the house at any given time, we’re lucky to get 10 consecutive minutes for a “shower” in our various bathrooms. You usually sit in a tub and hold a movable nozzle over your head. Even so, those few hot minutes are a welcome treat.

By then it is time for bed. It often rains at night; you fall asleep to the sound of raindrops bouncing off the metal roof. Before you know it, that darned rooster is crowing all over again.

Mary Vallis, 2008

There are days when, teaching here at the National University of Rwanda, I doubt myself. There are lots of reasons to assume this exercise in cross-cultural journalism education will not work.

English is the third language of most of my students. I do not yet speak much Kinyarwanda (beyond hello, how are you and “buhoro,” or slower), and know only a few isolated phrases in French (il fait froid, le chat est grand, c’est le castor sauvage).

Half the time, when I arrive on campus, the power is out, or the Internet is down, or both. Printing out assignments or class handouts is touch and go. Sometimes, I am able to teach in a room with a blackboard (not all of them have one). Even so, finding an eraser or chalk can prove a challenge. The relentless rain sometimes keeps students from class (so do a litany of excuses, ranging from “my elbow hurts” to “I have to work at the radio station.”)

Yes, there are lots of reasons to think I will fail. But I remember what I told my students the first time they came to class without the assignments they were due to hand in, protesting they were unable to complete the work because the power was down again. I told them all you need to be a journalist is a pen and paper. I apply the same principle to teaching.

My third-year print editing students returned from their class trip to Kigali discouraged that they had not seen George W. Bush; despite their cheerful assessment of the trip, you could see it in their weary eyes. So I decided to bring Mr. Bush to them. I wrote a speech that he could have given during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, performed it for them (twice, slowly, in English) and instructed them to write a news story based on the address. Beforehand, I gave them a lesson on the importance of taking good notes, and the proper way to directly quote a source in a newspaper.

For all the obstacles in their way, my students got it. They laboured over the weekend writing 350-word stories based on my Bush impression. I found out today that one student surreptitiously recorded my voice on his mobile phone, determined to get Bush’s quotes right. Despite his shaky English, the student turned in a story that showed he clearly understood the lessons, even noting in his copy how certain lines of Bush’s speech were delivered (laughingly or emotionally). My student is still struggling to find the right words in a foreign language (Bush “cut the red liban”), but the principles of journalism we have been discussing are clearly at play in his work. You just have to be patient and read closely to understand he is learning.

It is easy to become frustrated by the amount of chatter in Kinyarwanda between students when I am facing the chalkboard, or by the note passing and the students’ confused stares. It is frustrating until I realize they are discussing my words to ensure everyone in the class understands what I’m prattling on about. With each assignment, their summary news leads contain more news, are more direct and more often than not, they are now written in active voice.

The fluorescent lights in the computer laboratory are flickering on and off as I write this. Rain is hammering the building’s metal roof. Error messages are popping up every eight seconds warning me that my memory stick is infected with yet another virus, and the computer has already flicked off without warning once. Such is life in Rwanda.

I am not working at my usual Canadian pace, to be sure. But there is no doubt that teaching here is worthwhile. As I left the classroom today, one of my students caught my eye and said, in his best formal English, “Today’s class was very beneficial. Thank you.”

Mary Vallis, 2008

On Tuesday morning, 41 journalism students and a handful of teachers from the Rwanda Initiative and the National University of Rwanda boarded a bus in Butare. Destination: George W. Bush.

We had arranged to take the students to Kigali, more than two hours away, to cover Rwandans’ reaction to the U.S. President’s visit.

All we needed was Robert Mugabe. Robert K. Mugabe, that is — a second-year student we thought was still in the bathroom (turned out he was on the bus the whole time). Everyone was excited. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the world’s most powerful man.

The students sang all the way to Kigali. Boys at the front of the bus belted out traditional songs in Kinyarwanda to drown out the girls singing gospel songs farther back. When we finally arrived in the capital, we piled the students into cabs and onto the back of motorcycle taxis and fanned out across the city armed with notebooks, audio recorders and a lone television camera.

To say it was a different experience than covering Bush in Canada is an understatement. Guards here wear berets and carry machine guns and switches. There was no sign of protest in the street, nor celebration — I did not see anyone waving an American flag, or a Rwandan one, for that matter. The students were under orders to cover the local angles — no one had accreditation to the day’s press conferences or photo opportunities. The most we could hope for was to see a white hand waving as the motorcade cruised past, or maybe a handshake. Even so, they seemed keen – all but for one, who disappeared to get a radio fixed as soon as the bus stopped. But even he turned up at his assigned location later.

The five students I was with covered the area around the new U.S. embassy in Kigali’s government district, where Bush would be giving a speech. I hoped we would have one of the best chances of seeing the president. The relevant city block was, of course, barricaded on all sides. The students sidled up to presidential guards with guns and politely asked how to get closer to the action. For every guard that understood their plight and cut them a break, the next one turned them back. Eventually we wound up stuck on a street corner on the wrong side of the embassy — a policeman confided the motorcade would enter from the opposite side. It was clear the students were discouraged.

Yet after siitting for hours on end in the middle of a hot afternoon, they did not complain, nor did they give up. Even after guards and policemen questioned the students about their work and warned them to wait until Bush appeared to interview anyone, they quietly spoke to a defense lawyer, an unemployed amputee, taxi drivers, curious students and street children who gathered on narrow sidewalks in front of local shops. I don’t think it ever crossed the students’ minds to take a break to drink water, nor did they ask to use a washroom or stretch their legs.

By hour six, the guards allowed our group to stand on the edge of the street, rather than ordering us back onto the curbs like everybody else. After all that, the motorcade did arrive from the other way — we briefly saw the shiny cars off in the distance — and it left the same way. As the guards ordered spectators to return to their homes, I reminded the students they more interviews to be done to capture the crowd’s newfound disappointment. All day they had waited, without any payoff whatsoever. Even so, they finished the job.

The students put their own disappointment aside, and set out finishing the task like professionals. And the next day, they sang all the way home.

Click here to hear the students singing

Mary Vallis, 2008

On Saturday, four of us took a drive out of our small town down a twisty valley road, past dozens of prisoners in pink uniforms tending fields under the watch of armed guards, past Mount Huye, past a young boy carrying a pig and children dressed in dirty T-shirts, who waved at our car like we were rock stars.

For the first time in a week, the sun shone and there was no threat of rain. Along the way, our driver pulled the car over where the view was especially good, so we could take pictures of ourselves smiling in front of the Rwandan hills, the kind of snapshots you know you will e-mail back to Canada, where parents will print them out and attach them to the fridge.

Our destination was Murambi, the site of an unfinished school where an estimated 50,000 people took refuge during the 100 days of violence that tore this country apart in 1994. It is a beautiful campus of low, brick buildings balanced atop a lush, green hill. As we walked along its brick pathways, children from the next house over played in the tall grass. We could hear the echo of clapping, drums and songs rising from the valley below. The site’s caretaker, Francois, joined us. Wearing plaid pants and a pressed dress shirt, he explained in halting English that people might be celebrating a wedding.

The wedding, the children, the warm sun all faded away as we approached a row of classroom containing the preserved bodies of genocide victims that had been carefully excavated, somehow preserved with lime and laid out in 24 of Murambi’s classrooms on slatted wooden platforms as a raw reminder of the tens of thousands of lives that were lost here. Long before Francois opened the first classroom door, I could smell the victims.

As the guidebooks explain it, the local bishop and mayor set a trap for the area’s Tutsis by telling them they would be safe at the technical school. But when Tutsis arrived, the electricity and power were cut off. Two weeks later militamen stormed the school. They threw grenades into crowded classrooms and hacked people to death with machetes. Their bodies were dumped into mass graves.

Years later, the bodies were excavated. Most were reburied under concrete slabs, but hundreds were set aside for display. The site, we are told, is one of the most explicit genocide memorials in the country. The sharp stench of the human remains was so potent that I held a shirtsleeve over my nose and mouth to keep from gagging. I ventured into only a few of the classrooms that Francois quietly opened for us.

The chalky victims are still posed in the positions in which they were found. Arms on some of the mummified bodies are raised, as if the victims died protecting themselves from blows. Others are wearing rosaries or still have clumps of hair. There are children with feet only a few inches long. Some are intertwined with their mothers. If one is brave enough to look closely, one can see where some victims were hacked at the ankles first, to prevent them from running.

Nothing separates visitors from the bodies. There is no glass. There are no colourful blurbs of explanation outside each room; visitors are left to draw their own conclusions, or ask questions of the guides if they dare.

I eventually walked upwind of the classrooms, turned my back on the bodies and photographed the landscape instead. Francois joined me as my friends moved from classroom to classroom. He told me that his mother and sisters all died here, while he was in Burundi (his father had died in an earlier struggle, back in 1963). I did not ask Francois how he knew this. “Come,” he said. “You are a friend. I want to show you.”

He took me to another row of classrooms and fumbled outside a locked door for his keys. “What is in here?” I asked. Francois would only say that he had to show me. When he finally found the right key, the door swung open.

Inside this classroom were rows and rows of human skulls. They faced the door like soldiers at attention. Some were cracked and missing pieces, as if the victims had been hit in the head. Behind them, on another wooden table, were stacks of bones. I think they were femurs – hundreds and hundreds of femurs, stacked like firewood.

Francois eventually locked the room up again. We followed him to a building where bundles of bloody clothes were neatly stacked along a wall. And then he took us past a group of women tending the grass between buildings, past an excavated mass grave and back to the main building, which appeared to have been built long after the massacre, as a host centre of sorts for Murambi.

The only traditional parts of this “Genocide museum,” if that is how one can describe it, were the grass basket Francois set out for donations and the guest book that was so large, he carried it to us with both hands. We signed our names and our home countries. When I reached the square reserved for comments, I paused. What can one possibly say about experiencing this? Three buses of Rwandans pulled up near the flagpole outside and Francois impatiently shut the book and took it away before I could collect my thoughts.

I have heard this place referred to as the “school of death.” I know 800,000 people lost their lives in the Genocide. I know it lasted 100 days, and that Rwanda has never been the same. But now I have met some of the victims, both dead and alive. Before we climbed back into the car, Francois told me it is not easy to be here every day. But he says it is necessary.

Mary Vallis, 2008

Having travelled halfway around the world over three days, from the snow-covered streets of downtown Toronto to the rust-red roads of rural Rwanda, having replaced hot water with warm rain, the moment I have been waiting for finally came: I met my class.

My students, if you are reading this, take note: The lead sentence of this blog post is far too long. In your own work, please take care not to write first sentences stretching past 35 words. (Shami, you were correct when you noted that those who write for the Internet are lazy.)

So there we were: Me, the short Canadian girl who looks much younger than her 31 years, and them, eight male Rwandan university students in their mid-twenties to early thirties. Only three third-year students did not turn up for their first print editing class. The rest appeared eager to learn.

My classroom is about 10 feet by 12 feet, with concrete walls, a bare floor and bars on the open windows. When I arrived, there was only one massive wooden office desk in the middle of the bare room. There is no chalkboard. The students quickly disappeared and returned with chairs. Most remembered to bring a pen. And so we began.

In the first moments, the class dissolved into giggles.

Eager to establish my credibility, I started by telling them about my experience (a decade as a Canadian newspaper reporter who has worked on stories many of them knew about, like the massacre of students at Virginia Tech last year). “Tell us something personal,” one mischievous student asked. “How old are you? Are you married?”

I had been warned the questions would come - asking about one’s family is a common courtesy here, and I think the students wanted to ensure I had enough authority to teach them. Smiling, I answered: 31 years old, and yes, married to the Rwanda Initiative teacher in the next classroom. “Any babies?” the mischief-maker continued. The students tittered, hiding wide, bright smiles behind their hands.

On we went. As the students introduced themselves to me - among them Ildephense, Felix, Théoneste and Jean Damascnène, the soft-spoken class president - all confessed they hoped to work in TV or radio. No matter, I said. Learning to edit will improve your scripts and help you write well in English (for most, it is their third language, behind Kinyarwanda and French). Editing can turn a good story into an award-winner, I told them. If the words are effective, they will disappear in the reader’s mind and be replaced with images of scenes and characters instead. The students grinned.

And then we discussed their first big assignment: covering U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to Kigali next week. Instructors working with the Rwanda Initiative are taking 42 journalism students on an overnight trip to the capital, more than two hours northeast of the university in Butare, where they will search out local angles on an international news story. For most, it will be the biggest assignment of their lives. Their faces - some smiling, other contorted into frowns - show they are both excited and nervous about the proposition.

The role of my class is especially important: In Kigali, they will be photographers, roaming the streets in search of images that capture the impact of Bush’s visit on Rwandans. The following week, they will become editors, and improve stories written by second-year information gathering students about the big day. We will also develop our own class style guide, which they will apply to all of their assignments over the next month.

With that, I gave them their first assignment: If you could ask Bush a question next week, what would it be? The depth of their answers was staggering. One would ask the president what he would do to ensure Rwanda and the United States have a formalized relationship that survives past his mandate. Another would ask what Rwanda could learn from a developed country like the U.S. that would help it economically. Another student wanted to know what Bush was doing to stop Rwanda’s militia. Others chose not to ask about Rwanda at all, preferring instead to ask Bush for his thoughts on the presidential race or Iraq. What they all had in common, however, is that the students began by addressing Bush as “Your Excellency.”

None of my students will be anywhere close to Bush next week. I cannot wait to watch them fan out in Kigali and cover the story in their own way, whatever that turns out to be.