As the Boeing 767 broke through the clouds on its final descent into the Kigali (Rwanda) International Airport on June 16th, four Boston-MetroWest high school students were struck by the country's lush green "mille collines" - or "thousand hills" that surrounded the airport.
It was the last leg of their 32-hour journey to Rwanda's capital where, for 10 days, they would live with Green Hills Academy students and their families and volunteer at the Home of Hope Orphanage, just a stone's throw from "Hotel Rwanda."
Each morning during their stay in Rwanda, the four Belmont Hill School students worked in the orphanage near the center of Kigali. Built on a gently descending hill, it is a small, peaceful, walled-in enclave for abandoned Rwandese children and the elderly. There, sisters of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity work tirelessly, 365 days a year, to feed, bathe and teach the hundreds of Home of Hope residents.
For four hours each day, the students donned colorful cotton smocks to feed porridge to 2-year-old orphans. They taught 5- and 6-year-old Rwandese children English. They joined older children during recess in the protected courtyard-area to ride a seesaw or play pick-up soccer games. And they served hot lunches to the children on long, wooden tables.
The students also visited the elderly down the hill from the orphans' buildings each day - to make them smile and to learn simple phrases from them in their native Kinyarwanda language.
In addition to volunteer work at the Home of Hope orphanage, the four students visited Hutel des Mille Collines, or Hotel Rwanda, now a completely remodeled, popular luxury hotel in the center of Kigali, just up the hill from the orphanage. They spent an entire afternoon at the National Genocide Museum, a shocking reminder of what happened before, during and after the hundred days of genocide in Rwanda from April to July 1994.
One afternoon, the students went to a small village 50 kilometers south of Kigali to visit a church where hundreds of women and children were raped and killed during the 100 days of genocide. There, bullet holes are still visible in the church's aluminum ceiling. Thin sunrays shine through them.
The students remained silent as they visited the underground genocide memorial where victims' bones have been placed in carefully stacked coffins, and where hundreds of skulls are neatly lined up in rows above the caskets.
And before their return to the U.S., the students and their hosting Rwandese brothers and sisters attended a dinner hosted by Rwanda's President and First Lady Paul and Jeannette Kagame at their official residence in Kigali, where the students were thanked for their volunteer efforts at the Home of Hope orphanage.
The farewell of the four students and their hosting students' families in Kigali International Airport was bittersweet. One 15-year-old Rwandese 'brother' decided to wear the white Boston Red Sox uniform that his Lincoln, Mass. 'brother' had brought to him as a gift. And one Weston, Mass. student said an emotional 'goodbye' to his hosts in Kinyarwanda.
Since their return to Boston, the Rwandese and Boston-area students keep in touch via e-mail and text message. Twin brothers of one hosting Rwandese family will be attending Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. this fall, and their older sister will begin three years of study at Suffolk Law School in Boston. All three plan to stay with the family of one the MetroWest students they hosted.
The trip was a valuable service learning exercise in the Home of Hope orphanage and a way for MetroWest and Rwandese youth - future leaders from distant corners of the world - to build lifelong friendships.
All students learned two important lessons. First, only 13 years ago, a bloody genocide in Rwanda left between 800,000 and 1 million Tutsi and moderate-Hutu men, women and children dead in a mere 100 days. And second, thanks to the tireless efforts of President and Mrs. Kagame, and Rwanda's government under their leadership, peace, stability, prosperity - and prevention of future conflicts such as this - are more evident than ever in Rwanda.
Carl F. Hobert, a graduate of the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, is a teacher at Belmont Hill School in Belmont, Mass. and is Executive Director of Axis of Hope, a non-profit international conflict management and prevention organization based in Belmont.
