Bartonites,

First and foremost, I hope you HAD a great workshop together. I‘m sorry that I was not able to make it and cannot wait to see you all in March for commencement.

I tried to send this email out prior to the class but lost access to my email at some point on my travels and could not get anything out.

I have been waiting for my honeymoon for my immersion field trip as I am currently traveling Africa and felt that this would be a great opportunity to journal about a culture far different than anything I know.

I am writing this in the Rwanda airport as we head to Nairobi for the next leg of our trip. As some of you may know, Rwanda went through a devastating genocide in 1994. In 100 days, approximately 1 million women, children, and men were brutally slaughtered on the streets of their hometowns all throughout the country. While there were many factors that lead to this, the ultimate reason was race confrontation between two tribes, Hutu and Tutsi. These two sets of people were deeply interwoven. They were neighbors, friends, and colleagues.

The extremist group of Hutus organized and forced other Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbors or be killed themselves. The victimized group ran to the people they trusted to keep them safe only to be betrayed and murdered by their neighbors, friends, and even their priests and nuns.

Separate from this horrific event, Rwanda is the home to a large population of Mountain Gorillas that were being poached and brought to the extreme endangered species list.

Needless to say, I flew to this country expecting a power centric mindset. People have to quite literally fight for their survival and have no reason to trust anybody. It’s been only 25 years since this genocide and it is still a vivid memory to many of the people here. I was wrong - the progress and worldview of this country is beyond anything I could have imagined. The result of the genocide created a pluralistic mindset and community collaboration led by an impressive leader in President Paul Kagame.

There are no more tribes like Hutu and Tutsi. Everyone here is a proud Rawandan. I spoke to locals in the large capital city of Kigali and traveled to the rural northern province. The government only has one political party and the people of Rwanda have democratically elected the president for his third 7 year term. This will be his last.

The parliament is made up of approximately 65% women. Everybody treats everyone’s child as their own and looks out for one another. Everywhere I went I saw neighbors helping each other farm and transport items. Not because they were colleagues but because they were working together to create a great community.

On the last Saturday of every month all the businesses are closed until 11AM to participate in “community day” where they clean the streets and neighborhoods and everyone works together. I was fortunate enough to be here at this time to witness this.

Lastly, Rwanda has educated all the poachers on the danger and lies behind their work. They’ve trained them to be “Porters” and help tourists trek into the mountains to visit the gorillas. They now make more money than they had and are happier than they ever have been. With that, the Mountain Gorilla population is growing.

While I consider myself to be somewhat of a pluralist, this was a fascinating lesson for me on how a power centric country turned a tragedy into a pluralistic mindset and the country is now stronger than ever, and the vast majority of the country is behind the progress.

I’ve also tried to include a picture of my wife and I standing 10 feet away from a 400 pound Gorilla but the WiFi in Africa is not cooperating! I’ll have to share pictures another time. Nonetheless, a remarkable experience that I recommend for everyone.

Thanks!

Jake