Rwandan Students Meet WMHS Counterparts

Before they go to sleep, the students gather, like family, they said, and talk about their day.

Unusual?

It was for these students. Many of them are orphans, or have lost at least one parent.

“We were like homeless people,” Pascasie Nyirantwari told a class of 10th graders at , after genocide in her country—until they moved into a community that houses, cares for and schools 500 young people in rural Rwanda.   

Three students, all seniors from the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, spoke Wednesday with students in Brendan Doherty’s honors American history class.  A total of 12 students from the village are visiting different US cities, in groups of three, to reach out, Bill Cummings told the WMHS students, to meet supporters and prospective supporters of the school. The Cummings Foundation sponsored the students’ visit.

Liliane Umuhoza lost her father in 1994, according to her biography, during the genocide. She was two years old, she told Doherty’s students. Her mother remarried. Learning her history when she was 14 was painful and difficult for her and her parents.

“God sent angels to help us,” Liliane said, in the person of “our lovely mother,” Anne Heyman, who founded the village in 2006.

With the village, “We get the chance to be in a family,” said student Claude Irankunda. “We call it our real home.” Claude’s mother survived the 1994 genocide, according to his biography, but as a single mother had to raise her son in “precarious situations.”

Pascasie Nyirantwari lost her father and three siblings in the 1994 genocide. Her mother died in 2001. She stayed in a child-headed household for several years until she and her younger sister were taken to an orphanage. Then she moved to Agahozo-Shalom.

First, Liliane said, “We heal our hearts. Then we go out and heal the world.”

Students at Agahozo-Shalom live in cabins of 16, Cummings told the WMHS students before their Rwandan counterparts arrived.  Their diet:  rice and vegetables. The village started with 125 students, Cummings said.  

Woburn students asked how the students spend their spare time; about the length of their summer vacation; and what technology they use.

They play sports, like basketball and soccer, spend time in a music center and recording studio.

They get a one-month summer vacation. During that time, they return to their villages, Claude said.  It’s important for villagers to see them, he said.

They use cell phones—but not in school.  WMHS students nodded knowingly. If the Rwandan students violate that rule, instead of having their phone taken from them, students discuss consequences—like what they’re missing in class if they’re on the phone.

They all had to learn a new language for classes:  English. That’s the law in Rwanda, Heyman said.

Learning English was “really hard,” Liliane said.

The students use a “novel idea” in their country to resolve issues at school, Cummings said. They vote.  

The Cummings, Bill and his wife, Joyce, have supported groups of students from Tufts University, Bill’s alma mater, on service and learning trips to Agahozo-Shalom.  

After 40 years in real estate, “We said, ‘Let’s invest where we can see something happening, do a lot of good,’” he said.

One of Doherty’s students, Irene Kamikazi, is from Rwanda. She came to the states, to Woburn, three years ago, she told Patch, after living with her grandmother, to join her mother.

WMHS student Jennifer Hendricks liked having the opportunity to meet people from a different culture. Doherty agreed. It’s good to see that after a tragic event they can continue, commented classmate Christiana Gianetta. The Rwandan students’ visit ties in to the WMHS students’ study of the Vietnam War and genocide, she said.

When the Rwandan students’ plane landed in New York City, they said it looked like what they’d seen in movies. Some took their first—long—plane ride to get to the states. They arrived Sunday; they’ll be leaving this coming Tuesday.

After the students visited the high school class, they headed to lunch with some 30 other guests at . How, Cummings wondered out loud, would the students like hamburgers and macaroni and cheese?

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