The orphans of Rwanda

Tufts University junior Kira Mikityanskaya with school children during recess at Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village

By Kira Mikityanskaya, Special To The Observer

As we bumped and rattled along an unpaved road full of giant potholes, I strained my neck for a first glimpse of Rwanda.

Unfortunately, the headlights from our bus shed the only light for miles and I would have to wait until the following morning for a first impression of the “country of a thousand hills.”

Our group of 18 Tufts University Hillel students was selected for a 10-day service trip to Rwanda in May, where we would spend time with orphans of the genocide.

In April, when the Jewish community commemorated those lost in the Holocaust, the citizens of Rwanda commemorated and remembered their family members lost in the 1994 genocide.

In just 100 days, close to 1 million people were murdered in a country of just 9 million.
Extremists from the majority Hutu group instilled fear in every citizen: the Tutsis feared a torturous death by machete and the moderate Hutus feared the consequences of refusing to kill their Tutsi neighbors.

Using popular media, the Hutus rallied the entire country — men, women, and children — to kill. As the Western world turned a blind eye to the genocide, 1.2 million children were orphaned.

Upon hearing about the state of Rwanda’s orphans, a dedicated philanthropist, Anne Heyman, decided she would help.

After discovering that Israel built youth villages to help children of the Holocaust, she decided to build the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (www.ASYV.org).

Modeled after Israel’s Yemin Orde, ASYV was built to eventually house 500 orphans and provide them with a great education, a place to call home, and an outlet for healing and reconciliation. Heyman partnered with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — a major beneficiary of the United Jewish Campaign — on this special project.

In Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, agahozo means “to dry tears.” In Hebrew, shalom means “peace.”

An Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village house, home to 16 youths, house mothers and counselors

The village is a place for the orphans to dry their tears and begin to heal. The peaceful environment inspires hope in this promising group of kids.

Their drive and motivation are astounding. They realize how lucky they are to live in a state-of-the art facility, eat three meals a day, and have a place to call “home.”

Most of them aspire to attend university in Rwanda and some even hope to study in America.

On any given day, a visitor will find kids surfing the Web in the learning center, playing basketball, soccer or volleyball, learning traditional African dances, playing guitar, painting a mural or working on the village farm.

Yet even these typical activities do not mask their haunted pasts. One young man shared two songs that he wrote before coming to the village. They reflect on the immense sadness he feels every day, the irreparable hole in his heart, and his desire to find love.

ASYV is not an instrument of mass aid. Instead, its goal is to create a ripple effect of change. The village employs many locals, shares its recycled water with local villages, invites others to use their sporting facilities, and models the act of community service for its inhabitants.

The student body is drawn from Rwanda’s 30 districts. With each graduating class, the village hopes to send leaders back to develop their local communities.

Although ASYV has electricity, wireless Internet, and running water, housing for the rest of the kids is not yet complete. The health center has a nurse but no doctor.

The leadership of the village has many more dreams: a bus to take field trips, cows for milk and cheese (a step toward self-sustainability), and scholarships for graduates to receive higher education.

As I met survivors of all ages and walked through several memorials (one closely modeled after Yad Vashem), I struggled to comprehend the inhumanity witnessed here just 15 years ago.

Tufts Hillel students and local youths paint a mural on the side of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village dining hall

Every single person walking down the street is either a survivor or a perpetrator. Not a single person in Rwanda was unaffected by the genocide.

Yet I marvel at their ability to move on, to bear witness in the gacaca courts (a system of community justice), to live next door to those who murdered their family, to coexist in peace for the greater good of the country.

Standing on top of the village’s highest hill overlooking a breathtaking view of green pastures, which, 15 years ago, were filled with blood, I reflected on the meaning of “Never Again” and what our responsibility as Jews is in the face and aftermath of genocide.

Although the smell of blood is no longer in the air, Rwanda has a long road ahead. ASYV is a glimmer of hope and an instrument for success in repairing not only a country destroyed by genocide, but also individual souls: orphans who had no control over their past, but have a strong hold on their future.

Kira Mikityanskaya graduated from Oakwood High School and is now a junior at Tufts University.