The first three days of my trip have left me feeling incredibly lucky. My luck started at the airport, when the random seat I chose at the airport happened to be directly across from another person traveling to the Village for graduation. Jordan, who was also a fellow with me in 2016, had invited his mom to join him for graduation, and out of all the seats at the airport, and all the flights out of DC to Kigali, we happened to be at exactly the same place at exactly the same time.
Once I arrived in Kigali, I made it my mission to connect with as many alumni as possible. These kids are BUSY! With their college courses and internships and jobs and rich social lives, my babies are hard to get a hold of. It doesn’t help that I don’t have a local number, so I can only get in touch with them when I have wifi. After a reckless trip to the market (hi my name is Naomi and I’m addicted to handicrafts) I decided to kill some time and go for a walk to visit some old stomping grounds.
As I was walking into the strip mall to say hi to my favorite ice cream shop, I decided to make a quick stop in the grocery store downstairs. As I was walking into the store, I heard someone call “NAO!” and I froze.
There is only one person in the world who calls me Nao. If I had gone upstairs to the ice cream shop first, I would have missed him. If I hadn’t taken out my headphones a split second before walking into the store, I wouldn’t have heard him. Lucky lucky lucky for me, I was in the exact right place at the exact right time to see my Modeste – graduate of the class of 2017 and member of Student Government 2016. Like something out of a movie, one second I was standing in the grocery store and the next second I was getting and giving one of the best hugs of my life.
It’s an interesting thing catching up with adult students. As an elementary school teacher, it’s not really something I’ll get to do for at least another decade – my first class of second graders are only eighth graders this year. My Rwandan kiddos, on the other hand, were already basically adults when I taught them. My students were between 15-19 and the Student Government Ministers were in their early 20s. Now, four years after I had them and two years since I’ve seen them last, my Ministers are 23 and 24 – not only old enough to speak to like friends, but also far enough removed from the Village that the old boundaries of the teacher-student relationship no longer fully apply. While I deeply believe that once you’re my student, you’re always my student, it’s amazing to notice how these relationships have evolved.
Modeste came prepared. After our epic reunion, we spent the next nine hours together- first at the ice cream shop, then getting dinner, then on a park bench in his favorite plaza that overlooks his college campus and the Kigali Convention Center. Once we ran through the list of usual topics (his coursework, my job, living situations, yawn) we moved on to more interesting things.
“Nao,” he said. “I’m not a student anymore. Now you can answer all the questions you refused to answer in the Village. You told me you would answer when I’m older so now I’m older and it’s time to tell me.”
If you can remember the questions, I said, I will answer them.
Needless to say, he remembered. One by one, we worked through his list of things he wanted to know about my background, relationships, and Village politics.
“Now I really understand you,” he said to me by the end. We vowed to do a better job keeping in touch and made plans and promises to meet again before I fly out.
The next day, I went to visit Peter, another Fellow from 2016. Like me, Peter stayed for a second year. Unlike me, Peter never left. After our two years in the Village, Peter – who is both an incredibly talented photographer and a deeply generous person – flew home, sold his car, and came back to Rwanda with thousands of dollars of state of the art equipment. He rents a five bedroom house and runs an artist collective called Envision Media Arts Collective. For about $20 a month, graduates and local artists can join the collective, which gains them access to studio workspace, gallery space to display their work, equipment to rent at discounted prices, mentorship opportunities, and most importantly, a community of artists to collaborate with and share inspiration. I toured Peter’s space and marveled at the work he is doing and his sustained commitment to providing opportunities to both ASYV students and alumni, and the greater artistic community in Rwanda. You can read more about his work here.
After seeing Peter, I went back to a favorite cafe/ bookstore (whose menu hasn’t changed even a little) and visited a pottery shop (in case my favorite tea mug ever breaks!). Naturally, I went back to the market to buy more baskets, because I’m an addict.
Later that evening, Adelaide came to say hi. Adelaide was one of my Ministers and graduated in 2016. She then came back in 2017 to serve as my intern in the Library. In a few weeks she’ll graduate from a highly competitive training program that prepares young people for jobs in the hospitality and tourism sector. She had an incredible opportunity to intern at the new Mariott hotel in Kigali, and that internship has turned into a job in their Human Resource department. Adelaide hopes that that job will turn into opportunities for career growth and possibly even travel or transfer to different Maroitt locations around the world.
Adelaide told me about her work ethic, her organization skills, her role as a class representative, and it’s easy to see the direct line between her experiences in SG and her success as an adult. I took her out for dinner and she shared updates about her classmates and fellow ministers. I heard about all the programs the kids are in, the skills they are developing, the places they are working, the ways the Village has shaped their lives.
If there was a word bigger than pride, I would use it – most of my graduates are in the middle of the bachelor’s or certification programs, and many of them are living alone, without guardians or siblings or even roommates – a feat most of my friends have yet to accomplish. They are making financial plans, career decisions, and critically analyzing their social relationships to make sure the people and significant others that they are surrounding themselves with are bringing value and positivity into their lives. They are healthy, they are safe, and they are singularly focused on building successful careers and secure futures for themselves and their families.
It’s been a true joy spending the past few days connecting with graduates. Selfishly, it’s been incredibly affirming to hear them recount their joyful memories of their time with me. A teacher never really knows her impact, and I feel so lucky to have this glimpse into my students lives and see how they’ve applied some of the things they say they learned from me. From organizational skills to decision making processes, to how they build their social lives, my graduates thanked me for the many lessons they learned from watching how I operated in the Village. I’ve seen as many of them as I could, and now it’s time to head back to the Village to see the babies – my juniors and seniors who are the only ones left who remember the crazy Cousin who ran the Library.
Where The Sidewalk Ends 