Project Independence students who have completed internships in culinary arts sing and dance at their graduation on our second day in Rwanda. (Cindy Perry photograph)
Part One
The next day, after hastily changing into dresses and skirts at Centre Christus, we sit awkwardly on an outdoor patio at HotelTech, a restaurant and hotel overlooking the hills of Kigali. It's clear why we were advised to dress more formally for the first graduation of students from Project Independence, the program that provides job training for orphaned young people. The graduates, ages 16 to 22, have donned their best clothes. They sit together on the patio, looking solemn, while we take a table to the side. It's the first time we've met them.
Although the graduation marks the students' completion of a three-month internship, rather than years of schooling, the stakes feel much higher. Many of these students have headed households of younger siblings since their parents died of AIDS. They hope their internship experience will enable them to get jobs and earn money to keep their families together.
As the ceremony unfolds, the Upper Valley students mostly observe the Rwandan young people from behind the lenses of cameras as they take pictures and video of the graduation, which they will use for a DVD on Operation Day's Work. Curious Rwandan students occasionally glance at us.
To Rebecca, the students seem to be looking at us as if we're intruders. And she feels apart from them, too.
"Never have I been so aware of my skin color," she writes in her journal that day. "We were the only people who were white in that room."
Rebecca, who's lived in Strafford for all her 16 years, is a strong student who's involved in numerous extracurricular activities at The Sharon Academy, from Operation Day's Work to theater to student government. She wants to become a teacher and has already identified several small, selective liberal arts colleges she's interested in attending. Now, however, she's struggling with the shock of the new, from her sudden status as a racial minority to the way events, including today's graduation, don't seem to start at a set time.
This ceremony isn't so different from high school graduations in the Upper Valley. The speeches are heartfelt, though to outsiders they seem on the long side, especially since most must be translated from Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda, into English. Project Independence teachers and staff look on proudly as the students demonstrate newfound skills in serving tables, housekeeping and cooking. And the graduates, who appeared so serious at first, let loose during a skit they perform at the end of the ceremony.
One student plays the role of a Project Independence graduate who has gotten a job as a taxi driver. The amateur actor bounces up and down in his chair and imitates the sounds of his vehicle with hilarious precision. The first passenger he picks up is Jesus Christ, a student wearing a white robe. He picks up another student who plays a businessman, his shirt stuffed to make him look fat, so Jesus must move to a seat further back. The taxi becomes crowded with more and more passengers until there's no room for Jesus, at which point the van crashes.
In a predominantly Catholic country, the skit has a religious message about the importance of remembering Jesus even after achieving worldly success. Though the Upper Valley students don't fully understand the skit — Cindy, who had a translator, explains it to us later — its physical humor and the laughter of the Rwandan students need no translation. The American students laugh, too; they see the Rwandan students differently from the way they did a couple of hours earlier. They seem more like them.
For Rebecca, that connection comes from watching the students communicate through theater, an important part of her own life. "I realized they lived a similar existence to mine," she says later.
With some urging from the adults, Kylie, a 16-year-old Thetford Academy student from Topsham, Vt., agrees to say a few words to the group. Kylie, who has a petite build and sandy-blond hair she wears in ponytail, can be sassy to adults, but she's perceptive and empathizes with the Rwandan students she meets. She also possesses spunk and independence: She's the most adventurous eater of the three girls on the trip and chooses to spend two days with Project Independence staff and students while the rest of the group visits a national park in northern Rwanda.
Now Kylie explains to the crowd of about 50 why we're here. She's poised and speaks clearly; when she addresses a crowd 10 times as large the next day, she seems unfazed and pauses at the end of phrases to allow for the translation into Kinyarwanda.