Butare

The next few days of our journey in Rwanda took us to Butare. Butare is a town about 2 hours southwest of Kigali. It is home to the National University of Rwanda, which was the only university in Rwanda for many years. This has made Butare known as the intellectual capitol of the country.

We arrived in Butare July 4th weekend, which ironically, is also Rwanda’s Liberation Day – their own version of July 4th. July 4th marks for Rwanda the day 16 years ago, that genocide ended, and a new government was born. We attended a community celebration in Butare that had live music and dancing. We also heard a live broadcast of the president giving a speech in Kigali. In his speech he honored several people, both living and those who had passed on, that had fought for justice and saved lives during the genocide.

The following day we visited the National University of Rwanda. The university has around 11,500 students and is the only public university in the country. It is the only school in Rwanda to offer a PhD program. It is the largest employer in the nation. Many question what will be the future of the university. Many specialist schools are being consolidated. For example, the school of education has been moved from Butare to Kigali. Also, enrollment at the university is not high enough to finance the school. Many students cannot afford to pay tuition and therefore apply for loans and scholarships. Most loans and scholarships, however, are offered in science or education. Decreased enrollment in many departments has caused them to shut down – including the African History and Language Department.

While at the university, we visited a genocide memorial there dedicated to students and staff who were killed during the genocide. Especially heart – breaking to hear is that many people fled to Butare when the genocide began, thinking the university would be a safe haven. It wasn’t. Instead fellow students attacked each other. In fact, even today there are staff and students at the university who knew of the plot by Hutus to take over the campus, but did not stop it from happening. There are woods surrounding the campus where many Tutsi students and staff hid out to escape the bloodshed.

We also visited a secondary school in Butare. The school was originally started as a private catholic school, but had been so successful (many Rwandan leaders graduated from this school) that the government took it over. Compared to other campuses we had seen, this school had vastly more supplies. They had a computer lab filled with at least 30 computers inside (all with internet!). They had a science lab with adequate supplies including Bunsen burners and human body models. They even had a beautiful, hotel-worthy swimming pool!

Despite these obvious advantages, the school systems in Rwanda are facing great challenges. The whole country is moving to English only education next year for all secondary schools. This is highly problematic, as not all teachers speak English! The main languages of Rwanda are French and Kinyarwanda. Almost all the teaching supplies – text books, posters, teaching aids – are in French. We had a roundtable discussion with the teachers at this secondary school and I was amazed by their determination in taking on this challenge next year. Several of the teachers asked us if we had any ideas about how to ease this transition. All I could think of was my experience teaching at a highly bilingual school in Texas. We were so quick to transition students from Spanish to English, and many times what would happen is our students would end up not truly fluent in either. I certainly hope this is not what will happen to the students in Rwanda.

It scares me how quickly the whole world seems to be moving to English. Don’t get me wrong – there is great value in being able to share a common language with others for communication purposes. I just worry about students losing a valuable part of their identity – their native language – in their quest to learn English. In my travels I always find it quite humbling to be in another country and the person from that country can speak to me in English and I can’t reciprocate in their native language. I think it is high time the United States recognizes the value of learning other languages just as much as the rest of the world does.

And now, to end with a joke my middle school Spanish teacher told me:

What do you call someone who can speak two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call someone who can speak three languages?

Trilingual.

What do you call someone who speaks only one language?

A U.S. citizen.