Dear Rotarians and friends,
I was so inspired by my visit to Rwanda in December that I set up a collaboration between their national, regional and village leaders and the village leaders I have been working with from Konkourona, Burkina Faso.
We met in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and it was another incredible experience. I finally had the chance to meet a young woman I have been mentoring for 8 years, who is in the picture above. We had just walked 2 miles down a mountain to get some groceries and we were on our way back up.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was the opportunity to participate in Rwanda’s Umuganda celebration, during which communities come together with a common purpose. On the last Saturday of every month, every citizen in the country between the ages of 18 and 65 is required to serve their community from 8-11 am. Interestingly, the project we participated in was planting trees. So, while we were planning to plant 100 new trees in Souderton, PA in the US, community leaders in Kigali were planning to plant trees in their city.
There were hundreds of people planting hundreds of trees to help meet the country’s goal of 3,000,000 new trees this year, and the work went quickly. Visitors from many countries joined us to observe and learn from the Umuganda practice including France, Ghana, Korea, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Romania, Senegal, and Uganda. It was a party like atmosphere with music, dancing, singing and inspirational speeches. Rwandans sang something like, “Prosperity and protection will only be done by us” in the native language of Kinyarwanda as a reminder that it will take all citizens working together to make progress toward their goals. Everyone I spoke with was committed to the cause as people from all different professions worked together side by side.
I was shocked to learn that the land we were standing on was the site of the murder of 40,000 people during the 1994 genocide. It is the community’s hope that families of those who were killed will someday walk in the shade of the trees in remembrance of those they lost and commit to never let anything divide them from each other again. Prior to colonization, there was no division of the population into Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities that led to the genocide. It was an idea brought about by foreigners to sow division among the people that led to the deaths of approximately 2,000,000 people out of a population of 7,000,000.
It made me think of the current political situation in the United States in which there is increasing animosity between members of our two largest parties and about how sad it is to be so divided. I then thought about the value of Rotary in bringing people together across divisions of politics, religions, ethnicities and so many other possible divides. Like the population of Rwanda, we are united in service and recognize our responsibilities in strengthening our communities. We do not always agree, but most of the time we can come to a compromise, and that is worth celebrating as we look ahead to our 100th year.
In Rotary
Kate Hoath
President