A Different Discussion About Aid

The United States of America has just sent a small number of its sons and daughters as Peace Corps volunteers to serve as teachers and advisors in Rwanda. They have arrived to assist, and we appreciate that. We are aware that this comes against the backdrop of increasingly scarce resources, of budget discussions and campaign promises, and of tradeoffs between defense and domestic priorities like health care and infrastructure investments. All that said, I believe we need to have a different discussion concerning the potential for bilateral aid.

The Peace Corps have returned to our country after 15 years. They were evacuated in 1994 just a short time before Rwanda collapsed into a genocide that killed over one million people in three months. Things have improved a lot in recent years. There is peace and stability throughout the nation. We have a progressive constitution that is consensus-driven, provides for power sharing, embraces diversity, and promotes the participation of women, who now represent the majority in our parliament. Our economy grew by more than 11% last year, even as the world entered a recession. We have chosen high-end segments of the coffee and tea markets in which to compete, and attract the most demanding world travelers to our tourism experiences. This has enabled us to increase wages by over 20% each year over the last eight years -- sustained by, among other things, investment in education, health and ICT.

We view the return of the Peace Corps as a significant event in Rwanda's recovery. These young men and women represent what is good about America; I have met former volunteers who have run major aid programs here, invested in our businesses, and I even count them among my friends and close advisors.

Peace Corps volunteers are well educated, optimistic, and keen to assist us as we continue to rebuild, but one must also recognize that we have much to offer them as well.

We will, for instance, show them our system of community justice, called Gacaca, where we integrated our need for nationwide reconciliation with our ancient tradition of clemency, and where violators are allowed to reassume their lives by proclaiming their crimes to their neighbors, and asking for forgiveness. We will present to them Rwanda's unique form of absolution, where the individuals who once exacted such harm on their neighbors and ran across national borders to hide from justice are being invited back to resume their farms and homes to live peacefully with those same families.

We will show your sons and daughters our civic tradition of Umuganda, where one day a month, citizens, including myself, congregate in the fields to weed, clean our streets, and build homes for the needy.

We will teach your children to prepare and enjoy our foods and speak our language. We will invite them to our weddings and funerals, and out into the communities to observe our traditions. We will teach them that in Africa, family is a broad and all-encompassing concept, and that an entire generation treats the next as its own children.

And we will have discussions in the restaurants, and debates in our staff rooms and classrooms where we will learn from one another: What is the nature of prosperity? Is it subsoil assets, location and sunshine, or is it based on human initiative, the productivity of our firms, the foresight of our entrepreneurs? What is a cohesive society, and how can we strengthen it? How can we improve tolerance and build a common vision between people who perceive differences in one another, increase civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and self-esteem? How does a nation recognize and develop the leaders of future generations? What is the relationship between humans and the earth? And how are we to meet our needs while revering the earth as the womb of humankind? These are the questions of our time.

While some consider development mostly in terms of infusion of capital, budgets and head counts, we in Rwanda place equal importance to relationships between peoples who have a passion to learn from one another, preparing the next generation of teachers, administrators and CEOs to see the exchange of values and ideas as the way to build the competencies of our people, and to create a prosperous nation.

We will do this because we see that the only investment with the possibility of infinite returns is in our children, and because after a couple of years in Rwanda, working and learning with our people, these Peace Corps volunteers will be our sons and daughters, too.

Comments

[isabelitab]

Focusing on education and the ways we relate to each other. Very inspiring and very insightful!
Shouldn't we adopt reconciliation and Umuganda all around the world?

[mamapanya]

As a distant witness to the history of Rwanda, and yet very much a part of who I have become, it is almost impossible to find the words that I can share with many - critics, fans, sympathisers and even bitterly hateful ones, about the journey you have taken to get here Mr President. - My husband sent these words to me in an e-mail - they sum it all up:

"Excellence is the result of caring more than one may think is wise. Risking more than what is considered safe. Dreaming more than one may think is practical. Expecting more than one may think is possible. Excellence is the seed of our breath." -

I applaud you for seeking excellence - and achieving it - even when it seemed an impossible feat.

[rugglebyc]

President Kagame, you are sorely misguided. Anyone who volunteered with the Peace Corps knows it's just a goodwill organization that keeps tabs on the people of the world by letting optimistic young Americans teach you English and how to plant crops you don't need. And don't think their work is for free. It pays off with every sip of imported coffee that was grown on land that could have fed the hungry of your country. Only an acute sense of racial inferiority would lead an African man to believe that marginally skilled college kids from America have more to offer than the smart and talented amongst his own people. That is the same racial inferiority complex that fueled the genocide, and it could happen again. Look into your heart and you will see that Africa has its share of smart, talented young people with more to offer than a one year excursion. But they need jobs and they need hope. They need to know their countries will make a place for them and their talents, and their leaders will do more than provide natural resources to people from other lands. Look at your own sons and daughters, they'll be around long after those U.S. college kids have gone home to corporate jobs. Until Africa believes in its own people, worships its own gods, and promotes trade and cultural exchange between African nations, it will always be begging for handouts and hoping that someone will come along to save it.

[AScrantonian]

dear rugglebyc, May I ask you to re-read President Kagame's piece. I believe that the President made several of your points for you; but in fact that you have missed some important nuances. Your friend.

[rugglebyc]

Please don't refer to yourself as my "friend" then question my intelliengence. I read the President's message with great care before responding. Every word I said was true, though you may find it uncomfortable.

[Michael Toso]

Rugglebye,
You have reason to be bitter. While no one, least of all "U.S. college kids", may be in a place to judge this emotion, I would suggest that its expression is not achieving positive change. I would also suggest, Mr Rugglebye, that you take the time to meet some of these "marginally skilled" college kids as they return to Rwanda. Like any cross-section of youth on this earth, there will be motivated, talented, and skilled among them, just as there are likely to be some lazy, selfish, children. These are not innately American traits, they are human traits. I would offer, Mr. Rugglebye, that having served in Niger for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, I learned humility and respect - and did not, indeed, offer a great deal to those I lived with. Africa does have its share of smart, talented young people, and they have much more to share than an (please forgive my correction, two-year commitment) excursion. I would offer, however, that Peace Corps volunteers are not stealing your jobs. If anything, they are being placed in positions to help support the very people you champion. I would not personally ask your youth to believe in foreigners, worship foreign gods, or hold back from promoting trade and cultural exchange with other African nations. I would suggest that there are things to be gained from cross-cultural exchange, and that with each Peace Corps volunteer your country hosts, you will have another advocate.

[SNReject]

Thanks Mike!
You said all that I wished to say in my comments that were not published. Its a shame that some have such negative views of the Peace Corps. You and I both know that our work was meaningful, and we both realize how much we learned as well. I hope to see you this summer!

[ljmck]

Thank you, President Kagame, for your elegant statement of questions that concern us all. Your words remind me how easy it is to become a victim of ethno-centrism, a kind of know-it-all-ism to which we culturally isolated Americans may be especially vulnerable.

[greenToBlue]

Mr. President

Thank you for your leadership. Rwanda is in good hands, you are indeed an example to what a real leader should be. If Africa had many leaders like, things would have been different.

I recently watched hotel Rwanda and it changed my perception. I wish you luck.

Thank you again Mr. President

Good luck

[lemince]

Dear greenToBlue,

I feel so bad to see how some people can judge a leader by a movie they've seen. All movies by definition, except documentaries, are fiction.

Listen, I am not denying the Rwandan genocide like Kagame likes to call anybody who challenges his leadership. All I am saying is that, if there was real international justice for all, Kagame could be in jail. This man has hands full of blood. He sacrificed "internal Tutsis of francophone Tutsis" or those who lived in Rwanda before the war he started by shooting his predecessor's airplane. He is the one who sparkled the genocide and didn't care; the genocide spared the "diaspora Tutsis or the anglophone Tutsis" The later are the ones on power in Rwanda now.

Beside that, Kagame is responsible for large scale massacres of Hutus in both Rwanda and the DR Congo (including other Bantu tribes of the DR Congo). Overall, this man is responsible of the perishment of 5 million people in both Rwanda and the Congo. Hitler killed the same number of people; but some still the difference, why?

You want to know more about "Hotel Rwanda"? Please visit follow this link and maybe you can do some extra research besides what Hollywood the the anglo-saxon media tells you to believe.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beyond-HOTEL-RWANDA-Half-truth-Worst-of-Lies/24521468051?sid=6ca968f01b6d01c3c2aa9d52f618fa5e&ref=search#/pages/Beyond-HOTEL-RWANDA-Half-truth-Worst-of-Lies/24521468051?v=info&viewas=10726097

Thank you for your attention.

[Chinenye Mba-Uzoukwu]

There's a scene in the movie, Amistad, where Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) tells John Qunicy Adams that the is only one way the trial will end: he tells him that at this the last Supreme Court trial, he will call for his ancestors to be present and help him because "it is for this moment that they lived".
Reading the words of President Paul Kagame, despite the obvious differences of opinion of those who live the Rwandan reality, we hear the simple truths that cannot be obscured because they speak to the esssence of Africa - "sitting atop the fallen palm tree in the village square, crickets chorusing in the cool night to the distant sounds of mothers singing stubborn children to sleep, the familiar roughness of the traveler's voice reminds us that it is only when we return to who we are, that we indeed, are." Thank you, sir.

[DonReinaldo]

Thank you Mr. President. Your comments on what Peace Corps Volunteers can learn in Rwanda and from its citizens are true. They describe the treasure I left Colombia with in 1963 -- an appreciation of the complexity and wisdom embedded in indigenous and peasant communities. Your remarks constitute the most eloquent and insightful expression of what the Peace Corps is all about, and the reciprocal benefits that can be shared between persons from different cultures.

Dr. Ronald A. Schwarz
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
Colombia One (1961-63)

[Nkurunziza]

Very brilliant analysis by President Paul Kagame.
Based on this kind of positive attitude and spirit towards Peace Corps volunteers, President Obama shall definately send many more American children to meaningfuly contribute to Rwanda's socio-economic development agenda.

[Nkurunziza]

PK is avisionary leader! We need such leaders in Africa! Rwanda needs our support!

[Thadeo]

Congratulations Mr. President. Thank you so much for sharing with us this piece. I find it more informative and educative. On one hand it tells us the importance of partnership and on the other it teaches us the beautiful culture of Rwanda and her way of doing things.

Who else would know that Rwanda which was engulfed in genocide 15 years ago is today a peaceful country with over thirty Peace Corps volunteers? To those who had doubts of the security in the country I think they can contact the volunteers to have first hand information.

It is very hard to express my own gratitude to Mr. President but I am sure Africa needs many leaders of your kind to transform the continent. Who could have imagined that a person who grew up as a refugee could liberate his country from genocide, bring peace and stability, increase school enrolment from primary level through university, grow the economy of the country between 7%- 11% for more than ten years (the last year being 11%), reduce malaria the main killer disease by over 60% and spear head a constitution that grants equal opportunities and power sharing to all.

I personally appreciate you and your leadership and pray that the almighty blesses you and make your country best you wish to have.

Thadeo

[betterus]

These young men and women represent what is good about America;
And America sure can also learn a lot from the others, including Africa.

[brownsaimons]

I have been following what this President is doing and I feel that it is high time for western powers as well as the succsessful business leaders from countries like USA, UK,Canada,­Germany,Ne­therlands, Belgium,Italy..The Asian countries like China, Japan, S. Korea...to come together and support him (Bearing in mind the use of Good aid and private investments). Lets make this country a model by supporting this leaders vision.
PK keep it up and forget about your detractors who are currently clutching at straws!
I will send my son as a volunteer to Rwanda next year

[wellbeing]

Mr. President
Taking time and BLOG as the leader of an african country... allowing anybody to give you his or her opinion and critisism! I am impressed.

[arvay]

What an amazing testament to the vitality of African people!

First, we saw Nelson Mandela create, on top of the ruins of a cruel and arrogant apartheid state -- a council of reconciliation that made nonsense of all the expectations that we'd see another failed state arise out of decades of oppression.

Now, we are witness to another reconciliation, if anything, more amazing that South Africa's -- where people who murdered their neighbors and the relatives of the victims are bearing the difficult task of living together, so that their children can have a future.

History may very well record that Africa in the 21st century taught the world how to regain its humanity -- out of unspeakable horror.

If so, it will be a more valuable lesson than our technical and scientific achievements, some of which have only increased human misery and the toll of war.

Or maybe it's what humanity forgot as it sharpened its skills -- and now has the opportunity to regain.

[goodforme]

mr. kagame,

if you could replicate what nelson mandela did for south africa,

which is a peaceful revolution however incomplete it may be at the moment,

by asserting your independence from the colonial powers and by practicing your love for justice for all,

you have freinds in many of us around the world.

we'll be watching your progress closely.

you know how to reach and inform us if we could help you in the process.