When Theoneste Mutabazi started teaching at Umuco Mwiza School in Kigali in 2008, he marveled at everything its students had. There was an art room, a music room, and a library “with many books,” he says during a phone call from his office in the Rwandan capital. Since then, Umuco Mwiza, whose name means “good culture” in the Kinyarwanda language, has added more classrooms and even a large recreation area.
Mr. Mutabazi, who is now the school’s principal, notes in an excited voice that “Our children play soccer on the big playground on Friday afternoons.” They also are very happy to attend athletic meets, concerts, and field trips, he says.
All of this is possible thanks to a woman living half a world away.
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The 1994 genocide tore Rwanda apart. Three decades on, a survivor of the mass killing sees education as the key to development and solving conflicts.
The driving force behind Umuco Mwiza School is Marie Louise Kambenga, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who for decades has resided in Japan. In 2000, Ms. Kambenga co-founded Think About Education in Rwanda (TER), a nonprofit based in the northeastern Japanese city of Fukushima. The following year, the organization opened the one-story brick school in Kigali surrounded by lush green trees, as Ms. Kambenga believes that one lesson from the genocide is the importance of education.
“Education is the key to peace and development,” says the soft-spoken Ms. Kambenga, who knows Kinyarwanda, Swahili, English, French, and Japanese. Her office, filled with the scent of freshly brewed Rwandan coffee, is in a quiet residential area in Fukushima.
Ms. Kambenga first came to Fukushima in 1993 to study at a dressmaking school as part of a program run by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She returned to Rwanda in February 1994, dreaming of promoting cultural exchanges between the two countries. But her dream was shattered as the genocide started wreaking havoc in Rwanda two months later.
Ms. Kambenga, her husband, and their three small children survived the mass killing, which claimed the lives of more than 800,000 people, and they managed to reach a refugee camp in neighboring Zaire (now Congo). She sent a fax to her Japanese friends, who helped Ms. Kambenga’s family relocate to Fukushima in December 1994.
Courtesy of Umuco Mwiza School
Persistence and steadiness
Umuco Mwiza School has about 220 students, 14 teachers, and 10 classrooms, and it has already produced more than 500 graduates. The school is “very different from public schools in Rwanda. Public schools have many challenges,” says Mr. Mutabazi, a former public school teacher. For instance, it would not be surprising to learn that a teacher in a Rwandan public school has as many as 100 students in one class, says Ms. Kambenga.
Aside from giving money to Rwandan communities, TER has also set up greenhouses and taught self-sustaining farming methods so that residents can send their children to school instead of having them work in the fields. The nonprofit also has helped to secure the water supply in some rural areas.
“Rwanda has achieved rapid economic growth, called Africa’s miracle,” says Shiotsuka Minako, chief representative at JICA’s Rwanda office. “However, it still takes time to develop education systems.”
Citing UNESCO figures, Ms. Shiotsuka notes that many children in Rwanda “quit halfway through or stay back a year at elementary schools.” About 59% of Rwandan children complete elementary education, and 45% go on to secondary education.
“As the country still sees a lack of teachers and classrooms, many steady efforts are required,” she says. “TER has continued its persistent community-based work.”
“A big dream”
Ms. Kambenga returns to Rwanda every year to boost exchanges with its teachers and students and visit other parts of her homeland.
“Thankfully, children are full of energy,” she says with an easy grin spreading across her face. “It is a sheer pleasure to see them. I very much appreciate our supporters, who make this happen. I would like each one of them to see [the students’] smiles.
“Education enables children to feel confident about themselves,” she adds. “Education can also help them unleash their creativity.”
Courtesy of Umuco Mwiza School
In Japan, Ms. Kambenga became active in helping evacuees displaced by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was triggered by a powerful earthquake and a resulting tsunami. She frequently visited evacuees at their temporary housing, offering Rwandan coffee and tea.
“I just wanted to give something back to the community,” she says.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled Fukushima and its surrounding regions. Ms. Kambenga, however, decided to remain in the prefecture to help neighbors, despite the Rwandan Embassy in Tokyo urging her to evacuate.
The nuclear disaster had echoes of the genocide in Rwanda, she says. With the security situation in her homeland deteriorating rapidly back then, “All the foreign residents had gone so quickly. That made us very fearful. It was really tough,” she recalls.
As last year marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Ms. Kambenga was invited to speak at memorial services in such major cities as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagasaki. She also regularly visits schools across Japan to explain to students why education is critical.
Shishido Natsumi, a longtime supporter of Ms. Kambenga’s nonprofit, first met Ms. Kambenga in Rwanda in 1990, when Ms. Shishido had a stint at a dressmaking school as an international volunteer dispatched by JICA.
Ms. Kambenga “always has a big dream and continues her efforts to make her dream come true,” Ms. Shishido says.
Ms. Kambenga agrees.
“I’m hoping to generate a discussion of the importance of education not only in Rwanda, Japan, and the United States, but wherever you are,” she says.
