Meet Francis

This is an old post that I’m finally done writing. So let’s go back in time a bit…

I attended my second umuganda this Saturday. We went to the same site as last month, the future site of a kasava field. I met a very interesting young man there named Francis. He was probably in his mid 20s. He could speak English very well so we talked for quite some time. It ranged from agriculture to politics to education. I learned so much from him and attempted to convey something about America to him. Francis had finished secondary school and was waiting to attend University. He was going to a University in the north to specialize in agriculture. There has been a big push to professionalize agriculture. In Francis’ words, the Rwandan people use very traditional methods. As I gazed around at the hoes and picks tilling the field, I couldn’t agree more. By having Rwandans study agriculture, they would like the people trained in better methods, such as the spacing of seeds, the rotation of crops, etc.

Francis also explained how education is being stressed by the President here. There is a shortage of available spaces for higher education. Thousands of students take the exam to enter University but only a small percentage are accepted. You have a better chance of getting in if you are a student in the hard sciences or math. There just isn’t enough places for people to learn.

Francis was under the impression that all Americans have education as a high priority. It could possibly be because the Americans that appear in Rwanda are highly educated and mainly wealthy. I tried to let him down gently that not all Americans value education. That even though K-12 is free, some refuse to attend or even if they do – they don’t put in effort. I don’t think he believed me.

Even though speaking with Francis was sort of like hearing an elongated political commercial with some hard facts and statistics, it was wonderful to hear the viewpoint of a twenty something. Hopefully the first of many stimulating conversations to come.