IU students create, bring books to Rwandan school

When IU alumna Nancy Uslan traveled to Rwanda in 2005, she expected to just find gorillas.

As part of animal expert Jack Hanna’s film crew, Uslan and the rest of the team were looking to film endangered mountain gorillas for a documentary.
 
But at the base of Volcanoes National Park, she found something else entirely — the Kabwende Primary School.

The school, like many primary schools in Rwanda, did not have electricity or running water. There was also a clear shortage of books.

When Uslan returned home, she began searching for a way to help the school and the school system in Rwanda at large. By 2009, she found an outlet: the Books and Beyond Project.

Since then, the project has paired IU students from the Global Village Living-Learning Center with students from TEAM Charter middle and high schools in Newark, N.J. Working together with the students in Rwanda, they create original children’s books which are annually delivered to Kabwende.

“This isn’t one of those projects that goes into a country and never comes back again,” documenting team leader and writing partner Caitlin Ryan said.

Ryan, an IDS reporter and a senior at IU, has been with the project since the beginning.

This June, she made her second trip to visit Kabwende. She was one of four IU students to travel to Rwanda this summer as part of Books and Beyond.

“I stepped off the plane and felt like I was home,” Ryan said. “It’s like I have a family there.”

Madelyn Kissel, recent graduate and fund development team leader, said she felt similarly welcomed despite it being her first trip to Rwanda.

Before the project members finished the trek to the school, the students had spotted the team from a distance and ran to greet them.

Soon, they were surrounded by students.

“That was how I met them for the first time,” Kissel said. “What should have been a 15-minute walk turned into half an hour. It was great.”

While the school has improved since the project began, there are still just 29 teachers for more than 1,900 students. Some of the classrooms do not have desks, only chairs.

“If a room has one light bulb, then that’s a lot of light,” Kissel said. “Comparing it to us, it’s hard to understand how they learn. But they do.”

Ryan said the most significant and encouraging improvement she has seen is in the students’ and teachers’ English skills.
 
This is an important achievement, Ryan said, because Rwanda’s government recently made English the official language for its schools.

The move is an attempt by Rwanda President Paul Kagame to gain international attention for the country following the genocide it faced 18 years ago. Unfortunately, many citizens in Rwanda only speak French and there are very few resources available to change that.

Ryan said when she last visited the school, the team couldn’t really speak to the headmaster without a translator. This time, he gave a speech entirely in English.

“It was so encouraging,” she said.

Also encouraging, Ryan said, was her favorite part of the trip: a community dialogue sponsored by the project.

An important part of Books and Beyond, team members said, is making sure the project does not implement anything in which the school’s community does not have a say.

The community had many ideas on how to improve the Rwanda side of the project in the years to come, Ryan said.

“It was really exciting to see real community organization,” she said. “It sounds kind of geeky, but it really was democracy at its best.”