06-APR-A-4

 

GWUMC STUDENT PRESENTATION ON RWANDA-06 AND SUBSEQUENT MEETING WITH LOUISE MUSHIKAWABO AND SISTER IN THE RONALD REAGAN BUILDING WOODROW WILSON CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARS AND THE AFRICA CENTER ON RWANDA

 

April 12, 2006

 

The presentation on Rwanda went very well with a large number of students expecting to go on the subsequent trip to Rwanda in July 2007 or almost anywhere, as the group who went with me testified they are all eager to go with me anywhere at anytime because of the life-changing nature of this experience for them. (see 06-Apr-A-5 following)  I have been trying to get a plan together not only for the dissertation stage of my graduate degree—ironically now with no new large trips scheduled for just the time I would need them for the data gathering phase of the proposal—but I will try to get to somewhere in early July, Eritrea in earliest October, Mindanao and Leyte/Palowan in late January and early February, and March in Sudan—all of these trips planned around the thesis process and the coming famine in the Horn of Africa and down to Malawi.

 

I left from the presentation to go downtown after meeting with both Howell Simmons and Saad Noor and there met Louise Mushikwabo and her sister Anna Marie (see subsequent 06-Apr-A-5) to hear a discussion of her book on her experiences in Rwanda and reflecting on the narrow chance that spared her and here sister while killing her brother and all other family in Rwanda during the genocide.  We will be in touch with this family, and will read the boo she inscribed to me.  Her sister is a member of the parliament in Rwanda and is also the owner of the hotle very newar the airport where we may consider staying at our next excursion to Rwanda.

 

Now, I must get back into the re-entry process, with a few runs thrown in to take advantage of the burgeoning spring that is rapidly unfurling the leaves at Derwood, which will be the host for the Spring party of the ELDP about the time we should hear about the written Comps passage as we already have for the orals.