March 5, 2008
By Tim Funk
The Charlotte Observer
One by one, they stepped to the microphones, peppering the African visitor with questions.
About the call by Darfur activists to boycott the Beijing Olympics. About European troops in Chad. About former President Clinton's apology for not stopping the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
A news conference with a visiting head of state?
No, the informed questioners Tuesday were students from 20 public and private high schools in and around Charlotte.
Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda, who gave the answers during a two-hour forum at Charlotte Latin School, was impressed, even moved, by what they asked.
"This student dialogue gives me hope," the bishop told 500-plus students gathered in the auditorium for an event sponsored by Charlotte's Echo Foundation. "You are seeking to understand the reality."
Though their generation is sometimes stereotyped as one obsessed with iPods, cell phone texting and MySpace, the teens at Tuesday's forum appeared to have more global concerns.
And empathy for suffering people a world away. Take Kendra McMurray, 16, a junior at Butler High School who wants to write socially conscious movies, such as "Hotel Rwanda," which told the genocide story.
On Tuesday, she cried at Bishop Rucyahana's passionate response to her question about how he and other Rwandans have coped with the loss of more than 800,000 of their countrymen -- including family.
"Bishop John," 62, answered by telling the N.C. high school students about a 16-year-old high school student in Rwanda -- his niece. Attackers peeled flesh off her arms, gang-raped her, then killed her.
Rucyahana, whose theme was reconciliation, said Rwandans have had to forgive such barbarism and pick up the pieces in their shattered nation.
"It's very painful, but I have to let go," he said. "We have a nation to rebuild. We have no luxury to hold on to our heart. ... We can't invest in our pain. We have to invest in our hope, in our future."
Rucyahana, who founded a school to help some of Rwanda's 400,000 orphans, invited students to come to his country, volunteer their time, and then return home determined to unite Americans through reconciliation.
"Look at what your forefathers built for America," he said at a follow-up news conference for student journalists. "They worked for it. Some even paid with their lives. You can't take it for granted. You have to sustain it."
Rucyahana's visit to Charlotte, which will include a 7 p.m. speech today at Sykes Auditorium at Queens University of Charlotte, is part of the Echo Foundation's weeklong focus on genocide in Africa. The speech is free and open to the public. Before Tuesday's forum, Echo gave schools classroom materials about Rwanda and the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Echo was founded in 1997 to carry on the human rights message that Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel brought to Charlotte that year.
On Tuesday, Stephanie Ansaldo, who heads the foundation, challenged the students and their schools to contribute a total of $1,500 to sponsor two students for a year at Rucyahana's Sonrise School.
The Echo Foundation is also sending 11 Charlotte high school students to Rwanda this summer to learn about reconciliation there.
Kristine Sowers, 16, of Providence Day School, went on a similar trip last summer, retracing Wiesel's footsteps from his native Romania to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where his parents and a sister were murdered by the Nazis.
On Tuesday, she got to introduce the bishop.
"There are students today who really care and are inspired by people like this," she said after the forum. "One person can change the world."
Julie McConnell, a biology and chemistry teacher at North Mecklenburg High School, said kids from all over the world coming to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have helped native-born students develop a keener interest in global issues.
Among Tuesday's questioners: Students who moved to the Charlotte area from the Ivory Coast and from Bosnia and Congo -- countries that, like Rwanda, have seen genocide.
To view the article online, go to www.charlotteobserver.com.