Summer in Sub Saharan Africa

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Author: Claire Diggins

With very little funding, one local contact, limited cultural knowledge and a few cameras, six Occidental students set out to live and teach in Kigali, Rwanda this past summer.

Sky Mangin (senior), Stephanie Chin (senior), Amy McDonough (senior), Anahid Yahjian (senior), Nelson Melgar ’10 and Julia Bleckner ’10 were selected to teach a series of film, photography, health and capacity building workshops in Rwanda’s capital and largest city.

The students drew upon their personal areas of interest and various courses taken at Occidental as they independently designed their workshops. In the end, the workshops were as much a learning experience for these new teachers as they were for their students.

Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) professor Laura Hebert organized these projects through a contact she made when she visited Rwanda in 2009, looking to arrange volunteer and research opportunities for Occidental students.

Her correspondence was with a man named Fidele Kanamugire, the Rwandan Executive Director of Play for Hope, an organization that uses sports as a tool for social change in Rwanda. Through his program, students and others volunteer to play soccer with children who are orphaned or homeless. The hope is that children will engage in a constructive activity with possible mentors, diverting them from harmful or reckless activity on the streets.

Kanamugire became familiar with Occidental after physics major Ryan Bowen ’08 volunteered with Play for Hope a few years ago. Kanamugire offered to serve as the main facilitator of volunteer opportunities for Occidental students, which included holding workshops, working with youth and women’s associations and working with Play for Hope. In the end, a group of Occidental students went and held their respective programs in 2010, launching what Professor Hebert hopes will be a continuous annual volunteer program: Oxy-in-Rwanda.

The inaugural Oxy-in-Rwanda mission was primarily funded through the John Park Young Fund. The fund offers up to $3,500 per student and is only available to DWA and Economics majors or Politics majors with a DWA advisor. Each student involved, aside from Melgar (Film) and Yahjian (ECLS), was eligible and awarded approximately $3,000 each to live and teach their various workshops in Kigali. Melgar was able to receive funding through the Young Fund because his workshop was to be taught with Bleckner, a DWA major.

Yahjian, however, had to fund the trip herself. “Yes, it hollowed out my bank account, but it was such a worthy expense that I do not regret at all.”

By the end of the summer, Professor Hebert’s original outreach in Rwanda was a success. The program resulted in four successful workshops, five Rwandan-produced short films, a photography exhibit and, hopefully, the establishment of an Occidental summer program in Rwanda.

Cinematic Aspirations

Melgar and Bleckner were selected to teach the film workshop with four cameras, two laptops and a handful of student translators. Though Melgar’s grant money only allowed him to stay for five weeks, the pair taught 25 aspiring filmmakers how to score a script, shoot, edit and produce a film over the course of two months.

Melgar and Bleckner were unsure what resources would be available to them, so they prepared the syllabus upon arrival, completely on their own. As Melgar put it, “We had no idea what to expect when we got there. We didn’t know who we were going to teach, what their level of knowledge would be or what resources we would have access to.”

Kanamugire picked up Melgar at the airport and took him and Bleckner to lunch to discuss the direction of the course. That week, Melgar and Bleckner devised a lesson plan to guide their workshop.

They taught the film workshop every weekday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in the office of Play for Hope, a small space with just enough chairs for every student and only a giant pad of paper to aid instruction. Bleckner and Melgar began the course with a week of film history and theory, through lecturing and screening films.

The workshop consisted of an equal number of male and female students, ranging in age from 18 to 35 years old. Bleckner and Melgar showed them music videos like Spike Jonze’s “Drop” and clips from films like “Road to Perdition” and “An Education” in order to demonstrate different uses of light and other cinematic techniques. Then they broke into four groups, assigning each member the role of writer, editor, director, cinematographer and production designer.

Each group worked together to write a script for a short film. As they wrote and workshopped their scripts, Melgar and Bleckner taught students how to improve their screenwriting: Write in the present tense, write what you see, use detail to describe the set and include specific directions for character and camera motions.

Then Melgar and Bleckner moved on to cinematography, showing students how to use a camera and teaching them about shutter speed and aperture. The four students in the class who were fluent in English translated all of this instruction into Kinyarwanda as Bleckner and Melgar lectured.

Melgar and Bleckner were unable to rent equipment from the Occidental film lab; although the rental is free to students, the insurance fees on the equipment far exceeded what their grant budget allowed. This is not a new issue for filmmakers at Occidental.,/p>

“The school should have an insurance policy already established if they expect students to film abroad. It is almost impossible to rent equipment because the insurance fee is so high,” Melgar said.Nonetheless, Melgar brought his own camera, monopod and tripod, and Bleckner brought a camera of her own as well. Between them and their students, they were able to procure a total of four cameras for the class to share and use to shoot their films.

Students signed up to come over to the house Melgar and Bleckner rented with Yahjian to edit their films after class, using Melgar and Bleckner’s laptops. Melgar and Blackner arranged for groups to come to the house every day after class, holding two three-hour editing sessions a day. The end result of this workshop was five films – four fiction and one documentary – produced by these teams under Melgar and Bleckner’s guidance.

Among the films were “Light After Darkness,” the story of a young musician trying to make ends meet, “It’s Not My Choice,” a tale of one woman’s struggle to support her family and “The Failure of Christianity,” a documentary investigating a trend of Kigali Christians straying from God (Rwanda is 94% Christian, according to the CIA World Factbook).

Each film was in Kinyarwanda with English subtitles. The students scouted their own locations and did most, if not all, the shoots on their own, using friends and family members as actors. The films premiered at a local restaurant in Kigali, where they were projected on a large screen to an eager audience of friends, family and filmmakers.

Melgar shared with me that the experience taught him a lot and renewed his love of film. “I learned a lot about myself,” he said. “I was surprised by how much I enjoyed teaching film. I think that if you are passionate about something, as I am about film, you can be a good teacher. It was encouraging to see how serious my students took the art form. To see people wanting to tell their stories and wanting to do it through film was very rewarding.”

Through the Lens

Yahjian taught a photography workshop over the course of her three-week stay in Kigali. Though she has never formally studied photography, Yahjian nurtured a love for the medium at the age of 15 and decided she would go to Rwanda to teach others to love the activity as well.Meeting her class for the first time, Yahjian didn’t know what to expect. She had with her three cameras: one outdated two-megapixel Kodak camera that Professor Hebert donated, another older two-megapixel and a new five-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot donated by friends. Sixteen students, four of whom had their
own cameras, attended her workshop regularly. At the end of their three-week program, her students showcased their work in a group exhibit.

Though Yahjian had never taught photography before her trip, she was able to mimic her teaching style after courses she has taken at Occidental, mainly through the film department. On the first day of class, Yahjian lectured her students for three hours, introducing them to different styles of photography with a slideshow presentation.

Her slideshow was comprised solely of photographs, which told the history of photography. It progressed from the first pinhole cameras, on to black and white, then color and finally into the modern era of digital photography. Students also translated her lectures, like in Bleckner and Melgar’s workshop.

“All of my students understood English, and at least five or six spoke it very well. I would say a few sentences and then my students would take turns translating. After a while, it became a rhythm, and it wasn’t a problem,” Yahjian said.

Throughout the course, she tracked different movements in the history of photography by showing photos by artists such as Ansel Adams, David Hockney and Annie Leibovitz. Her goal here was to show students different techniques evident in these artists’ iconic works so that the student’s might emulate them. After every class meeting, Yahjian gave her students a different assignment focusing on a certain technique.

For instance, she would ask her students to take a portrait of someone or do an observational photo as if they were journalists. Each photo had to tell a story. Her class met every other day to allow students time to take their photos, which was often troublesome as they were sharing cameras.

Students would present their photos every class meeting, sharing with their classmates which techniques they used, what story they wanted to tell with their photo and what colors they focused on, among other things. The rest of the class critiqued each student’s photo so that they could all learn to speak critically about photography, as well as receive feedback on their work.

Yahjian told me that, although her students often fought over the nicer five-megapixel camera, some of the best photos were taken on the older cameras. This taught her students a valuable lesson that photography is not necessarily about the machine, but rather the artist.

“I think they needed to know this. I think a lot of the paralysis people in Africa have sometimes is that they feel they must mimic the high-tech Western way of creating art, but it is more compatible with their lifestyle to modify this Western way and say, ‘No, you can do things simply’,” Yahjian said.

The results of her students’ work, as well as the work of Melgar and Bleckner’s students, is evidence that not only can you do things simply, you can produce very beautiful and moving art with modest means.At the end of the three-week workshop, Yahjian’s students produced art, while also developing a useful craft which could potentially provide them an income.

Kanamugire arranged for a gallery opening in which students showcased five or six of their best photographs at an exhibit in the annex of a large church.

“The location was perfect. It was huge and had wonderful natural light. It was such a joy for me to see my students grabbing their friends by the hand, showing them their photos, explaining what they were trying to say and what techniques they used. It was a wonderful way to end the course,” Yahjian said.

Health and Capacity Building

In addition to these photography and film workshops, Chin and McDonough, who are currently in New York participating in the Oxy-at-the-UN program, taught a month-long health workshop. Mangin, also at the UN program, taught a 10-day capacity building workshop to local nongovernmental organization (NGO) leaders.

Capacity building is a form of international aid that focuses on creating an environment which enables the engagement of civil society, institutional development and appropriate legal and policy frameworks. This can include working in agriculture, health, education and other sectors.

Mangin’s workshop focused on assisting leaders from the nonprofit sector develop their management skills and performance ability. She constructed her syllabus based on her observations of the needs of the community she was working with. She gathered relevant information and lesson plans through the United Nations and other non-profit international organizations that provided tool kits to teach non-profit leadership.

She held the workshops, which were attended by NGO directors, Monday through Friday in half-day sessions. The main topics of discussion included fundraising techniques, how to form institutional alliances and the need to create a new nonprofit in Kigali to ease the educational gap in the Rwandan school system. Mangin is still in contact with Kanamugire, who she worked closely with on this project, and plans to return to Kigali to continue this work, possibly upon graduation.

Chin and McDonough created and taught health education workshops on HIV/AIDS, drugs, alcoholism and nutrition. They developed their curriculum based on their DWA classes in global health policy and also by using online resources. They travelled to various community groups, which Kanamugire helped them get into contact with, spending two days with each of them. These groups, ranging in size and age, included a group of widows, an HIV-positive support group and a soccer team of former street boys.

McDonough found the experience to be certainly challenging, but incredibly rewarding. “The groups responded very positively and expressed such gratitude for having the opportunity to learn about how to improve their health. [For me] it reinforced the immense importance of education,” she said.

McDonough, who studied abroad in South Africa prior to her stay in Rwanda, says she is quite “taken with Africa” and cannot wait to go back. She encourages anyone interested in traveling, teaching or community organizing to go to Rwanda next summer.

Takeaways

While these students all offered valuable learning experiences to dozens of Rwandans, they also received a valuable cultural education in Rwanda. Each of them picked up some Kinyarwanda; for Melgar in particular, a tradeoff of teaching his students film was that they taught him Kinyarwanda.

“It was sort of their gift to us, and they got really into bringing us books after class and teaching us new words all the time,” Melgar said.

Yahjian discussed her insights into the “post-genocidal” era in Rwanda that she observed. She shared with me that today in Rwanda, there is no ethnic divide, there is no longer such a thing as Hutu or Tutsi and, in fact, it is quite rude to ask someone to identify as one or the other.

In order to prevent a very sad and tragic moment in the long history of a nation from overshadowing all other aspects of the country, a theme of forgiveness prevails over Rwanda. Such mercy has allowed for the harmonious coexistence of younger generations. As someone of Armenian descent who has dealt with the ghost of the Armenian genocide her entire life, Yahjian seems to have been deeply affected by Rwanda’s post-genocidal disposition. “[Rwanda] taught me a lot about how to deal with this shadow of genocide I have been living with […] I think they recognized it was necessary to forgive each other because they have to live side by side,” she said.

For those interested, the DWA department aims to continue this program in years to come. Tonight, Oct. 27 at 7 p.m., there will be an “Oxy-in-Rwanda” event in Fowler 302. Yahjian received an ASP grant that paid to have her students’ photographs blown up and framed. They will be exhibited at the event. The first 20 minutes will be dedicated to allowing guests to mingle and peruse the photos while enjoying refreshments from Porto’s bakery. Professor Hebert will then speak about future opportunities for Occidental students to travel and creat
e their own volunteer projects in Rwanda.

There will also be a discussion of how students outside of the Economics and DWA departments can find funding for these projects, including the Values and Vocations Project, various off-campus funding sources and even the Young Fund.

Professor Hebert informed me that the DWA department is willing to grant the award, funds permitting, to students working with DWA faculty on projects that fall under the parameters of the John Parke Young Fund. It is very important that Oxy-in-Rwanda participants represent a diverse array of disciplines.

For next summer, Professor Hebert will be looking for participation from students across campus with interests in filmmaking, photography, information technology, grant writing and fundraising, crisis counseling, public health and gender violence.

Yahjian will speak about her experiences, including her workshop, the most recent Rwandan elections, postcolonialism and the post-genocide era in Rwanda. Bleckner and Melgar will also share their experiences and screen one of their students’ films.

Any student interested in learning more about Rwanda or how to get involved is strongly encouraged to attend. There will be information provided at this event regarding how to volunteer next summer and receive funding.

The Future of Oxy-in-Rwanda

All of these students were clearly changed by their experiences in Rwanda, and each one left a mark on their students and the city of Kigali. Bleckner and Melgar have since founded a non-profit organization, HonestVoices, which aims to raise funds to provide film students in Kigali with equipment and other necessary resources to continue their craft, as well as to recruit volunteers to teach film in Kigali.

Bleckner decided it was important to start this organization because she and Melgar did not want to teach their students how to make movies and leave them with no resources. To that effect, Yahjian donated the three cameras she brought with her to her students, creating a rental system for them and putting one student in charge of monitoring rentals.

These trips provided a wonderful learning experience for Occidental students, who learned to step outside of their comfort zones, adapt to a new culture and embrace their respective crafts in new ways.

All interested students are invited to contact these students and visit their respective websites or email them. Yahjian’s blog: recollectingrwanda.tumblr.com Yahjian’s flickr page: flickr.com/photos/anahidyahjian Email: ayahjian@oxy.edu. Amelia McDonough: amcdonough@oxy.edu or Professor Hebert: lhebert@oxy.edu

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