Six Weeks in Rwanda

I was able to finish the application for the Truman Award with plenty of time to spare. Jutta offered to nominate me, and Colleen and Dr. Pedrow were kind enough to write my reference letters. I sent all of the materials to Jutta on Monday, and she received them today. Now it's up to the judges...

A while back, I made the case for a custom Linux distribution designed specifically for Rwanda. As it turns out, this is much easier than you might expect. When I have some time, I'd really like to take a shot at doing it. Lifehacker recently linked to this Information Week article , and this prompted me to look into the prospect of rolling a distro all by myself. I could make a number of different flavors of the operating system, tailoring specific packages and applications for the governments, the schools, or the telecenters. A more generalized version could even be targeted for Swahili-speaking countries or even Africa as a whole. The first step will be to choose an initial target audience and select a suite of applications appropriate for their needs. Stay tuned.

In 2006, I went to Rwanda on an internship with Washington State University's Center to Bridge the Digital Divide. My team helped establish an Internet telecenter in a rural village, and WSU decided to make a television commercial about it. Now they show it on television during breaks of Cougar football and basketball games.



I found some discussion of this commercial on the Spokesman Review's website. Check it out, it's kind of fun.

These are some notes I took at a lecture by Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the Academy Award nominated film Hotel Rwanda. He visited Washington State University on February 7, 2006.

1. "You can always find a solution."
2. "You can always get what you want."  (when talking about cramming 32 people into a car and a van)
3. he called the Mille Colline "a small island of fear in a sea for fighting"
4. the phone lines were cut, but the fax machine still worked
5. the UN's 2500 person peacekeeping force was reduced to 260
6. he tried "calling the White House to shame them into helping"
7. April 23
   1. woken up at 6AM after going to bed at 4AM
   2. at gunpoint, told to get all refugees out of the hotel
   3. negotiated for 30 minutes to get dressed
   4. used that time to call Rwandan generals
   5. was able to avoid any deaths
8. the refugees at the hotel were forced to drink the water in the pool and eat only corn and beans
9. the dead bodies on the side of the road were all people that Paul knew, lived with
10. the hotel used generator for a while, but they all broke down, they lived without any electricity
11. his wife was injured in the first evacuation attempt, was bedridden for weeks
12. the people at the hotel established a "blood brotherhood"
    1. if the parents were killed, the eldest child was in charge
13. Paul told a military officer "one day this will all end and you and I will have to face history"
14. he went to ask Gen. Bizimungu for protection
    1. militia men entered the Mille Colline
    2. Bizimungu and Rusesabagina went to Mille Colline
    3. Bizimungu stopped the militia men just as the refugees were about to be killed
    4. they had been dragged out of their rooms and been made to kneel at the edge of the pool
15. after the genocide, dogs were fighting over human flesh, flies were everywhere
16. Paul returned to Kigali after evacuating to the RPF side
    1. reopened the two hotels in July
17. "the best fight is to fight with words" "the best fight is to win because you are stronger"
18. "with a gun, you can win for a day"
19. he was almost assasinated in September, fled to Belgium
20. there is genocide happening right now in Burundi, Uganda, Darfur, and the Congo
21. "never again are the two most abused words" "they have become again and again"
22. What we can do
    1. raise awareness
    2. freeze Darfur oil money
    3. "one day they will have to face history"
    4. "they are calling fro the darkness, somewhere from a forgotten continent"

Yesterday I was talking to Jutta online and she pointed me toward The Truman Award of Leadership and Innovation by Young Professionals in International Development , sponsored by the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society for International Development. It's a $500 cash award for young individuals who are focused on international development, and includes an award ceremony in Washington, D.C. The application looks relatively simple, but I need to ask two people for letters of reference. This would be a very prestigious award to receive.