How to Address the President of Rwanda
“Good morning, Muzungoo!” the children shouted as they waved to us from the street. It was 6 p.m. in Rwanda. I was traveling as a journalist with World Vision, a humanitarian organization that fights the causes of extreme poverty and helps children and families through child sponsorship, clean-water wells, micro loans and economic development in countries around the world.
The drive outside of Kigali reveals the beauty of Rwanda and paints the oft-quoted tagline for the country: “The land of a thousand hills.” The aroma of woodsmoke, strong in the air, collides with sunflowers, snapdragons, red dirt and humanity. Lush avocado and acacia trees line the road and feed into the forest range and down through the valley where the rice fields are laid out like a neatly fitted quilts. Young children hustling goats, women carrying jerry-cans filled with water on their heads—all sharing the thin space of road that leads out from the capital city.
Our driver, Ringo, leans out the car window and corrects the children, telling them in Kinyarwanda that it’s not morning, but evening now. “Yes, they are Muzungoo,” he says in English and laughs. Muzungoo, of course, means white people.
Soon we stop the car to visit an Area Development Project that includes greenhouse farming with onion, corn and tomato. The soil in this region is acidic and hard to cultivate but the greenhouse collective helps with both growth and food security. The woman who work at this project can take a truckload of goods to the market after harvest and get a much better price than doing it alone. A beautiful thing.
As we leave the project site, I bump into an elderly woman with a canvas grocery bag on her head that says, “Yes we can,” with a picture of the White House and President Obama. That’s when it hit me. The first black president I will meet will not be from the U.S., but Rwanda.
The meeting has been cancelled and rescheduled a couple of times, but at the moment, our World Vision delegation, which includes pastors from New York City and Chicago, is set to meet with President Kagame the next day.
In the morning I unravel my suit jacket, white shirt and rolled up tie from the bottom of my Kelty backpack. I try and shake the jacket—hoping the wrinkles will magically disappear. They did not.
The meeting with President Kagame will help build the continuing relationship between World Vision and the government of Rwanda. Since the genocide in 1994 there have been numerous NGOs that have come into Rwanda, but many of them have either gone rogue and done their own thing—apart from the government—or they’ve tried to do things that simply aren’t helpful.
Getting on the radar of the President is a good thing, for sure.
We’re prepared by many members of the presidential staff as we work our way through security. The correct way to address the president is, “Your Excellency,” just in case you need to know. Or perhaps you take a trip to Rwanda and find yourself magically in his presence like me.
We’re all seated in his boardroom beforehand—a large circular room with oak desks and thin black mics at every seat. We’re offered bottled water and coffee as we wait. When President Kagame makes his entrance he does so with a smile and vigorous handshakes to our delegation.
After a number of formalities, President Kagame discusses the importance of having NGOs that partner with the government, stay humble and listen to the needs of the people—sharing mutual dignity and respect. He also spoke of the difficulties of rebuilding the beautiful country of Rwanda.
When asked what leadership lessons he would like to pass on to us, he says, namely: selflessness, character, consistency and fairness. “This is very complex,” he says, because the victims never think you’re hard enough on the perpetrators and the perpetrators always think you’re too hard on them.
What President Kagame has done in Rwanda is deep, rich and empowering—taking his people from the extreme darkness of genocide to productive and progressing nation. After only a short time with him you can see why he’s a champion for the people. Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to meet President Obama someday, but I’m kinda proud the first black president I met was from Rwanda.
Once our time was over we walked outside for the press to snap some photos and capture the event on video for the evening news.
And, yes, we unashamedly loitered the hotel lobby that night to watch ourselves on T.V. And, yes, it was all kinds of awesome.
Something this Muzungoo will never forget.
During the trip we visited many projects that included a bakery run by orphans, a leather-goods store and schools with sponsored children. We also visited an amazing woman with an entrepreneurial spirit who was given a microloan of a sewing machine and turned it into a thriving fabric business. It was a great portrait of hope.
I want to return to Rwanda some day—to find myself on the road outside of Kigali again where the beautiful hills roll on for a thousand different sunsets. And, I pray that the phrase “third-world” won’t be an appropriate moniker when I do.
