“You’re going where?”

“Isn’t there a war going on there?” 

“Do they have electricity?”

“My parents would never let me go.”  

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Rwanda before even setting foot in the country––it’s that most people know absolutely nothing about it. Aside from the words genocide, conflict, and poverty, the tiny central African nation appears to be of little or no interest to those around me.

And the truth is… for a colonized country who lost an estimated million citizens just 25 years ago, Rwanda’s doing just fine. Since 1994, they’ve drastically increased their GDP and life expectancy, improved literacy rates and decreased poverty nationwide. Not to mention they have the most female members of parliament in the world.

So yeah, the misinformation has led to a lot of uncomfortable pre-departure conversations.

I say all of this because everyone seems to give me too much credit for my “charitable” study abroad choice. I’ve had someone tell me how “good I’m going to feel about” myself after helping people “over there.” To be clear: I have no intentions of embarking on a mission trip and frankly put, Rwanda doesn’t need my help. This will not be three months of voluntourism. I won’t be building schools or handing out food. I’ll be studying the genocide and modern peacebuilding on a rigorous schedule in a place that knows the topic far too well. Period. Kigali is an advanced city and I fully expect to get my money’s worth in education through the School for International Training (SIT) program.

So why did I choose Rwanda?

Travel is a major value in my family, and with two sisters who spent semesters in both Germany and Costa Rica during their undergrad years––studying abroad was sort of written in the stars for me. So it was never truly a matter of if but where. As I neared the application deadline for global studies last year at Simmons, I found myself looking at four different places: Italy, Thailand, Rwanda, and Japan. I was torn between a longing for the classic "find-myself" European trip and a cultural experience that defied the norm. 

By process of elimination I rooted a few countries out. Japan would be expensive and cold during the spring and Thailand convinced my mom that I would spend the semester partying rather than learning (let's just say her reservations weren’t so far-fetched). So that left me with two. Tuscany, Italy sounded like pure bliss: the art, the history, THE FOOD. Then there was Kigali, Rwanda, which aside from being a beautiful-looking country with a depressing past––I knew very little about. Ultimately I realized I could live in Italy at virtually any time. Europe was a place I felt confident traveling solo. But when I tried to think of an equivalent scenario that would allow me to live in Rwanda, I came up empty-handed. 

At the end of the day, Italy would have been a breathtaking few months, but it would also have been a comfortable few months. The culture, cuisine and history were all so instinctively close to home that I knew I would come out of the semester as the same exact person I went in as. Rwanda on the other hand felt uncomfortable, a challenge, a test of adaptability. I knew if I could just be there and understand the aspects that make Rwanda the way it is––I would grow as human and maybe even find a little purpose along the way. 

So at the last moment, I chose Rwanda and haven’t looked back since.