A Place to Belong

March 26, 2008

By Robert Mangelsdorf
Maple Ridge News

Some people spend their entire lives looking for where they belong and still don’t find it. But in the dusty town of Ruhengeri, in Northern Rwanda, Cathy Emmerson found her place.
High in the jungle-covered hills, she runs a preschool for the village children, teaching them to read, feeding them and helping in any way she can to better the lives of a people decimated by war and genocide.
It was not long ago Rwanda’s dusty red soil was drenched with the blood of more than 800,000 people, systematically killed during the civil war between the ruling Tutsi minority and the Hutu majority.
It’s pretty much the furthest place you could get from Maple Ridge, but for the former real estate agent, it’s home, and she couldn’t be happier.
“My friends thought I was going through a middle-aged crisis, but they understand now,” Emmerson says. “This is where I belong.”
She first came to Africa four years ago on vacation with friends and travelled to Rwanda to visit the wild mountain gorillas.
She wanted to get off the beaten track, but fell in love with the country and its people.
“I couldn’t get Rwanda out of my mind.”
Within six months, she was back, for good.
For the first year in what was to become her adopted home, Emmerson volunteered with the Imbabazi Orphanage, run by American humanitarian Rosamond Carr.
“Her intention was to retire and then I could take over the orphanage,” says Emerson. “But then she said one day, ‘I’m only 94, I’m just not ready to retire yet.’”
Emmerson then went to Ruhengeri, where she had friends, and opened up a small gift shop to support the local craftspeople and artisans.
However, within a span of weeks, five parents in the town committed suicide after discovering they had AIDS. Close to 40 children were left without parents.
Emmerson brought the remaining parents and children together and asked them what they needed.
The answer was help with the children.
“If a single mother has to go into market to sell produce, the kids would be left alone wandering the streets,” she said. “So that’s kind of how the school got started.”
While primary school is free in Rwanda, there is no preschool available.
Emmerson currently looks after more than 120 children, ages two to six. She teaches them English and French.
They gather daily on plywood benches outdoors, under a tarp if it rains. She is simultaneously a mother, a teacher, a nurse and a cook.
Emmerson hopes to have a permanent preschool facility built by the end of the year, and is planning on building a trade school within the next five to seven years.
“Most children in Rwanda don’t even get a childhood,” she says. “If they get a chance to learn and play, they get a fabulous start to life.”
Emmerson married local businessman, Uwayo Rachid, about 18 months ago. Last year they gave out more than 500 goats to impoverished families.
Goats are a source of income for poor families. They can breed them and within a few years have a herd, which they can then sell.
Emmerson and her husband also built two houses and repaired seven more.
“You can really make a difference here,” Emmerson says. “Give a kid $3 worth of school supplies, and they think you’ve given them the moon.”
To say her time in the Land of 1,000 Hills has put her life into perspective would be an understatement.
Things that once seemed so essential to our survival don’t seem to matter any more, she says. Emmerson has no television, no fridge, she cooks her meals over charcoal in the backyard and if she wants to send an email, she walks into town to use one of Ruhengeri’s two internet cafés.
Thanks to a close relationship with North Province governor Boniface Racugu, Emmerson has been able to identify who needs help the most.
“Everybody looks poor, but the local government knows their community very well,” she says. “There is really good government in Rwanda right now and there are a lot of opportunities to make things better.”