Long road, big dreams for Rwandan student in St. Paul

Linda Umwali's school counselor played a little joke on her.

She called Umwali to her office at the Gashora Girls Academy in Rwanda. Umwali knew it was about her application for a college scholarship at Hamline University. The counselor greeted her with a very serious, downcast face, but then quickly gave up the ruse.

"'Linda, you know you applied to Hamline University, and the results are out, and you got in!'" Umwali, 19, recalled, laughing.

An acceptance letter can be ho-hum for American families. But in Rwanda, an impoverished, landlocked east central African country, acceptance to college with a full-ride scholarship is close to a miracle.

Umwali is Hamline's first Rwandan scholarship recipient. A first-year student, she's getting acclimated to life in Minnesota. That includes coming to terms with the shifting hours of sunlight — a striking change compared to her equatorial homeland — and snow, which "looks beautiful when you're in the room."

And she finds it unusual that Americans bring their dogs into the house at night. "Dogs in Rwanda are only let out at night, for security reasons. It's totally different."

Hamline University sociology professor Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert helped forge the school's connection to Rwanda. She has traveled there four times and helped create the Rwandan student scholarship.

Embser-Herbert says the American students she has accompanied to the country's Gashora Girls Academy are impressed with the students work ethic compared to the sometimes more relaxed attitude in this country.

"'Gonna have a little fun, have a little education, do this, gonna work,'" Embser-Herbert said of typical American student attitudes. "Here were girls who were up at 5 o'clock, early in the morning, without high-end facilities, working all day, and I'm sure having some fun, but very much focused on their studies."

Most Americans know Rwanda, a country about the size of Maryland with a population of nearly 12 million, because of the bloodbath there two decades ago. Members of the majority Hutu population slaughtered as many as 1 million minority Tutsi.

Umwali was born the year after the terror. She minces no words about it, calling it genocide, "killing a massive group of people either because of their race, religion their ethnic differences and that's what happened."

She doesn't want to talk about her family's ethnicity. Instead, she says, she is Rwandan, adding, "All those ethnic groups and all those identifications we give ourselves are not even scientifically proven to have meaning."

Rwanda's politics are precarious. The country is wracked with dissent. Across the border in the Republic of Congo, a rebel group of Hutu's has yet to be disarmed.

No matter. Umwali already has a goal. The economics major plans to return to Rwanda and eventually become the country's finance minister.

Some of her new American friends express concern. Uwamli says they ask her, "'You want to go back to die?' No. I want to go back to help my country and continue where others have stopped developing it."