Christianson touches many lives in RwandaDate: 12/7/2017 EAST LONGMEADOW – Though she was born and raised in East Longmeadow, Kelly Christianson, 24, has lived in Rwanda for the last two years working for the Peace Corps and enriching thousands of Rwanda resident’s lives. While her time with the Peace Corps is up, she has decided to continue her time there as an employee of an NGO, or non-governmental organization.
When Christianson was in sixth grade she took a history class that changed her life, and sparked her desire to work in developing countries.
“In middle school, in East Longmeadow, we have this teacher, he was teaching history or social studies in sixth grade and his name was Mr. Axlerad,” Christianson shared. “Him and his wife had actually spent some years teaching in, I think it was Zimbabwe, and I remember listening to his stories and looking at all of the pictures he had, and I thought it was so amazing. He would talk about the idea of community and how it was perceived in African countries versus Western countries.”
Since then, Christianson decided that she would pursue this venture at Keene State College in Keene, NH for her undergraduate degree.
“It’s [Keene State] the only undergraduate university in the country that offers a bachelor’s degree in holocaust genocide studies. I’ve got two degrees, I was a triple major, I did education and sociology for a bachelors in science, and then I got a bachelor of arts in holocaust and genocide studies,” Christianson explained.
Christianson completed her degrees after three and a half years, finishing a semester early than most college students, especially ones who have multiple degrees.
She laughed, “There was a complete lack of sleep for three and a half years.”
During her time at Keene State, Christianson focused all of her undergraduate research on rescuer behavior during genocide in Rwanda. When her research was complete, she traveled to an international conference in South Africa to present her research among other scholars. However, Christianson admits that the conference was not what she thought it would be.
“I had this kind of idealistic view that this conference was going to be everyone working together to do this great thing and to contribute and work together to prevent mass atrocity from happening,” Christianson shared. “It was not, it was a bunch of middle-aged researchers yelling at each other and insulting each other’s integrity as researchers for a week. I realized this is why nothing is happening, this is why nothing gets accomplished, because they’re more worried about their credibility as researchers than they are about making an impact with what they do.”
Prior to this conference, Christianson believed that the best way she could use education as a tool for rebuilding post-conflict society was through her research. She quickly learned that a hands-on approach would create the change she desired, and after talking with a friend who was applying to the Peace Corps, she looked into the Rwanda program and knew that was where she was meant to be.
In December of 2014 Christianson applied to the Peace Corps with Rwanda as her first choice, though South Africa and Tanzania were other countries she listed as options to travel to.
Christianson was based in a rural community in the eastern province of Rwanda.
“I was actually really close to the only city in the country, but I was on top of a hill, so when people would drive past my hill on the main roads and I’d say I lived there, Rwandan’s would tell me that I was lying and I must have been confused because no one lives on that side of the road,” Christianson said. “There are 200 people in my community. It was extremely rural, I literally lived in a forest on top of a mountain, but I loved it. I loved every second of it.”
Christianson signed on for two years in Rwanda, along with 46 other Americans. She noted that the closest volunteer to her was an hour away, as all 47 Peace Corps members were scattered all over the country. Christianson lived by herself with her cat, dog and chickens.
“The daily challenge was just working all day and then coming home and having to clean the house and feed the animals and start my charcoal stove and start cooking everything from scratch for every single meal,” she said. “I would get up around 5:30 a.m., I would eat dinner around 8:30 p.m. or 9 p.m., depending on when I would get home from work. Sometimes I wouldn’t get home until like 7:30, 8 o’clock at night and I wouldn’t get to bed until midnight, but I’m still up at 5:30 a.m. with the rooster and the chickens.”
Christianson considered herself lucky, as she was sent to a location in Rwanda that had electricity. She noted that when an individual signs up for the Peace Corps, they’re told to not expect to have electricity, to not expect to have water and frankly, to not expect anything.
“I had nowhere I could buy food. We only had a local market, twice a week, at night, in a field, where it was like all of the people in the village would bring in the vegetables and fruit that they grow at home to sell to each other in the market. We couldn’t get anything that was not grown in our area, and we live in one of the least-fertile areas of the country,” she shared. “My first year, we actually had a really bad famine because it didn’t rain for eight months. People in my area were abandoning their houses and moving to different parts of the country, people were sending their kids away to live with different family members who could feed them.”
During her time in Rwanda, Christianson kept herself extremely busy working on a series of projects. She built over 300 drought-resistant kitchen gardens for families that had malnourished children. Additionally, Christianson was involved in teacher training.
“Rwanda recently changed their national curriculum for public schools so that they’re supposed to be teaching this new curriculum that’s student centered and promotes students being involved in the learning process, which is not how it was before, it was just lecture style before,” Christianson said.
Instead of the term “town” as we would commonly use to describe the community we live in, Christianson described the area as a “sector.” She began to complete teacher trainings in her school sector for multiple schools. Once the district caught wind of this, Christianson ended up working with 14 different sectors, totaling 56 schools.
Aside from her responsibilities creating kitchen gardens and working with various schools, Christianson set out on her own mission: teaching English to locals who hadn’t completed school.
"One of the main forms of transportation in Rwanda is motorcycle taxis, which are literally dirt bikes and you pay them to take you places. Where I lived, that’s like the only form of transportation. I took those people who had not finished school and we created job-specific language classes that focused on speaking and listening for adult learners,” Christianson said.
The goal for Christianson was for these community members to be able to be proficient enough in English so that they could seek work in the city during school breaks, as at that time motorcycle transportation isn’t generally needed. Christianson wasn’t given any frameworks of how to create this program, and was able to strike out on her own.
“I was the first volunteer to ever hold district-level training in Rwanda, and I was the first volunteer to ever work with motodrivers,” she shared.
Christianson had classes of motodrivers that ranged anywhere from only three students to 40.
“In Rwanda, we don’t have resources. All of the motorcycle drivers each pitched in a bit of money and I went into the city and we bought a white-board so we could use it in the classroom. We’d go in there, and we have the white-board and we would write things, we’d practice things, we’d practice scripted conversations, we’d play different games like jeopardy and slap the board,” Christianson explained.
While she started teaching the motodrivers reluctantly, the time she spent on a weekly basis with the drivers soon became her favorite day of the week. In fact, she notes her favorite moment spent in Rwanda was with one of her motodriver students, Alex.
“When we started the classes, he couldn’t even greet someone in English. After about six months when we were doing our proficiency exams just so I could see where they were at with their speaking abilities, I sat him down and I wasn’t really expecting much because he was always quiet in class. He just opened his mouth and started having a conversation and giving me directions all in English,” she recalled. “I was so happy that day, to get him from zero to being able to have a conversation with me.”
Though overall she has loved her experience in Rwanda and couldn’t wait to travel back, Christianson’s time spent there did come with some lows.
“Peace Corps service, it’s like waves. Sometimes you’re super optimistic and you’re really happy with everything and then other times everything is going wrong and you get super homesick and just it’s a low,” she said. “I’m excited to get back [to Rwanda] and go to work again and get back to my animals.”
Since Reminder Publications spoke with Christianson, she has returned to Rwanda where she is working to develop an education program for an NGO called, “Never Again Rwanda.” She’s helping the group create a teacher education program that will serve as a curriculum for teachers to use as a guide for how they can discuss genocide in Rwanda.
“I’ll be working with them on how they can better equip their teachers to be able to talk about these things, which are very touchy subjects in Rwanda without getting themselves in trouble with the government,” she explained.
Christianson will be back in the United States in August 2018, and her Rwandese fiancé, Ben, will be joining her. The two plan to marry in March.
“We’re planning on coming back here in August when I finish my internship, spending a year in New Hampshire because that’s where my teaching license is valid for, and then we both want to go to graduate school. He wants to study youth development. I plan on studying international education development with a specialization in post-conflict countries,” she said.
Currently, Christianson is on the Board of Directors for Health Development Initiative New Hampshire, which fosters a partnership with Health Development Initiative Rwanda. For the past three years the group has had plans in the works of building a hospital in Rwanda that will provide non-discriminatory healthcare to the marginalized groups within Rwanda.
“It includes the LGBTQI population, the Ethnic Twa, who are the hunter-gatherer society that was living in the forest up until about 12 years ago, and people who are HIV positive, or teen mothers,” Christianson clarified. “Those groups are routinely denied access to healthcare in Rwanda, or they’re so afraid of being stigmatized that they won’t even try to seek healthcare.”
Health Development Initiative New Hampshire is searching for any donations possible through fundraising events and their website so they can build a hospital that will provide individuals with a safe space to receive quality healthcare. So far, the group has raised $8,100, however Christianson noted the group needs $25,000 to receive the structural design of the hospital so construction can begin. Health Development Initiative New Hampshire is a 501C3, and all donations are tax deductible. To donate to Health Development Initiative New Hampshire for this cause, go to http://hdinh.org/.
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