JPost.com
Opinion
Op- Ed Contributors
The Zionist angel of Rwanda
By YOSEF I. ABRAMOWITZ
02/08/2014 22:17
The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village provides a nurturing community for
500 of the most needy orphans.
A graduation photo from the class of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
Photo: COURTESY AGAHOZO-SHALOM YOUTH VILLAGE
An hour outside of Kigali, past industrious children carrying yellow
plastic water canisters and women with bundles on their heads, where
the road snakes up revealing a stunning view of the green valleys
below, Anne Heyman, in 2006, stood in the rain under a lone mango tree
with representatives of 56 local land-owners and redefined history
with hope.
In the land of a thousand hills, a million people were butchered in a
hundred days in 1994, leaving a million orphans by the time the RPF
(Rwandan Patriotic Front) staggered into the bloodied Rwandan capital,
as the world stood idly by. A decade after the genocide, Heyman and
her husband Seth Merrin sponsored at Tufts University a speaker from
Rwanda, as part of a series on moral voices. A decade after the
genocide, they were horrified to learn, there were still a million
orphans in Rwanda and no initiative to solve the issue.
Heyman, 43 at the time, dug deep into her Young Judaea Zionist
activist roots for inspiration - she grew up singing Arik Einstein's
"You and I will change the world" - and resolved to import to Rwanda
the Israeli model of youth villages that were established after the
Holocaust to absorb a generation of traumatized youth.
The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village - part Yemin Orde, part Kibbutz
Ketura, part Anne Heyman - opened its door only two years after Heyman
signed the land deal under the mango tree. It provides a nurturing
community for 500 of the most needy orphans, a campus with a communal
dining room, high school, health care clinic, homes with 16 kids each
and a house mother, workshop spaces, running water, plumbing and
electricity, and the best Internet service in Rwanda.
Nearly a decade after hatching her audacious idea, the mango tree
still stands, yet the angel of Rwanda has fallen. President Shimon
Peres sent a condolence message that was read Monday at New York's
Bnai Jeshurin synagogue, before a stunned community of mourners.
Heyman, 52, died on January 31 on the operating table, as physicians
from the Delray Medical Center tried to save her following a
horseback-riding accident during a jumping competition.
As Rwandans begin to commemorate 20 years since the genocide by
machete, they are also now mourning a daughter of Israel. This
Saturday, a special service will be held for the 500 kids at the
village to mourn the woman they called "our grandmother Anne Heyman."
Hundreds will be in attendance.
Susan and I were invited by Anne to volunteer at the village two years
ago, and to bring our children. It was, we knew at the time, a trap
that we knowingly walked into, because Anne, and her mission, were
compelling. (Two of our children hail from East Africa.) And when you
meet the kids of the village, look into their eyes and see the sparks
of hope and intelligence and love, it overtakes the despair, anger and
sadness that you leave with after visiting the genocide museum in the
capital.
For Anne, who owned a home in Herzliya as well as in New York, spoke
Hebrew to her kids, and met Seth under the blazing sun of Kibbutz
Ketura as a volunteer, building an Israeli-inspired youth village was
21st-century Zionism, replete with many Jewish and Israeli volunteers.
Yet for Anne it was not about public relations, but about the positive
role that Israel could play in the world.
Indeed, 99 percent of the graduating class last year passed the
matriculation exams, and students give back to their local communities
by teaching English, building houses and helping with farming. A young
woman, Emet, explained to me over a plain yet nutritious meal of
mostly beans, rice and plantains that her first two years in the
village, she learned "tikkun halev," fixing of the heart - she taps
gently her T-shirt - in order to go out and do "tikkun olam," healing
the world.
To go from destitution and despair to academic accomplishment and
community leadership is a miracle, one celebrated by Rwandan President
Paul Kagame, both at the first graduation, and then, last June, when
he visited Jerusalem, where Anne and I were privileged to host him to
share a vision for a solar-powered Rwanda, starting with the youth
village.
An eery snowstorm swept over New York City during the funeral. "These
are the ice cold tears of God," said Seth, her husband. It rained on
their wedding day, pointed out one eulogizer, and snowed during her
funeral, but the rest of her life "was pure sunshine."
Her three children, dignified and menchlekeit, spoke of a mother who
instilled a love of family, of giving, and of pursuing dreams. She
would have both kvelled thru the tears and words and sniffles but
also, frankly, would have been impatient. "Who is going to care for
the kids of the village?" she intoned from Heaven. "That's all that
matters." We all heard it.
The author serves as CEO of Energiya Global Capital and can be
followed on Twitter @captainsunshine.
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Zionist-angel-of-Rwanda-340791
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