War and education
Grace, a six years girl immigrated into Kenya from Rwanda in the year 1994 following the famous Rwanda genocide. He parents were butchered in front of her eyes and the only thing that saved her life was a hundred liters container in which she hid when her family was being slaughtered. After the incident, she tearfully and painfully left home without any specific destination, only to escape the jaws of death (rwandanstories.org/aftermath.html). She had already started schooling and the language that she had got used to was French (Wamitila, 2005).
After her arrival in Kenya one year later, she enrolled in a school in one of the refugees camps in Kenya. She was very much interested in education but her main obstacle was language.
Having got used to using French as the learning language and finding English as the language used instead of French, made her unable to learn efficiently. She had first to change her language so as to cope with the situation. Though her adaptation to the new language was rapid, cross cultural communication still remained a major determent in her studies. This was because she would not discuss any issue with her classmates (Nola, 2003).
Her educational progress was slow to pick up but with time, she was able to upgrade and adapt to using English as her main language. Due to her passion in retaining her first class language, (French) she decided to take it as her second language in secondary school where she performed excellently (rwandanstories.org/aftermath.html).
Her past and scene of murder of her family made Grace much bitter with the Rwandese government. This made her lose interest in going back to Rwanda though she had a chance of going back and working in the education sector. Her education was also greatly affected by the immigration and murder which swopped her dream career from being a doctor to a lawyer so as to avenge the murder (UNCHR, 2000).
All in all, the support she received from the refugees’ camp and the Kenyan government in general as well as the general public made her succeed in education. The psychological counseling that she received made her think and revise her decision of revenge and instead of revenge, she went back to Rwanda to preach peace and reconciliation (Boustan, 2009).
References
UNCHR. 2000. State of the World’s refugees: The Rwandan genocide and its aftermath"
http://www.rwandanstories.org/aftermath.html
Wamitila J. 2005. Escape from jaws of death: a girl with a big heart. Macmillan Publishers.
Nola J. 2003. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Boustan N. 2009. Fertility and Immigration. UCLA.
