features
After their eight days in Rwanda, 12 Suffolk students will never see the world quite the same way again—because their understanding of the world just got much bigger.
spring 2024
Rwanda is a land of contrasts—beauty in its lush hills (above, photograph by Jake Sherman) and the brutal memory of the 1994 genocide. The Kigali Genocide Memorial (below) includes a haunting gallery filled with photos of some of those lost during the massacres.
In Lake Kivu’s case it’s not a monster, but kilos and kilos of carbon dioxide and methane, some of which has been down there for centuries. In fact, Kivu is one of three lakes in Africa known to have occasional limnic eruptions—explosive releases of CO2 that can kill people and animals living near a body of water.
Yet for 12 Suffolk students on a tranquil evening in March, paddling around in rickety wooden fishing boats on Lake Kivu was the perfect place to be.
Theirs was no ordinary fishing trip. Instead, these students traveled almost 7,000 miles to central Africa to study water and its many meanings for the people of Rwanda—as a source of life and of livelihoods, as a wellspring of its natural world and of its national economy.
Story and Photographs by Ben Hall
Water scarcity actually isn’t a problem in the Republic of Rwanda. Unlike many of its continental neighbors, this lush, green “land of a thousand hills” has plenty of the stuff. The water issue in Rwanda, a small, landlocked nation of 13 million people, isn’t supply: It’s the challenging confluence of geography, infrastructure, and resources. Most of Rwanda’s water is in its valleys, and moving it up and over those scenic hills is an expensive proposition on a per capita basis, particularly for a poor, mostly rural country where 39% of the population lives below the poverty line and 16% lives in extreme poverty.
Long before they found themselves on Lake Kivu, the students had begun examining water from multiple angles in Rwandan society as part of a course taught by Professor Jonathan Haughton, chair of Suffolk’s Economics Department. The class culminated in a weeklong trip to Rwanda led by Haughton and Jane Zhu, chair of the Sawyer Business School’s Marketing Department and director of international engagement. Over the course of that week, the students visited governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and businesses that focus on water issues in the capital city of Kigali and surrounding areas.
“There’s a perception of Africa as ‘poverty plus animals,’” said Haughton. “Yes, there’s poverty. And yes, there are animals. But there’s so, so much more.”
Like water.
Part of Haughton’s goal for the trip was for students to experience Rwandan history and culture—which, tragically, includes the 1994 genocide. What took place that spring and summer in Rwanda has a brutality that’s difficult to grasp.
Exact numbers are hard to pin down, but it’s generally agreed that over the course of 100 days, around 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and others were slaughtered by ethnic Hutus.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial quietly but powerfully depicts the events leading up to, through, and after the genocide. The weapon of choice to kill friends, neighbors, and family was the machete, and the horror is not sanitized in any way. There are videos of people being hacked to death. Photographs of bloody bodies strewn across roads. Skulls, leg bones, and clothes retrieved from mass graves. Guides gently remind visitors it’s all right to step out of the building if they feel overwhelmed.
Not an obvious first-day destination for jetlagged students.
And yet the Kigali Genocide Memorial was exactly the right place to go on the first day. That’s because it set the contrast for the week ahead and gave students an understanding of the atrocities and unfathomable human tragedy, along with context for how much progress the nation has made in just 30 years since the genocide occurred.
“What’s amazing to me is how it wasn’t that long ago,” said business economics and global business major Dominika Jasinska, Class of 2025. “But it’s also amazing how Rwandans have all worked together and used the approach of forgiving each other, even though that might mean standing next to someone who murdered their family.”
Thirty years on
Return to Table of Contents
The water conundrum
Sitting on the western border of Rwanda, Lake Kivu could be the African equivalent of Loch Ness.
It’s vast.
Sitting on the western border of Rwanda, Lake Kivu could be the African equivalent of Loch Ness.
It’s deep.
It holds a massive amount of water. And at its murky bottom lurk ancient mysteries.
Top photo: Rwandan fishermen paddle their boats across Lake Kivu. Bottom photo: Economics Professor Jonathan Haughton (left), the trip’s organizer, studies a map of Rwanda’s Akagera National Park with Julia Rozzi, Class of 2027, and Marketing Professor Jane Zhu.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) loomed in the haze off to the west as students boarded large, spiderlike wooden fishing boats whose design likely hasn’t altered in many years. From the shore they headed out with local fishermen to participate in the nightly ritual of catching sambaza fish, a cousin of the sardine.
As the fishermen paddled out, they whistled and sang songs. And once out on the calm lake, they set their nets, hung Coleman lamps over the water to lure fish to the surface, and waited as a gibbous moon slowly set over the DRC. Students chatted quietly with each other, gazed at constellations not visible in the Northern Hemisphere, and, two hours later, helped the fishermen haul in the catch.
For business analytics and information systems major Stuart Atkinson, Class of 2024, those hours on the water offered lessons not available in any classroom: The chance to help row the ancient boats, haul in the nets, and witness firsthand how the men and the lake help feed the nation. It was, Atkinson declares, “a highlight of the trip for me.”
Fish aren’t the only thing coming out of the lake. Remember all that methane? Turns out it’s become quite an asset for Rwanda. The day after the fishing trip, students traveled half a mile to the KivuWatt Power Station, which had been visible from the boats. It extracts the methane from the water, then uses it to generate from 10% to 25% of the country’s electricity. The gleaming facility was a reminder of the mix of ancient traditions (singing fishermen) and new technology (methane extraction) that coexist in Rwanda in the 21st century.
Haughton has been traveling there since 2016, when the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda reached out and asked him to prepare a report on poverty in the country. (Officials cold-called Haughton after reading a book he co-wrote in 2009 called Handbook on Poverty and Inequality.) Since then he’s also contributed to a report on teenage pregnancy in Rwanda and worked with a team that’s examining financial inclusion in the country.
In their element
Haughton’s fascination with Africa started as a child, when his father served as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in Lagos, Nigeria, in the 1960s. Over the years, he’s been back to the continent many times, traveling to countries like Togo, Ghana, Mauritius, Madagascar, and, just weeks before this trip, running a workshop in Tanzania. As Haughton told the students more than once, “Once you get a taste of Africa, you want to go back.” He wanted students to experience that connection and gain a deeper understanding of the continent and its people—so, with the support of Suffolk President Marisa Kelly, he put together the trip.
If you had told the students when they were packing that they would need scratchy lab coats and hair nets, they would have thought you were umusazi (that means crazy in Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda). Turns out the gear is required if you want to tour Inyange, a Kigali bottling plant that distributes water, milk, and juice throughout Rwanda and neighboring countries. Students didn’t seem to mind the sartorial requirements and were able to study the clattering assembly line up close, watching as small plastic vials were inflated into pint-sized bottles, then moved down the line to be filled with juice (that Tuesday was mango day), and whisked off to be boxed and loaded onto trucks.
Like so many things on the trip, the bottling plant was a first for Julia Rozzi, Class of 2027, who had never toured any kind of factory before. “We got to see not just the economic side of how water works,” she said, “but also the many logistical pieces of the puzzle.”
The water theme rippled out into other visits: to UNICEF to hear about its WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) Program; WASAC, the state-owned Water and Sanitation Corporation; and Aquasan, a company that manufactures water storage tanks, essential in a country where central plumbing is the exception rather than the rule, especially in rural Rwanda.
At every stop, students stepped up to shake hands with their hosts, ask questions, and take notes. As they did so, they began to realize how hard Rwanda must work to accomplish even basic societal goals that Americans often take for granted.
“The people in these agencies are very clear they have a plan to deliver water and sanitation to the whole country,” said economics major Lily Davis, Class of 2024. “They just don’t have the money or resources to make it happen as quickly as they want.”
Davis was also impressed with the focus on including the environment in the planning. It’s not a new way of doing things, either: Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008, one of the first countries to do so. “In the West, we have to break bad habits,” she said. “But because Rwanda is closer to the beginning of the process, they can incorporate environmental concerns as they advance their infrastructure.”
The logistical puzzle pieces
Students atop “Napoleon’s Hat,” a small island in Lake Kivu.
From left: Safari guide Deo Kayitare shows a weaver bird’s nest to Emily Briand, Class of 2026; Kigali’s Kimironko Market (photograph by Jake Sherman); students hanging with the locals—including zebras and impalas, as well as giraffes, elephants, hippos, and lions—at Akagera National Park.
“Transformative” is a pretty loaded word to apply to a trip that lasted only seven days. (Well, eight, if you factor in the last-minute cancellation of the flight home that forced the group to tack on another day, during which several students—in true Suffolk fashion—just calmly rolled up their sleeves and spent the day helping to track down new flights for everyone.)
But many students said the trip was, indeed, just that. Most didn’t know each other before leaving Boston. By the time they drove away from Akagera National Park on the final day, they had bonded in multiple ways: Rooming together. Losing luggage, then recovering it. Rattling around on bumpy van rides from one end of the country to the other. Seeing zebras, giraffes, elephants, and lions in the wild. Sharing meals, stories, and selfies. Learning a dozen new things every day. And experiencing the intense, collective connection of traveling together a long way from home.
Though Haughton will be retiring in June after 27 years at Suffolk, he hopes the legacy he leaves these 12 students (and many more over the years) will last a lifetime. Over the next 30 years, he pointed out, almost 60% of all population growth in the world will be in Africa.
“These students need to know about that,” he said. Whether or not they come back, he added, they’ll see Africa with new eyes, perhaps even engage in business there.
By the end of the trip, Dominika Jasinska was contemplating just that possibility.
“I’d definitely like to do something regarding water access to help them advance their economic growth,” she said. “Honestly, I’m already looking for ways to go back to Africa.”
LIFE CHANGING
02
01
03
04
01
02
03
04
01
02
03
04
01
04
02
03
Fishermen head out onto Lake Kivu at sunset to fish for sambaza.
01
05
02
03
01
06
02
03
05
06
Akagera National Park is home to elephants, lions, rhinos, giraffes, hippos, zebras, and dozens of smaller animals and species of birds.
Since 2010, Akagera National Park has seen an increase in wildlife numbers from fewer than 5,000 to almost 12,000.
Amanda Silva, Class of 2024, lends a hand paddling the boat and whistling with the local fishermen as they head out onto Lake Kivu.
To learn about water in Rwanda, students visited government agencies, NGOs, and local companies, including Inyange, which bottles and distributes milk, juice, and water to Rwanda and neighboring countries.
Economics Professor Jonathan Haughton bargains for an African mask at the Kimironko Market in Kigali.
05
06
05
06
05
06
04
06
04
05
