From a Rwandan Dump to the Halls of Harvard

BOSTON — Nine years old and orphaned by ethnic genocide, 
he was living in a burned-out car in a Rwandan garbage 
dump where he scavenged for food and clothes...

Daytimes, he was a street beggar. 
He had not bathed in more than a year.

When an American charity worker, Clare Effiong, 
visited the dump one Sunday, other children scattered. 
Filthy and hungry, Justus Uwayesu stayed put, 
and she asked him why.

“I want to go to school,” he replied.

Well, he got his wish.

This autumn, Mr. Uwayesu enrolled as a freshman 
at Harvard University on a full-scholarship, studying math, 
economics and human rights, and aiming for an advanced 
science degree. Now about 22 — his birthday is unknown — 
he could be, in jeans, a sweater and sneakers, 
just another of the 1,667 first-year students here.

But of course, he is not. He is an example of the potential 
buried even in humanity’s most hopeless haunts, 
and a sobering reminder of how seldom it is mined.

Over the 13 years since his escape from the smoldering 
trash heap that was his home, Mr. Uwayesu did not simply 
rise through his nation’s top academic ranks. 
As a student in Rwanda, he learned English, French, 
Swahili and Lingala. 
He oversaw his high school’s student tutoring program. 
And he helped found a youth charity that spread to high 
schools nationwide, buying health insurance for poor 
students and giving medical and scholastic aid to others.

He is nonetheless amazed and amused by the habits 
and quirks of a strange land.

“I tried lobster, and I thought it was a big fight,” he said. 
“You have to work for it to get to the meat.” And the taste? 
“I’m not sure I like it,” he said.

Fresh from a land dominated by two ethnic groups 
— the majority Hutu and the Tutsi, who died en masse 
with some moderate Hutu in the 1994 conflict 
— he says he is delighted by Harvard’s stew of nationalities 
and lifestyles. 
He was pleasantly taken aback by the blasé acceptance 
of openly gay students — “that’s not something we hear 
about in Rwanda”— and disturbed to find homeless 
beggars in a nation otherwise so wealthy that 
“you can’t tell who is rich and who isn’t.”

He says his four suitemates, hailing from Connecticut, 
Hawaii and spots in between, have helped him adjust 
to Boston life. But he is still trying to figure out an 
American culture that is more frenetic and obstreperous
 than in his homeland.

“People work hard for everything,” he said. 
“They do things fast, and they move fast. 
They tell you the truth; they tell you their experiences 
and their reservations. 
In Rwanda, we have a different way of talking to adults. 
We don’t shout. We don’t be rowdy. 
But here, you think independently.”

Born in rural eastern Rwanda, Mr. Uwayesu was 
only 3 when his parents, both illiterate farmers, 
died in a politically driven slaughter that killed 
some 800,000 people in 100 days. 
Red Cross workers rescued him with a brother 
and two sisters — four other children survived elsewhere — 
and cared for them until 1998, when the growing tide 
of parentless children forced workers to return 
them to their village...[...]nytimes.com