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From Never Again

Albert Nzamukwereka, Never Again's Rwandan director, has spent three months in Rwanda as a guest of the International Centre for Tolerance Education.

Here he shares his first impressions of New York City.

I was impressed by the diversity of the inhabitants and the complexity of the transport means. In my way from the air port I recognised one of the famous street known from Eddy Murphy famous movies: A Prince in New York. Queens boulevard you remember very well in this movie. It was so exciting to see the big differences between my country Rwanda and the city: big bridges, big cars with music in high volume. After some minutes I started to realise that I was in the city that I used to see in the American movies. What made me more confused was different kinds of people eating in the street in front of nice and expensive American jeeps that I saw everywhere in Manhattan. I also saw women carrying their kids in the hands and feared that they could fall comparing to how our African mums carry their kids. I kept looking around astonished with the look and the style of New Yorkees. I am now learning through [New York members] Marian And Heddy how to use subways, map and other electrionic cards with which I am not familiar with... I look like a typical Rwandan peasant coming for the first time to in the city of Kigali from the village.

Then came the technology of my appartment with electronic keys and and a modern kitchen followed by a restaurant to share food with Marian and Heddy a piece of rice and fish. Americans have the habit of eating several times and I am not familiar with that, I used to have lunch at a particular time and a given place. At ICTE in the coffee room there are always drinks and food. I can't resist to not testing different nice and new drinks and food, so sometimes I find something that I like and on the other hand I have bad luck to choose something that I don't like.

The working environment in the USA is totally different from Africa and Rwanda. At work in Rwanda people waste some times chatting, joking and socialising a little bit and this keeps freshness in your mind - even if you lose alot of time talking socially you gain joy and happiness. Here it is rare for people in the street or at work to make fun with you, everyone concentrates in his or her office until the end of the day, so you feel lonely some how when you are not familiar with that rhythm and environment of working. When they don't have a specific question related to work they want to discuss that is it.

I have been observing the activism that young people have in USA mainly those I meet here at ICTE and it inspires me to create such big opportunity when I go back home. You always have many things to learn by observing a new society like this. I feel like my mind was somehow closed, now it is open, this part is difficult to explain. I wish many young people from developing countries could get opportunity like this and use it appropriately.

Internet..an amazing tool, since I was here I have been passionated by the internet. I have access to internet at the apartment and office, the connection is so fast and it gives you the energy of doing other things fast. I fear that when I go back home I may be sick of losing this access which is changing my daily life by connecting me to new people and new ideas, I understand and get now some answers, how human being have managed to construct such amazing bridges like Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, the big flats, the nice cars, the technologies of subway train I keep questioning myself why Africa is so different, even 50 years after the independance. Did God create us differently?