Uganda and Rwanda: Post Conflict Transformation

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Educational Excursions

From each of the four main program locations – Gulu, Kampala, Butare, and Kigali – the program engages in a number of short excursions that are designed to complement classroom discussion and field-based educational activities such as ISPs.  These experiences enhance students' understanding of the region by allowing them to engage first-hand with critical issues in reconciliation and redevelopment, and to apply concepts introduced through their coursework.  

Rwanda

The Murambi Genocide Memorial site, near Butare, and the Gisozi Genocide Memorial and Information Center in Kigali are two of the nation’s largest.  Many visitors to these sites assert that their visits were life-transforming.

• Culturally important sites, such as the former king's palace at Nyanza, help to understand the history and politicization of ethnic groups in Rwanda and thus provide a cultural-historical frame for understanding the genocide.
• Gacaca courts are an indigenous Rwandan solution to the problems of justice and reconciliation.  Students may arrange to attend a day-long session of gacaca with their Kigali host families.

Uganda

Internally displaced people's (IDP) camps in northern Uganda expose students directly to the human costs and social dislocation of the northern conflict.

• NGO offices and project sites shed light on efforts to ameliorate conditions and begin the process of resettling displaced people in their former villages, recovering from trauma, and re-integrating ex-combatants.
• Culturally significant sites in central Uganda, such as the tombs of the Buganda kings in Kasubi, situate questions about ethnicity and nationhood in a wider national frame.
• Mass burial sites in the Luwero Triangle underscore the lengthy history of violent conflict in Uganda and help students to see the northern war as part of a broader, long-standing dynamic of political instability.