RESPECT International Blog

“I always refer to myself when I am saying this: my experience as a refugee opened for me doors to discovering and appreciating others. I always act as not belonging to my country, but to the world. It is a process that grows step by step.” Jean Clement Ishimwe

The life of a refugee means being forced into living in a country that is not your own, and often this is not simple or easy. Due to language issues, poverty and trauma the students have trouble integrating into schools. So in 1996 following a movement of refugees from the Great Lakes countries (Rwanda, Burundi, and the Republic Democratic Congo) to Kenya, the Saint Kizito Socio-Cultural Center located in Kabiria, one of the suburbs of Nairobi, Kenya was set up to provide specific facilities for refugee students. It exists under the patronage of Sacred Heart Parish of Degoretti.

Students from this school have gone on to become self-supporting and have entered further education worldwide. A graduate of the Saint Kizitio School, Jean Clement Ishimwe, is from Rwanda, a former refugee of war from 1994 “till now”.

He explains “till now” because, even though “I now have legal documents from Rwanda, I still can’t live there as I wish. All my family members are refugees – my parents still live in refugee camps – and the reasons that made us leave our country are still existing.”

Jean Clement joined the school at its inception and, since graduating, he still has strong links with it. He set up a letter exchange program at the school with RESPECT International. He believes that not only is it good for the students to share their experiences but it also helps to improve their writing skills. As Jean Clement said, he thinks of himself as a citizen of the world not a country. This feeling of openness led him to set up the letter exchange: to allow the refugee children to share their stories internationally.

He goes on to stress the importance of personal connection through writing, explaining that “it is easy to copy and paste a message that is well worded, but it still doesn’t say something about you. With this technology, we are turning away from expressing our really personal feelings that are expressed in letters to common feelings that are found everywhere on the net.

“Sometimes it is psychological. When I receive a letter written by hand I feel a direct contact with the person who wrote it. Writing letters convey not only the message itself, but the whole personality is involved: from the handwriting to the signature. Letters bring people together without an intermediary of a device,” he adds.

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