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Justus Uwayesu, rescued at 9 from the streets of Rwanda, is enrolled as a freshman at Harvard.CreditIan Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times
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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.

They arrived as a drought, and then famine, began to grip their home province. “I was malnourished,” Mr. Uwayesu said. “My brother would tell me, ‘I’m going out to look for food,’ and then he would come back without it. There were times we did not cook the whole day.”

In 2000, young Justus and his brother walked to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital and a city of about one million, in search of food and help. Instead, they wound up at Ruviri, a sprawling garbage dump on the city’s outskirts that was home to hundreds of orphans and herds of pigs.

Justus found a home with two other children in an abandoned car, its smashed-out windows and floor covered with cardboard. For the next year and a half, he said, all but the search for food and shelter fell by the wayside. “There was no shower, no bathing at all,” he said. “The only thing was to keep something warm for the night, something really warm.”

He learned to spot trucks from hotels and bakeries that carried the tastiest castoffs, and to leap atop them to grab his share before they discharged their loads to less nimble orphans.

For days when there was nothing to eat — no trucks came on Sundays, and bigger children claimed most edible garbage — he hoarded food in discarded cooking-oil tins, sunk into trash-fire embers to keep their contents warm.

Mr. Uwayesu said he was hobbled in a fall from one moving trash truck, and once nearly buried alive by a bulldozer pushing mounds of garbage into a pit.

Just 9, he spent nights in terror that a tiger said to roam the dump would attack him (there are no tigers in Africa). In the daytime, begging on the streets, he saw a world that was beyond him. “At noon,” he said, “kids would be coming back from school in their uniforms, running and playing in the road. Sometimes they would call me nayibobo” — literally, forgotten child. “They knew how different we were from them.”

“It was a really dark time, because I couldn’t see a future,” he said. “I couldn’t see how life could be better, or how I could come out of that.”

Purely by chance, Ms. Effiong proved the boy’s savior.

The charity that Ms. Effiong founded, in New Rochelle, N.Y., Esther’s Aid, decided in 2000 to center its efforts on helping Rwanda’s throngs of orphans. One Sunday in 2001, after delivering a shipping container of food and clothing, she took a taxi to the dump, spotted a scrum of orphans and, after some conversation, offered to take them to a safe place.

All but Justus refused. “I took him to where I was, cleaned him up, changed his clothes, dressed the wounds on his body and eventually sent him to primary school,” she said.

In first grade, he finished at the top of his class. It was a sign of grades to come: straight A’s in high school, followed by a seat in a senior high school specializing in the sciences.

Mr. Uwayesu moved into an orphanage run by Esther’s Aid, then, with two sisters, into the compound where Ms. Effiong lives while in Kigali. Throughout his schooling, he worked at the charity, which since has opened a cooking school for girls and is building a campus for orphans.

"My life changed because of her,” he said.

He would not have been able to compete for a spot in an American university without outside help, however. After high school, he applied for and won a seat in a yearlong scholars program, Bridge2Rwanda, run by a charity in Little Rock, Ark., that prepares talented students for the college-application process.

For roughly the past decade, Harvard’s international admissions director has personally scoured Africa for potential applicants each year.

Like most top universities, Harvard chooses its freshmen without regard to their ability to pay tuition. But until this year, the Cambridge campus had only one Rwandan student, Juliette Musabeyezu, a sophomore.

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No more. Of the 25 or so African applicants who made this year’s cut, three are from Rwanda, including a second Bridge2Rwanda scholar.

Not bad for a little country that is home to barely 1 percent of Africa’s billion-plus population. A photograph of Rwanda’s Harvard contingent appears on Ms. Musabeyezu’s Facebook page.

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Originally Posted by Kapadilla:

Horsie dem bais seh how you been to Green Tea not Harvard. Hey hey hey...

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Jocks at their best. Paper classes? What a concept!

FM
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:

Horsie dem bais seh how you been to Green Tea not Harvard. Hey hey hey...

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Jocks at their best. Paper classes? What a concept!

Hey hey hey... Sketdan. Tell duh to Horsie. 

FM
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:

PPP only interested in thieving they measure progress in terms of how much dem can thief. Not anything like this.

Guyana didn't have Hutu and Tutsi killing off each other either

FM
Last edited by Former Member
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:

Horsie dem bais seh how you been to Green Tea not Harvard. Hey hey hey...

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Jocks at their best. Paper classes? What a concept!

Hey hey hey... Sketdan. Tell duh to Horsie. 

Athletes always cheatin'. They go away to play their games. When they return for classes on Monday, they go around hunting for the people who took the tests and trying to get the questions and answers. I know this!!!!

FM
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:

Horsie dem bais seh how you been to Green Tea not Harvard. Hey hey hey...

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Jocks at their best. Paper classes? What a concept!

Hey hey hey... Sketdan. Tell duh to Horsie. 

Athletes always cheatin'. They go away to play their games. When they return for classes on Monday, they go around hunting for the people who took the tests and trying to get the questions and answers. I know this!!!!

Skello like yu gat 1st han experience...hey hey hey 

FM
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by Kapadilla:

Horsie dem bais seh how you been to Green Tea not Harvard. Hey hey hey...

UNC report finds 18 years of academic fraud to keep athletes playing

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

Jocks at their best. Paper classes? What a concept!

Hey hey hey... Sketdan. Tell duh to Horsie. 

Athletes always cheatin'. They go away to play their games. When they return for classes on Monday, they go around hunting for the people who took the tests and trying to get the questions and answers. I know this!!!!

Skello like yu gat 1st han experience...hey hey hey 

Bai me nah wan athlete. Me ah wan skinny man, 5' 6'' and about 135 lbs. Me gat fuss haan experience wid some ah dem bais.

FM
Originally Posted by RiffRaff:
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:

PPP only interested in thieving they measure progress in terms of how much dem can thief. Not anything like this.

Guyana didn't have Hutu and Tutsi killing off each other either

Nah we had Roger Khan and Rabbi Washington gang killing off Guyanese.

 

 

FM

David Lammy

Politician

David Lindon Lammy was born on July 19, 1972 to Guyanese parents in Tottenham, North London, England. He has been a Member of Parliament for Tottenham since 2000.

At the age of 11, David was awarded an Inner London Education Authority choral scholarship to The King's School, Peterborough. He then studied Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London obtaining a first class degree.

David became the first Black Briton to study a Master's in Law at Harvard Law School in 1997 and is a member of Lincoln's Inn having been Called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1994. David returned to England and stood as a Labour candidate for the newly created Greater London Assembly, securing a position as the GLA member with a portfolio for Culture and Arts. Following the sad death of Tottenham's longstandin MP Bernie Grant, David was elected as Labour MP for Tottenham at the age of 27 in June 2000.

Here is David Lammy with Barack O:

David Lammy meets with US Senator Barack Obama

FM

John R. Rickford

Author & Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University

John Rickford

Born on September 16, 1949 in Georgetown, Guyana, John Rickford is the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy in Education, and Pritzker University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. He has been at Stanford since 1980.

He received his BA with highest honors in Sociolinguistics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1971, and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979. He won a Dean's Award for distinguished teaching in 1984 and a Bing Fellowship for excellence in teaching in 1992. He is also the President of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics.

He is the author of numerous scholarly articles, and author or editor of several books, including A Festival of Guyanese Words (ed., 1978), Dimensions of a Creole Continuum (1987), Analyzing Variation in Language (co-ed., 1987), Sociolinguistics and Pidgin-Creole Studies (ed., 1988), African American English: Structure, History and Use (co-ed., 1998), African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications (1999), Creole Genesis, Attitudes and Discourse (co-ed., 2000), Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English (co-authored, 2000, winner of an American Book Award), Style and Sociolinguistic Variation (co-ed., 2001), and Language in the USA: Themes for the Twenty-First Century (co-ed., 2004). He also has two books forthcoming in 2012: Language, Culture and Caribbean Identity (co-ed.) and African American, Creole and Other Vernacular Englishes: A Bibliographic Resource (co-authored)

 

 

FM

Dr. Cargill Alleyne, MD, FAANS

Head of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Georgia and Author

Dr. Cargill Alleyne

Cargill H. Alleyne, Jr. was born on August 4, 1965 in Georgetown, Guyana to an Cargill H. Alleyne, Sr., an economist and Linnette S. Alleyne, a school teacher.

He established a national record in high school by obtaining 9 distinctions in the G.C.E. Ordinary Level and CXC Exams. In 1983 he emigrated to the U.S. and attended George Washington University where he was elected to several honor societies, including Phi Beta Kappa. He majored in Chemistry and Mathematics and graduated with a Bachelor of Science. He graduated cum laude from Yale School of Medicine in 1991 and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor medical society. His neurosurgery training was completed at Emory and he completed a fellowship at the Barrow Neurological Institute. After practicing at the University of Rochester for 4 and a half years, he was recruited to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta.

Dr. Alleyne is listed in the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 Best Doctors in America and listed as one of America's Top Surgeons in 2009.

He co-wrote 2 books: Ned's Head and Neurosurgery Board Review: Questions and Answers for Self-Asssessment.

[Source: crazykelvin.com]

 

FM
Originally Posted by Gilbakka:

I've posted the three examples above to show that Guyanese in the past excelled in the USA and can do so in the future too.

3 Successful black men from Guyana this is gonna drive em racists here buck wilde. 

FM
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:
Originally Posted by Gilbakka:

I've posted the three examples above to show that Guyanese in the past excelled in the USA and can do so in the future too.

3 Successful black men from Guyana this is gonna drive em racists here buck wilde. 

Nah worry an stress, plenty highly prominent coolie man deh around. Two abie savia, Gajraj an Rajah Khan. Dem nah gat high high degree, but dem save plenty coolie in Guyana.

FM
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:
Originally Posted by Gilbakka:

I've posted the three examples above to show that Guyanese in the past excelled in the USA and can do so in the future too.

3 Successful black men from Guyana this is gonna drive em racists here buck wilde. 

Nah worry an stress, plenty highly prominent coolie man deh around. Two abie savia, Gajraj an Rajah Khan. Dem nah gat high high degree, but dem save plenty coolie in Guyana.

None sent by the PPP keep that in mind stay focused.

 

PPP investing in indians is a myth.

FM
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:
Originally Posted by skeldon_man:
Originally Posted by HM_Redux:
Originally Posted by Gilbakka:

I've posted the three examples above to show that Guyanese in the past excelled in the USA and can do so in the future too.

3 Successful black men from Guyana this is gonna drive em racists here buck wilde. 

Nah worry an stress, plenty highly prominent coolie man deh around. Two abie savia, Gajraj an Rajah Khan. Dem nah gat high high degree, but dem save plenty coolie in Guyana.

None sent by the PPP keep that in mind stay focused.

 

PPP investing in indians is a myth.

Dem still high profile, regardless.

FM

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