As the story goes, the property on Valencia Street was zoned for retail. But the new tenants wanted to open a tutoring center. Naturally, the solution was to start stocking up on pirate stuff.

The Pirate Supply Store at 826 Valencia is really a front for a place where kids in San Francisco can get help with writing and homework. In 2002, when I was working as a college advisor in a Bay Area high school, I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about this brand new tutoring center in San Francisco’s Mission District. It sounded like something I might like, so I called and went in for an interview.

From the website:  “826 Valencia was founded in 2002 by educator Nínive Calegari and author Dave Eggers. The idea was simple: they wanted to support overburdened teachers and connect caring adults with neighborhood students who needed a little help with their writing.”

My experience with rising seniors and their struggles with personal statements seemed tailor-made for 826 Valencia’s needs and I became part of the first group of volunteer tutors to sneak past the eye patches, hook protectors (corks), drawers full of X’s (to mark the spot on treasure maps), and a large barrel full of lard, among other things, to the back area where tables and chairs were set up for students.

It was exciting to be part of this new adventure, and I met the most amazing, dedicated people who ran the place. I went to high schools on field trips to help kids get started with writing their essays. And classes of kids came from across the Bay to 826 on field trips to get help with their writing. For most kids, this meant taking BART to the Mission and walking through the eclectic neighborhood to the pirate supply store/tutoring center. A few years into my tutoring stint, 826 began offering a Personal Statement Weekend at Mission High School. Students from all over the city came with drafts of their essays and were paired off with volunteer tutors who had attended a training session, often led by me. I loved working one-on-one with the kids on those weekends. They all came with such interesting stories, even though they may not have thought they were interesting at all.

On one occasion, we were visited by a group of middle school kids who were writing essays about a book they had read. One of “my” kids sat slouched in his chair, chin in his hand, eyes half-closed–not exactly the picture of readiness for a stimulating discussion of his work. He had chosen to write about All Quiet on the Western Front, a story about young men not much older than he, fighting in World War I. I read his first paragraph and stopped in my tracks when I got to this sentence: “They made lifelong friendships that didn’t last very long.” I looked him in the eye and said, “This is one of the best sentences I have ever read. Really.” He sat up then and smiled. It was a moment for both of us.

Another great aha moment: working with a kid who did a compare and contrast essay about his life and The Simpsons. You just never know what kids will come up with when they get some encouragement. This kid ran with it, and produced a unique essay about life in the inner city set against the crazy TV world of the Simpsons.

The good folks at 826 Valencia produced many books of student work. Jory John, one of the talented staff members who has since become a best-selling children’s book author, pulled together letters to then President Obama to create a book of helpful advice from kids. Obama was spotted carrying a copy of it!

826 Valencia (which now has nine official chapters nationally, all called 826) also published a book called Don’t Forget to Write: 54 Enthralling and Effective Lessons for Students 6-18. Jenny Traig, writer and editor, asked me to contribute a chapter for the high school section. So, there I am, on the same page with some kick ass writers. I was thrilled to be asked and so excited to be a part of this work.

My years with 826 Valencia finally came to an end after over 10 years and 100 plus hours of volunteering, and a collection of cool 826 swag. I tapered off, only going to the personal statement weekends until my fall travel schedule started to interfere.

 

I have to say that working alongside other dedicated volunteers and carrying out the mission of the amazing duo of Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

 

 

I found myself talking during naptime one day to Rosita, the Urban Court staffer whose job was to conduct outreach for the new program. I started asking her a lot of questions and soon found myself recruited to the training.
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Monday, June 9, 2008. Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.

I awake early and hear my hostess Shirley Randell swimming in her pool. The goat outside my window bleats. A bit later Shirley, dressed in the sari that’s her daily costume, is rushing off to work.

I arrived yesterday, bleary and beat. Shirley was on the patio with two friends, a tureen of soup, hunks of hearty bread and Rwandan beer on the table. I managed a modicum of cheer despite my exhaustion. Shirley will be my hostess and landlady the next three weeks, as well as the organizer of my volunteer project.

I’m here to conduct a series of interviews with members of RAUW (Rwanda Assn. of University Women), a professional organization that Shirley started. These are educators, businesswomen and politicians who generate educational opportunities for Rwandan girls and shed light on domestic violence and AIDS prevention. I’ll write profiles from each of the interviews, and Shirley will post them on the RAUW website.

My friend Simin Marefat, a San Francisco nurse who spent time in Rwanda in 2007, made the introduction. Shirley is 68, Australian, and has worked all over the world for humanitarian organizations. Raised her four children in rural New Guinea, spent years in Bangladesh and the South Pacific island of Vanuatu. She’s been in Rwanda three years, working for SNV, a Dutch development organization. Always in motion, juggling several balls in the air. Knows absolutely everyone in Kigali’s expat community.

Shirley’s house is in Kiyovu, an upscale section of Kigali where Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, also lives. Good restaurants nearby. Also the Hotel Milles Collines, which we saw in the movie Hotel Rwanda. That’s the hotel where the temporary manager Paul Rusesabagina (played in the movie by Don Cheadle) sheltered 1,268 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, saving them from slaughter by Hutu militia.

Wednesday, June 11. Kigali.

Rwanda is one of Africa’s tiniest countries and the most densely populated. It’s the size of Vermont, with the population of Chicago – 10 million people. And yet, there’s an amazing orderliness to Kigali. The streets are clean. The traffic isn’t horrendous as in most African cities. It’s a dream compared to Nairobi – there isn’t that same sense of chaos.

Fourteen years ago, the city was decimated. Homes, schools and hospitals trashed. I’ve learned that few of the city’s pre-genocide residents remain. Kigali was rebuilt by Tutsi exiles, many of them living for decades in Uganda, the Congo, Kenya and Europe. Once the genocide ended, they repatriated to Rwanda, determined to reclaim their country. The genocide claimed 700,000 to 1 million people, but an equivalent number of exiles returned to Rwanda in the year following the genocide. Today, Rwanda is one of only three countries in the world with a female majority in the national parliament.

Thursday, June 12. Kigali.

I’m sitting on the terrace at Bourbon Coffee, a Starbuck’s-like café. It’s a total disconnect: a social nucleus for networking expats, NGO workers and the local elite, umbilically linked by laptops and cell phones to the great Cyber-Mommy. The Rwandan clientele are beautifully dressed, polished and confident. The wait staff look American in their jeans, styled hair and trendy T-shirts. This is an oasis of the privileged. Customers with laptops gets a complimentary Internet access code for an hour when they buy a drink and/or food item. We could be in Santa Monica, Sedona or Santa Fe.

I hire a Moto – a motor scooter that functions as an alternate taxi, for one fifth the price – to the main road to change money. Then take a cab to the Rwandan Women’s Network offices to meet with Mary Balikungeri. The driver goes 10-15 minutes outside the town centre, through a series of dirt roads into neighborhoods so ramshackle I start to think he’s lost. Finally I see the sign for Rwandan Women’s Network. I’m 30 minutes late, which means very little here.

I like Mary. Forthright, as Shirley promised. Energetic, strong, a robust sense of humor. Very take-charge. She won’t let me turn on the tape recorder until I explain who I am and what I want to talk about. She immediately determines that, since I’m a San Francisco Chronicle journalist, I shouldn’t restrict my reporting to Shirley’s RAUW website but should also profile the Rwandan Women’s Network for the Chronicle. She’s a bit of a general.

She left Rwanda with her family when she was small and lived in Uganda until 1995, one year after the genocide. Mary offers me literature and a DVD on her organization at the end of the chat, then brightens and seems genuinely happy when I say “J’ai racines Africaines” (I have African roots). “Yes?” she says. “My mother was born in Cameroun and her parents were missionaries.” “Then you are family!” she exclaims. “You are a missionary’s child.”

This is so powerful for me that I look down and clench my teeth not to cry. I’m very proud of my grandparents Fred and Roberta Hope — especially my grandfather’s work operating an industrial school that gave self-sustaining trades to the men of Cameroun. In the U.S., when I mention my grandparents’ work there’s typically a chilled silence. “Missionary” is a loaded word and no one stops to consider that a lot of valuable work was done by ecumenical workers. Only in Africa, among African Christians, do I get a sense of appreciation or enthusiasm.

The sun is falling and I can hear the traffic down the hill. Faint dog barks, a whistle, the insistent rhmmmm! of a Moto bike and the sassy, unruly call of a tropical bird. It’s six o’clock, just a half hour until Rwanda’s early nightfall. When you’re this close to the Equator, the divide between daytime and nighttime is suprisingly sudden, and occurs at the same time all year long.

Monday, June 16. Kigali.

Late in the afternoon I meet with Stephanie Nyombayire. A remarkable young woman who lived the past seven years in the U.S. – three in a boarding school in Connecticut and four at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She’s just graduated, and is back in Kigali working for Orphans of Rwanda.

Stephanie is pretty, could be a model, and in fact was featured twice in Glamour magazine: the first time when she and other Swarthmore undergrads started Genocide Intervention Network, a campus organization for Darfur relief; the second time when she was selected one of the top 10 college women of 2007.

Stephanie was born in exile to Tutsi parents, in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and lived there until she was 7 – the year of the genocide. Her family returned to Rwanda that year and she went to a French-speaking school, Ecole Belgique, until she won a scholarship to Kent School in Connecticut at 15.

“A lot of Rwanda is made up people who are very young,” Stephanie says. “A lot of them don’t have parents because of the genocide and a lot of them had to raise younger siblings from the age of 10. So I’ll be trying to focus on youth and opportunities that will move them forward.”

Thursday, June 19. Kigali.

Just returned from the Ministry of Education and a very strong interview with Odette Mukazi, a great woman who coordinates the Rwanda chapter of FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists). It’s a pan-African organization that encourages girls to stay in school, where they often drop out after primary school and in general are intimidated by boys. Tuseme (Swahili for “speak out”) is their major initiative, aimed at empowering girls and focusing on their specific education issues. They’re partnered with Orphans of Rwanda and a lot of their girls receive ORI scholarships.

Odette is dynamic – not as animated as Mary Balikungeri but a force nonetheless. She tells me about growing up in exile in Uganda, her daughter Matilda who is in a U.S. law school, her return to Rwanda so soon after the genocide ended. When I ask if she’d lost a lot of family in the genocide, Odette pauses and becomes silent. “Yes, so many. I have no idea how many.” I start to cry, clench back my tears. It’s as if everything I’ve heard or learned in the last weeks, now accumulated, comes rushing toward me in a flood of grief.

Odette begins to cry and for a few minutes neither of us can speak. I grab a Kleenex. I say to her, “I am so sorry,” but barely get the words out. I’m not sure but I suspect she appreciates that I felt the enormity of her grief. Are African men taught not to cry?

Gradually she composes herself and speaks about FAWE and the results she’s seen in young women. When I ask about her two daughters she says, “Yes! They are very empowered!” The one in law school even confronted a Rwandan man – a former Hutu militia, in exile to escape prison – who spoke on her campus and claimed the genocide never happened! According to Odette, Matilda stood up and said, “Excuse me! I am Rwandan and there absolutely was a genocide.” The man blew more steam and Matilda stood up and walked out. “He didn’t expect there would be a Rwandan in the audience,” Odette says.

Monday, June 23. Kigali Airport.

I’m on my way home. Said my goodbyes at Shirley’s house. Shirley was effusive with thanks when I wrote a $100 check to RAUW for one of the orphanages it supports. Many people asked these last days if I’ll be returning to Rwanda. Shirley kept saying it’s bound to happen — as if it were etched on a chart of my destiny, a fait accompli. I met some extraordinary people here and I’m amazed by the beauty of Rwanda, the resilience of the people, and the miracle of recovery that took place in the wake of so much hatred, bloodshed and loss.