Alice and Her Struggle to Reach America

Term Project: Chapter 2-Alice Ingabire-Schaut; Rwanda Alice Ingabire-Schaut came to the United States in 1998 from a Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, which is in central Africa. Even though Alice is from Rwanda, she spent most of her childhood as a political refugee in Uganda. In 1994, the Hutu government that ruled Rwanda, killed thousands of Tutsis and then collapsed when the rebels attacked. Alice had joined many Tutsis that were flooding back into their homelands. When she returned, the air smelled of death and the economy was in ruins. Her mother’s family ended up in a camp in Uganda during the war, and it was a miserable place. The land was poor, there were no streets or houses. The refugees had to cut down trees to create living spaces for themselves and their families. They built and lived in mud huts with thatched roofs and there was no electricity, no water and there weren’t even outhouses. Diseases such as cholera, sleeping sickness and malaria spread rapidly and since there was no medical care, many died. Life was difficult for Alice and her family, and Alice eventually found a way out through her education. She received a scholarship to a school in Wisconsin and studied there for college. This is the way most immigrants from Rwanda found a way out of the terrible situation in their homeland. Many children received scholarships to schools in America and once there they found jobs and sent part of their money earned back to their families in Rwanda to help them survive. Alice experienced many cultural differences once in America and they were difficult to overcome, but she eventually slide right in to the American way of life. Alice had never heard of torn jeans before and thought that many people in Wisconsin were homeless because of the torn jean clothing trend. Alice had also never lived in a building with running water, let alone a washing machine. She had seen some of her girlfriends washing their clothes, so she put her laundry into the machine and