Rodrigue attended a seminar on Africa at Ikubunkan Global High School. He met some students from the High School on last August when they visited his home university, Protestant Institute of Art and Social Sciences as a study tour. It seems to be a good oppotunity for him since he could know many Japanese have their interest on Africa although they have relatively limited knowledge. We hope he can meet many Japanese, not only students or scholars but also ordinary people, and share his knowledge about African countries as much as possible while staying in Japan.

Here is his report.

On September 29th, 2018, I attended a festival at Ikubunkan Global High School. Some students, the friends of mine, had organized a seminar on Africa.

In fact, those friends of mine came, last August, to Rwanda at my home university. They were in a study tour. At that time, a group of 4 students from Ikubunkan and 17 students from PIASS, my home University had discussions on the causes of conflicts and how conflicts can be handled peacefully. That's where I met students from Ikubunkan for the first.

One week after reaching Japan, I heard that the students would present their experience from Rwanda through a seminar on Africa. I attended the seminar and I was happy to meet them again.

The seminar was done in form of exhibition: the students arranged a room with materials brought from Africa. Furthermore, they wrote down on papers their experiences, the history of genocide in Rwanda and other interesting stories from Rwanda. Also, they printed out pictures taken from their study trips. In few words, they were too creative.

The exhibition was interesting and people could get to know how the study trip looked like by observing only. Moreover, the students were also stood by in order to guide and explain to people even a single detail of their trip.

I took part in the seminar by showing on the map where Rwanda is located. Also, I answered questions of people about Rwanda in general and especially about the genocide.

All in all, I got two elements from the seminar: First, I appreciated how the Japanese students were proud of explaining to their fellows about Africa. Second, within the two hours I stayed there, I realized that many people who came in the seminar were adults. It seems that Africa is still an unknown continent even among Japanese adults. However, the interest is obvious and that is wonderful for me.