 Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Friday PM. My name's Luigi Scarcelli. I have an extra special show tonight with my friend and mentor, Cedric Mufarenzima. Cedric has come all the way from Rwanda to Maine and it's a very circuitous route. It's a very interesting and he's gonna tell us a little bit about it. So welcome. Good to see you Cedric. I thank you so much for having me, Luigi. Thank you. Sure, sure. I've known Cedric for probably about six, seven months now. Yes. So let's talk a little bit about your background, your story coming to Maine from Rwanda. So you were born, what city were you born in Rwanda? Yeah, I was born in the eastern province of Rwanda in a district called Cajonza, a sector called Mukara and yeah, really only by the Maine way, you know. It's a very popular area. Most people pass by here, going to the rest of the country. Okay. So you're kind of on the way to one place to the other? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so many very, it's like a big park and that there is a very big border between Rwanda and Tanzania and on the way there, you passed through my area where I was born in the eastern province of Rwanda. And didn't you say that you were born kind of more of a rural community, like a farm almost? Yes, I'm a country boy. I was born in a farming area. My mom had main activity was farming and I grew up on fresh food. When they talk about organic, I know what they're talking about. I grew up eating on the food that my mom and her friends and other people who helped her had farmed. And it was a big area where milk was abundant and a lot of agricultural products and very good essence of life, I think, I miss it. And so you were farming, so you were kind of really in that rural environment, like capturing your own food in a sense of the farming, you weren't going to the groceries for your food. You were getting the food and creating it yourself. The supermarket is a thing of the West, I believe. Most people go to the farmer's market to get their food. And my mom used to be one of those people behind the counter in the farmer's market. She grew her own food. Some of it we could eat at home, but others she could bring at the public farming farmer's market. And that's the kind of economic activity I grew up seeing around. But I didn't stay in that area for a long time. Well, before you jump to the next chapter. So was there, how much of that system was in cash versus bartering? Was some bartering also? Yes. There was so much bartering going on, especially when there was things that are not readily available. Let's say there is a lady, my village, she's very good with making herbal medicine. If your child had intestinal problems, she could whoop up a few leaves and could give you something to drink. And my mom knew too well to send you there with a bag of corn, with a bag of sorghum or maize as a way of, OK, you're going to get the medicine but bring something as well in exchange. But that did not remove the cash economy, like you said, like sugar, soap, those kind of things. You had to go to the local mom and pop shop. But there was no, like, the level of supermarkets. Hannaford is not a thing there. Right, it wasn't all of that choice. And sometimes in the West, I mean, this is jumping ahead. But I do think it'd be interesting. When you first moved to the West, were you shocked by all of the choices and really it's fundamentally false choices? Because it's all the same soap, but just a different box of all of that. Was that shocking even at all to you? Yeah, I think one of the most shocking situation for me was dunking donuts. Like I couldn't, pardon, that you could get that level of assortment of drinks in one single place. And there was two or three people making it happen. In my mind, I felt it required a whole manufacturing plant to be able to put such drinks fast. And it was mind-boggling. And the only drinks I knew were the five ones, booze, milk, water, and men. But when I saw the kind of things people are able to put up. Coca-Cola, then Dr. Pepper, then Pepsi, and all these things. And they're fundamentally the same. They just have a different branding to them and small little differences in flavors. And so you did a lot of the farming yourself in those days? I was a kid, I was a kid. Just tugging along when they went to pick up a big plantain that had fallen or they had cut, picking up small potatoes that were left around when people were harvesting. They say it's like 3 PM. You're hungry. You could be sent to just to cut off some maize and bring home and grill for everybody. Those were small tasks. Adults could do the chopping. And so for example, in a village such as this, what was it at night, what was it form of entertainment? Were you listening to the radio? Was there a television? Or was it that, I mean, you guys weren't that far outside of the electricity types of things. Or what was the types of things as a child that you remember? Yeah, you mentioned radio was big. There is this big kind of play. You know, when people were like a dialogue of some sort. So popular. Called Urunaana. It was like Tuesday night at 7.30. Everybody who been here, they're ready to hear the next episode. And the day after on Wednesday night, there was something called Umsekiwera, which was like also a play dialogue type of thing, bar bar romance. So it was a little bit later in the night around 9.30 or 10.30. So I caught the bag. Like I really liked that. And I could put my ears to the radio and hear what Imabre is going to do to Uima and I have his friend. There was always these little details that could tell you, they could make it dramatic and include some of the older stories from historic Rwanda. And it was very fascinating. It was my introduction to media and arts in general. And did you have a large school there, a smaller school? There was a public school and a public high school. The way it's done in Rwanda, you do six years of primary school, then six years of high school. I went one or two days to the primary school, but before that, preschool was a one whole, all kids in same neighborhood could just sit down there and listen to one person and speak. They don't go play the rest of the day. So I didn't do too much schooling there. But there was a big school there for everybody. Basically everybody went to the same school. Yes. And so this was the smaller schools, but then you moved away with your dad and your grandmother on your dad's side. Is that correct? When I was five, I moved to the outskirts of the city. It was a bitter moment for me personally. You know, like being out of your five, then you're taken away from your mother. It kind of leaves a very long lasting impact on you. But it was for educational opportunities. So I really found those. Because obviously rural area, then the outskirts, the quality of education improves, it gets better. So I went to the French speaking school. They were very harsh on French. You had to speak French all the time. Otherwise you could be shunned or they could put like something on your neck as a way of saying he was speaking vernacular. Sometimes there could be some serious consequences for not speaking the instructional language. The school was called La Source de Savoie. It was like a private school and the kids from the high middle class in that area, that's where they go. Those who were from the elites, they could go to a much English speaking school a little bit near the city. So that's why I did my primary school for six years. It was a very interesting experience. And you, it was better than the public schools because obviously we had to go to school in a white shirt and a red tie. That itself, knowing that you put on a tie every day, did something to your psych and you could see the other kids going to the public school were in khakis, like khaki pants and khaki shorts and khaki shirts. Khaki shorts and khaki shirts. Woo, that's hard to say. So- Like a white shirt? For us it was like a white shirt and a dark marine. Tan pants even? Like blue for the marine. Right, blue, yeah. Marine blue. Marine blue. Very dark blue. And a red- Red tie. Red tie. Made you stand out. It made you stand out. It made you feel different. And you knew there was a cost to that. So all that swag could end when they would send you back to go get your school fees. Because in private, they don't mess around. You either get the money on the first day of the school or they send you back home. So imagine you showed up in the morning and it was like, go, go back. So that was always like a very, not very fun moment. And then you could see the other kids going to the public school running because nobody's gonna send them away. But you know, there was always like that. Contracts that I grew up to know how to live with and appreciate it. And so was this was a Jesuit school, a Catholic school? Wasn't it a religious, a little bit based? It was much more parent run. But the high school I went to was Catholic. Okay, so that's, we'll get to that at the high school. So this was on the secondary school. This is the primary school, my primary school. Between five and 11. Five and 11. And in French speaking. So at this time, you did not speak English at all? No, there was no English. But there could be a course of English every now and then. In the school, you had to learn how to say, to do, we do, I do, like they, you know, I, you, he, she, those kind of verbs, conjugating verbs, building phrases, the basics. They could give us a little bit of grammar, singing, a little bit of singing every now and then. But everything was fundamental in French. And if you could not speak French or a little bit of English, you could get very penalized for that. And I think it was net positive, because obviously you are immersed in that environment. You have to force yourself to say something, even if you don't know, but you keep forcing, eventually helps. It helps. Yeah, a little bit. And so were you still friends with any of your friends from the village or is this kind of a, did you feel, because I've seen and knowing you, you have a lot of adaptability. Yes. And that oftentimes comes from when you've had to move a lot. Yeah. Because you have to make new friends. Yes, yes. Oftentimes you're the new guy at the place. Yeah, yeah. So that was, but did you keep your friendships? Were you good at meeting new people? Did that help you from that? Yeah, I think that that is something that developed when I went to high school. Yeah. But earlier, I wasn't aware what was happening. It was obviously moving places. And I really formed these relationships that are very strong with friends. But in high school, because as a place I went for six years, living in boarding school with the guys, like we developed the relationships. We started, two guys I still talk to today, more than two, actually three of them. Three of them. And this was high school. And that was, so that was a boarding school. Yes, yes. So at that time, similar area as your other school? No, no, no. This one was more into the city. Think of Westbrook, you know? Yeah, the equivalent of Westbrook to Maine, all right? That's where I went for high school in a Jesuit. Yeah, a place you would call, that's where the gangs be hanging out. There was a school in the middle there. Right in the middle of it. Yeah. Like you said, there was no, it became very hard for me to maintain relationships from the village to the outskirts, then now to the city. To the city, that's where I still think I have friends. That's where you still have friends. That was the third maneuver. So you were there, that's six years? Yes, yes. Is that the extra two years than we have in the U.S. for high school? Is that two years after to add additional years or the two years starts earlier? The way it works, obviously when you're like five or six, they put you in primary school, then you do six years, 11, then you jump right away. Like there is not too much of a delay between high school and high school. You just start, basically the equivalent of the seventh grade. For us, we call it high school. Then from the seventh to the 12th, you are in high school most of the time in boarding because that's what makes economic sense. Like obviously you're in one place with the same kids, yeah, I think the same thing. There is no, like everybody is in the same place doing the same stuff. Depending on the quality of the boarding school you end up, that obviously determines the next moves you do. But really the best and most cost effective for everybody, the parents, the children, is to be in a boarding school. Yeah, it's the standard. It's not like obviously I know boarding schools are much more elite and very expensive, but there it makes more sense for everybody. Yes, it's an experience that actually, looking back, I'm thankful for that experience and I can see the quality of a person that comes out of such a very gruesome discipline. You wake up at 4.30, you go to bed at nine. And between 4.30 and 6.00 a.m., no talking. You're just kind of meditating some sora. After 9.00 p.m., no more talking. Yeah, we did same time at 6.30, at 12.30, and at 7.30 in the evening. Same things, same time. Prayer before meal, prayer after meal. Six times of prayer during the day. It was like very regimented, you know what I mean? Well, we have that here in the U.S. called the military, except for the prayer park. That's definitely, that's very much, they wanted to have that discipline. And it seems to have worked very well for you and the idea that it shapes you as a man. And this is a formative years. You said this starts in seventh grade? Yes, yes. And it goes all the way to what we consider to be 12th grade. Yes, yeah. And so that's that extra six years. Before we talk about your journey into America, and you can always let me know if any of this stuff is too heavy or things like that. But I mean, at your age, you're 26 now, this was really around a lot of the war torn and post war, really more post war in Rwanda. Now, what was that like for you as growing up? I mean, was that difficult? Did you see any of that? I'm sure people ask that all the time because that's what a lot of Americans know about Rwanda. They only know the very difficult and tragic parts. Obviously that doesn't sum up the country. Maybe that's not what something that you really saw that much about or things, but what was your exposure and thoughts about those days? It's obviously, I wasn't born through it. It happened in 1994. I was born in 1996. You were born. Yeah, so I was born two years after that, but it was still in the aftermath. There were still, yes, people could be farming and boom, they're born. They're all, they buried somebody here during the genocide. Then the next thing you know, there is a, every year, there is a commemoration on a national level. It was a very, it's a gloomy moment. Everybody is commemorating. They are lost ones in the genocide. My mother, who was very impacted by it, she obviously issues of PTSD, issues of being too close to the catastrophic. It just happened two years ago. You lost six of 12 siblings. You lost a husband. You saw people being killed. There is so much trauma. And basically, for me, what's interesting is comparing how it was, when I was starting to have a little bit of thought, let's say in the year 2000, 2002, then how it is today. It's an amazing transformation. To see somebody growing, but it's like rising from ashes. Like you could see your mother turning into a different being because of the moment the country is going through. Dark, gloomy. Then after that, you could see another step. Then on the country level, you see the transformation. People are saying, let's, what they call, you're basically getting back together. There is a word for it. Reconciliation. Reconciliation, thank you so much. Reconciliation happening. That for me blew my mind. You could see somebody who killed your family members, but I'm here to apologize. Then the burden now is on the person who is being asked, justice must be served. Now these people who are giving pardon, but also they have to, on a community level, take on cases. Imagine a murder case being judged by community members. And actually deciding a sentence of somebody on a community level. That was happening when I was coming up. So seeing that community level blew my mind. Seeing what came out of it. Imagine there was like a million cases for genocide that needed to be prosecuted. So they had to come up with a revolutionary way of doing that. Then they had to reconcile these people. Then they had to develop. We had to go to school, we had to eat, we had. You could see the power of a nation. To be honest with you, I believe in Rwanda, I think what I saw in my formative years and the way it is today, mind-boggling. I still, I feel like for me, it gives me a moral tasks, at least to get your life to a level where you see, I'm proud of what I've come because I'm proud of the country. Coming from that, it's very inspiring, you know? And so when you say, so after World War II, they had a thing, it was a Nuremberg trial. And that's where they were trying all the Nazis. So because I think you told me about this, or I might have seen this somewhere else, this community-based, because it was so many people. It's not like they had a, you know, with some of the Nazis, they were only prosecuting the higher-ups, not the soldier who was forced into it. But right in Rwanda, you have so many people, and I don't know what the hierarchy was. I mean, the guy who was ever in charge, he was probably hung or something like that. The guy who ordered everybody. But it was almost chaos, right? So within the post-chaos, how, and I know you said it just now, but I mean, explain a little more for the viewer, how does a community-based judgment system work? You're saying? Thank you. Thank you for the question. There is actually a technical term for it called gachacha. Gachacha means the grass. People could sit around and they could vote six honorable, truthful members of the committee. And these people could sit in the front and they could bring the perpetrator in front of everybody. Then the people could accuse the person. The person could either explain the crime or provide evidence, and everybody's taking notes. There's now there is a tract. Because everybody's speaking. There is people testifying. The person who did the crime, then there is a committee. Then they will have a few minutes together. They had guidelines written up in Chinyarwanda that are specific, and everything was happening in front of everybody. Then those documents could be transferred to the court. Then everything could be formalized. And what was oftentimes, again, very much guessing, but the idea that was a more just upon in a sense that they weren't not as much eye for an eye, or was it that, where if you were judged as a person who may have killed some people, was your punishment to be killed or was there a different level of this community judgment? The capital punishment was there in the beginning, but slowly it was faded, because it's not the way the world is today. A person, despite what they have done, they're still a person. We all have time. When I kill you, I remove the time aspect. Basically your potential is gone. So literally you had jails full of engineers and teachers. You don't do that. You don't just put everybody on the show them. What they had to do was, also there was something called Tige, which is that's an acronym in French. I think it's called Travon, something works, public works. So these people who were accused of these heinous crimes of genocide, they were given a task to rebuild the country. So they are the same people who build cobblestone roads across the country. The same people who are farming valleys of rice, people building like soil management systems, terraces. These are all people in prison. So they really played a big part in the country and everybody who could go through certain years of public works, their sentence could be curbed and they could rejoin their family very soon. It was a very, it's a miracle, let me put it out. It's like a creation of miracle, painful, certain people are not happy with it. It's like, you know, these seven pricks killed my family. Now you're sending them back. Like it was a dice and then I was in the middle of it because my mother was a survivor and she could tell me stories of people she had to show up and she got charged and testified against and these are people you see, oh, been received today. And before the, so let me just ask this, before the genocide that happened, were these also the neighbors? So at one time it's your neighbor, but at one time it's your victimizer, but now you have to be the forgiver. Was that how it had worked? Yes, yes. Everybody had all lived together. That's the difficult thing. I mean, I think in some of these other things where it's outsiders coming in and a whore and a presser, but these, because they were two tribes, the Tutsis and the Hutus, and just for the viewers who really, because many people aren't gonna know anything about this, so at the time, when we go back to before the genocide happened, who was the people that were in charge? Was the Hutus were in charge at that time? You would say it was the Hutu regime, according to what I read or what I saw in the history books, but it was a system that followed the reign of the king. So the colonizers, the powers that kinda were colonizing the country, I think at the time was Belgium. They had a falling apart with the king and he's a demonstration. So they removed the king and they put in a Hutu leader. That's who they put in. Then there was a whole ideology that was formed to change how people could see Tutsis. Tutsis have always been a minority, then it was also a social and economic class. It was something that became weaponized. It was there as a way of moving up and down. But Tutsi was a step up? Yes, yes, yes. So that would be a step up. And so which was the tribe that seemed to have went for the revenge that was the genocide? Yeah, they actually called it ethnic groups. It was ethnic groups. Ethnic, so. Because there was an element of anatomy. Like they could say if your nose is this wide and this long, you say it's this length and it's longer. That means you're a Tutsi. And they say it's wider and it's shorter or that they could come up with metrics. But obviously they start putting it in your ID. They could say so and so Tutsi. Then during the genocide when you could cross like a border or like a stop road stop. Like a road block almost. They could check your ID. It doesn't matter how you look like. Yeah, it was like a very weird, weaponized concept. Really, you can't tell people. Like it really, it's hot. I think in Rwanda they got that whole concept from the Belgians. You know in Belgians is this sects, the Wallone and the Flamon. Like they speak a little bit of different things but they hate each other so much. So they gave us a little bit of test of that. And they took the country down a hill. Well, it's what they call a divide and conquer. Divide a timpere, it's a Latin principle. That's the idea that it will be very hard to take control of a unified population. But if you take this population and you split them in two, you give the smaller one the guns and the money. So they're always afraid of the larger population and what happened was chaos. But it seems as though after the reconciliation and do you find that that was all based on internal powers or was there outsiders that helped? Because it seems like the outsiders created a lot of the problems and maybe the group of the people within themselves were the people that were able to reconcile it. Yeah, I think it had something to do, big time to do with the good leadership. Like without a leader who thinks in that way that wouldn't have happened. It was easy for the leaders to say it's revenge, it's take over, it's silence everybody. But I actually think reconciliation is a way of survival. Like if had they not been that way of reconciling, things would be still going down. Like right now you can even use reconciliation as a weapon. Don't treat me like that because we're reconciled. It could happen to you. Yeah, it's a mean of survival. You have to do it. It's not otherwise it's gonna be 100 years of a conflict. This is what I think a lot of people will find interesting is your pathway to come to Maine. So tell me about that because I know that you were in school there and it happened that the school that you went to is Bentley College, correct? Close, those are Babson. Babson Business College. And they teach mostly business at Babson, right? At that time, had you wanted to be a businessman? Was that something you thought about? Business was an idea? Yes, I think to be honest with you, if I'm to attribute where I get the bug of wanting to be in entrepreneurial ventures from my mother, I could see her investing a little bit into getting the land ready, sowing, harvesting them, keeping some for ourselves, then taking the rest of the market. Simple action, she did it repeatedly and I saw it happen so many times. So I think that's where I get the bug. But the way I ended up in America was through a program called Bridge to Rwanda. It was a program started by American financial businessmen, they came in Rwanda, then they asked the president, what can we do to help the country? So the president asked them to help the brightest of the country to find opportunities in American universities, excellent universities, not all of them, but the good ones. So these guys set a task and they started Bridge to Rwanda. They could attract American investors to invest in Rwanda. But these businesses, they could say, oh, we don't have the good, qualified American labor. So they started training Rwandans into America. So that happened once, happened twice, happened three times. On the first time, I got lucky, I got into the program. It was like a prep program of some sort. They could put you guys in a room, where we applied 1700, they picked 27 of us. Then they trained us for like 18 months, doing standardized exams, TOEFLs, SATs. Then we did the whole application process through Common App. Something, I don't know if it's still there, Common App. Common App, yeah. Yeah, so we applied to different schools. Common Core, maybe, even. Yeah, there's like a very weird term they use. So I got into that program. I went through the 18 months. I graduated, but I had contacts at Babson College through a summer program they had done in the country. Then I was like, I want to go to Babson, because it's the only school I knew, and I liked what I saw. I didn't want to try a lot of stuff. Because they told me in America, there's 4,000 schools. It's like, how do you go through 4,000 schools and pick one? It was crazy. So I went to Babson for four years, and towards the end, obviously, you are in an entrepreneurship school. It's a business school. They're giving you everything for you to dream out of the books. So for me, I felt a moral debt to really, what can I do? Be in the business world. And I had so many options in front of me, but people, people is what do things. So if you don't have people, you don't have anything. So I knew people in Maine. So I come up in Maine, and that opened the door for me to know about the life in Maine, what people do for a living, what is it can I do to add value to this community that I want to join. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, man. Take care, everybody.