The Light - An Alumni Publication Winter 2014/2015 | Page 17

REFLECTIONS

“When I was 16 my father chose someone for me to
marry. My cousin found out about it, told me, and I
ran to Uganda. I hid for three years. When I came
back, I did something terrible.”
She stopped there. “I can’t tell you.” Silence for
minutes. I found some toilet paper for Shyaka’s nose.
“I will write it for you
later.”
I tried to hug
Shyaka, who stiffened,
unused to it? Scared?
Surprised? “You don’t
have to read that
book. We can find
something else for
you.” I tried to look
in Shyaka’s eyes, but
they were downcast
and brimming. Shyaka
said she wanted to go. She didn’t want to miss
Leadership class.
Shyaka left, and I sat in silence with the book
which screamed, “... disowned by her father, and
expelled from family and clan, she refuses to
be silenced. One of today’s most admired and
controversial political figures …”
I wondered where I was going with this. In the
States, I definitely pushed buttons with my students.

Made them confront the uncomfortable. Made them
squirm in their seats at 8 a.m. on Monday. Required
reflection of the past in order to forge a solid future.
But that was America. My students could
lose themselves in MTV afterwards. Forget about
personal growth and subdue raw scars with lattes
and long drives in
convertibles. Or they
could deal with it and
see a counselor.
I felt as if this
morning I had asked my
students to try and walk
a tightrope across the
crocodile-infested Nile
without a net. Shyaka
had fallen. Was I going
to dive in after her? Or
was I going to drop the
book? Instead of the tightrope over the Nile, give
them cotton candy and forest fairies?
I wondered if I could buy a net. Or teach them
wicked-cool ninja moves to kill crocodiles in the
water. But did I myself know those moves?
Perhaps we could learn them together.

“I felt as if this morning I
had asked my students to
try and walk a tightrope
across the crocodileinfested Nile without a net.
Shyaka had fallen.”

These chapters are taken from the manuscript for Schmidt’s second book, Milk into
Butter, about her experiences living and working in Rwanda from 2009 to 2012.
Monique Schmidt grew up in rural South Dakota, but felt there was so much
more to the world. So at the age of 17, she started exploring. First, she went
on exchange to Japan on a Kikkoman Soy Sauce Scholarship with Youth For
Understanding. Next she spent her junior year at the University of Grenoble,
France. That taste of the world led her later to Francophone West Africa, where she
spent several years as an educator with the Peace Corps and Fulbright programs.
Inspired by the African world she encountered, Schmidt continued to graduate school for
a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and wrote her first book, Last Moon Dancing.
Schmidt has won numerous awards for her work, travel and writing, including Outstanding Young
Alumnus, Augustana College Thought Leader and the Peace Corps’ Paul Cowan Award for Best NonFiction. Currently, she is director of education for a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.

Sarah Coomber is editor of Reflections. Sarah went to Japan in 1986 with the
YFU-Japan-U.S. Senate Exchange Program. She has worked in journalism, public
relations and academia, and now is a writing consultant in the Vancouver,
Washington, area. You can find her work at sarahcoomber.com.
YFU

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