10 April 2005
Marybeth
When Carrie was in third grade, her wonderful teacher, Ellen Esrick, assigned interesting and diverse social studies projects as they studied world geography. As the class studied a continent, each student selected one country on the continent on which to focus and present some sort of visual display. When the kids worked on Asia, Carrie chose Afghanistan. As she learned more about it, she was frustrated that it had so little structure. For students of history, you might remember that the Soviets had withdrawn their occupation and the country was in civil war, with the warlords fighting for power. The Taliban had not yet emerged and the US State Department warned against American travel to the region and described the form of government as “anarchy.”
Carrie was determined to choose a stable and peaceful country when it was time for her Africa project. The gentle mountain gorillas, dense rain forests, and peaceful Hutu rulers appealed to her, so she chose Rwanda. In April of 1994. Just days after she began working on her project, a “travel brochure,” the prime minister was assassinated and the genocide commenced. Our whole family, tuned into Rwanda because of Carrie’s project, followed with horror as events unfolded on the other side of the world that month. Carrie was heart-broken, partly because of the immensity of the genocide and partly because another social studies project was jinxed. Jinxed or not, the world became more tangible and accessible to all of us because of Ms. Esrick’s wise assignments.