A University on a Hill: Writing a Short Essay about a Historical Event, and a Geographic and Historical Portrait of Rwanda

1The shape of a short historical essay

2A model essay

Written by Ganzaa from the sources listed at the end of the lesson. Paragraph numbers are added for study.

A University on a Hill: the Opening of the National University of Rwanda

1 On 3 November 1963, the National University of Rwanda was officially opened in Butare, now Huye. It began with only fifty-one students and sixteen lecturers, yet it grew into the largest university in the country and trained many of the teachers, doctors and public servants that Rwanda needed. This essay explains how the university began, how it grew, and why its opening was an important event in Rwanda's history.

2 The university was founded a little over a year after Rwanda had become independent, on 1 July 1962. It was established by the government in cooperation with the Dominicans of the Province of Quebec, in Canada, and its founder and first rector was Father Georges-Henri Lévesque. At first it had only three parts: a Faculty of Medicine, a Faculty of Social Sciences and a teacher training college. Among its first professors was Alexis Kagame, who by then had been publishing books in Kinyarwanda for twenty years.

3 Over the following decades the university expanded steadily. A Faculty of Law opened in 1973, and agronomy, which had been a department of the Faculty of Science, became a faculty of its own in 1979. In 1981 the university merged with the National Institute of Education. By 2005 it had more than eight thousand students and over four hundred lecturers.

4 The university suffered terribly during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Many of its staff and students were killed, and much of its equipment was destroyed or taken away. It closed, and it did not reopen until April 1995. When it did, English was introduced as a language of teaching alongside French, and a campus that had been built for about 1,600 students had to make room for more than 4,500.

5 In 2013, the National University of Rwanda was merged with all the other public institutions of higher education to form the University of Rwanda. Its name has disappeared, but its importance has not. The opening of 1963 gave a newly independent country the chance to educate its own professionals at home, and the campus at Huye, where those first fifty-one students arrived, remains part of the University of Rwanda today.

3Questions on the model

1. Which sentence in paragraph 1 is the thesis?
2. Find two past perfect verbs in paragraphs 2 and 3. Why are they used?
3. Which paragraph deals with consequences in the short term, and which in the long term?
4. How does the writer handle the events of 1994 without graphic detail?
5. How does the last sentence return to the beginning of the essay?

Show answersHide answers

1. "This essay explains how the university began, how it grew, and why its opening was an important event in Rwanda's history." (The sentence before it also states why it matters: it trained the professionals Rwanda needed.)
2. had become independent (independence came before the founding); had been publishing (Kagame's work had begun before 1963); had been a department (before it became a faculty in 1979). Each refers to an earlier event.
3. Paragraph 3 shows growth in the following decades; paragraph 5 gives the long-term significance and today's situation. Paragraph 4 is a turning point.
4. It states the facts briefly and plainly (staff and students were killed, equipment destroyed, the university closed) and moves on to the reopening.
5. It mentions "those first fifty-one students" and the campus at Huye, both from paragraph 1, so the essay ends where it began.

4Language for writing about historical events

5Project: a geographic and historical portrait of Rwanda

In groups of four or five, produce a portrait of Rwanda, or of your own district, as a poster, a short booklet or a five-minute presentation. It brings together Units 1 and 3: the land and its people, and the past that shaped them.