THE DUTCH really do drown their fries in mayonnaise. And if you go to the right place, you can get them in a cone with ketchup and onions on top. Yummy.
After the first few fat-drenched bites my body went into lipid overload and I passed the cone around the group. My Egyptian friend had a few, then offered them to the Turkish girl to his right. She in turn handed the cone off to Sean, from University College in Dublin, who turned his nose up at the Dutch delicacy and let the fries fall to Vincent, the amazing Rwandan man who had never before left Africa and was now sitting on the beach with us watching fireworks.
That night in Holland I gained much more than a few hundred grams of fat. I gained knowledge of the world as it could only be told by people my age. I learned about dating rituals in Egypt; I learned about the difficulties of living on a divided island like Ireland or Cyprus; I learned that those who lived in Lebanon during constant bombing still had to go to school--they just never went outside for recess. I learned that people from Uganda are pretty much just like me, personal space issues aside.
I attended a conference this summer in the Hague; students from 36 countries came together to talk about peace. We worked through simulated brink-of-war crises, replayed Madeleine Albright's moves at the Rambouillet Conference, and decided whether to let China into the World Trade Organization. Then, after 13 hours of work and lectures, we hit the bars on the beach. I learned more over those Heinekens than I ever learned in class.
Doreen, a law student from Uganda, would plop herself down right next to me--apparently personal space is not much of a concern in her culture--and talk my ear off about what must be done in Africa. The economic situation is terrible, she said, and those who suggest that people simply fix things on their own are kidding themselves. Agencies come in eager to solve all the problems, but they do not have the funding or the degree of massive organization needed to restructure a country. "What would you do?" I'd ask. And she'd tell me. One day Doreen will be a force all her own in Africa; I look forward to meeting her again someday.
Vlasko was a young man from Macedonia with a grumbling Slavic exterior, but the corners of his mouth curled up in a smile when he played pool.
"Ethnic Albanians are finally able to speak their own language in schools," he said proudly, but he is aware that there are still problems in his country. He spoke of violent crackdowns on students at universities, of the efforts going on to celebrate the diversity of the region. One of those efforts is a European student group called AIGEE, which facilitates cultural exchanges--even with the former Yugoslavia--to provide greater understanding among students.
Dijan heads up the Turkish division of that same student group. She told me about the international conference for peace they were planning for next summer, half in Turkey, half in Greece. She hoped that a new understanding could be reached among the next generation of leaders in the Mediterranean, even though the supposed adults in government can't seem to get along.
On his chin my friend bears a scar that is the visible reminder of his nightmare of four years ago. Because he is a Tutsi and because they were at war, Hutus in Rwanda hunted his entire family. Vincent alone survived.
He played dead, ran when he had the chance, and survived. A bullet took half his chin, but he survived. The war took one million people, but he survived. He survived to tell us the tale, to teach us dances from his homeland, to insist that Rwanda can be healed, to sing to us a ballad of hope that one day the Hutus and the Tutsis can live together.
Charlottesville is 7,000 miles from Rwanda's bloodshed, but we are not untouched by the events of the outside world. As of fall 1998, the University had 59 Turkish students, some of whom may have lost friends or family members in the recent earthquake. We have Jewish and Palestinian and Iranians students who can give an unmatched perspective on events in the Middle East. We have 26 Pakistani and 103 Indian students; they can tell you more about Kashmir than Tom Brokaw ever could. Two hundred and three students from China, 50 from Taiwan, 157 from South Korea, 14 from Thailand, 15 from Singapore, and 28 from the Philippines can tell you economics majors what the Asian financial crisis really did to their home economies.
Eighteen students from Ethiopia, 11 from Nigeria, nine from Ghana, seven from South Africa, six from Kenya, four from Liberia, and one student from Botswana can describe the wonderful natural beauty of Africa and their hopes for the future of the dark continent. Twenty-seven students from Russia can better guess at the future of the former superpower than almost any writer for The Washington Post, and 87 students from the United Kingdom might possibly be able to explain their country's fascination with royalty.
We have a wealth of information sitting in Alderman Library, there for the taking. But we also have each other--sitting next to us in class, live in the flesh rather than dusty on the shelves. A conversation with a fellow student is much less conducive to sleep than the musty library, and you never know--you may end up with a place to stay next time you're in Amsterdam, or Istanbul, or Cape Town, or Kigali, or Moscow, or ... .
(Emily Harding is a third-year College student.)
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