This past spring, Norbert Ishimwe found himself in an unlikely place: playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 with the Jackson State University Symphony Orchestra at a concert in St. Louis.
Ishimwe (whose first name is pronounced nor-BAIR) might have just as easily wound up a college basketball standout or a construction worker in his native Rwanda–or worse.
At age 3, Ishimwe’s mother and seven siblings fled his birth city, Kigali, for neighboring Congo during the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which nearly one million people were slaughtered.
Among the victims were Ishimwe’s father and grandparents. When asked about his ethnic background, Norbert let out a heavy sigh.
“Here we go again,” he said.
The small African nation has tried to heal from the genocide, when long-simmering tensions between the majority Hutus and the ruling Tutsis boiled over. Ishimwe said many Rwandans have tried to forget those meaningless divisions.
“As Rwandans, we don’t talk about it,” Ishimwe said. ” … It keeps the differences alive. It’s not necessary to say it.”
Ishimwe, now 21, said he hated Rwanda’s past growing up. After a few years of exile in Congo, the family moved back to Kigali and Ishimwe got into basketball and music.
By the time he graduated from high school, he’d earned a spot on Rwanda’s Junior National Basketball Team and was drawing attention from international recruiters. In 2010, Ishimwe enrolled in New Horizon Prep School in Jackson, which was run by former Portland Trailblazers center Audie Norris, and played point guard for the team.
The school closed in spring 2011, and Ishimwe found himself stuck in the U.S. with nowhere to go. The phone number listed on the school’s old website leads to a wrong number. He couldn’t afford to go back to Rwanda, so he spent a few months crashing on the couch of a friend in San Antonio until he started taking classes at Jackson State University last fall.
Still, he had little money to live on, and the situation became so dire that he went to see the campus chaplain, the Rev. William Ndishabandi, for guidance. As it turned out Ndishabandi, a Uganda native, also pastors All Saints Episcopal Church in south Jackson. Ishimwe became active in the church and even fills sometimes for the organist.
“Rev. William, he prayed for me,” Ishimwe said. “There was just so much love at All Saints.”
The first answer to Ishimwe’s prayers came in the form of church members offering him a place to live, alleviating him of the burden of paying to sleep on a friend’s sofa. Then, this spring, he auditioned for and won a spot on JSU’s symphony orchestra, which covers the cost of his education.
Ishimwe’s student visa expires in September, however, and he must leave the country to renew it, he said. Because he must travel to Montreal, where one of his brothers lives, to get his immigration papers in order, All Saints is holding a benefit and concert Sunday, Aug. 26, at the church at 147 Daniel Lake Blvd. to send Ishimwe to Canada and meet other living expenses.
Scott Albert Johnson, a renowned Jackson harmonica player, will be the featured musical guest. A barbecue chicken dinner begins at 5 p.m. Donations will be gladly accepted, but the benefit is free and open to the community.