Editor’s note: This is the second in a five-part series about African students’ experiences.

Tears came into the eyes of John Musemakweri, graduate student in agricultural education and studies, as he recalled his days in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, which killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis.

“I was one of the people who would sort out people who we thought were not yet dead,” Musemakweri said.

His job, as part of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, was population control, meaning that he had to find people who were still alive.

“You see, the problem is they will cut [and] kill, but finally not everybody died,” he said. “They will cut and then assume you are over, and then after, like, two days, maybe, that place is captured by the rebels.”

After the Tutsi rebel forces captured a territory which was previously occupied by the Hutus, his job was to load people who were not yet dead into a truck that was sent to a makeshift Red Cross clinic.

“When you remember, you cry,” he said, tears coming into his eyes. “It’s bad . It’s over. What got to me is that you get some kids breast-feeding and the mother died some time ago. And you don’t care about the kid. You just pick and throw [the child] in the truck. It’s over.”

Some Africans believe that problems such as the one that occurred in Rwanda are not entirely domestic.

“We know the history of these Hutus and Tutsis,” said Peter Eyongeseh, who has a political science degree from the University of Iowa. “It’s that a Tutsi is a light-skinned African and a Hutu is a dark-skinned African – same culture, same background, same genetic makeup. And that’s a result of what? Colonization.”

Musemakweri said the Hutus and Tutsis had lived in peace before the country was colonized by Belgium, creating a divide between the groups. He said the Hutus were mainly cultivators and the Tutsis were mainly cattle keepers. He said when the Belgians colonized Rwanda, they decided to rule through the Tutsi elite.

Hutus and Tutsis, who never really dwelled on any differences before, began to differentiate themselves from each other. He said after some time, when it became harder to differentiate Hutus from Tutsis, the Belgians began using physical characteristics such as the size of one’s nose to tell the difference.

Some Africans are angry that people don’t understand the effects of colonization and other unfair policies, and want to ignore it when talking about problems in Africa.

“I refer to people, whites, who adhere to this globalization system, this mentality of Africa being dependent, being a dark continent that needs help, as white devils,” Eyongeseh said.

He said his feelings are similar to those felt by people who express anger towards Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“The people who are actually actively, presently, infringing and creating chaos among African people are whites, so I refer to them as white devils, expressing my own anger,” he said. “Is a white man really a devil? No. There are very nice white people – I have met a lot of them – but the system which they are imposing on me is a devilish, nefarious system, and those who adhere to that system, I refer to them as white devils. That’s my own explanation of white devil when I use that term.”

He said that behind most of the wars which people see today in Africa, there are the hands of some sort of British, French, American or other European power.

As an example, he mentioned the 27-year-long war in Angola between the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola rebels and the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola.

According to Title Four of the Intelligence Authorization Act from the House of Representatives, Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the national union, was being funded by the American Central Intelligence Agency.

Eyongeseh added that he believes this was because the United States didn’t want the Soviet Union, Angola’s satellite power, to benefit.

Francis Owusu, assistant professor of community and regional planning, said that he wouldn’t go as far as blaming the West for all of Africa’s problems, however.

“The farthest that I will go on these issues is that the United States has certainly been involved in many issues in Africa, especially during the Cold War, when there was competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for specific countries in Africa,” he said. “But at the same time, the Russians were also there.”

Owusu is originally from Ghana, and he said that Africa has lost its moral credibility to criticize the rest of the world for its problems.

“In the 1970s, it was generally accepted that the problems of the developing world was the result of their relationship with the developed world – colonization and others. Late 1980s they started talking about corruption, mismanagement and all kinds of domestic problems in Africa,” Owusu said.

Musemakweri added that after a while, Africa has to start looking at itself for its problems.

“Those people killed them with their own hands,” he said, referring to the genocide in Rwanda.

Eyongeseh’s roommate, Babatunde Oni, an undeclared graduate student, said the problem is not that simple.

“Pre-colonialism, there was a thing called trade by barter. When people came back from the farm, they packed their goods and they put it on the street, and no one had to be there to sell it,” he said. “My dad used to say that as a kid he could play in someone else’s house, and whatever house he found himself, he slept there. But all of a sudden, kids started getting missing, because they were selling them for human trafficking and slave trade. That’s when people started hiding their kids. That’s when people started getting wary.”

Musemakweri said this is a discussion that people need to have more often, especially in an academic community, instead of just feeling sorry for Africans.

“All people want to hear is about suffering in Africa,” he said.